Category: Pennsylvania Politics

When State Sen. Sharif Tahir Street converted to Islam 30 years ago, he already had a Muslim name.

His father, John F. Street, who would go on to become Philadelphia’s mayor, gave his son a Muslim name when he was born in 1974 despite raising him in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, an evangelical Christian sect in which members of the Street family hold leadership roles to this day.

As the senator tells it, his father initially considered adopting the name Sharif himself — not because he was considering converting to Islam but because he wanted to embrace the movement of Black Americans reclaiming pre-slavery identities.

Instead, the elder Street, who had already built a reputation as a rabble-rousing activist, kept his name and dubbed his son Sharif, which in Arabic means noble or exalted one.

The story would be surprising if it weren’t from the idiosyncratic Street family, which has played a unique outsider-turned-insider role in Philly politics for decades. The late State Sen. Milton Street was the senator’s uncle, and Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas Street is his ex-wife.

This year, with Sharif Street a frontrunner in the crowded Democratic primary to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, the family could make more history: If elected, Sharif Street would become the first Muslim member of Congress from Pennsylvania.

A Street win would mark another milestone in political representation for Philadelphia’s large Muslim community, an influential constituency that already includes numerous elected officials and power players.

But in characteristic Street fashion, that potential comes with a twist. Street has relatively moderate views on the conflict in Gaza and would likely stand out from Muslim colleagues in Congress like U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D. Mich.), progressives who regularly denounce Israeli aggression.

To be sure, Sharif Street, 51, is highly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war in Gaza. But he is also quick to defend Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, favors the two-state solution, and counts many prominent Philadelphia-area Jews among his friends and political supporters.

“Guess what? Benjamin Netanyahu is not the only leader of a major country in the world that’s committed war crimes, because Donald Trump has done the same thing,” Street said last week at a Muslim League of Voters event. ”But none of us would talk about getting rid of the United States of America as a country.”

For Muslim voters who view the Middle East crisis as a top political concern, this year’s 3rd Congressional District race sets up a choice between one of their own and a candidate whose politics may more closely align with their views on Gaza: State Rep. Chris Rabb, a progressive who has been endorsed to succeed Evans by the national Muslims United PAC.

“F— AIPAC,” Rabb said at a recent forum, referring to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, which has spent large sums and wielded aggressive tactics to unseat lawmakers it views as antagonistic to Israel. “They are destroying candidates’ lives because they don’t like that we’re standing up to them, that we are actively and consistently acknowledging that there is a genocide in Gaza.”

Rabb, who is not religious and said he respects all faiths, is hoping that Muslim voters will embrace his stance on the issues.

“Making history is not the same as being on the right side of history,” Rabb said in a statement.

‘Embrace all of the texts’

Street said his Adventist upbringing immersed him in an Old Testament-rooted Christianity that led to a growing curiosity about all the Abrahamic faiths. As he got older and read more, he realized that he didn’t view Judaism, Christianity, and Islam “as separately as other people do.”

“I do believe that the Abrahamic religions were all correct. In no way were they all supposed to be separate religions,” he said. “Islam allowed me to embrace all of the texts, which I had already decided to do.”

Before converting, Street said he was embraced by the Muslim community in Atlanta when he was a student at Morehouse College. He officially converted after returning to Philly to earn his law degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

Street’s Shahada, the creed Muslims take when joining the faith, was administered by Imam Shamsud-din Ali, his father’s friend. (Years later, Ali was one the elder Street’s associates being targeted by federal investigators when an FBI listening device was discovered in the mayor’s office in 2003. The episode created a firestorm around John Street’s ultimately successful reelection campaign that year, and Ali was later convicted on fraud and racketeering charges.)

For many Muslim converts, the religion’s dietary strictures, such as abstaining from pork and eating Halal food, take some getting used to, Sharif Street said. That wasn’t a problem for him.

“Islam has a lot of rules — unless you were Seventh-day Adventist,” he said, referring to the denomination discouraging followers from eating pork, shellfish, and numerous other foods.

Street said his faith has guided him as an individual and public servant.

“Islam, for me, focuses on my personal responsibility,” he said, and “the idea that man’s relationship with God is and always was.”

His views on the unity of the Abrahamic religions also guide his perspective on the Middle East, he said.

“I recognize that there won’t be peace for the state of Israel without peace for the Palestinian people, but there won’t be peace for the Palestinian people unless there’s peace for the state of Israel at some point,” he said.

Like elected officials of other religions, Street’s politics do not perfectly align with the teachers of Muslim leaders.

On a recent Friday, Street attended Jumu’ah, the weekly afternoon prayer service, at Masjidullah in Northwest Philadelphia. A sign at the entrance reminded Muslims that abortion and homosexuality are against Islam’s teachings.

“Almost every one of Philadelphia’s Muslim political leaders … are all pro-civil rights, including LGBTQ [rights] and pro-choice,” he said. The sign, he said, represented “some members of the faith leadership who are reminding us … that is not the stance of the official religious community.”

For Street, that type of dissidence hits close to home.

His father, he said, became Baptist after being “kicked out” of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for officiating a same-sex marriage in 2007 between Micah Mahjoubian, a staffer for Sharif Street, and his husband, Ryan Bunch.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church in North Philadelphia did not respond to a request for comment.

’One of the most Muslim urban spaces’

Ryan Boyer, who heads the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council and is Muslim, likes to say he’s proud that members of his faith are so integrated into local politics that their religious identities are often overlooked.

“We’re a part of the fabric,” said Boyer, whose politically powerful coalition of unions has endorsed Street. ”To me, it’s not that big of a deal. We’re here.”

For Boyer, that means Muslim candidates like Street are judged based on their merits, not their identities.

“He’s Muslim,” Boyer said of Street. “Well, is he smart? Does he present the requisite skills and abilities to do the job? … The answer is yes.”

Other Muslim leaders in the city include: Sheriff Rochelle Bilal; City Councilmembers Curtis Jones Jr. and Nina Ahmad; former Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson; and City Commissioner Omar Sabir, who is Boyer’s brother.

Philly has also sent several Muslim lawmakers to Harrisburg, including current State Reps. Keith Harris, Jason Dawkins, and Tarik Khan.

Although the community is less well-known nationally than those in Michigan or Minnesota, Philadelphia has one of the nation’s oldest and largest Muslim populations, with about 250,000 faithful in a city of 1.6 million, according to Ahmet Tekelioglu, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Philadelphia branch.

By some estimates, Philly’s Muslim community has the highest percentage of U.S.-born followers of any major American city, thanks to the conversion of thousands of Black Philadelphians in recent decades. While many came to the faith through the Nation of Islam movement, a vast majority of Black Muslims in Philadelphia now practice mainstream Sunni Islam, Tekelioglu said.

Add in thriving immigrant communities from West Africa and the Middle East, and Philadelphia is “one of the most Muslim urban spaces” in the country, he said.

“Within a few minutes of walking in the city, you come across a visibly Muslim individual,” said Tekelioglu, whose nonprofit group does not make political endorsements. “Halal cheesesteak, ‘the Philly beard,’ and such — these also have overlap with the Muslim community and [the city’s] popular culture.”

The Middle East and the 3rd Congressional District

As a lawmaker, Street has been instrumental in forcing the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association to allow Muslim girls competing in sports to wear hijabs and in leading the School District of Philadelphia to recognize Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr as official holidays.

That record is part of why he bristles at the Muslims United PAC’s endorsement of Rabb.

“We cannot allow other people to hijack our community and hijack our issue because it’s Black people, it’s Muslims dying in Philadelphia right now, and some of these candidates don’t have anything to say about that,” Street said at the Muslim League of Voters event. “Some of them even got some fugazi Muslim organizations to endorse them.”

At another recent forum, the 3rd District Democratic candidates were asked whether they support legislation stopping U.S. weapons shipments to Israel after more than two years of conflict that has seen an estimated 70,000 Palestinians die in Gaza.

Street, who traveled to Israel and Palestine in 2017, said the one-minute response time wasn’t enough to unpack the complicated issues, and none of the other candidates gave straightforward answers — except Rabb, who said he supported the proposal.

“There are no two sides in this when we see the devastation,” Rabb said.

In an interview, Street said his comparatively moderate views on the crisis and his relationships with Jewish supporters will allow him to “play a really constructive role” in Congress.

“We need more people who can talk to both the Jewish and Muslim communities,” he said. “We need people who can have a nuanced conversation and do it with some real credibility.”

Tekelioglu said he has observed Muslim voters moving away from “identity politics” and toward “accountability-based political stance.” That evolution has accelerated during Israel’s war in Gaza following the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, he said.

“Oct. 7 and everything that’s going on has made everything a bit more clear,” he said. “This doesn’t make it such that the Palestine issue is the main dealbreaker, but overall I see a trend of moving away from the identity politics.”

The real question, he said, is, “Are they going to represent our interests?”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed this article.