By
Ayesha Ahmad, IOL Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON,
March 24 (IslamOnline) – The American Muslim community was shocked
by yet another series of raids Wednesday, March 20, conducted by
federal agents on the premises of their institutions, businesses and
charities.
This
was not the first time such raids – part of an ongoing investigation
into financial and other support for organizations deemed “terrorist
groups” by the U.S. – have occurred, and it is not the first time
Muslims and their organizations have pled their innocence of such
charges.
What
made these raids particularly striking – aside from the raids on the
homes of individuals associated with the organizations raided – was
the focus on several well-respected, well-established institutions of
Islamic thought, learning and religious studies. What many Muslims
feel is that Islamic scholars who provided intellectual voices of
moderation in the American Muslim community are being targeted.
Specifically,
the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS), the
International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the FIQH Council
of North America were all listed on the search warrant. Muslim
scholars associated with the groups – like Dr. Iqbal Unus of GSISS
and Dr. Jamal Barzinji of IIIT – were personally affected when
agents raided their homes with guns drawn.
“All
three of those entities up until now were thought by everyone to have
good relations with all kinds of government agencies,” said Sharifa
Al-Khateeb, a Washington-based Muslim scholar, activist and president
of the North American Council of Muslim Women.
“The
question that comes to a person’s mind is, if the government wanted
to get information on any of these, they could have gotten that
information… without anyone ever knowing it,” she said.
Al-Khateeb
told IslamOnline that the targeting of Islamic intellectual
institutions and scholars by the government was deliberate. “The
only thing I can imagine is that it was intended to give… the
intellectual elite among the Muslims in this country [the message]
that they no longer have freedom of speech.”
She
felt that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush was
making an effort to stifle the dissent felt by many Muslims – and
non-Muslims – towards what they perceive as the misdirection of the
war effort, especially with regards to U.S. policy on Iraq and the
possibility of further warfare.
“After
the statements were made… about possibly using nuclear arms,”
Al-Khateeb said, referring to the president’s remarks on his
willingness to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, “there was a lot of
negative reaction to it among Muslims.”
“I
think that our government would like to have a free rein to do
whatever… they want to do, and they don’t want to hear any
negative retorts to whatever they propose doing. Everything’s
supposed to be acceptable because it is done in the name of
security.”
However,
Jamal Barzinji, whose home was raided on Wednesday by federal agents
in a dramatic search-and-seizure repeated in at least six other
households over two days, said that the raids expressed the wishes not
of the administration, but of elements within the government, media
and scholarship who were unhappy with the positive attention being
given to Muslims. “Unfortunately, the best guess that we have is
that there is tremendous pressure on the administration, the Justice
Department and so on from some elements that are extremely unhappy
with the prominence that Muslims are receiving,” he said.
Barzinji
did not elaborate on exactly what these “elements” might be,
saying that they could exist among both Muslims and non-Muslims in
America.
He
said that the trail of suspicion could lead back to self-styled Middle
East “experts” like Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson, widely
suspect among American Muslims for anti-Islamic theories. Their
reports on what and whom they suspect of supporting terrorism are sent
to federal agencies, which use the information without considering
ulterior motives or hidden agendas, he explained.
Pipes
and Emerson are examples of people “who do not want to see Muslims
develop such excellent relations with the government… assuming
political rights,” he said.
A
widely-known Islamic scholar with IIIT himself, Barzinji seemed deeply
shocked that these Islamic intellectual institutions, which have made
themselves fully available to the Administration for information and
support in the anti-terror war, would be suspected in such a way.
“It
is unthinkable that places like the FIQH Council… really the
equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury in England - this should be
untouchable, really,” he said. “Not only this… but these places
are being so cooperative with the administration… with its regard to
understanding the Muslim world.”
The
FIQH Council, for example, was the Islamic American authority that
gave a ruling at the start of the Afghanistan campaign allowing
Muslims to fight on the side of American forces against other Muslims,
for the sake of justice. GSISS trains Muslim chaplains specifically
for the military with “the right attitude” and an “appreciation
of what we have in this nation,” Barzinji said.
"That
is what makes it so outrageous, what makes it so unthinkable, that
they would target these… institutions,” he said. “Why target the
very groups who have been most helpful, who have been most
understanding of the needs of our government?”
Barzinji
said that the “line of moderation” pioneered by most of the
institutions and individuals targeted in these raids was seen as a
threat by anti-Islamic “elements.”
Al-Khateeb,
however, saw the threat against moderate Islamic voices as a greater
crackdown on the presence of Islam in America. “That’s the whole
point,” she said. “If you stomp down the doors of moderates, then
what about the people who are outspoken?”
Such
measures as these raids, she said, “would serve to disempower the
middle-of-the-road Muslims who are cooperative tax-paying people, who
have middle class jobs and who need to keep them, and they’ll send a
message to them that, you know, your position in this country is
tenuous, and that if in fact we as a country decide to do whatever it
is we feel like doing… we need to count on your silence.”
Al-Khateeb’s
deep concern for the implications of the raids, and her shock at the
tactics used in the invasion of individual homes, were keenly apparent
in her voice. “It’s a very critical juncture for our community,”
she said firmly. “To stand together, to insist that we will have our
freedom of speech, and we will not allow ourselves to be treated the
way Jews were treated in Germany before they were rounded up.”
She
left no room for argument with the words she chose to describe the
federal raids. “A rose by any other name is still a rose, and a
Hitler by any other name is still Hitler,” she said. “And Gestapo
tactics, whether they are used by World War II Germany or… [now] in
the United States, are Gestapo tactics. We can’t pretty them up,
they’re Gestapo tactics.”
“As
Americans, if our rights – whether [they’re] destroyed by
incipient means or whether it’s done by a proclamation saying that
no one is allowed to disagree with the head of state or the
government; if that is what is happening to… our basic
constitutional rights, then is this the same America that we had pre
9-11?” she asked.
“And
what I think is that if they want to redesign America, then they need
to make some constitutional amendments and they need to do it in
writing.”
Barzinji
insisted that he did not want to project the raids in the context of
the administration’s responsibility, but he stressed the need for
the administration to realize the impact of such actions on the image
of America worldwide.
“We
keep hearing from President Bush, from Attorney General [John]
Ashcroft, from [Defense] Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld and Secretary [of
State Colin] Powell, we are losing overseas… the PR war,” he said.
“Unfortunately,
an event like this… picked up the same night by international media
– it’s going to do a lot of damage,” he added. “People are not
going to understand. They’re going to blow it out of proportion,
it’s going to hurt our image, it’s going to hurt our war against
terror.”
