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U.S. Muslims Protest Airstrikes at State Department
By Ayesha Ahmad
WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (IslamOnline) - Of all the speakers who addressed the crowd of anti-war protestors before the U.S. State Department Friday, Mary Holmes looked the least like a "typical" Muslim.
Slim and petite with white-blond hair and stylish clothes, Holmes, who has contacted a number of Afghan women's organizations in her attempts to help Afghanistan's suffering people, accepted Islam less than a year ago, and is engaged to an Afghan Muslim.
"My fiancé can't sleep at night," she told the gathered participants and media, her voice shaky and her eyes hidden behind black sunglasses. Habib Mehdi's parents are in Kabul right now, she said, and Holmes and her fiancé are often unable to contact them.
Holmes' story offered a personal tone to the general message of the rally, which demanded from the government a sincere effort to reassess U.S. foreign policy. Speakers also challenged a rising sentiment among many Americans that dissenting from government policies reflects a lack of patriotism.
The afternoon rally of roughly 30 people at 23rd and C streets was organized by the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations, based in Washington, and was a small, but staunch cry of protest in the face of a largely silent response from the American Muslim community.
A number of central national Muslim organizations issued statements after the U.S. began airstrikes on Afghanistan stating full support for U.S. President George W. Bush's campaign against terrorism, without condemning the actual bombing campaign.
Activist Mahdi Bray, president of CCMO and political director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, expressed some disappointment in the Muslim leadership, but said that he had to answer to his own conscience.
"I have to stand before God, and he's going to ask me, what side did you stand on when Afghanistan was attacked?" Bray said.
Bray, who participated as a non-Muslim in the civil rights movement in 1960s, and after converting to Islam, began to work for Muslim civil rights, said that he didn't think it was unpatriotic to disagree with his government's policies.
His sentiment echoed the remarks of one of the speakers, Erik Gustafson, executive director of the Peace in Iraq Center, who said that the U.S. "policies do not reflect the moral conscience of the American people… and we have to speak out against that."
Gustafson, who carried an American flag to show that his opinions did not compromise his own patriotism, spoke of the tendency of U.S. foreign policy to neglect the suffering of the people it affects, citing the economic sanctions on Iraq and the harsh inequities facing the Afghanis currently under attack.
He compared the "tremendous tragedy" of the American deaths on September 11th to what is referred to as "collateral damage" in the deaths of Afghanis and others, and called for "a dramatic change in policy throughout the world."
Shaker Elsayed, secretary-general of the Muslim American Society (MAS) in Alexandria, Virginia, said that the issue of foreign policy was no longer a "closed-door issue," and that its controllers should be the American people.
"Why are we creating enemies instead of making friends?" he said. "Why are we taking lives instead of giving life? Why are we shedding blood instead of giving blood?"
"The American people are not to blame for what the administration is doing… but our silence amounts to approval," he said, drawing murmurs of agreement from the gathered crowd.
One of the participants attending the rally, Nadirah Rasheed of Maryland, said that she came to break that silence, "to demonstrate in support of the Muslims and against what's going on now," she said.
"There's nothing wrong in expressing sorrow about the people who were killed [on Sept. 11]," she said, "but the Muslim organizations seemingly were readily accepting the fact that Osama bin Laden is guilty… we don't know!…There are so many things we still have to question."
The rally, like the previous and much larger anti-war rally held in Washington on September 29, had its own band of angry dissenters; one man stood at the corner of 22nd and C streets holding a sign that said, "Stop Terrorist Appeasement."
Another, Robert Buchanan, tried to ask questions after the speeches, but was put down by Bray, who told him that because of his previous use of curse words he would not be allowed to do so. Buchanan called the gathered demonstrators a bunch of "Arab Nazis," using curse words at them, and when asked to listen to the sermon for the Friday prayer given after the rally, said several times, "I don't listen to fiction!"
But the men left before the sermon, whose speaker emphasized that despite the oppression of Muslims and persisting negative images of Islam, America's fastest-growing religion continues to spread widely.
Bray, who said of the small numbers at the rally, "a few can make a difference among many," told reporters after the prayer that he felt bombing Afghanistan - "giving fuel to dissent in the region" - would not contribute to removing the "scourge of terrorism," reiterating that another solution needed to be found, without compromising what he said was America's undisputed right to go after the terrorists.
And Holmes, who will marry her Afghan fiancé in June 2001, will continue to work with the Afghan women's groups and other organizations she supports, in hopes of bringing peace to Afghanistan, rather than war.
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