If Dr. Mehmet Oz’s lead over his opponent holds, he could be the next Senator from Pennsylvania, and that would make history, as he would become the nation’s first Muslim senator.
With that in mind, Muslims in the state have invited him to events at mosques. They have waited for him to talk about how his life has been influenced by his faith, which he once told an interviewer followed the mystical Sufi Islam of the whirling dervishes. They anticipated some acknowledgement of the significance of the election of a Muslim to such a high national office. But Dr. Oz has not done any of those things. He has not fulfilled the hopes of his Muslim co-religionists.
Oz’s personal and political identities seem to be fluid, uncommitted to the Muslim community, and his fellow Muslims seem to be equally ambivalent about him.
He identifies himself as a secular Muslim, raised his four children in his wife’s Christian faith and rarely discusses his religious beliefs in public. Unlike most American Muslims, he is a Republican. And some of his rare comments about Islam — including a warning about Shariah law in the United States, which no group has ever proposed — have been viewed by fellow Muslims as Islamophobic signaling.
Above all, though, the alienation many Muslims feel from Oz stems from his warm embrace of former President Donald Trump, who once said he would “strongly consider” closing mosques in the United States and took many actions considered hostile to Islam.
As Liam Stack observed, “the first Muslim senator might be a man who owes his political rise to a figure who spread Islamophobia more widely than any other recent American leader.”
Dr. Oz, known as a television medical popularizer, often accused of peddling quack remedies, says, “I have struggled a lot with my Muslim identity, in part because, within my family, there were two very different perspectives on it,” he said in a 2009 interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the PBS television show “Faces of America.”
This ambiguous identity extends not only to his religion, but to his reputation as a doctor. An article in Scientific American is titled, “Dr Oz Should Not be a Senator—or a Doctor.” They point out that he “has long pushed misleading, science-free and unproven alternative therapies such as homeopathy, as well as fad diets, detoxes and cleanses. Some of these things have been potentially harmful…”
Muslims’ concerns over Doctor Oz’s ambivalence about his religion are not over theological differences, but over his unwillingness to publicly embrace them while at the same time aligning with politicians who have been hostile toward their community.
Dalia Mogahed, the director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, said it felt as if Oz had “disowned” his background and he therefore finds it difficult to encourage his fellow Muslims to vote for him. “How can I justify this?” he said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, guys, we want to go vote for this guy, he’s good, but he doesn’t want to be seen with us.’”
Only 10% of American Muslims identify as Republicans, according to a study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding this year. Forty-six percent of Muslims identify as Democrats and 40% as independent, the highest percentage of independents of any faith group. Oz is believed to be the first Muslim nominee for Senate from a major party.
Mogahed said that American Muslims were likely to be independents because many did not feel they fit into either political party.
Oz embraced Donald Trump throughout his tenure, was endorsed by him and is being supported by him at rallies. He has become identified with Trump’s Islamophobia. So Oz now finds himself in a bind: he may be both not Muslim enough for Muslims and too Muslim for non-Muslims.
Chris Caras, the imam of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, who used to be an assiduous follower of Dr. Oz on television, has been left disenchanted by his campaign style: “All I saw were what seemed to my eyes to be him eating pork and drinking beer and wine in rural areas…After months of these pictures without a single person of color, I finally unfollowed him after many years.”
It remains to be seen if there are enough non-aligned Muslims and non-Muslims who approve his position on major political and social issues and who are willing to ignore his religious vacuum.
