American Islamic Congress

American Islamic Congress ^ | February 22, 2003

[Cultural Jihad]

Former Ohio congressman John Kasich's "From the Heartland" segment tonight on FoxNews featured a guest, Zainab Al-Suwaij, the executive director of the American Islamic Congress. FoxNews' website says about this segment:

---

A Muslim Makes the Case for War Against Saddam

John talks with Zainab Al-Suwaij is the executive director of the American Islamic Congress. Ms. Al-Suwaij joins us from Bosnia and explains what it was like to grow up in Iraq in the shadow of Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. She believes that this is a war that must be waged.

---

Zainab made an interesting statement regarding the so-called "peace" marches, that there has been no such peace in Iraq for the past 15 years, because of widespread torture and oppression under Saddam.

From their website:

---

Mission:

The American Islamic Congress (AIC) is a social organization that is dedicated to building interfaith and interethnic understanding. Our organization grew out of the ashes of September 11. The vicious terrorist attacks made many American Muslims realize that we had been silent for too long in the face of Muslim extremism. We believe American Muslims must take the lead in building tolerance and fostering a respect for human rights and social justice. We have a responsibility to help our country rebuild from this attack, and to our religion to reassert that we are moderate and peace-loving people.

---

[Thorondir]

I don't know if the guy is supporting the decision or its type of decision. He just stated that it happened. Interesting, but does not seem good to me, either.

Human civilization had better wake up soon and get as serious about its survival as the seventh-century savages of Islam are about our annihilation!
SLEEPING AMERICANS ARE EASIER TO KILL.
Do not be lulled to sleep by the Religion of Peace defenders.

Click here and never forget the face of Islam and what it wants for you infidels.

[nightdriver]

"Very interested actually, do you have the case law or some source for this ? Thanks."

An old lawyer showed me that thirty years ago. I have the case numbers in my old stack of stuff somewhere. I'm going to have to find it because nobody believes me. It even went so far as to say that when in public documents the word "religion" was used, it meant, solely, Christianity.

That ought to cause a few eyebrows to raise in this secular age, huh?

[Mo1]

I agree that there are nuts cases out there that want to kill us .. but I don't like the goverment telling me what religion I can practice

[Thorondir]

I couldn't agree more, sir.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Doesn't that go against the First Amendement?

Clarify your question. Which part of the first Amendment? Free Exercise?

To use an extreme example, what if we started a religion that required adherents to murder a non-believer each week. Would stopping that so-called religion be a violation of the Free Exercise clause? Or would this "religion" be de-listed as such.

Now for the logical leap - How is de-listing Islam any different than de-listing the hypothetical religion above as a "religion"?

[Mo1]

That was not my point and you know it

[Cultural Jihad]

Dancing Inside The Circle
July 5, 2002
Zainab al-Suwaij

Every other evening during the summer, there is a dance party on a West Haven beach. Elderly residents of Surfside, a housing complex, are joined by young people along the ocean boardwalk. It is a melting pot of ages, genders and races, as everyone shakes hips - prosthetic and natural.

I discovered the dance party during a recent beach outing with friends. Our group consisted mostly of Muslim women, some of whom, like me, wear the hijab, or head scarf. We come from Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, but most of us are now American citizens.

As the dance party drew to a close, we watched a resident of the nursing home raise an American flag. All dancers joined hands and circled around the flag, singing "America the Beautiful."

I knew that I, too, had to join this celebration. I grabbed my Egyptian American friend and rushed into the circle. This was my flag, and I wanted to dance around it with my fellow Americans.

Many people were caught by surprise at the sight of a hijab-wearing woman joining hands with them. Some smiled warmly, others looked confused. Many Americans look at me simply as an Arab or Muslim. They overlook that I am an American and have been part of this culture for more than a decade.

The rest of my Muslim American friends stood outside the circle. One complained, "They brought out the flag just to spite us." Another remarked sarcastically about me, "What does she think she is, an American?"

There at the West Haven beach, I saw the cycle of suspicion that too often clouds encounters between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans. This past week, with warnings of terrorist attacks on July Fourth, those feelings were particularly intense. Americans suspiciously eyed those who share the attire and skin tone of al Qaeda operatives. Muslims sensed this. We often interpret displays of patriotism as alienating, even provocative.

I try to stay outside this cycle of suspicion by honestly recalling life in my native Iraq. Growing up, I witnessed the worst that a police state has to offer. I saw students disappear for questioning Saddam Hussein's regime, I had relatives killed by the secret police and I smelled the rotting flesh from Hussein's jails.

As an American, I enjoy all kinds of freedoms that are lacking in Iraq, including the right to criticize my own government. More important, here I have the freedom and the power to advocate on behalf of Muslim sisters across the globe. Their liberation depends on those of us privileged enough to live in America and strong enough to speak on their behalf.

I fear that the incident on the West Haven beach reflects a larger problem: Too many Americans who come from Muslim countries seem to have forgotten why they first came here. We Middle Easterners grew up without hearing the call to "ask what you can do for your country." We did not enjoy "government of the people, by the people and for the people." Instead, we had to ask ourselves, "How can I protect myself from the government?"

But now we are here, and our presence should be an occasion for fusion, not fear and separation. More than most Americans, we know the value of freedom. We should be working to improve our lifestyles, open our minds and mix the best of our religious values with the opportunity to create a better future for our American children and for people living under oppression everywhere.

As a Muslim woman, I am inspired by the legacy of female activists in America, whose efforts to improve society were grounded in religion. From the abolitionist movement to the fight against urban poverty, American Christian women transformed society by fusing their religious values with the values of America. Similarly, American Muslim women need not choose between their heritage and their new homeland.

At my Iraqi high school, students were forced to march in pro-government rallies every week. I would always try to sneak away. But on that West Haven beach, I decided to ignore the cycle of suspicion and join the dance circle around the Stars and Stripes.

This country, I felt, is worth it.

Zainab al-Suwaij is executive director of the American Islamic Congress (www.aicongress.org), a privately funded group in New Haven formed after Sept. 11 to increase understanding of Islam.

http://www.aicongress.org/policy/articles/Courant3.htm

[FreedomPoster]

Then clarify your point, I obviously didn't understand it.

[Cultural Jihad]

Muslim women owe it to America to fight for freedom, respect

   Today's Forum was written by Zainab al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a privately funded group in New Haven, Conn. The column was originally printed in The Hartford Courant.
   It was the first day of third grade, in September 1980, when my mother presented me with my ''hijab.''
   The hijab is a traditional head scarf worn by Muslim women who seek personal modesty in public. My mother had made one for her 9-year-old daughter, and for the first time I appeared before my classmates with my head covered.
   Even in southern Iraq, where I grew up, this was a strange sight. I lived in the largely secular city of Basra, and no one in my school of 700 wore a hijab. The Iran-Iraq war had just begun, and many Iraqis saw the hijab as a symbol of Iran's Islamic regime: our sworn enemy.
   In class, everyone stared at me and some even teased me by yanking the scarf off my head. My teacher, a Christian, could not understand my decision. She turned to me in class and asked me to explain the cloth on my head.
   This, I answered, is part of my religion. My family's religious tradition asks that women cover their hair. The hijab, I told her, is who I am.
   Today, the hijab remains an important part of my identity. Everything beneath it becomes private, even precious. I feel a deep obligation to cover my hair, and make an open-minded choice to place a thin divider between my body and the outside world.
   By sending me off to school with a hijab, my mother placed a big responsibility on my shoulders. But the challenge I felt as a 9-year-old in secular Iraqi society is nothing compared to the task before me today in the United States. Ever since a terrorist cell of Muslim men launched a vicious attack on America, the scarf I wear has become a charged symbol, a new kind of barrier I must struggle to overcome.
   On Sept. 11, as we began to absorb the shocking images on TV, my husband urged me not to wear my hijab in public.
   ''If there are ignorant people,'' I told him, ''I want to educate them.''
   Although some women fear wearing a hijab in America, my experience has been just the opposite: People are respectful and understanding. On Oct. 8, I showed up at work and discovered many female colleagues -- all non-Muslims -- wearing the hijab as a sign of sisterly solidarity, an act repeated by American women across the country. It was a special day for America.
   I ask my Muslim friends to imagine the reverse scenario. If Americans had hijacked planes and crashed them into Mecca, would the Muslim world have ever shown such sympathy? My friends cannot help but agree that the response we have encountered here is extraordinary.
   Now American Muslim women must respond in kind. We have come to America seeking safety and freedom, and rightly demanded equal respect and equal rights as citizens. Although American democracy has welcomed and accommodated Islam, the Muslim world continues to regard America with suspicion. And for too long, we silently tolerated this one-way embrace.
   Whether we wear hijab or not, American Muslims face a barrier of our own creation. We have not done enough to denounce Islamic hate speech and defend pluralism around the world. The Muslim world and the American public must hear our voices. As Americans, we must work to ensure that respect for individual rights and tolerance are rooted within all parts of our community. We are all human beings first, then citizens with our own personal beliefs.
   Women have not had a significant voice in the American Muslim community. Although we cannot be imams, we should be community leaders. In any case, we are mothers, raising a new generation of American-born Muslims. We must educate our children not to judge people by the clothes they wear or their religious identity, but by how they behave.
   American Muslims have a personal interest in strengthening and defending our country's values of tolerance and civil rights, under which we have thrived. So much is at stake, for us and for our country. Because when and if our daughters choose to wear the hijab in public, they should do so in an America that recognizes Muslim women as its proudest freedom fighters.
   

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Tuesday, January 22, 2002.

http://www.aicongress.org/policy/articles/Courant1.htm

[Cultural Jihad]

LIFE DURING WARTIME

American Muslims
Are Americans.
Let's Act Like It.

BY TAREK E. MASOUD
Friday, September 14, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

There's a famous photo of a Japanese-owned grocery store in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor with these words emblazoned across the front: "I AM AN AMERICAN." It accurately encapsulates the way many of us in the Islamic and Arab community feel at this hour. As it becomes ever more apparent that our co-religionists have visited slaughter upon our compatriots, so many of us want to declare from the rooftops our allegiance to this great nation, to show our solidarity with our fellow citizens, and to join the fight against our common enemy.

Despite their demonstrations of patriotism after Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were thrown into internment camps. This is not likely to happen to us. President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Sen. Ted Kennedy and countless pundits have bent over backward to make sure that Americans know that all Arabs are not to blame, and to explain that Islam and Islamic fundamentalism are not the same thing. They are correct, of course, and it is good to hear them say it. Because even I need to be reminded sometimes.

In fact, I wonder, when I hear these words of ecumenical brotherhood, whether Islam and Muslims are not getting a bit of a pass on this one. When I read Muslims posting messages of joy on Internet newsgroups, declaring, Malcolm X style, that the chickens have come home to roost, I wonder where these people come from. Are they the people I pray with at the mosque? Are they the New York cabbies I greet with a hearty "salam alaikum" and who in my mind have always been models of hard work and the American way? Could it be that Islam is not the religion of peace that I've been telling everybody it is, but instead a faith of bloodthirsty fatwas that exalts murder and suicide? Is it conceivable that Muslims are not the noble people I believe them with all my heart to be, but rather the kind of monsters who celebrate death and destruction?

No. It cannot be. But if I--a man born and raised into the faith, of Arab parents and with a deep love for the culture of the Arab world--can ask these questions, what questions must my Protestant and Jewish and Catholic friends be asking? And how can I, as a Muslim, give them an answer? I certainly cannot look to the national leadership of the Islamic community in America for guidance. The American Muslim Council tells us to be careful, to be on the lookout for suspicious and anti-Muslim behavior, presumably by other Americans seeking revenge. The Council on American Islamic Relations even sent out an e-mail with a handy form for reporting hate crimes against Muslims. I wonder if these groups are oblivious to the fact that it is Muslims, with names like Mohammed and Abdullah and, yes, Tarek, who have committed the greatest hate crime in American history?

Instead of trying to think of ways to help the victims, the leadership of the Muslim community would rather wrap itself in the mantle of victimhood. Actually, that's not quite right: It is wrapping itself in the mantle of potential victimhood. The feared hate crimes have not materialized. No one is taking to the streets and shouting "Death to Muslims." No mosques have been burned to the ground.

And so every day, as the nation mourns, as foreign countries pledge support and offer condolences, American Muslims are strangely absent from this tragedy, save the occasional press release. As a result, the only Muslims that America sees are Osama bin Laden and the mug shots of Tuesday's suicide bombers.

Already we can hear rumblings in the Muslim community about the need to keep fighting against profiling, the practice of singling out Arabs and Muslims for increased scrutiny at airports. They had been making headway with this cause--both presidential candidates denounced profiling during the 2000 campaign--and now they fear public sentiment will slide in the other direction.

But Tuesday's events should have demonstrated the folly of their position. How many thousands of lives would have been saved if people like me had been inconvenienced with having our bags searched and being made to answer questions? People say profiling makes them feel like criminals. It does--I know this firsthand. But would that I had been made to feel like a criminal a thousand times than to live to see the grisly handiwork of real criminals in New York and Washington.

I can hear my co-religionists now, arguing that the Muslims bear no special responsibility for these attacks, that a community of six million law-abiding Americans should not apologize just because a few of them committed a crime. Perhaps they are right. But looking at the images of shattered buildings and dead bodies, of people jumping to their deaths and of planes wielded as instruments of death, how can we not apologize, knowing that these images were brought to us by people who claim to act in the name of the faith we call our own? It seems to me that an apology would be very little to ask. Instead of jealously protesting our innocence and girding against repercussions, we should be asking, "What else can we do to help?"

Like the New Yorkers who even now are volunteering in greater numbers than relief workers can make use of, it is time for American Muslims to start acting like Americans.

Mr. Masoud is a graduate student at Yale.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001128

[TLBSHOW]

did you hear about the Fbi muslims that won't do their jobs?

[BenR2]

Women have not had a significant voice in the American Muslim community. Although we cannot be imams, we should be community leaders. In any case, we are mothers, raising a new generation of American-born Muslims. We must educate our children not to judge people by the clothes they wear or their religious identity, but by how they behave.
American Muslims have a personal interest in strengthening and defending our country's values of tolerance and civil rights, under which we have thrived. So much is at stake, for us and for our country. Because when and if our daughters choose to wear the hijab in public, they should do so in an America that recognizes Muslim women as its proudest freedom fighters.

/ / / / / /
This woman has more cojones than 99% of American Muslim males. (I hope no one tries to hurt her for her outspoken pro-American views.)

[Mo1]

Then clarify your point, I obviously didn't understand it.

Why bother .. you'll tell me I'm wrong

[Cultural Jihad]

(I hope no one tries to hurt her for her outspoken pro-American views.)

Agreed. But if it happens, it wouldn't be from her co-religionists, but from those parasites who have to feed off of hatred.

[FreedomPoster]

Have it your way, I'm out.

[Mo1]

Have it your way, I'm out.

Bye!

[Cultural Jihad]

did you hear about the Fbi muslims that won't do their jobs?

I've heard of one. Did you hear about the hundreds who do do their jobs?

[justshe]

Thank you for posting those articles. The amount of anti-muslim rhetoric on these boards has been multiplying expotentially lately. It would appear there is a now a new category where blatant bigotry and racism is not only accepted, but is actually being cheered by many.

It has to stop. It is based on an irrational fear that is grounded in ignorance, imo. And I fully expect to be flamed.

I abhor the violence we have experienced....but I refuse to use a broad-brush to damn ALL based on the behavior of a radical sect that has bastardized their religion in order advance their sick agenda.

[BenR2]

Agreed. But if it happens, it wouldn't be from her co-religionists, but from those parasites who have to feed off of hatred.

/ / / / /
Uh, care to explain that? Not sure I follow . . . ?

[TLBSHOW]

No, can you link it?