“I Feel Extremely Disillusioned,” Said Sara Ahmed, a First-Time Pakistani American Voter

With the 60th presidential election approaching, the Pakistani American community faces a dilemma — to vote for a system they distrust or risk empowering candidates they fear may exacerbate the situation in Gaza and the Middle East.

As the 60th US presidential election approaches on November 5, members of the Pakistani American community face a difficult choice: vote for a system they distrust or risk empowering candidates whose policies may worsen the situation in Gaza and the Middle East.

Sara Ahmed*, a 26-year-old first-time voter, feels disillusioned by the two-party system. “It feels like there are two sides of the same coin at this point,” she said.

Ahmed is not alone in her skepticism. Ayesha Malik*, a 24-year-old from Chicago, feels her political views are rooted in her experiences growing up in a predominantly white and conservative area post-9/11. “My experiences were affected by post-9/11, feeling ashamed of my background, hearing white people talk about brown people as ‘terrorists,’ portraying Pakistan as a terrorist state,” she explained.

On the other hand, Ahmed, who moved to the US from Pakistan six months ago, feels her perspective on US politics differs from that of her family, who viewed the US as a place of opportunity and “welcoming”. Ahmed's experience in a post-9/11 America has left her disillusioned by the country's heightened scrutiny and foreign policy entanglements in the Middle East.

“My generation has never known an America without 9/11,” she said. “We have never experienced America without its invasive foreign policy, its influence on the Middle East, and views towards us Muslims specifically.”

Another first-time voter, Amani Khan, a 19-year-old student at the University of Michigan, describes a more direct sense of disappointment that the US government’s support for Israel has garnered amongst her peers. There’s a push to vote third-party at her university. Khan and her family have always aligned with the Democratic Party, however, feel “upset by the US’ stance” on Middle East policy under the current administration.

“It’s sad to see the US not have Israel take any accountability,” she said.

“Neither political candidate, Kamala Harris nor Trump, has any kind of solid response to what’s going on,” Malik added, pointing to remarks made at Trump rallies where “people are saying that Palestinians have been taught to hate Americans at two years old.” She argued that Democrats have traditionally been seen as “more socially moral” but feels that “the ideology that the Democratic Party is representative of the people has totally lost its weight in this election”.

Unlike Malik and Khan, Bilal Hussain*, a 27-year-old IT engineer living in Wisconsin, has always leaned towards the Republican party. “We need to stop being so involved in this war,” he said of the situation in Palestine. After seeing the Biden administration’s response post-October 7, he stressed that he would “never trust the Democratic Party anymore. Obama killed millions of Muslims. Biden is killing millions of Muslims. Kamala will kill even more. They have terrible international affairs policies. We need a leader who can negotiate with foreign leaders to prevent war.”

Faraz Siddique, 26, a wealth/strategy consultant who immigrated from Pakistan to North Carolina in 2017, has always leaned left. Yet he now feels extremely betrayed by the Democratic Party’s stance on Gaza, “to the point where it makes sense to vote for the Green Party, but that means another vote wasted.” “Same as last time, this election revolves around voting for the lesser evil,” he lamented.

For these young Pakistani Americans, the limitations of the two-party system have reached a breaking point. Malik has chosen to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. “I think it’s unrealistic that you will align with a political candidate completely,” she explained, “but [Stein] is the most progressive candidate that we have. At least she acknowledges Palestinian suffering; she at least calls it a genocide. None of the other political candidates have said anything like that.”

Reflecting on the limited choices within the two-party system, she added, “We have been voting for years and years, choosing a moderate candidate so we can reach a more progressive reform, but that never happens. We need to vote for radical candidates. Even if we can’t get them in office, we need to at least give them a platform.

“We know that the third-party candidate Jill Stein will certainly not win but it will be interesting to see how many votes she gets.”

Like Malik and Siddique, Ahmed also voiced her frustration with the lack of viable alternatives. “I don’t feel represented [by the two main parties]. It is also hard to be represented because the electoral college makes it kind of impossible to feel represented within your state. Or to directly vote for a candidate, there are so many barriers. You can’t really have any new candidates, you have to pick from what is chosen for you.

“I don’t

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