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"Feelings are running strongly against Bush in the community," said Awad
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Additional
Reporting By Mustafa Abdel-halim, IOL Staff
CHICAGO,
September 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Leaders of the
U.S. Muslim community intend to deliver a bloc vote in next year's
presidential elections, one that will go against the candidate they
endorsed last time - President George W. Bush.
The
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim
Council, the American Muslim Alliance, and the Muslim Public Affairs
Council agreed this weekend to cooperate on a voter registration drive
that they hope will send one million Muslims to say "No" to
Bush's 2004 re-election bid.
Representatives
of the four leading U.S. Muslim advocacy groups have begun voter
registration drives at mosques and Islamic centers across the nation
in hopes of ensuring a strong turnout in the 2004 presidential
elections.
The
message is to reflect widespread "dissatisfaction" in the
Muslim American community with the Bush administration's treatment of
Arab and Muslim Americans since the September 11 attacks, Nihad Awad,
CAIR Executive Director was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as
saying.
"Feelings
are running strongly against Bush in the community … We feel that
civil liberties have deteriorated in this country," he stressed.
Among
the policies that have alienated Muslims are those allowing racial
profiling of Arab and Muslim men, the use of secret evidence in cases
said to touch on national security, and the detention and
deportation
of many Arab and Muslim nationals without the right to legal
representation.
Further
to their outrage, Bush
appointed
in August Daniel Pipes, an outspoken anti-Muslim scholar, to the board
of the government-funded U.S. Institute of Peace.
"Such
an appointment, along with other actions helping discrimination
against Muslim and Arab Americans could lead Bush to lose that support
base in the coming presidential elections," Laila Al-Qatami of
the
American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) told
ISlamOnline.net.
She
warned that unlike the 2000 elections in which Arabs and Muslim
Americans voted overwhelmingly for Bush, things could not stand a
repeat in the 2004 presidential elections.
"Bush
should realize that such rising racism and bigotry against Arab and
Muslims here would have ramifications for him."
Better
Job
Awad
declined to say the Democratic candidate, if any, the Muslims
coalition would endorse.
"We
will try to do a better job than we did in 2000," he said,
asserting that "no decision has been made."
"Muslims
are eager to vote in defense of their liberties and in defense of
their future," said Awad, who heads up the best-known of the four
groups.
"We
want equal respect and equal treatment under the law."
Community
leaders say a rash of hate attacks on Muslims and Arabs and verbal
assaults on Islam by leading evangelical preachers have increased the
community's sense of isolation.
"The
(9/11) hijack attacks gave a big push for those launching campaigns
against Islam and Muslims in America, as people accept attacks against
Islam more," Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR told IOL.
The
CAIR had said in a report released on July 15, that anti-Muslim
violence, harassment and discrimination
have
surged by 15
percent in the U.S. over the past year in the wake of the 9/11
attacks.
Another
report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released last year
found that anti-Islamic hate crimes also
increased
by 1,600 percent in the U.S. last year.
