Acclaimed Canadian poet and New York Times bestselling author, Rupi Kaur declined an invitation from the White House to attend a Diwali event hosted by the vice president, Kamala Harris.
In an Instagram post on her official account, Kaur explained that she won't accept "any invitation from an institution that supports the collective punishment" of civilians. She also called on other South Asians to hold the US government accountable.
"I refuse any invitation from an institution that supports the collective punishment of a trapped civilian population—50 percent of whom are children," the author said. She wrote the Biden administration continues to "justify this genocide against Palestinians."
Kaur, an Indian-born Sikh poet also pointed out that the Hindu holiday of Diwali is a "celebration of righteousness over falsehood and knowledge over ignorance."
"I'm surprised this administration finds it acceptable to celebrate Diwali, when their support of the current atrocities against Palestinians represent the exact opposite of what this holiday means to many of us," Kaur said, urging her fellow South Asians to hold the Biden administration—and America—accountable.
But it's not only South Asians that are giving Biden fits. A cause for even greater concern is a huge drop in support from Muslim and Arab Americans.
A new survey shows support for Biden dropping dramatically among Muslim and Arab Democrats in Michigan, a main demographic that threw its support behind Biden in the swing state in 2020. The message from this voting block today is that Biden's handling of the war in Gaza could cost him the state of Michigan—and its 240,000 Muslim-American voters.
Why does this matter? Because Biden is already trailing behind former President Donald Trump. Muslim-Americans basically handed Biden in Michigan in 2020. He won 83 percent of the vote in the Michigan precincts, with the highest concentrations of Muslim and Arab Americans, and he won 81 percent of the vote in the first Muslim-majority city in the country, Hamtramck.
In short, Biden can't afford to lose any votes amongst anybody.
"Biden's extremely poor performance among Arab, Muslim, and young voters of his own party is historic and frightening," progressive strategist, Waleed Shahid, said to NBCin an interview. "Biden is risking handing the future of American democracy to Trump by providing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's far-right government an unpopular blank check to wage a reckless war."
Polls back what Shahid is saying. An October survey by the Arab American Institute found a drastic drop in support for Biden in Arab American communities. Only 17 percent of respondents said they would back the president, down from 59 percent in 2020.
Surely, Biden's statements early on in this latest Middle East conflict, when he described the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza as "the price of waging war," didn't help him get more support.
Biden made things worse by publicly doubting the death toll in Gaza, stating he has "no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using."
The death toll now has surpassed 10,000, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. The majority of the dead are children.
The executive director of the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy organization Council on American-Islamic Relations, Nihad Awad, spoke against Biden's remark.
"We are deeply disturbed and shocked by the dehumanizing comments that President Biden made about the [now 10,000] Palestinians slaughtered by the Israeli government over the past two weeks," Awad said, adding: "President Biden should apologize for his comments, condemn the Israeli government for deliberately targeting civilians, and demand a ceasefire before more innocent people die."
Anushay Hossain is a writer and a feminist policy analyst focusing on women's health legislation. She is a regular on-air guest at CNN, MSNBC, and PBS, and her writing on politics, gender, and race has been published in Forbes, CNN, USA TODAY, The Daily Beast, and more. Hossain is also the host of the Spilling Chai podcast and author of "The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women."
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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