TOM WILLIAMS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) Zahid Quraishi was confirmed as the first Muslim American federal judge by the United States Senate on Thursday. Quraishi, currently a magistrate judge, will serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. He was confirmed with an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 81-16. "Mr. Quraishi will be the first American Muslim in United States history to serve as an Article III federal judge," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in floor remarks on Wednesday ahead of the vote. "The third largest religion in the United States, and he will become the first to ever serve as an Article III judge." "We must expand not only demographic diversity, but professional diversity, and I know that President [Joe] Biden agrees with me on this, and this will be something that I will set out to do," Schumer continued. Before he was appointed as magistrate judge, Quraishi was formally chair of Riker
Quraishi was also a military prosecutor and an Army captain in Iraq who tried public corruption cases as a federal prosecutor after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The son of Pakistani immigrants has become the first Muslim federal judge in U.S. history after the Senate voted to confirm him to the post by a vote of 81-16.