US Muslim leaders oppose Trump’s appointments - Reuters

According to analysts, Muslim support helped Trump win Michigan and contributed to his victory in other battleground states.

Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, stated that the Republican candidate “won because of us, and we're not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”

Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network (AMEEN), remarked that Muslim voters hoped Trump would appoint officials who would work for peace, but that did not happen.

“We are very disappointed. It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” he said.

Nazarko added that the community would continue to push for its voice to be heard and for the war in Gaza to end.

Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and co-founder of the Abandon Harris campaign, which endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, said that Trump’s appointments did not surprise him but turned out to be even more extreme than he feared.

“It's like he's going on Zionist overdrive. We were always extremely skeptical ... Obviously, we're still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” he said.

Several Muslim and Arab supporters of the election winner hope that Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, will play a key role in ending the war. This hope is bolstered by the fact that Grenell spent several months working with US Muslim and Arab communities and was even presented at events as a potential next secretary of state.

Another key Trump ally, Massad Boulos, the Lebanese father-in-law of Trump's daughter Tiffany, has met several times with Arab-American and Muslim leaders.

Boulos and Trump promised Arab-American and Muslim voters that the Republican candidate was a man of peace who would act quickly to end wars in the Middle East and beyond. However, neither of those promises has been fulfilled immediately.

Hope for peace remains

During his campaign, Trump visited several cities with large Arab-American and Muslim communities, including Dearborn, Michigan, where he expressed his admiration for Muslims. In Pittsburgh, the Republicans referred to Muslim supporters as “a beautiful movement. They want peace. They want stability.”

Bill Bazzi, mayor of neighboring Dearborn Heights, who supported Trump, said he met with the newly elected president three times and still believes Trump will work to end the war despite his appointments.

Rola Makki, a Lebanese-American Muslim and vice chair of the Michigan Republican Party’s media outreach division, agreed with him.

“I don't think everyone's going to be happy with every appointment Trump makes, but the outcome is what matters. I do know that Trump wants peace, and what people need to realize is that there's 50,000 dead Palestinians and 3,000 dead Lebanese, and that's happened during the current administration,” she said.

Controversial appointments

Following his November 5 victory, Donald Trump began announcing names of individuals who would join his administration after the inauguration.

The appointments of several politicians who support Israel in the ongoing Middle East conflict sparked dissatisfaction among Muslim leaders in the US.

Notably, Trump announced the nomination of Fox News host and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as US Ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a staunch pro-Israel conservative who supports Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and calls the two-state solution in Palestine unrealistic.

Additionally, Trump selected Republican Representative Elise Stefanik as US Ambassador to the UN. She described the UN as “a cesspool of anti-Semitism” and took a strong stance condemning the deaths in Gaza.

For Secretary of State, Trump appointed Republican Senator Marco Rubio, an ardent Israel supporter. Rubio stated that he was opening a new chapter for a ceasefire in Gaza and emphasized that Israel must destroy "every element” of Hamas. “These people are vicious animals,” Rubio said.

Read about Trump's 10 friends and who will join the new US president's team in RBC-Ukraine's article.