NJ-06: Tuesday's primary features N.J.'s 1st Muslim woman candidate for Congress
Like many challengers to sitting House Democrats in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, writer Amani Al-Khatahtbeh supports Medicare for All and the Green New Deal and wants to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What makes her different is that she is the first Muslim woman to run for Congress from New Jersey, according to Jetpac, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based group that trains American Muslims to run for public office and become active in politics.
Al-Khatahtbeh is one of two progressive Democrats challenging Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. in New Jersey’s 6th District. Also running is Russ Cirincione, a housing lawyer with the New York state government, who is on a slate of supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
At a time when President Donald Trump ran on a platform of banning Muslims from entering the country and went all the way to the Supreme Court to impose restrictions on visitors from several Muslim majority nations, Al-Khatahtbeh said her candidacy was “a moral obligation to this moment in time.”
“It’s reclaiming our place here,” she said. “We need more representation at the table. I grew up with my family’s Arabic satellite at home. Most kids are saying, ‘I want to be lawyer, I want to be a doctor.' The earliest notion of what I wanted to do was, ‘I said to myself, I want to stop a war from happening one day.‘”
https://www.nj.com/politics/2020/07/tuesdays-primary-features-njs-1st-muslim-woman-candidate-for-congress.html
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