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Muslim Rights Activists, Lawyers Urge American Muslims To Fight For Their Rights
By IOL Washington Correspondent, Ayesha Ahmad
WASHINGTON, March 9 (IslamOnline) – With thousands of Muslim and Arab non-citizens being detained after September 11, many of them on minor visa violations, their communities will not get the rights that are due to them unless they fight for them, Muslim civil rights activists and lawyers said Friday, March 8.
“Every single minority in this country was not empowered without a fight,” Sami Al-Arian, a University of Florida professor, who was recently fired from his position. “[Many] of these rights are not rights unless you fight for them.”
Al-Arian is a well-known activist in the Muslim and Arab community here, having campaigned against “secret evidence” laws for years while his brother-in-law was kept in jail on charges nobody was ever told about.
“We never thought that civil rights would concern us,” he said, explaining that many immigrants came to this country seeking the protections and the freedoms it affords to its residents. “Many of us thought that this is a society that values freedom… freedom of the press, free speech.”
Speaking at a fundraiser for Solidarity USA, a Washington-based civil liberties task force currently focusing on the backlash against Muslims and Arabs in post-September 11 America, he said Muslims and Arabs have often been targets because they are misunderstood, mostly because of media misrepresentation. But he added that the nature of this country allowed them to agitate against that targeting.
“That is the beauty about America – unlike other societies – here we can fight and we can also win, and we must put civil rights at the core of our fight,” he said, stressing that political power in America would not come without winning civil rights battles.
Solidarity USA, which has successfully aided a number of foreign nationals in processing their cases, held the fundraiser at Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va. near Washington, D.C., to raise money for a Muslim national legal defense fund, among other goals.
Al-Arian, the fundraiser’s keynote speaker, detailed the situation of his brother-in-law Mazen al-Najjar, who spent three years in jail under secret evidence before a judge ruled that there was no evidence against him.
He was finally released, only to be picked up and detained again after September 11 on a visa violation. Al-Najjar has three American-born daughters.
In the three years he was in jail before, Al-Arian said, “when he was a threat to national security,” his brother-in-law was able to talk to people, to watch TV, to maintain a life even behind bars that was in line with acceptable levels of human and civil rights.
Now, al-Najjar has been in jail for 104 days on nothing more than a visa violation, and he is kept in isolation 23 hours a day, strip-searched naked twice a day and allowed only one 15-minute phone call per week, Al-Arian said.
After September 11, Al-Arian said, “thousands of people are victims… It’s not even secret evidence anymore; it’s no evidence… Innocent people [are] being arrested and detained for no reason except their ethnicity, except their opinions.”
Al-Arian’s points were bolstered by the testimony of several lawyers, who represent some of the post-September 11 detainees.
Attorney William Moffitt said he represented a man, whom he said all the information the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used against him came out of his own mouth – “because he wanted to help.”
Moffitt stressed that it was not necessary to talk to authorities if they had no warrant. “With the frenzy in law enforcement right now in this country, they’re no very careful about who they arrest… who they prosecute,” he said.
Lawyer Hamdi Rafai warned that the FBI would use any means necessary to get information. “They are allowed to lie to you, they can mislead you to get you to give information,” he said.
Another lawyer, Rhonda Gelfman, said she had represented Muslims from Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and even the Bahamas after September 11, and called their detentions “a travesty.”
“They’re not involved in terrorism, but Attorney General [John] Ashcroft isn’t sure, so let’s just leave them there till we’re sure,” she said sarcastically.
She told people in the audience to ask immigrant friends and relatives to apply for citizenship as soon as possible – as citizens can’t be deported.
All the lawyers urged Muslim and Arab Americans to avoid saying anything to authorities unless they are required to, and to obtain legal help immediately if they are arrested; foreign nationals specifically should ask to speak to their consulate immediately, Moffitt said.
In urging people to support the creation of a Muslim legal defense fund, Al-Arian said that there was nothing more noble than fighting for justice for people unjustly incarcerated.
“I don’t think there is anything more noble on earth than justice. Justice is the highest value in Islam next to tawhid,” or the Islamic belief in the oneness of God, he said.
Solidarity USA’s chief coordinator, Yaser Bushnaq, told the audience that the fundraiser was meant to educate their community “on matters related to their constitutional, legal and human rights,” and “to coach the community on how to prepare itself to become more proactive,” and he hoped to expand such events across the country in the future.
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