IIRC; it wasn't until the Iraq War that Muslim-Americans really turned against the GOP.
Yeah, the roots for that break were there after 9/11 though: anti-Muslim sentiment had existed in the US since 1979 when Islamic fundamentalism really entered (North) American public knowledge for the first time and while it by that time had long been acceptable to express anti-Muslim sentiment (after all, one of the biggest songs in 1979 was "Bomb Iran"). After September 11th you just saw the emergence of an extremely perfidious and widespread anti-Muslim sentiment that was to some degree independent of political affiliation (plenty of Democrats voted to invade Iraq, after all) but was really strongly felt by the GOP. Plus all of the traditional signs of persecution against Muslims emerged and intensified after 9/11: the anti-Muslim attacks and incidents, the insanity with "Shariah Law in the US" and all the obsession with burning Qurans and such.
IMHO, Iraq was an outgrowth of September 11th and Bush's strong neoconservative leanings, but all the background that lead to the split between American Muslims and the GOP started with the aftermath of September 11th. If 9/11 hadn't happened or possibly (but less likely) if it had happened but Bush or a similarly interventionist figure hadn't been President, this trend of Muslim rapprochement with the GOP would almost assuredly have continued.
Interestingly, it's fascinating to think what a small but notable Muslim contingent of the Republican Party might do to Republican policies vis-a-vis the Middle East and South/Southeast Asia.
I don't think it's possible to get a Muslim president.
Not impossible, just improbable. The US is just far and away more likely to elect a black, female, or Jewish (or some combination of the thereof) president than a Muslim one. Gallup did a poll on this a while back and, regardless of political affiliation or professed ideology, atheists and Muslims came in somewhere near dead last in terms of which group Americans would be willing to vote for for president.
An American who is Muslim would probably do what was expected of him by the American people the same as what happened in WW II when a Christian Germany declared on the US that was commanded by a Christian American of Dutch and German descent. When Italy declared war on US, Italian Americans signed up and served with distinction as did Buddhist Japanese Americans.
There's a problem with this to some degree. The Italians were Christian but in the 1930's and 40's they were the wrong kind of Christian: Catholicism has not historically been an accepted domination in the United States, and arguably was only really dealt a decisive blow when JFK became President. Plus, the Nazis really pretty strongly didn't identify themselves with Christianity. They tolerated it because many Nazi Party members and soldiers were practicing Protestants or Catholics but the Nazi state did not get along well with Christian institutions.
I do agree though, a Muslim-American President is almost assuredly going to go
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