American Muslims: Cleaning Their Own House

American Muslims must be feeling despair over the news that Asam Akbar, a sergeant serving in Kuwait and an American Muslim, is accused of intentionally throwing grenades into the tents of his fellow soldiers, killing two and injuring fourteen. Many policymakers, pundits and citizens suspect that the attack was politically motivated. This horrific incident ignites questions that have been smoldering since 9/11 concerning the place of Muslims in American society and about possible divided loyalties.

All responsible American Muslim leaders condemned the 9/11 assaults while expressing their valid concerns that they not lead to an anti-Muslim backlash. But these Muslims are still under suspicion. After all, adherence to Islam is used to justify the most virulent forms of terror and repression in the world today. Fortunately, many Americans Muslims are stepping forward to defend the values of civilization.

One problem that these Americans face is the fact that public distinctions between clerics, mosques, and Muslims who favor an open society and those who do not are not clear. There are many Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims who are peaceful and tolerant. Yet the Wahhabi sect, which is promoted by the Saudis, supports an aggressively fundamentalist and repressive form of Islam that has bred terrorists. In America different Muslim communities are not well defined enough to allow one to easily distinguish those that support an enlightened Islam and those that do not. Muslims who are committed to peace and tolerance and who want to protect the name of their religion thus face the challenge of making these distinctions more explicit.

Many Americans, as they've watched the FBI break up terrorist cells from Portland, Oregon, to Detroit, to North Carolina, continue to be suspicious of their Muslim neighbors. But they should also reflect on the fact that the FBI nabbed six Yemeni members of al-Qaeda in Lackawanna New York apparently based on tips from other Yemenis.

There's a sound tradition in America of individuals policing their own communities and in this way advancing the principles of civilization. For example, after 1948 the Congress of Industrial Organizations expelled eleven affiliated unions because of their leaders' communist ties or sympathies. In the decades that followed the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters expelled members associated with communist groups. These expulsions weren't simply opportunistic attempts to appeal to American public opinion but, rather, were reflections of a deep anti-communism in the hearts and minds of most union members.

In the 1990s Republicans who were trying to win elections in the once solidly Democratic South faced the problem of white supremacists running with a GOP label. Should the party speak out or leave the matter to individual voters? In fact, when racist David Duke ran as a Republican for governor of Louisiana in 1991, the national party backed the corrupt Democrat Edwin Edwards. Better a crook than a Klansman! Republicans would not allow their party to be tainted by racists.

These are good models for freedom-loving American Muslims. Occasionally, it may happen that a person who expresses sympathy for al-Qaeda is no worse than very stupid and very deluded. But that should not excuse him from being publicly ostracized by his community or privately reported to the FBI. No doubt, mistakes in judgment will be made as American Muslims attempt to clean their own house. But the stakes today are literally thousands of American lives and the liberty of all of us.

American Muslims could also use their cultural institutions to raise new generations of Muslims who will incorporate into their hearts and minds the universal human values of free speech, inquiry, and exchange; individual liberty; toleration; and representative government. The Arab-American Chamber of Commerce and the Minaret of Freedom Institute promote just such values. Such American Muslims follow the example of millions of other immigrants—Catholics from Italy and Ireland, Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia, Buddhists from Asia, Hindus and Sikhs from India. Tolerance does not mean agreement with other religions or lifestyles. It does mean a deep commitment to respecting the rights and freedoms of those with whom you might disagree.

American Muslims are in a unique position to export to their brothers overseas a more enlightened Islam that will vanquish the hate on which terrorism is based and help replace savagery with civilization in countries like Iraq. This is exactly what the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy is doing.

Muslims deserve the same tolerance and freedom that all Americans enjoy and that attracted many Muslims to these shores. But it is unfortunately also true that some Muslims do not stand up for an enlightened Islam out of moral flabbiness or obtuseness. Some -- perhaps a significant segment of the American Islamic community - sympathize with or support radical Islamists. And others fear that their homicidal co-religionists will target them with fatwas and death warrants.

But America brings out the best in all people, and American Muslims who truly appreciate the freedom that they enjoy will no doubt have the courage to fight!

Show me a truly patriotic muslim. Go ahead, I dare you.

OK. Article from the Detroit Free Press:

The holiday was Ramadan, when observant Muslims fast, and Houssain Sareini was testing his faith in God and country.

The Dearborn native was a Navy sailor aboard the USS Vicksburg, stationed in the Persian Gulf in January 1996. And Sareini was the ship's chief swimmer: If any aircraft crashed overboard, he was the one responsible for diving in and saving the pilot. At the same time, he worked 12 hours a day in the combat center, scanning radar for hostile planes.

Through it all, Sareini was determined to make sure he didn't eat from sunrise to sundown, as required during the month of Ramadan.

"I'd be lying if I said I was able to do it every day," Sareini said in a recent phone interview. "The job was demanding. But I managed to do it about half the time."

The story of Sareini, today a petty officer awaiting a possible call-up, is in many ways the story of the more than 4,000 Muslims in the U.S. armed forces. They're proud of their backgrounds, but they're also loyal Americans. And as the United States strikes Afghanistan, they're behind President George W. Bush, serving as important symbols of the country's commitment to religious tolerance.

"I don't see Islam and America as being opposites," Sareini said. "I see evil people who have done a terrible act, and the United States has a responsibility to act."

In recent weeks, Bush has repeatedly stressed that the ongoing war is against evil, not Islam. "We are the friends of almost a billion worldwide who practice the Islamic faith," he said.

Sareini agrees.

"When you hear the commander in chief say things like that, it's important," he said. "It was a good gesture, especially at a time like this."

Sareini, 25, comes from a family with a history of service in the armed forces. Uncles, grandparents and cousins have all served in the U.S. Army or Marine Corps. A cousin, Abdullah (Jake) Sareini, was called up recently by the U.S. Marine Corps. Jake Sareini speaks English and Arabic and served during the Persian Gulf War, when he helped translate the words of prisoners, said his wife, Vanessa.

"He loves the Marine Corps," she said.

Houssain Sareini's mother, Suzanne Sareini, who is American-born and of Arab descent, is a Dearborn City Council member. She worked for the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and his father. Today, she's worried about her son.

"I'm tremendously proud of him, and like every other parent of those in the military, I hope he doesn't have to go," she said.

Her son was born in Dearborn, part of a large Lebanese population that fled to the city after civil wars racked their homeland. His father is an immigrant from Lebanon who started out on the assembly line at Ford Motor Co.

After he graduated from Fordson High School, where the majority of students are Arab American, Sareini spent a year at Adrian College.

But he wasn't satisfied. "I wanted something with a little more action," he said. He rose quickly and was selected for a special prep school in Rhode Island.

In late 1995 and 1996, he was stationed in the Persian Gulf, part of a 400-member crew that kept tabs on Iraq and tried to enforce United Nations sanctions. Today, he's close to becoming a commissioned officer and is working on his master's degree in biochemistry at Iowa State University. Through the years, Sareini has had his share of teasing from his colleagues about his ethnicity, but it's mostly minor jokes.

"When you're out on a ship for a long time, you have your pranksters to make time pass," he said. "But I've always been treated with respect. It's all about your performance and character in the Navy. Cream rises to the top. If you want it bad enough and carry yourself appropriately, you'll rise above."

Sareini tries to pray once a day, and he's given his children Muslim names; he has a 4-year-old son named Mohammed, and a 2-year-old daughter named Rena. His wife, Wendy, converted to Islam after their marriage.

Sareini said he is concerned about some of the backlash directed at Arab Americans, and recalls the internment of Japanese Americans after World War II. But he adds that ultimately Americans judge people on who they are, and not where they're from.

It's an idea echoed by Jim Turner, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, who said the armed forces gives "equal treatment to all service members regardless of religious preference."

Sareini added:

"The president is right to look at this, not as us versus them, or Christianity versus Islam," he said. "It's good versus evil."

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