Fatima Abdallah
Fatima Abdallah, 19, said she will be voting for Bernie Sanders in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New Jersey.
“I think he’s as genuine as a politician can be,” she explained. “I don’t see it as him being unrealistic. I see it as him being, you know, a dreamer which to me is what America was built on.”
Abdallah, who studies biology at Rutgers University-Newark, helped to register dozens of voters at her school.
“Politics is all about pleasing the people,” she said. “If you make your voice heard, politicians will listen to you because all they care about is the vote.”
The Fairview, New Jersey, resident said this election isn’t just about choosing the candidate she likes best, but a candidate she feels safe with.
“That’s what’s scaring me,” Abdallah said. “Having someone who’s supposed to represent you and be a leader for your nation to be racist towards you.”
A lot of Muslim-Americans moved to the United States because their home countries were under attack, she said. To be rejected here or to be blamed for terrorism creates a sense of identity crisis and confusion, especially among Muslim youth.
“I go to school. I go to the grocery store. I play basketball. I do everything else like a regular teenager does, but I’m looked at completely different because I have a scarf on my head,” Abdallah said.
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Halimah Elmariah
Halimah Elmariah studies international relations and diplomacy at Seton Hall University, with a minor in Middle Eastern studies.
Halimah Elmariah, 19, says she isn’t sure if she will vote for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New Jersey.
“I’m so ambivalent about it,” she said. “It’s like choosing the lesser of two evils.”
Elmariah, from North Bergen, New Jersey, studies international relations and diplomacy at Seton Hall University, with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies.
While she aligns on social issues with Sanders, she doesn’t like his economic policies, and she isn’t a fan of Clinton’s foreign policy record.
“What has she done in Muslim-majority countries? That’s very indicative of how she feels towards Muslims.”
When it comes to the general election, Elmariah said she probably just won’t vote.
Still, she definitely doesn’t want Republican Donald Trump as president. Fear, dismay with the establishment and long-harbored bigotry are driving Trump’s success, Elmariah said.
While she isn’t worried Trump could actually implement his Islamophobic policies if elected, what scares her is the social ramifications of his rhetoric.
“It’s kind of like normalized bigotry,” she said. “Because of what he’s saying, people can say racist things to me on the street.”
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Dina Sayedahmed
Dina Sayedahmed said she will vote for Bernie Sanders although she aligns most closely with Jill Stein (Muzaffar Suleymanov).
Dina Sayedahmed, 21, is excited to be voting in her first presidential election.
She turned 18 shortly after the 2012 election, but has voted in local and midterm elections in the mean time. She aligns most closely with Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
The Rutgers University student from Hudson County, New Jersey, was surprised by Donald Trump’s popularity, she said. When he entered the campaign, Sayedahmed considered Trump’s campaign a joke.
But when she saw GOP candidates start competing “to see who can be more hateful,” she started taking it more seriously.
“For any community to just stand there and watch that happen, it makes them complicit in his rhetoric. It makes them complicit in this hatred,” the political science and journalism student said.
The way Sayedahmed sees it, people are worried about refugees, the Islamic State and terrorism, and candidates are capitalizing on that for political gain. Islamophobia “looks like it’s really profitable.”
The stakes are particularly high this election and not just for Muslims, she said.
“We all need to come together and vote racists, vote hate mongers, vote Islamophobes, homophobes out of office.”