Posted on 08/01/2004 8:18:16 AM PDT by SJackson
Edited on 08/01/2004 8:24:03 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
HASHIM Raza is a 38-year-old physician from St. Louis who, like like a majority of Arab- Americans, voted for President Bush in 2000. Raza has voted Republican in every presidential election starting with Ronald Reagan in 1984.
This year, he will vote for Democrat John Kerry. "After 9/11, things started adding up,' he said at a reception Tuesday for Muslim attendees to the Democratic National Convention hosted by the Islamic Society of Boston. "Muslims were unfairly targeted; we were presumed guilty; Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Cheney acted like they have no use for Muslims. The Republican Party has become a refuge for far right religious extremists. I believe people like Bush senior and (Bob) Dole were moderates. But now I feel the party has excluded me.' A year ago, Arif Gafur, a 52- year-old engineer for Shell Oil in Houston, did not know anything about being a delegate to the convention. Before 9/11, he and many of his professional friends were never involved in politics. But the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, where many Muslims were detained, made him concerned. "America is the best country in the world, but it's not easy to be a Muslim,' he said.
The invasion of Iraq, which Gafur said was "unnecessary,' pushed him and several other South Asian Muslims to register 1,000 voters and elect delegates to district, state and national delegations. Of the about 5,000 delegates to the convention, about 40 are Muslim and six are from Texas, including himself.
"Sometimes, on Middle East policy, Kerry seems to come across as Bush Lite,' Gafur said. "But on domestic policy, with the Patriot Act and the racial profiling of Muslims, the Muslim community was awakened to the fact that we had to get involved.'
Really Mr. Muslim...When is the last time a "far right religious extremist" crashed a plane into a building or blew himself up or beheaded someone? To call someone extremist when you yourself are a memeber of the most extreme group on this planet takes a LOT of gall you absolute moron.
Big-Time Oxymoron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Until the last muslim is kicked out of America we'll have to continue worrying.
These people are so different from the rest of us.
If, G-d forbid, a fanatical Jewish sect engaged in terrorism against the US, 99% of America's Jews would be racing against one-another to condemn the attack and demonstrate their patriotism and belief in America to the rest of the country.
There have been sporatic equivocal statements from Muslim leaders in the US (and from certain overseas Muslims like the religious leader in Turkey and Palozzi in Italy). By far the greater reaction has been to count the number of times people give them dirty looks and tell them to go back where they came from, and feel sorry for themselves because they are "misunderstood."
In World War II, there were battalions of Japanese-Americans formed to fight for the US. I have yet to read of something similar in the US.
This is a dangerous community.
Really Dr. Raza? As an attendee of the RAT's convention, you are hardly objective on this. Can you offer a single shred of evidence to back up that statement? Probably not. Your agenda is showing.
Perhaps Muslims will receive less scrutiny under a Kerry administration, at least at the beginning. But, Dr. Raza, since effective law enforcement to weed out the terrorists hiding within your community will be sacrificed for political correctness, what do you suppose will happen to Muslims when the next attack occurs? Will there be a reasoned, rational effort as is going on now (I'm sure there are abuses, but on the whole you know I'm right) or will there be a knee-jerk need to look strong reaction from a Kerry White House? Will the population itself lash out?
Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
I hate to mention the inconvenience of being personally detained at airports because of the security screening put in place becaue of the Arab terrorists. I never used to have to be at the airport 3 hours ahead of my flight until some Arabs perpetrated the 9-11 attacks.
Repeat my inconvenience by the millions of Americans who pass through the security checkpoints and I have no sympathy for a Arab family of 4 being detained. They need to get a grip on their fellow "conservative" muslims who publicly proclaim America is a threat to Islam.
By the way......what is a Conservative Muslim??? Are they Muslim first or American first? And they should be reminded, it is a privlige to be American, not a right.
An enemy will always remain loyal to a friend of the enemy. If the enemy supports Kerry, then Kerry is also an enemy.
Is that a muslim who starts the the beheading cut under the right ear?
Now there's a sure fire motivator!
i guess I'll have to change my plans and join them.
NOT!
That's right Joe ... sounds like the callers to radio & TV stations, who state they were life long Repubs, but GWB is so evil they are heading Left.
Is that violin music I hear? ;)
Post 23 has it nailed. Where is the condemnation of violence from our "American Muslim" brothers?
I see it as are you for a civilized world or a world where a government like Saddams's is the norm? I choose civilization.
GREAT PHOTO!!!!!!!!!! That's EXACTLY how FnKerry would be!!!!!!!!! Good job there!
Not all Muslims are terrrorists, but all terrorists "have been" Muslims. That's the very definition of a profile. A 100% profile.
The weekend after 9/11 we flew to Bangor, Maine to attend a wedding. The airline we flew had been disrupted and so they arranged for us to fly on another airline about two days before our flight. Well, my Arabic last name combined with the fact that it looked like we had booked the flight so recently, plus that it was to Bangor (an airport that played prominently in 9/11) raised alarms and my wife (who happens to be a fair-skinned redhead) and I were taken to closed rooms and strip-searched, our luggage pilfered, questioned at length, etc. A teenaged female passenger, seeing our treatment, literally cried and begged her parents not to let her get on the flight with us.
Naturally, I was embarrassed and humiliated, made to feel ashamed of my last name, which together with my love for grape leaves and tabouli are the only things I have remaining of my family heritage. I can only imagine what I would have been put through had I been a Muslim without a local driver's license.
Did I think it was necessary? Yes. Did I expect it before we traveled and even pondered not making the trip? Yes. But did I deserve it? No. And I don't believe the vast majority of Muslims in this country have deserved the treatment they have received either.
That doesn't translate into a vote for Kerry, in my case. I won't vote for Bush this time around either, however, and I am a Pennsylvania Republican. I will root for Kerry to lose, but that's as far as I go.
The Homeland Security apparatus is only one aspect of a long list of measures Bush has initiated that take power from the individual and communities in favor of a central state. The Bush administration has clearly and decisively been moving in the wrong direction -- a direction completely antithetical to true conservatism -- and I think I'd be no worse off with an imbecile who talks like a socialist but has no capability to enact his agenda. At least with Kerry in office my party can stand for something I believe in again.
And according to Kermit, it's not easy being green. We all have a burden to bear.
It makes sense that traitors would join the Demorat party.
They vaguely condemn "terrorism"; the question is, do they condemn specific attacks, such as on the WTC, Pentagon, Bali, etc., as terrorism, and do they condemn the likes of Osama bin Laden and his supporters as terrorists? As a rule, they don't. In their eyes, only infidels are guilty of "terrorism" -- whatever the faithful do is justifiable.
"I wonder how Muslims will like a President Kerry when he overreacts after the next terror attack by doing what Roosevelt did with Japanese-Americans in 1942."
A very likely scenario. Of course, it will be for their own protection. American Muslims are ill served by the extremely poor PR they have in this country. They don't seem to realize that, in the US, when something bad happens, everyone must come out with a statement in the press condemning the act without conditions. Silence, in the US, implies support of the action. And American Muslim groups have been quite silent since 9-11, and before.
THE TRUTH be known GWB has taken a lot of hits ,for standing up for the muslimes ,nobody wants to talk about that now do they ,you cant please everyone ,.GWB has to look out for the nation as he swore he would do
FYI - I was taken to a room after coming back to the US after living overseas because the customs agents decided I was a drug "lordess." I wasn't stripped searched, but I was accused, my luggage was torn apart (they were looking for secret compartments), then left in a heap. When the agents walked off, I quit my crying and packed my things back up. I didn't like my treatment and still think they were stupid and rude. They could have used a drug dog and didn't need to insult me. But I am still going to vote for President Bush. It is not any president's fault that I fit certain profiles because if the countries in which I chose to travel.
The point is, when the bad guys have certain characteristics that's what we need to be looking for.
The USA has invited in people from all over the world and given them the priviledge of being Americans. Name another country in which, despite your race, you will be considered one of the people?
Because "American" status has been conferred in the way it has (not by race or skin color) it is impossible for us to look at someone and know for certain about their backgrounds or the risks they pose to US! And think about the rest of us Americans for a second... Even though the overwhelming evidence proves that middle eastern males between a certain age are the enemies, all of us who were kind enough to allow foreign born people to be Americans, WE now are being pulled out of lines and searched at airports. For what they did, we are being photographed as we come into baseball games and walk down city streets.
Yes, I almost cried too when a 85 year old grandmother in a wheelchair was harassed and searched as I flew through Denver last year after CPAC. It made me furious and angry - as usual the government beaurocrats mess it up.
But when you stop feeling sorry for yourself you might think of ways to help. No one is safe inside our country if there are sleeper cells. And that includes both you and your fair-skinned wife. And your children. Do something to find and oust these monsters. The Japanese chose to prove their worth during WWII by fighting, not pouting. Unfortunately, I have heard few middle easterners do the same or help support our President in this terrible time. Don't allow yourself to be discouraged, get active. Helping through planned inaction to get Kerry elected is a mistake you will regret forever.
Then let everyone work on putting in place some common sense laws about immigration, border access, and background investigations of peole who want to come to the US. For that, we need everyone's help- yours too.
LOL!!! that pic is awesome!!!!!
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