A new national count offers a snapshot of Muslim representation today. The deeper story is how years of voter mobilization, candidate development, and local organizing are beginning to reshape Muslim participation in American public life.
A newly released 2026 Directory of Elected Muslim Officials from CAIR and CAIR Action identifies 228 Muslim Americans serving in elected office and the judiciary across 26 states. The directory includes four members of Congress, 44 state officials, 11 mayors, 87 city council members, 58 school board members, and 17 elected judges. Women make up 43 percent of those officials. Read CAIR and CAIR Action’s 2026 directory announcement
The headline number is significant. But the more revealing story is where Muslim political power is actually being built.
The Growth Did Not Begin in Washington
Muslim political participation has been developing from the local level upward for years.
In 2020, CAIR, Jetpac, and MPower Change identified a record 181 Muslim candidates running across 28 states and Washington, D.C., with 80 ultimately winning office. Those candidates were not concentrated only in congressional races: they also competed for municipal, county, judicial, school-board, and state legislative seats. Read the 2020 American Muslims Breaking Barriers report
That kind of local participation is still visible today. In Illinois’s April 2025 municipal elections, CAIR Action Illinois reported 19 victories among its endorsed or supported candidates, spanning school boards, park districts, township offices, village boards, and city councils. The organization credited candidate forums, voter education, canvassing, phone and text banking, volunteer mobilization, and transportation to polling places as part of that effort. See CAIR Action Illinois’s 2025 local election results
Those races rarely receive the attention of a congressional campaign. Yet they represent something arguably more important for long-term political development: a bench.
A community with several nationally prominent politicians has representation. A community producing school-board members, trustees, commissioners, council members, state legislators, judges, campaign workers, organizers, and future candidates is beginning to build political infrastructure.
Why Local Power Matters
The concentration of Muslim officeholders in local government should not be treated as a lesser form of political success.
The National School Boards Association describes local school boards as the community’s direct voice in public education, responsible for setting policy, establishing priorities, overseeing budgets, and holding school systems accountable. Learn more about the role of local school boards
For Muslim families, those decisions can touch everything from school climate and student accommodations to calendars, curriculum, budgets, and district policy.
Municipal government can be just as consequential. The National League of Cities emphasizes the authority local governments exercise over land use, zoning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, and other decisions that shape daily community life. Read the National League of Cities’ municipal policy framework
That means questions that may feel “national” to Muslim Americans often become intensely local: whether a mosque can expand, how religious institutions are treated under zoning law, what services neighborhoods receive, or whether Muslim residents have meaningful access to local decision-makers.
Local office can also become a pathway to higher office. Rep. Lateefah Simon, for example, served on the Bay Area Rapid Transit board before winning California’s 12th Congressional District in 2024. Read CBS Bay Area’s report on Lateefah Simon’s congressional victory
Political influence, in other words, does not simply trickle down from Washington. It can grow upward from communities that develop experienced leaders locally.
Voters Are Building the Other Half of the Equation
Candidates cannot build lasting political power without an electorate prepared to participate.
Research from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding’s American Muslim Poll 2025 found that 85 percent of Muslims legally eligible to vote reported being registered, up from just 60 percent in 2016. That placed Muslim voter registration statistically on par with most other major religious groups surveyed. Read ISPU’s American Muslim Poll 2025 findings
That rise suggests Muslim political participation is becoming less episodic.
For many years, major bursts of Muslim civic engagement were tied to moments of crisis—surveillance, immigration restrictions, discrimination, foreign-policy controversies, or spikes in anti-Muslim rhetoric. Increasingly, organizations are investing in infrastructure that remains after an election ends: voter registration, candidate forums, civic education, leadership training, canvassing, coalition building, and candidate development.
The growth of representation is therefore not just about individual candidates deciding to run. It reflects communities becoming more capable of producing, supporting, electing, and holding accountable public officials.
Representation Is Growing—but the Map Is Still Uneven
The 2026 directory shows just how concentrated that progress remains.
New Jersey leads the country with 46 Muslim officials, followed by Michigan with 38 and California with 20. At the same time, 24 states still have no Muslim representation identified in the directory. See the state-by-state findings from the 2026 directory
That gap matters.
Representation does not simply appear because a Muslim population exists. Communities need voter registration, organizations, donors, volunteers, candidate pipelines, political knowledge, and people willing to view public service as a space where they belong.
The same lesson can be seen in New York. A long-form examination by The Guardian traced the rise of Muslim political influence there to years of organizing by Muslim, immigrant, civil-rights, tenant, and grassroots groups that developed in response to post-9/11 surveillance and political exclusion. Read The Guardian’s analysis of Muslim political organizing in New York
That distinction is important.
Political power is not simply having a Muslim name on a ballot. It is having communities capable of identifying priorities, recruiting leaders, mobilizing voters, building coalitions, and remaining engaged between elections.
Greater Visibility Has Also Brought Greater Resistance
Increasing Muslim participation has not made anti-Muslim rhetoric disappear.
A recent Religion News Service analysis found that some political rhetoric has shifted from framing Muslims primarily as a terrorism or national-security concern toward portraying Muslim political participation and even Muslim presence itself as a supposed threat to American identity. Read the Religion News Service analysis
That tension has become particularly visible as more Muslim candidates win office. RNS noted that anti-Muslim attacks directed at Abdul El-Sayed increased sharply following his Michigan Senate primary victory, while experts interviewed for the article described broader rhetoric portraying Muslims as a cultural or “civilizational” threat.
The paradox is striking: Muslim Americans are becoming more deeply integrated into American democratic institutions at the same moment some political voices are questioning whether Muslims belong in those institutions at all.
That makes local representation especially important.
Every Muslim serving on a school board, city council, state legislature, court, or in Congress is not merely adding another name to a national count. They are participating in the ordinary work of American government—making policy, serving constituents, debating budgets, representing neighborhoods, and helping shape public institutions.
What Comes Next?
The 228 officials identified in 2026 should be understood as a measure of progress, not the finish line.
The deeper measure of Muslim civic power will be whether communities continue building the infrastructure underneath those officials: more registered voters, stronger civic organizations, informed constituents, young people who understand government, viable candidates, experienced volunteers, and community members who remain engaged after Election Day.
It also means expanding the map.
The future of Muslim political participation will not be defined only by who reaches Congress. It will be built in school-board meetings, city halls, county offices, state capitols, courtrooms, campaigns, and community organizations across the country.
The most important question raised by the 2026 numbers may therefore not be how many Muslims hold office today.
It is how many communities are building the civic infrastructure to produce the leaders of tomorrow.
