Having Trouble Understanding Trump Voters? Islam can Help.

In 2016, a man named Donald Trump won a presidential election in the United States of America, despite the best forecasts only giving him a ~30% chance of victory. In 2020, those same forecasters gave Trump only a 10% chance of victory, as even a large polling error wouldn't be enough for him to win. There was a large polling error, and Donald Trump did not win the presidency. One thought reverberated everywhere I went, however -- from the made up worlds of social media, to the virtual calls with friends, to the very real conversations with colleagues -- how can 73 million Americans vote for Donald Trump after everything he's said and done? I have good news for many of the seeming millions trying to answer this question, you probably already have the right headspace to think about Trump voters. If you're brave enough, simply download the module you have for understanding Muslims.

I want to state the thesis explicitly and early. Supporters of Trump, like supporters of Islam, are overwhelmingly supporters because they were born that way. People support Trump because they're conservative, people support Islam because they are Muslim. Being born into a ____ family does not make you evil, and people deserve love and respect because they are people. Separately, as a non-Muslim (atheist) and a liberal, I think both ideologies are undesirable, and the actual words of Trump or Muhammad are often reprehensible. The following paragraphs will focus on the ideologies, but my goal is to convince you about the people.

A quick caveat. No analogy is perfect, some are useful. I could easily replace Muslims with Christians here, but it gets messier because of the overlapping Venn diagrams. While there are certainly Muslims who voted for Trump, most people don't think of those identities as intersecting.

Now, let me guess the complaints that are beginning to boil.

How dare I compare Muslims to Donald Trump? Have I ever met a Muslim in my life? Donald Trump, let's remember, has publicly mused about disrupting, databasing, and deporting members of a faith group, and has explicitly called to ban that group from entering the US. He called for the torture of terrorists' innocent family members, and the plunder of other nations in war. He has equivocated on disavowing hate groups numerous times, and bragged about the sexual assault of women (of which he's been accused dozens of times). Finally, of course, the totalitarian implications of his thoughts on democracy and election results. You cannot compare Muslims to Donald Trump.

Of course I'm not. Donald Trump isn't like "Muslims", President Trump is the Prophet Muhammad.

Image: Despite high profile murders, there is a long history of imagery

of Muhammad within Islam, and commandments against such imagery

are comparable to that within Judaism and Christianity.

The personal actions of each are perhaps the most contestable, but everything Donald Trump could tweet in his wildest, evilest dreams was actually possible in 7th century Arabia. Round-up and exile a different faith group. Check. Sometimes sell their women and children into slavery, and slaughter their men instead. Torture innocents on the wrong side of war, capture and sell slaves, practice polygamy, sex slavery, and pedophilia. These are all things Muhammad is accused of in relatively reliable historical records for the time.

Muslims revere Muhammad. Therefore, all Muslims support torture, ethnic slavery, and mysogeny - no! Just as... Well I hardly need to finish the sentence.

How do Muslims square there commitment to a just world in light of Muhammad's actions, and for that matter how do conservatives do the same for Donald Trump? There are many ways and they go back centuries, I'll summarize from worst to best. Obviously a significant number of supporters embrace the terrible ideas. There are real people willing to kill others because of perceived threats to their identity. There are people who believe foreigners are inferior and women should be subjugated. They do not get to define Islam, and they do not get to define conservatism. Next, they will defend the actions (Muhammad killed Jews because those Jews hated his movement, Trump wants to deport Muslims (at least Syrian refugees) because they "hate America"). They bring up facts to refute these claims (Muhammad improved women's rights at the time, Trump brought the lowest black unemployment rate since before Lincoln (I jest)). The contradictions are critical to understanding the movement. Every world view can be understood by looking at the right set of statements. All of the sins of Muhammad I listed are hotly contested, and some are probably unfair. Donald Trump said there were "good people on both sides" in Charlottesville -- and then said "...The White Nationalists... They should be condemned totally" one minute later.

But overwhelmingly, the main way people deal with the flaws in a leader is to not think about the flaws in their leader. Muhammad was just a man, not perfect -- Allah is the perfect one. And as for Trump, this whole argument is a strawman. Haven't we heard a million Trump supporters or evangelicals say "I may not love him as a person, but I have to support him because..." abortion, immigration, etc. I care about the actual beliefs, the policies.

If you are even marginally informed I can let you write this section yourself, even if you disagree with me so far. Trump's policy puts Central American children in cages. The Quran says non-Muslims from beyond the borders can be made slaves. Trump bans transgender people from the military. The Quran commands homosexuals be killed. Trump lowers taxes on the rich. The Quran commands that women receive less inheritance than men. "Moderate" supporters might contest all of these as bad faith. "You don't understand, there was a high standard for killing gay people, it almost never happened, it was a product of its time." "You're being thick, these kid cages are the best options we have given the laws on the books. They were here under Obama, too."

Quick reminder. I firmly believe these positions are bad, and we should seek to oppose them. We should seek to make conservatives more sympathetic to liberal policy and Muslims more sympathetic to secular government. We should love them both passionately while we do it, and not call them bigoted racists the whole entire time.

I have, however, saved the worst for last. The one position that both groups take which I find hardest to understand or to forgive. Authoritarianism. Trump AND Republicans actively try to undermine democracy and seize power of government despite the will of the people. The reaction to the 2020 election is particularly concerning. Islam literally means submission, and represents the belief that we should all submit to one leader who will rule over us with an iron fist. Thoughtcrime (disbelief) is punishable by eternal torture. Spoken crime (apostasy) is punished by execution and then eternal torture.

This is scary, and this is seriousness, and it should sometimes be opposed in the streets or on the battlefield, though rarely, to be sure. If a person has unkind beliefs, that's makes me sad. If they insist that everyone must live subject to those beliefs, that makes me scared.

But it doesn't make me scared of a hairdresser named Fatima who lives in Queens, even though she prays in a language I can't understand. Nor her brother Omar who lives in Atlanta now, but still has some unsavoury friends that he chats with when he goes back to visit Egypt. Not even their parents, still in Egypt, that are wonderful friends and hosts, but say some very ignorant things about Jews when they start talking about politics. It doesn't make you scared either, because you're a good liberal, which I know because you read long opinion pieces by me in an abandoned blog and are probably a family member.

So that guy named Trevor who lives in North Dakota, is working at a pipeline company and own 3 more hunting rifles than you think he needs -- don't be afraid of him either. Easy for me to say as a white guy? Yep. I'm neither the target of most right wing violence (abortion clinics and brown people) nor of Muslim violence (a lot more brown people). It is easy for me to say. All of the victims matter, a lot. And all of the victims are rare. Most stats on this issue are heavily biased, and there's really no need to compare.

With that accidental poem, I've had more than my say. The next time you read the fifteenth column of the week on why Trump voters existing show the power of white supremacy, ask yourself whether the existence of Muslims shows the power of Jihad. If you can live with that conclusion, you may not be entirely wrong, but it's up to you to defend that for a change.