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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (73801)	9/3/2003 9:18:45 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Since we were talking about the convention, I thought you might find this interesting- I certainly do. United U.S. Muslims To Vote Against Bush Re-election "Feelings are running strongly against Bush in the community," said Awad Additional Reporting By Mustafa Abdel-halim, IOL Staff CHICAGO, September 2 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Leaders of the U.S. Muslim community intend to deliver a bloc vote in next year's presidential elections, one that will go against the candidate they endorsed last time - President George W. Bush. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council, the American Muslim Alliance, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council agreed this weekend to cooperate on a voter registration drive that they hope will send one million Muslims to say "No" to Bush's 2004 re-election bid. Representatives of the four leading U.S. Muslim advocacy groups have begun voter registration drives at mosques and Islamic centers across the nation in hopes of ensuring a strong turnout in the 2004 presidential elections. The message is to reflect widespread "dissatisfaction" in the Muslim American community with the Bush administration's treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans since the September 11 attacks, Nihad Awad, CAIR Executive Director was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying. "Feelings are running strongly against Bush in the community … We feel that civil liberties have deteriorated in this country," he stressed. Among the policies that have alienated Muslims are those allowing racial profiling of Arab and Muslim men, the use of secret evidence in cases said to touch on national security, and the detention and deportation of many Arab and Muslim nationals without the right to legal representation. Further to their outrage, Bush appointed in August Daniel Pipes, an outspoken anti-Muslim scholar, to the board of the government-funded U.S. Institute of Peace. "Such an appointment, along with other actions helping discrimination against Muslim and Arab Americans could lead Bush to lose that support base in the coming presidential elections," Laila Al-Qatami of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) told ISlamOnline.net. She warned that unlike the 2000 elections in which Arabs and Muslim Americans voted overwhelmingly for Bush, things could not stand a repeat in the 2004 presidential elections. "Bush should realize that such rising racism and bigotry against Arab and Muslims here would have ramifications for him." Better Job Awad declined to say the Democratic candidate, if any, the Muslims coalition would endorse. "We will try to do a better job than we did in 2000," he said, asserting that "no decision has been made." "Muslims are eager to vote in defense of their liberties and in defense of their future," said Awad, who heads up the best-known of the four groups. "We want equal respect and equal treatment under the law." Community leaders say a rash of hate attacks on Muslims and Arabs and verbal assaults on Islam by leading evangelical preachers have increased the community's sense of isolation. "The (9/11) hijack attacks gave a big push for those launching campaigns against Islam and Muslims in America, as people accept attacks against Islam more," Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR told IOL. The CAIR had said in a report released on July 15, that anti-Muslim violence, harassment and discrimination have surged by 15 percent in the U.S. over the past year in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Another report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released last year found that anti-Islamic hate crimes also increased by 1,600 percent in the U.S. last year.