The Nov. 8 midterms almost saw Dr. Mehmet Oz become the first Muslim U.S. Senator. The Republican TV doctor-turned-politician—who wasn’t exactly popular among a wide swathe of Muslim Americans—would have been a controversial first for the community. But Oz’s loss to Democrat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania masks what was otherwise a record-breaking election for the community of at least 3.45 million people. Muslim Americans won at least 83 seats across local, state, and federal midterm elections as of Thursday morning, according to an analysis by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights and advocacy group, and Jetpac, a nonprofit focused on increasing Muslim political representation in the U.S. Almost 150 Muslim Americans had run this year for office, including 51 state legislative candidates across 23 states. Beyond these topline figures, several Muslims became the first representatives of their communities to enter statehouses. Illinois had its first Muslim Americans elected to the general assembly: 23-year-old Nabeela Syed and 33-year-old Abdelnasser Rashid both won seats in the state house. Salman Bhojani and Suleman Lalani became the first Muslims elected to the Texas legislature. In Georgia, Palestinian American Ruwa Romman became the first Muslim woman elected to the State House. In total, Georgia elected four Muslim Americans to office. Nabilah Islam, a Bangladeshi Muslim American, had run for (and lost) the competitive Georgia U.S. House seat back in 2020. But in this week’s midterms, she became the first Muslim woman and first South Asian woman to be elected to Georgia’s Senate. “I decided not to give up,” Islam says. “I still wanted to make a difference in my community in the state levels; there’s many things we needed to work on, including access to Medicaid and protecting abortion rights.” FULL ARTICLE