Author: Patrick Healy
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 16, 2003
After the call to prayer, there
came the call to politics.
As worshipers at the Islamic Center
of Long Island, in Westbury, Nasau County, chatted and rose from Friday
Prayers last week, Ghazi Khankan stepped before a microphone and called
for the crowd's attention. Mr. Khankan, ready with a box of voter registration
forms, wanted to make voters of everyone present, as part of his effort
to register 100,000 Muslims across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
"As Muslims, as you are, so shall
your rulers be," Mr. Khankan, president of the New York Council on American-Islamic
Relations, told the worshipers. "If we do not participate in the political
process, we will not be able to influence it. It is urgent that we do so."
So began a New York campaign by
the group to bolster voter registration among Muslims, part of a continuing
national campaign by the council, an advocacy group based in Washington.
With an eye on the 2004 elections, Muslim groups across the country want
to strengthen their political voice, and political agents like Mr. Khankan
are going mosque to mosque to do so.
The registration campaign comes
at a time when more and more American Muslims are becoming politically
active, said leaders from Muslim and Arab-American groups. Antiterrorism
measures adopted since Sept. 11, like the registration and detention of
thousands of Arab and Muslim men, have pushed civil liberties issues to
the fore.
"There is a growing consciousness
and a growing understanding that we all have to participate, more than
any other time," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the council in
Washington. "Many Muslims and Arabs in this country feel they have been
let down by this administration when it comes to civil liberties and civil
rights. It will be a major factor in how they vote."
Mr. Awad and others said it was
still too early to say whether Muslim and Arab-American voters would support
President Bush or his Democratic challenger. He said 72 percent of Muslim
voters supported Mr. Bush in the 2000 election, but other studies questioned
the validity of that figure and estimated that a majority of Muslims actually
supported Mr. Bush's opponent, Al Gore. Pinning down the exact number of
Muslim voters in the 2000 election is tricky, and estimates range from
500,000 to one million.
The difficulty in agreeing on Muslim
voter patterns - or even the number of American Muslims, which various
groups put between four million and eight million - shows how diverse and
disparate the community is. James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute
in Washington, which tracks trends in Arab-American political participation,
said that a Muslim voting bloc simply does not exist.
"One group wants Kashmir, one group
wants Palestine, and one group wants drugs out of their community," Mr.
Zogby said.
Ahmed Jamil, director of Masjid
Dar-al-Dawah in Astoria, Queens, said Muslims in his community felt they
were singled out by the war on terrorism and wanted to be politically involved.
Mr. Jamil attended a recent conference
in Washington sponsored by the Muslim American Society where imams and
local leaders learned how to write political pamphlets, talk to reporters
and lobby politicians.
Mosques across the country are also
offering voter education classes where first-time voters are taken through
the voting process step by step, said Agha Saed, president of the American
Muslim Alliance.
Raed Tayeh, spokesman for the Muslim
American Society, a national advocacy group based in Virginia, said some
Muslims were still reluctant to register, in view of the federal government's
drive to register male Arab immigrants and the possibility of deportation.
They worry that if they write to a congressman or register, "the F.B.I.'s
going to knock down their door," Mr. Tayeh said.
Others reject politics on principle.
Leaders of Muslim groups said it was mostly older people who believe that
voting is forbidden because it follows secular law.
But Sayf Ulhaq, who is 19, made
a point of not taking a registration form as he left the Islamic Center
of Long Island. "It goes against everything we believe in," Mr. Ulhaq said.
"Any laws that are made by man are purely against Islam. Once you put the
ballot in, you're denying the Almighty his authority."
