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ICNA-MAS Convention Opens, Former Presidential Candidate Speaks
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| Compromised civil rights have not yielded any productive results, convention goers were told. |
By
Jamshed Bokhari, IOL U.S. correspondent
BALTIMORE, Maryland, July 6 (IslamOnline) - Gathered together for the
first time ever, and showing an unprecedented unity between two major
American Muslim groups, the mostly Arab Muslim American Society (MAS)
and the South Asian-dominated Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA),
opened their historic joint conference
Friday, July 5.
Nearly
7,000 first-day registrants gathered at Baltimore’s Convention
Center in the heart of the city and rejuvenated Inner Harbor to hold
meetings and panels addressing the plight of American Muslims in the
wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and nearby Washington,
DC.
Entitled “Islam in North America: Challenges, Hopes &
Responsibilities,” the convention stressed need for unity and
political action in the wake of the federal crackdown on
Constitutionally-mandated civil liberties and the targeting of
American Muslims.
The day’s first main panel focused on the state of North America’s
Muslim community before and after September 11 in which Georgetown
University professor Yvonne Haddad commented that the U.S. has offered
Muslims the opportunities to grow, challenging and “break[ing] the
intellectual monopoly of the various states” on Islam.
Muslims in the U.S. reflect the nature that “America is a nation in
perpetual formation…It has not been finished,” Haddad commented,
saying that Muslims will play an important part in shaping and forming
the U.S. as past minorities accomplished.
But, “9/11 changed things dramatically”, producing a cottage
industry selfishly and monetarily profiting itself by instilling fear
in Americans of Islam.
Professor Mumtaz Ahmed agreed, pointing out that American Muslims were
being queried in an unprecedented manner with questions no other group
would be asked, that the “media is asking Muslims questions they
would never ask Jews.”
“As a Muslim, I have no special talent to talk about terrorism,”
Ahmed commented when stating why he would not speak publicly on Islam
immediately after September 11.
“Islam is not on trial,” he affirmed.
Haddad reinforced that view commenting on the issue of civil
liberties: “The U.S. is dealing with [American] Muslims in a
particular way, as if they were dealing with people they are at war
with.”
“An effort to silence Muslims” is underway, she said commenting on
the attitude of U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration.
“If you are not behind American foreign policy, then you are
un-American.”
Mumtaz added that in this atmosphere, when the federal government was
trying to recruit American Muslims to aide in the war on terror,
“how can American Muslims help when they [the government] are
raiding their homes, their places of worship, their intellectual
centers.”
Another panel later in the day took up issues concerning the legal and
political crisis in the U.S.
Civil rights and criminal attorney Stanley Cohen initiated his
presentation by offering a welcome to the FBI agents in the room,
eliciting laughter from the audience. He then reviewed the numerous
cases he has been involved in with Muslim clients before and after
September 11, noting a rising trend.
Cohen attributed the rise to growing American Muslim political clout
in the U.S. and the reaction it has produced within certain quarters,
stating, “They fear you, that’s why they are jailing you,”
adding that the scrutiny was grossly unjustified because “The Muslim
community in the U.S. is the most respectful, law-abiding community in
this country.”
He stressed what was to become the theme of the day, that for Muslims
to remain silent in the wake of these attacks on the community would
cause the destruction of not only the Muslim community, but for other
Americans as well, exclaiming, “Silence is death!”
Greg Nojiem, of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), read
through a “list of horrors” the Bush administration has enacted,
including the establishment of the proposed Homeland Security
department, giving arrest authority to the largest collective of
federal officials ever; the USA PATRIOT Act; the loss of the role of
the judiciary through executive fiat; the loss of attorney-client
privilege; military detentions and tribunals for American citizens;
and the abrogation of search and seizure laws allowing law enforcement
authorities the right to search homes without the owner present and
without informing them of the search after it has been conducted.
“They can go into your home, download everything off your computer,
and never tell you they did it,” Nojiem said.
Former independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader, the keynote
panel member, did not hold back condemning current executive
administration policies either.
Commenting on the over 1,000 Arabs and Muslims detained immediately
after the attacks, and the nearly 180 remaining in custody, Nader
asked, “Has anyone been caught?” to which the audience answered
“No!”
He then rhetorically queried on the loss of civil rights, asking,
“Is there any civil liberty we have given up that would have stopped
9/11?”
Continuing his commentary on the loss of civil liberties, recalling
moments in U.S. history when groups and communities had been targeted,
Nader said, “They used to be called Communists, now they are called
terrorists.”
Nader called 9/11 an “intelligence failure” commenting that
“when the government gets embarrassed, it changes the subject.”
Manipulating the national psyche that the U.S. had never before
experienced an attack on its mainland since 1812, the Bush
administration has overreacted in its war on terrorism, threatening
and attacking the perpetrators in a tit-for-tat game: “You killed
our civilians, we will react the same.”
“The U.S. will lose this type of war,” said Nader, “because the
U.S. has more to lose.”
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