“But the truth is that we are experiencing the same Islamophobic rhetoric right now coming from the Biden administration,” she said, adding that Muslims in Michigan “don’t feel safe, they don’t feel heard and they don’t feel seen.”
Adam Y. Abusalah, a Palestinian American resident of Dearborn, joined the Biden 2020 campaign as a field organizer in Michigan.
“At the time, I thought Biden was the better candidate and that he would lead with compassion and humanity,” said Mr. Abusalah, 22, who works in local government.
But he now feels that the administration’s approach to Palestinian issues and Israel, he said, is indistinguishable from Mr. Trump’s. The president’s staunch support for Israel in recent days has been gut-wrenching, he said.
Mr. Abusalah said his community is feeling anguished and fearful in the wake of the outbreak of violence in the Middle East.
“It feels like it’s a crime to speak up for Palestine right now,” he said. “The media and our elected officials make us look like we’re bad just for speaking up about injustices.”
Some prominent Arab American figures in Michigan have predicted that many voters in the state will choose to leave the presidential candidate ballot blank next year.
One of them is Osama Siblani, the publisher of The Arab American News and an outspoken voice on Middle East policy. He has heard the worry that abandoning Mr. Biden means that Mr. Trump, should he be the Republican nominee for president, will prevail.
“My argument is, ‘Let him win,’” he said of Mr. Trump.
In Dearborn, a city whose bustling center is dotted with Middle Eastern restaurants and storefronts with signs in Arabic, Mayor Abdullah Hammoud has absorbed the distress from his constituents over the direction of the Democratic Party.
“What I’m hearing from community members now is the feeling of being back-stabbed,” he said. “The feeling of being brought into the fold under this tent of diversity, yet the issues, the values, the principles we fight to uphold are not being taken up by the party that we have pledged to support again and again.”
