The group did not hesitate to help in the massive relief effort.

CONNECTICUT, USA, September 6, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In a continuing Muslim show of solidarity, a US Muslim comedian group has allocated their performance revenues to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a local US daily reported Tuesday, September 6.

The Muslim Comedy Tour performed their famous show “Allah Made Me Funny” at Richardson’s Charles W. Eismann Center for Performing Arts in Texas and did not hesitate to donate the proceeds to Katrina victims, Connecticut’s Daily Campus newspaper reported.

Proceeds from the event were originally supposed to go to the Muslim Cemetery Improvement Project in Denton, Texas.

“The money raised was re-directed to the Islamic Relief USA,” group leader Preacher Moss told the daily.

The tour, co-founded by Moss and fellow comics Azhar Usman and Azeem, is aimed at bridging gaps of bias, intolerance and other social ills that spread in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, according to the group’s Web site.

“The idea is to provide a venue whereby Muslims and non-Muslims

can feel safe, relevant, and inclusive of an experience where humor is used to bridge gaps of bias, intolerance, and other social ills that are pre and post 9/11 relevant,” Moss said on the Web site.

A coalition of major American Islamic groups have formed a task force to coordinate humanitarian relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, pledging to raise $10 million for the effort.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest US Muslim advocacy group, called on mosques and Islamic centers nationwide to collect donations for hurricane disaster relief following Islamic congregational prayers (Jumah) Friday.

Hurricane Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast just outside the city of New Orleans on August 29 and swept devastation through the area with winds of up to 145 mph (233 km/h).

The killer storm sent a devastating wall of water into Mississippi and 80% of the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is submerged by waters as deep as 6m (20ft).

The disaster has killed thousands and displaced more than one million people, and requires the largest relief effort in American history.

New Orleans houses with water up to their eves. (Reuters)

President George W. Bush has been under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike for a sluggish federal response to a flood that has made hundreds of thousands homeless and is feared to have killed thousands more.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called Monday, September 5, for creating a commission, like the one that examined the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to study how the hurricane response went wrong, Reuters reported.

“Serious mistakes were made,” Reid said.

The outcry has triggered a major political crisis for Bush, already suffering from the lowest public approval ratings of his presidency, largely because of the Iraq invasion-turned-occupation.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called the Bush trip Monday “another callous political move” aimed at shifting blame for the political crisis from himself.

Some black leaders have accused the administration of not taking the crisis seriously enough because many of its victims are poor and black.

Trent Lott, a former Senate majority leader, said he has been battling the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its Mississippi counterpart for help for his state and urged Bush to cut red tape.

After a one-on-one meeting with Bush, Lott said: “I am demanding help for the people of Mississippi to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.”

Bush made his second visit to Louisiana and Mississippi, where the storm has caused one of the biggest humanitarian crises in US history.

On his first tour Friday, September 2, five days after the huge scale of the disaster became apparent, the president acknowledged the initial relief effort had been “unacceptable.”

Former US presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton established a new fund Monday to assist the hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

“The job is too big, too overwhelming for any one group,” Bush said at a news conference with Clinton.