Dr. Ibrar Nadeem, the Ciattarelli campaign’s executive director for Muslims relations, told the audience at a campaign event on Saturday, “family comes into place when a man and a woman gets married, not the same sex” — a widely held belief among the vast majority of the world’s Muslims. Nadeem also expressed that he had been attacked for supporting Ciattarelli by people accusing him of “taking money from Jews,” which he denied.
“We are going to have a ban on same-sex marriage and I know my brother voted against it and he will do it again,” Nadeem said. “We talk about family. Family comes into place when a man and a woman gets married, not the same sex. We oppose same-sex marriage.”
Nadeem made the comment in the context of having Muslim voices in the centers of power in New Jersey.
“We want to be in those rooms where decisions will be made — and not necessarily mean me, I said we. I’m going to collect resumes from top intellectuals,” he promised. “It will be merit-based, but we want to be in those rooms where decisions are made.”
He also lamented that “people from my community,” presumably Muslims, attacked him for supporting Ciattarelli.
“Somebody said you are taking money from Jews. I said, ‘I check my bank account every day brother, it’s not there,’” he asserted.
The attack on Ciattarelli for Nadeem’s comments also included condemning Ciattarelli for celebrating that his campaign was “the first to have a Muslim as part of a his inner circle of advisers.”
Nadeem is the director of the Auliya Council of North America, a Sufi Islamic organization, and is a regular supporter of Republican causes in New Jersey. While degrees of discrimination against gay people vary in Muslim communities around the world, and the Islamic community in the United States tends to me more accepting than those in other parts of the world, the vast majority of countries governed under Sharia, or Islamic law, punish or at least heavily discourage homosexuality. At least ten Islamic countries punish consensual same-sex relations with death, according to a 2020 study by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
In the United States, a Pew Research Institute poll published in July found that 55 percent of Muslims agree with the phrase “homosexuality should be discouraged by society,” compared to 30 percent for Americans generally and 47 percent for Americans who identify as Republican or lean Republican. Even organizations that support LGBTQIA2+ causes, such as the Human Rights Campaign, concede, “it is rare that an openly LGBTQ+ Muslim feels fully welcome at a mainstream mosque in the United States. Cultural norms and traditional readings of sacred texts often uphold a heteronormative binary of gender identification and sexual orientation that don’t allow for the range of identities present in today’s society.”
Ciattarelli responded to the attacks late on Monday, noting that he personally does not oppose same-sex marriage and accusing Sherrill of lying.
“You know I support same sex marriage. You also know the full clip of Dr. Nadeem’s remarks are clear: He was talking about the grief he gets from some BECAUSE of my unwavering support for the Jewish community and Israel and his own efforts to build bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim communities,” Ciattarelli clarified. “Your desperate lies will backfire. NJ’s Jewish community doesn’t need lectures from Mamdani supporters like you who didn’t even have the moral courage to stand with Israel.”
Ciattarelli was referring to Sherrill’s refusal to condemn New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Shia Muslim and self-proclaimed “democratic socialist.” Mamdani’s radical campaign promises, such as calling for the creation of “government-run grocery stores,” coupled with his history of anti-Israel stances, has alarmed many moderate voters. Mamdani has repeatedly failed to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a rallying cry to bring the Islamic jihad for the destruction of Israel to all countries, drawing condemnation from several Jewish members of Congress. Mamdani condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than Hamas, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023, massacre of random Israelis by the jihadist terrorist group, and he supports the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) movement against Israel.
Rep. Sherrill has tried to keep some distance from Mamdani, falling short of formally endorsing him but praising his “very interesting” ideas.
Rep. Sherrill’s attacks on Ciattarelli for hosting an event with a Muslim leader come at a particularly concerning time for her campaign. While the Democrat is leading in most polls, she is doing so narrowly, and anonymous Democrats nationwide have raised the alarm that her campaign is floundering.
“People think she’s not running the race that she should be running,” an anonymous Democratic political operative told Politico on Tuesday. “There is concern among some in the party that she lacks concrete policy ideas, relies too much on a D.C. staff that isn’t Jersey-savvy, takes certain voter demographics for granted — and focuses on Trump too much.”
A poll published by Fairleigh Dickinson University found Rep. Sherrill attracting 52-percent support, compared to Ciattarelli at 45 percent with a three-percent pool of undecided voters. A similar survey published by Quinnipiac University last week found Rep. Sherrill with 50 percent support, compared to Ciattarelli at 44 percent.
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