Arab Muslim community leader in Michigan ejected from Kamala Harris rally

Ahmed Ghanim, a prominent Arab and Muslim member of the Royal Oak community in Michigan, has been ordered to leave an event hosted by the Kamala Harris campaign team at the Royal Oak Music Theatre, without being provided with any reason as to why.

At the venue on Monday, Ghanim, a former congressional candidate in the county Royal Oak belongs to, was escorted by a campaign organiser to two police officers waiting for his arrival. The organiser, who forced Ghanim out of the campaign event 10 minutes after he had taken his seat, told Ghanim he had to leave immediately.

In an interview with the Detroit Metro Times, Ghanim said, "I asked why she was kicking me out. She wouldn't answer. I was very calmly asking why I was being kicked out."

The conversation escalated in the intensity with which the police officers planned to execute his removal.

In the same interview, Ghanim told the Metro Times, "I was just wearing a suit and a white shirt. I said, 'OK,' and I left. The police officer said, 'You either leave now or I'll put you in the back of my car.'"

Harris campaign's history of outcasting Arabs and Muslims

In early August, US Vice President Kamala Harris was disrupted amid a campaign rally in Detroit by pro-Palestine protesters. She answered their calls for an end to the genocide in Gaza by saying, "If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I'm speaking."

This now infamous instance is one among many wherein Harris has condescended towards Muslim and Arab voters and dissenters who wish to move her existing genocidal political position on America's unending support of Israel in its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Harris' running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, also refused to meet directly with pro-Palestine advocates in Minnesota on July 9–cancelling a pre-scheduled meeting with individuals representing American Muslims for Palestine and the Council on American-Islamic Relations on the day it was to be held.

Later that month, at the Democratic National Convention, where a pro-Israel speech slot was allowed, Palestinian-American Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state Representative and loyal Democrat, was not permitted to give a speech at the DNC, despite the negotiatory urges of the Michigan-formed Uncommitted Movement.

This litany of instances wherein Muslim and Arab Americans wished to engage with the Democratic party in good faith, only to be met with rejection, echo Ahmed Ghanim's sentiments in his interview with the Metro Times: "If that happened to me, imagine what would happen to any other Muslim."

Up against the establishment Democrat

Ghanim, an Egyptian immigrant who arrived in the US in 2001, thoroughly opposes Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, supported politically and financially by the American government.

His career in the political sphere began when he co-founded Metro-Detroit Political Action Network following Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017. The Political Action Committee's (PAC) opposed Trump's Muslim travel ban and fought for Muslims who were exposed to a host of racial, religious, environmental, and economic injustices.

Ghanim's Democratic primary opponent, to whom he lost in August, is US Representative Haley Stevens.

Dubbed a "genocide enabler" by Ghanim, she is in her third-term as a moderate House democrat who fervently supports Israel, and her campaign was bolstered by generous campaign donations from affiliate PACs of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). One group, United Democracy Project, spent over $4 million on ads supporting Stevens over the past four years.