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Despite
Reservations, Most US Muslims Favor Kerry
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Most Muslim American
back Kerry on Iraq, civil rights but not on faith-based issues
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WASHINGTON,
Oct 11 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Despite opposition to
the Democratic Party's platform on faith-based issues, the majority of
Arab and Muslim Americans are likely to vote for the party's
presidential candidate Senator John Kerry.
“There
is no way for the Muslim community to find themselves completely
aligned with one party or another,” Ibrahim Mohammad, the imam of a
mosque in Seattle, told the Associated Press.
“On
moral issues like gay marriage, abortion, these kinds of faith-based
issues, we tend to agree more with the Republicans. If you look at
civil rights, the Bush administration gets an 'F.' They flunk the
test.”
Arab
and Muslim Americans support Kerry because they think he has a
stronger commitment to civil rights in the United States.
“Democrats
appeal to us on human rights and civil liberties. Personally, I think
for the times we are in today, civil liberties will have to win
out,” said imam Mohammad.
A
May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded
that the Arab Americans and the Muslim community in the United States have
taken the brunt of the Patriot Act
and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
More
than 1,200 Muslims and Arab-Americans have been taken into custody
after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Amnesty
International has repeatedly said that racial
profiling by
US law enforcement agencies had grown over the past three years to
cover one in nine Americans, mostly targeting Muslims.
Muslims
-- whose estimated numbers nationwide range from 1.2 million to 7
million -- could be crucial in the November 2 make-or-break elections,
especially in swing states like Ohio, Florida and Michigan, which have
the nation's largest Arab-American population.
Furious
over the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 policies that unfairly
targeted them, some 150 of the traditionally
Republican-leaning
Arab Americans, including businessmen, physicians and lawyers, agreed
during a meeting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando
Sunday, October 3, to give their votes to Kerry.
In
late September, a poll conducted by Zogby International for Georgetown
University's Muslims in the American Public Square found Muslims
supporting Kerry by a margin of 76 percent to 7 percent for Bush.
Iraq
Nightmare
The
US-led invasion of oil-rich Iraq, unleashed without a UN mandate, has
also further pushed Arab and American Muslims away from the Republican
Party.
Kerry's
stance on Iraq is why Prospect Park Borough Councilman Mohammad
Khairullah, one of a handful of Muslim elected officials in New
Jersey, plans to vote for him.
“He
said the United States will never attack unless we are in real danger,
which will really appeal to Arabs.”
The
same position was echoed by Hani Awadallah, president of the
Arab-American Civic Organization.
“This
guy is bad for America, he's bad for the Constitution. He is the
abyss…He has made America look so bad to the rest of the world.”
Awadallah
further said: “Muslims used to look at America as being on the side
of the underdog. Now he's shown America to be a cowboy bully, and it
will take 50 years to undo this image.”
Eighteen
months after the invasion, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the
US-led onslaught “illegal” and
said it contravened the UN charter.
The
Bush administration has invaded Iraq in March 2003 under claims of
possessing weapons of mass destruction, none of which have been found
more than one year and a half after the invasion.
A
report drafted by US weapons inspector in Iraq Charles Duelfer has
concluded that Iraq had possessed no
weapons
of mass destruction before the US-British invasion of the oil-rich
country.
Pro-Bush
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US Muslims bore the
brunt of the Patriot Act and other anti-civil rights procedures
Bush adopted
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However,
not all Arab and Muslim Americans share the same view on Bush and his
rival.
Sherine
El-Abd, a member of New Jersey steering committee for Bush's campaign,
admires Bush's public pronouncements on behalf of American Muslims.
“It
is this president that changed the language about how Americans
pray,” she said.
“Since
I came to this country in 1965, it was always `Americans pray in
churches and synagogues.' Now it is `churches, synagogues and
mosques.' He's the one who started that.”
El-Abd
also defended the post 9/11 detentions, most of which were carried out
in New Jersey and New York, that antagonized the Muslim community.
“I
have visited those detention centers, and I did not personally meet
one person who was there with no reason,” she said. “If you break
the law, you break the law. It's a high price to pay for an
immigration violation, but better safe than sorry.”
Although
Aref Assaf of Denville, president of the New Jersey chapter of the
Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, prides himself on being
an “un-Bush,” he is not wild about Kerry, either.
He
expects that if elected, Kerry would show more support for pro-Israel
policies than Bush.
Souheila
Al-Jadda, a producer with San Francisco-based Link TV, which
translates news reports from the Middle East for an American audience,
summed up the dilemma.
“This
is a defensive vote, a reluctant vote, but they will vote for Kerry
because no one wants Bush back,” she said.
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