By Kane Farabaugh, VOA News

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VOA News: Seven Muslim Americans on Ballot in Suburban Chicago

Chicago (VOA News) – When it started last year, the non-profit group Project Mobilize, or Project M, hoped to change the political landscape in suburban Chicago by promoting Muslim Americans as election candidates.  So far, there are no Muslim Americans serving as elected officials in the Chicago area.  But Project M hopes that will change in municipal elections April 5.

In the countdown to election day, Maha Hasan is making a final push to get out the vote.

She is running for a position as a trustee with the Justice Public Library.  Justice is a Chicago suburb.

“The demographics have significantly changed.  You see a lot more Polish immigrants coming in.  You see a lot more Latin Americans.  You see more, definitely more Middle Eastern Arab Americans migrating in,” she said.

Hasan is hoping to make history as the first Muslim American candidate elected to the Justice Public Library board.  She is one of seven Muslim Americans on ballots in municipal elections in suburban Chicago April 5.  Five are women.

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Candidate Itedal Shalabi & Project M Director Reema Ahmad work the ropes of campaign management.

Running for public office is not something that women are encouraged to do in male-dominated Arab Muslim culture. But five of the seven Arab Muslim candidates running for local office in Chicago’s Southwest suburbs are women.

“I am female. I am Muslim. I also wear the headscarf,” said Maha Hasan, a woman of Palestinian origin running for the library board in Justice. “These are the things that can be obstacles.”

Maha is running alongside her sister Nuha Hasan, a candidate for park district commissioner in Justice. The other three female candidates are Lina Zayed for Burbank School District 111 School Board, Rola Othman for Reavis High School District 220 School Board, and Itedal Shalabi for North Palos District 117 School Board.

“In the Arab community, who’s doing a lot of the leadership? It’s men,” said  Shalabi, a woman in her early 40s also of Palestinian descent. In most Arab countries, women are not expected to get involved with government and instead rely on the men to take up issues with local officials, she said. This, however, has been changing both overseas and in Arab immigrant communities.

“Some men might think that a woman running for local office will take a toll on the family,” she said. “I am running to show that it’s possible and that young women can do it too.”

According to 2010 data released by the Arab American Institute, Illinois has only three Arab American elected officials. Scattered among different counties, all three are men. Estimates for the state’s Arab population range from nearly 98,000 to 220,000.

No single reason seems to be propelling more women than men of Arab descent to run for local office in the Southwest suburbs. But candidate Nuha Hasan brings up a point that most women in the community can agree on.

“Arab women are learning from the mistakes of the older generation,” Nuha said. Older Arab Muslim women are less likely to have a college education and hence be more inclined to accept paternalistic values, she said. That older generation’s passivity is a catalyst driving younger women’s activism, something which younger Arab men don’t necessarily feel.

Despite these challenges, Nuha says that she is receiving great support from both men and women in her community. Both sexes want to see America’s Arab Muslim minority adequately represented. All seven candidates are backed by the Summit-based non-profit Project M, which advocates civic engagement among Arab Muslims.

“We want to turn things around. We don’t have to be a disempowered, marginalized community that complains all the time,” said Director of Project M Reema Ahmad, a young Arab Muslim woman who also wears the headscarf. “We’re going to take our governance by the reins so that we’re not just sitting on the sidelines of the political framework.”

Minority women running for local office is not unique to Chicago’s Southwest suburbs. Jessica Grounds, executive director of the national non-profit Running Start, deals directly with women in both local government and on Capitol Hill. Although not an expert on the Arab Muslim minority, she says that the challenges they face are common to all minority women.

“Sometimes it is an advantage being a woman of minority,” Grounds said. “They can accurately represent their own communities instead of having someone outside of their minority represent them.”

“We know that the positions we are running for are small,” said Shalabi, the candidate for the North Palos school board. “But someday they might take us to the White House.”

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