• Endorsement of Stein and Butch Ware comes as Muslims channel anger over US support for Israel into supporting third parties

The Abandon Harris movement that sprouted late last year out of the widespread outrage over the Biden-Harris administration's support for the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza has officially endorsed the Green Party's Jill Stein for US president.

Middle East Eye
By Umar A Farooq
October 7, 2024

The endorsement is the first of its kind for Stein and the Green Party, with the Abandon Harris campaign being the first major Muslim-led political group to endorse her campaign this election cycle. Last month, a smaller group, the Muslim American Public Affairs Council NC, also endorsed Stein.

"We are not choosing between a greater evil and a lesser evil. We are confronting two destructive forces: one currently overseeing a genocide and another equally committed to continuing it. Both are determined to see it through," the Abandon Harris campaign said in a statement released on Monday.

"We call on Muslim-Americans and all those who stand firmly against genocide to vote for the Green Party in 2024. The path to justice is long, painful, and difficult, but it is ours to pave and follow."

In an interview with Middle East Eye in August, Stein said that if she were to win the presidential election, one of the first decisions she would make would be to end all military support to Israel.

The endorsement also comes amid a growing shift in the Muslim American community's voting patterns. For decades, the majority of Muslim voters cast their ballots for the Democratic Party.

However, the US military and diplomatic support for Israel's war on Gaza, which Israel recently expanded into a ground invasion of Lebanon, is a major priority for the voter bloc in the elections taking place in November.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties have spent the last few weeks arguing over which candidate, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, would be the more pro-Israel president.

In an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday, Harris was asked whether the US lacks any influence over its ally Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing Netanyahu's rejection of a US-French proposal for a truce with the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.

"It is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks," Harris said, referring to a retaliatory Iranian ballistic strike on Israel last week.

As a result, Muslim voters have exited the Democratic party in droves. A series of polls conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that there was a 43 percent drop in Muslim support for the Democratic Party between 2020 and July 2024, when President Joe Biden was still the Democrat's candidate for president.

Last month, a task force of major Muslim American groups released a statementcalling for voters to cast their ballots for candidates that support both a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel - thus far only independent and third-party candidates have stated support for both of these positions.

Then in a major development, a group of more than 100 leading imams and Muslim scholars in the US signed a letter urging Muslims to vote for a third-party candidate, instead of Harris or Trump.

"We may not know what the future holds, but we know this: we will not taint our hands by voting for or supporting an administration that has brought so much bloodshed upon our brothers and sisters," said the letter, first obtained by Middle East Eye.

"We want to be absolutely clear: don't stay home and skip voting. This year, make a statement by voting third party for the presidential ticket," the letter said.

The Abandon Harris campaign, formerly Abandon Biden, was launched in December by several Muslim American leaders and community organisers after their deadline for Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza came and went with no response.

It then relaunched as Abandon Harris in August, after a demand for Harris to accept an unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a full US arms embargo on Israel was met unanswered.

"Our movement remains dedicated to ensuring that the American people, especially the Muslim American community, recognise the responsibility we share in standing up against oppression and using all our power to stop genocide - wherever it may arise," the campaign said in its statement.

Following Monday's endorsement, Abandon Harris will be holding a press conference with Stein and her running mate, Butch Ware, in Dearborn, Michigan on Wednesday.

Pushed towards Stein

Despite this growing shift in the Muslim community away from the two major political parties during this election cycle, some Muslim-led groups continue to maintain support for the Democratic Party.

One such group, Emgage, officially endorsed Harris last month and recently hosted vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

Walz spoke during a virtual summit hosted by Emgage, where he continued to tout US support for Israel.

"This war must end, and it must end now. The vice president's working every day to ensure that. To make sure Israel secures itself, the hostages are home, the suffering in Gaza ends now, and the Palestinian people realise the right to dignity, freedom and self-determination," he said.

The Uncommitted Campaign, a movement that aimed to withhold votes from President Biden during the primary elections over the war on Gaza, released a statement last month saying that while it could not officially endorse Harris, voters shouldn't pick any of the alternatives.

Then on Sunday, following the release of the letter from over 100 imams and scholars endorsing the third-party vote, a different letter endorsing Harris was signed and released by 26 other imams.

According to NBC, which reported the second letter, Mohamed Elsanousi helped organise the effort. Elsanousi is a Biden nominee for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and has ties to the Anti-Defamation League, a group that has long been denounced by pro-Palestinian groups for describing Palestinian rights movements as antisemitic.

Others in the Muslim community have drifted towards the Republican Party and the Trump campaign.

Amid this rupture in the electoral politics of the Muslim community that has in part led to a surge in Stein's campaign, the Green Party has been faced with a series of attacks from members of the Democratic Party.

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the Green Party "not serious" and said Stein's presidential bid was "predatory".

Keith Ellison, the former congressman turned Minnesota attorney general who is also Muslim, said Stein was "nauseatingly conventional" and accused her of having "no record of producing anything except Republican victories".

"A lot of people in the Muslim community see even more reason to be jumping on Jill Stein's campaign. That's the reason for this coordinated attack," Stein's running mate Ware, an associate professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara who is also Muslim, said in an episode of the Bad Faith podcast.

Ballot Access

There are around 2.5 million registered Muslim voters in the United States, according to data from one of the leading Muslim American civil rights groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

This is a marginal amount out of the entire pool of registered voters, which is 161 million Americans. But electoral data shows that Muslim voters could make a significant impact in states key to winning the presidential election, like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.

In the states of Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, Stein is leading against Harris among Muslim voters.

Jaylani Hussein, a co-founder of the Abandon Harris campaign, told MEE that there are a number of good third-party candidates that match their policy priorities.

However, the major factor in endorsing Stein came as a result of ballot access. Stein is officially on the ballot in 38 states that together hold a total of 437 electoral votes - 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidential election.

"Our first viable option in the independent parties is the Green Party due to their ballot access," Hussein told MEE.

"We are in full support of individuals voting against genocide, which means voting for an independent party and not voting for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump," he said, adding that Cornel West and other candidates against the war on Gaza are also "good options".