In the two decades after 9/11, Muslims in this country were in a defensive crouch, politically, convinced that nativist whites looked at them and thought, terrorist. In his book Dearborn, a collection of short stories about the Arab-dominated Detroit suburb, author Ghassan Zeineddine describes the feeling of Otherness that Muslims experienced after the attacks on the World Trade Center.

“Badria heard stories of white men assaulting and killing turbaned and brown-skinned men across the country in revenge for the attacks,” Zeineddine wrote of one Muslim woman’s experience. “It didn’t matter if Badria had American citizenship or that her children were born and raised in the U.S. and spoke with American accents. They weren’t white.”

In 2016, I attended a Muslims for Hillary event on Devon Avenue. The organizer told me he hoped a potential President Hillary would appoint a Muslim to the Supreme Court. That was the community’s only possible path to power, he believed, since Americans would never elect a Muslim to high office.

Or will they? In 2022, a record 82 Muslims were elected to federal, state, local and judicial offices, according to Jetpac Resource Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. That included four members of Congress. Here in Illinois, the first two Muslims were elected to the state House of Representatives: Abdelnasser Rashid of Bridgeview and Nabeela Syed of Palatine. Rashid defeated state Rep. Michael Zalewski, a political scion whose father was a Chicago alderperson.

Nothing represents the Muslim community’s political coming of age more than the debate over the war in Gaza. Last month, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire, the position favored by Muslims. The fact that the debate has reached mainstream institutions is a big deal in this country, whose politicians have traditionally supported “Israel’s inherent right to defend itself,” as the Pentagon’s press secretary put it recently.

Gaza has been a galvanizing issue for American Muslims, who have mostly voted Democratic in recent years, due to Republican warmongering in the Middle East. Now, they’re threatening not to vote for either party, due to what they see as President Joe Biden’s warmongering there. Palestinians have suffered far more casualties than the Israelis in the war: 33,091 dead, 70 percent of them women and children. Rashid was among local Palestinian officials who turned down a March meeting with Biden advisers to discuss the situation in Gaza. More Palestinians live in Cook County (18,000) than any other county in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than 23,000 live in the Chicago metropolitan area.

“There’s nothing new to be said,” Rashid declared. “We need an immediate and permanent ceasefire. And we need the United States to stop supplying arms to Israel.”

Muslim politicians have broken through in the suburbs, but they have yet to win a seat on the Chicago City Council, unable to break through in the ethnic politics that define most urban wards. Last year, Mueze Bawany, a Pakistani immigrant, lost his challenge to 50th Ward Alderperson Debra Silverstein. Bawany’s campaign was hurt after the Tribune discovered a deleted X account in which he wrote “F— Israel and f— all you Zionist scum.” West Ridge, which covers most of the 50th Ward, has both the city’s largest concentration of Muslims and its largest concentration of Jewish Chicagoans, each making up around 25 percent of the population. However, the ward has been represented by a Jewish alderperson since the 1950s. Silverstein, who is in her fourth term, seems secure in the seat, but a Muslim could succeed her after she retires. Or, a Muslim could win a seat in a ward where ethnicity is less important.

Someday, there will be a Muslim alderperson on the City Council. There will also be a Muslim senator, governor, justice, and maybe even president. If that all sounds far-fetched, given the prejudice against guys named Muhammad in early 21st Century America, remember that it was less than 100 years ago that New York Gov. Al Smith was clobbered in the 1928 presidential election because he was Roman Catholic, and therefore would take orders from the pope in Rome. If anyone complained about Joe Biden’s Catholicism, it was because he wasn’t Catholic enough, because he supported abortion rights. Muslims are going through the same stages of assimilation as every other ethnic group in this country’s history, and they’re going to end up in the same place. When they get there, they’ll remember Gaza as a landmark on their march to empowerment.