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A Step Backwards: Shall We Lose A Muslim Appointee?
By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute
27/06/2001
"One step backwards, two steps forward." This is the usual refrain of those who have suffered setbacks in what they are convinced must eventually lead to progress. When the U.S. Congress established the International Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF) at the behest of Evangelical Christians, who had in their sights the Muslims world, it was a step backwards for the Muslim community in the United States. Still, Muslims could console themselves with the notion that the appointment of Laila Al-Marayati to the USCIRF was two steps forward. Not only did her presence on the commission partially ameliorate its propagandistic mission, but she was also able to issue a dissenting report noting religious freedom violations by Israel that would otherwise have gone unnoted by the commission.
While the USCIRF has now taken aim at a number of countries, the special targets of those who lobbied Congress for its creation were China and Sudan. Although the commission has put Russia and Iran (and even Saudi Arabia and Egypt) in its sights, those behind the commission's establishment have always wanted it to be another weapon in the arsenal of the forces of the American Right fighting against normalization of relations with China, and the takeoff point for obtaining support for Christian rebels fighting the Muslim government of Sudan. They have now succeeded in getting Congress to pass legislation punishing oil companies that do business with the Sudanese government, and have made advances in seeking to obtain U.S. taxpayer funding for the guerillas in the South.
Now Al-Marayati's term on the commission has ended, and as of this article no Muslim has been appointed to replace her. The Muslim community faces a major step backwards if President George W. Bush does not include a Muslim among his appointees to the committee. And Muslims are being called upon to put pressure in the Bush administration to replace her with another Muslim appointee. Despite the fact that four Muslim organizations called for Muslims to vote for Bush in the last election (and now claim that the Muslim vote was the margin of victory in Florida), the Bush Administration has yet to respond.
On the contrary, the administration has moved to distance itself from the American Muslim community. When an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post characterizing Dick Cheney's planned presence at a White House briefing with the American Muslim Council with the headline "Cheney to Host Pro-terrorist Group" (Radler 2001), Cheney backed out of the meeting, averring scheduling problems.
It will be interesting to see if direct pressure on the executive branch will prevent this reversal by the new administration of the most significant Muslim appointment under the Clinton administration. If it fails, and we do take one step backward, that may be Allah's way of telling the community to reconsider the thrust of its political emphasis. I don't mean the question of whether Muslims backed the right horse in the last presidential election (I dealt with that question in an earlier column). Rather, Muslims may have to consider whether energy would be better directed towards Congress than at the executive branch. It is, after all, Congress that makes the laws. Further, as Alex Kronemer (2001) has pointed out, a letter signed by five representatives has more impact on a government agency than a petition signed by 50,000 citizens. That is because it is the people in Congress who fund the agency and no bureaucrat wants to be on their bad side. As Kronemer put it, no one can call a president
their president, but your Congressional representative can be your representative.
It is time Muslims monitored and ranked Congressional representatives and senators on how they vote on issues of importance to us, both foreign and domestic, and publish those results among our community. Because that kind of evaluation is not engagement in partisan politics, even our tax-exempt organizations (including the mosques) can get involved as other groups have done.
For example, when the House voted for the typically misnamed "Sudan Peace Act" (in support of John Garang, the man the New York Times [1999] characterized as one of Sudan's "pre-eminent war criminals") only two representatives voted against it. Do you know their names? (Final answer: Jeff Flake, R-AZ and Ron Paul, R-TX).
Keep an eye on your representatives. Make sure they know how you feel. Reward them when they're good with campaign donations and public praise and throw them out of office when they're bad. That's the American way. At least, it's supposed to be.
References
Kronemer, Alex 2001. Presentation to Council on American-Islamic Relations (Washington, DC) June 25.
Radler, Melissa 2001. "Cheney to Host Pro-terrorist Group" Jerusalem Post, (June 22).
Times, New York 1999. "Misguided Relief to Sudan" Editorial, The New York Times (Dec. 6).
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