Conservatives vs. Liberals:
Where Will Muslims Find Their Political "Home"?

Many well-meaning people, Muslim or otherwise, try to play the American political game by voting for acceptable candidates, or even running themselves. They are driven by the hope that they can change the system for the better in some way. However, far more often than not, they become the ones who are changed in thought and action-and not for the better. The following paragraphs will explain, God willing, one way how this can happen.

After the election of 2004, we see that voters in the US have been placed into two broad groupings. People used to think of "Liberals" and "Conservatives" as opposite ends of America's political spectrum; they have since become two separate bags into which the masses are tossed and sorted. Media, politicians, and people on the street would have you believe that your sympathies must lie with one bag or the other: little or no room exists for (intellectual) foreigners or independent people "on the fence". For example, talk to your middle-management co-worker about the abuses that big corporations commit; and he or she will immediately conclude that you are some kind of pinko socialist! Furthermore, if you find yourself speaking the same day to your daughter's professor against gay marriage, he might label you a redneck cretin. If you don't like capitalism, you must be a dirty hippy commie; and if you are not a democrat liberal you must be a republican conservative psychopath. Such attitudes further limit the range of political thinking that is actually possible in this country, in spite of the hype.

Conservatives are supposed to rally around several key issues: anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, anti-immigration, emphasis on military spending for "security", support for big business, as well as cutting income and wealth taxes to protect capital.

For the most part, these are all ideals the US-based Ummah-especially the upper middle class element on the make-is willing to get behind and support. While many Muslims don't like conservative thinking regarding US foreign policy, especially when the mega deaths of Muslims far away are involved, the majority of them are willing to turn their backs on the rest of the world in order to social-climb safely within the American status quo.

But sooner or later, Muslims find that even conservative ideals on social and economic questions are palatable only when the more racist and Christian overtones are downplayed. Never forget that the Republican Party owes much of its support, both financial and moral, to poisonous personalities like Jerry Falwell, Robert Tilton and Pat Robertson, all longtime and open Islam-haters. So, when George W. Bush takes a public stand against abortion or gay rights, he's not really talking to Muslims, but directly to his base in the Moral Majority.

Never will the Jews nor the Christians be satisfied with you unless you follow their form of Deen. (TMQ: Surat ul-Baqarah, ayah 120)

As for the liberal side (a relatively new realm for Muslims who have been told to "go to hell"-literally!-by the moral conservative camp), people there are said to favor pro-choice policies on abortion, gay rights, de-emphasis on military spending, and progressive taxes spent to buy the loyalty of certain special interest groups. Many liberals accept, even embrace the changes affecting American families (single mother heads of households, unmarried parents, gay couples adopting children, etc.) that are forbidden by Islam. Clearly, there is more in the liberal agenda that is disturbing to Muslims, who used to feel so comfortable as pseudo-conservatives. No matter what liberal kuffar say, they can never change the Islamic stands on homosexuality and abortion. And when they are called upon to "roll along with the new" and abandon "stone-age morality," Muslims will have a clear choice: roll along with the "new" way, or remain true to the Deen.

And Muslims trying to force themselves into the American system find it is difficult to increase their comfort level by "mixing and matching" policies. In theory it seems easy enough to support say, the right to abortion on demand (a "liberal" idea) and significant increases in military spending at the same time ("conservative"). Nonetheless, this happens rarely in real political life. In order to support one thing such as better health care & education, an American Muslim liberal really does have to approve of gay rights. If not, he or she falls to the margins, or is counted as "undecided". To select some of the good, you must take all of the bad; the cookie must be washed down with castor oil.

To participate as voters and even more so as candidates, Muslims must allow non-Muslims to tell them what is right or wrong, what is halal or haram. In the end, if Muslims attempt to align themselves with a non-Islamic party or school of thought, whether Conservative or Liberal, Republican or Democrat, they must be willing to consider which parts of their Islam are expendable enough to qualify for joining such a party.

So far, Muslim voters have tried to avoid such difficult decisions by not thinking at all, relying instead on their emotions and irrational "gut feelings." Many of them chose Bush in 2000, simply because they could not stand the idea of a prominent Jewish man in high public office. In 2004, they voted for Kerry in order to punish Bush, the man who they thought betrayed them in 2001, 2002, and 2003. But let's be real: if Gore had been elected in 2000, or even Nader, either of them still would have bombed Afghanistan after September 11, 2001. There was no other way to satisfy America's hate and thirst for revenge against "radical Islam," except by destroying a lot of stuff and killing a lot of "wogs."

Muslims in the USA, for the sake of their brothers and sisters elsewhere as well as their own, ought to start thinking again. Perhaps they should ask themselves a few simple questions: which party would 'Ali (RAAH) vote for? Who would 'Umar bin al-Khatab (RAAH) register Muslim voters outside a masjid for? Whose campaign bus would Abu Bakr (RAAH) climb aboard? What would Uthman (RAAH) say about a candidate who supported a Jewish state in Palestine or a capitalist state in Iraq? What would they all say to conservative or liberal parties? Could it ever be, "I like your policies overall, but you're just going to have to twist my arm a little harder on the gay thing…"?

With a little perspective, it's easy to see that the differences between liberals and conservatives are more like the differences between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. In other words, they mainly bicker about secondary social issues that their system can't fix anyway, and about how the spoils of capitalism shall be divided. On the other side of the coin, both liberals and conservatives agree that Islamic ideology doesn't belong in the USA, God should stay out of public life, and corporations must be in charge-though they still will bicker about which ones should get the most power. Where liberals and conservatives are concerned, there is no "lesser of two evils." As the Prophet himself (SAAW) pointed out, "Kufr is but one Ummah."

So let Muslims in America ask themselves once more: can they have a genuine political home under current conditions; and if so, where is it? Does Islam register on the American political spectrum? Heck, do we even want it to? Shouldn't we make Islam the basis for a different kind of system, a different kind of government doing a better job of understanding and guiding the world?

In the end, who needs conservatism; and who needs liberalism? It is up to Muslims to rediscover the way toward the true alternative, and show it to everyone else.

And rule between them by that which Allah revealed to you, and do not follow their vain desires away from the truth which came to you. (TMQ: Surat ul-Ma'idah, ayah 48)

(Submitted 11/5/04)