Andrea Elliott
April 19, 2010
When President Barack Obama took the stage in
Cairo last June, promising a new relationship with the Islamic world, Muslims in
America wondered only half-jokingly whether the overture included them. After
all, Obama had kept his distance during the campaign, never visiting an American
mosque and describing the false claim that he was Muslim as a "smear" on his Web
site.
Nearly a year later, Obama has yet to set foot in
an American mosque. And he still has not met with Muslim and Arab-American
leaders. But less publicly, his administration has reached out to this
politically isolated constituency in a sustained and widening effort that has
left even skeptics surprised.
Muslim and Arab-American advocates have
participated in policy discussions and received briefings from top White House
aides and other officials on health care legislation, foreign policy, the
economy, immigration and national security. They have met privately with a
senior White House adviser, Valerie Jarrett, Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to discuss civil liberties
concerns and counterterrorism strategy.
The impact of this continuing dialogue is
difficult to measure, but White House officials cited several recent government
actions that were influenced, in part, by the discussions. The meeting with
Napolitano was among many factors that contributed to the government's decision
this month to end a policy subjecting passengers from 14 countries, most of them
Muslim, to additional scrutiny at airports, the officials said.
That emergency directive, enacted after a failed
Dec. 25 bombing plot, has been replaced with a new set of intelligence-based
protocols that law enforcement officials consider more effective.
Also this month, Tariq Ramadan, a prominent
Muslim academic, visited the United States for the first time in six years after
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reversed a decision by the Bush
administration, which had barred Ramadan from entering the country, initially
citing the USA Patriot Act. Clinton also cleared the way for another well-known
Muslim professor, Adam Habib, who had been denied entry under similar
circumstances.
Arab-American and Muslim leaders said they had
yet to see substantive changes on a variety of issues, including what they
describe as excessive airport screening, policies that have chilled Muslim
charitable giving and invasive FBI surveillance guidelines. But they are
encouraged by the extent of their consultation by the White House and
governmental agencies.
"For the first time in eight years, we have the
opportunity to meet, engage, discuss, disagree, but have an impact on policy,"
said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington. "We're
being made to feel a part of that process and that there is somebody listening."
In the post-9/11 era, Muslims and Arab-Americans
have posed something of a conundrum for the government: they are seen as a
political liability but also, increasingly, as an important partner in
countering the threat of homegrown terrorism. Under President George W. Bush,
leaders of these groups met with government representatives from time to time,
but said they had limited interaction with senior officials. While Obama has yet
to hold the kind of high-profile meeting that Muslims and Arab-Americans seek,
there is a consensus among his policymakers that engagement is no longer
optional.
The administration's approach has been
understated. Many meetings have been private; others were publicized only after
the fact. A visit to New York University in February by John O. Brennan, Obama's
chief counterterrorism adviser, drew little news coverage, but caused a stir
among Muslims around the country. Speaking to Muslim students, activists and
others, Brennan acknowledged many of their grievances, including "surveillance
that has been excessive," "over inclusive no-fly lists" and "an unhelpful
atmosphere around many Muslim charities."
"These are challenges we face together as
Americans," said Brennan, who momentarily showed off his Arabic to hearty
applause. He and other officials have made a point of disassociating Islam from
terrorism in public comments, using the phrase "violent extremism" in place of
words like "jihad" and "Islamic terrorism."
While the administration's solicitation of
Muslims and Arab-Americans has drawn little fanfare, it has not escaped
criticism. A small but vocal group of research analysts, bloggers and others
complain that the government is reaching out to Muslim leaders and organizations
with an Islamist agenda or ties to extremist groups abroad.
They point out that Jarrett gave the keynote
address at the annual convention for the Islamic Society of North America. The
group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case against the
Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity whose
leaders were convicted in 2008 of funneling money to Hamas. The society denies
any links to terrorism.
"I think dialogue is good, but it has to be with
genuine moderates," said Steven Emerson, a terrorism analyst who advises
government officials. "These are the wrong groups to legitimize." Emerson and
others have also objected to the political appointments of several American
Muslims, including Rashad Hussain.
In February, the president chose Hussain, a
31-year-old White House lawyer, to become the United States' special envoy to
the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The position, a kind of ambassador
at large to Muslim countries, was created by Bush. In a video address, Obama
highlighted Hussain's status as a "close and trusted member of my White House
staff" and "a hafiz," a person who has memorized the Quran.
Within days of the announcement, news reports
surfaced about comments Hussain had made on a panel in 2004, while he was a
student at Yale Law School, in which he referred to several domestic terrorism
prosecutions as "politically motivated." Among the cases he criticized was that
of Sami Al-Arian, a former computer-science professor in Florida who pleaded
guilty to aiding members of a Palestinian terrorist group.
At first, the White House said Hussain did not
recall making the comments, which had been removed from the Web version of a
2004 article published by a small Washington magazine. When Politico obtained a
recording of the panel, Hussain acknowledged criticizing the prosecutions but
said he believed the magazine quoted him inaccurately, prompting him to ask its
editor to remove the comments. On Feb. 22, The Washington Examiner ran an
editorial with the headline "Obama Selects a Voice of Radical Islam."
Muslim leaders watched carefully as the story
migrated to Fox News. They had grown accustomed to close scrutiny, many said in
interviews, but were nonetheless surprised. In 2008, Hussain had co-authored a
paper for the Brookings Institution arguing that the government should use the
peaceful teachings of Islam to fight terrorism.
"Rashad Hussain is about as squeaky clean as you
get," said Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., who is Muslim. Ellison and others
wondered whether the administration would buckle under the pressure and were
relieved when the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, defended Hussain.
"The fact that the president and the
administration have appointed Muslims to positions and have stood by them when
they've been attacked is the best we can hope for," said Ingrid Mattson,
president of the Islamic Society of North America.
It was notably different during Obama's run for
office. In June 2008, volunteers of his campaign barred two Muslim women in
headscarves from appearing behind Obama at a rally in Detroit, eliciting
widespread criticism. The campaign promptly recruited Mazen Asbahi, a
36-year-old corporate lawyer and popular Muslim activist from Chicago, to become
its liaison to Muslims and Arab-Americans.
Bloggers began researching Asbahi's background.
For a brief time in 2000, he had sat on the board of an Islamic investment fund,
along with Sheikh Jamal Said, a Chicago imam who was later named as an
unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Asbahi said in an interview
that he had left the board after three weeks because he wanted no association
with the imam.
Shortly after his appointment to the Obama
campaign, Asbahi said, a Wall Street Journal reporter began asking questions
about his connection to the imam. Campaign officials became concerned that news
coverage would give critics ammunition to try to link the imam to Obama, Asbahi
recalled. On their recommendation, Asbahi agreed to resign from the campaign, he
said.
He is still unsettled by the power of his
detractors. "To be in the midst of this campaign of change and hope and to have
it stripped away over nothing," he said. "It hurts."
From the moment Obama took office, he seemed
eager to change the tenor of America's relationship with Muslims worldwide. He
gave his first interview to Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language television station
based in Dubai. Muslims cautiously welcomed his ban on torture and his pledge to
close Guantanamo within a year.
In his Cairo address, he laid out his vision for
"a new beginning" with Muslims: while America would continue to fight terrorism,
he said, terrorism would no longer define America's approach to Muslims.
Back at home, Muslim and Arab-American leaders
remained skeptical. But they took note when, a few weeks later, Mohamed Magid, a
prominent imam from Sterling, Va., and Rami Nashashibi, a Muslim activist from
Chicago, joined the president at a White-House meeting about fatherhood. Also
that month, Dr. Faisal Qazi, a board member of American Muslim Health
Professionals, began meeting with administration officials to discuss health
care reform.
The invitations were aimed at expanding the
government's relationship with Muslims and Arab-Americans to areas beyond
security, said Hussain, the White House's special envoy. Hussain began advising
the president on issues related to Islam after joining the White House counsel's
office in January 2009. He helped draft Obama's Cairo speech and accompanied him
on the trip. "The president realizes that you cannot engage one-fourth of the
world's population based on the erroneous beliefs of a fringe few," Hussain
said.
Other government offices followed the lead of the
White House. In October, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke met with Arab-Americans
and Muslims in Dearborn, Mich., to discuss challenges facing small-business
owners. Also last fall, Farah Pandith was sworn in as the State Department's
first special representative to Muslim communities. While Pandith works mostly
with Muslims abroad, she said she had also consulted with American Muslims
because Clinton believes "they can add value overseas."
Despite this, American actions abroad - including
civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and the failure to close
Guantanamo - have drawn the anger of Muslims and Arab-Americans.
Even though their involvement with the
administration has broadened, they leaders remain most concerned about
security-related policies. In January, when the Department of Homeland Security
hosted a two-day meeting with Muslim, Arab-American, South Asian and Sikh
leaders, the group expressed concern about the emergency directive subjecting
passengers from a group of Muslim countries to additional screening.
Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim
Advocates, pointed out that the policy would never have caught the attempted
shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is British. "It almost sends the signal that the
government is going to treat nationals of powerless countries differently from
countries that are powerful," Khera recalled saying as community leaders around
the table nodded their heads.
Napolitano, who sat with the group for more than
an hour, committed to meeting with them more frequently. Khera said she left
feeling somewhat hopeful.
"I think our message is finally starting to get
through," she said.
Source: NDTV, New Delhi
12:26 AM
Sultan Shahin
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