Attending Together

Last year at this time, concerning the purported threat of Iraq, UN Chief Inspector Hans Blix was told in essence; “the witches exist; you are appointed to deal with these witches; testing whether there are witches is only a dilution of the witch hunt”. Obviously this political approach has ended up costing thousands of lives. And we Muslims know all about witch hunts of one sort or another. We ask--in consequence are Americans safer, as the Bush Administration suggests in its new flag waving election ads? Is the world safer?

A new Century Foundation study of the Homeland Security said the department had done well in some areas including tracking foreign students, hiring travel checkpoint screeners, adding more air marshals on planes. "On the other hand, big vulnerabilities remain in container shipping, on general (private) aviation and on control of many border crossings," according to a Reuters report on March 7th. Also, “Other problems include intelligence gathering and coordination at a federal and local level”. I wonder why?

Jacques Chirac recently stated that he believes that the west's intelligence services, including his own, were "intoxicating each other" leading up to last year’s war. This is not history. These issues are still relevant, certainly to the upcoming election. . Therefore we need to keep it in the news.

Therefore, please mark your calendars; you are invited to join others who oppose racism, injustice and colonial occupation to make yourself heard on Saturday, March 20th at 12 noon. Insha’Allah as part of a global demonstration thousands of your neighbors and fellow citizens will meet at Madison Sq Park, 23 St & Madison Avenue to demand a stop to the attacks on civil rights & civil liberties. Without these events why would our elected officials make any effort or take any risk in this election year?

Muslim Students' Association (MSA National) and MAS Freedom Foundation join the National Lawyers Guild, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and others to demand justice and a better economic program. But you say you are not a protest person or you are uncomfortable with the carnival atmosphere? It is true that many groups may indeed have their roots in political notions that you or I might personally disagree with. And we do need to be careful of Mr. Lyndon Larouche and other political groups that sell a strangely complete and paranoid worldview to communities like ours. Still, the ability to stand together peacefully with mutual respect in order to achieve a higher aim is most precious, and we Muslim Americans can be grateful that we can still assemble in this country. If we do not use this right we lose it. Indeed we might.

So why would you attend? Against occupation in Palestine and Kashmir, perhaps. To witness for justice. Perhaps also to remember Muslim detainees; and for the over 63,000 from all nationalities who have been deported in mass expulsions from the USA last year. Immigrant men and women continue to be picked up on all sorts of pretexts (for an excellent article see http://www.counterpunch.org/reeves03062004.html ). "It makes the hair on my neck stand up because it reminds me of conditions in Iran, a country we say is the Axis of Evil." (David Shomloo, who is himself an Iranian immigrant commenting in The Oregonian, Jan. 23, 2004).

You could attend to call attention to the 10,000 Muslim men and boys ages 11 to 75 held in secrecy and miserable conditions in Iraq, as the New York Times reports on March 7th. They are held because the US troops do not know how to investigate their cases. This is a sort of hostage taking guaranteed to build resentment. Those who oppose the war need to know about the situation of these men.

We must also call attention to the unprecedented indefinite “disappearance” of the Guantanamo detainees. If we Muslims do not speak up why should we expect others to do our work for us?

When Aristide was spirited away from Haiti he wound up in custody of the Central African Republic. But why did the former cannibal Dictator of that same country end his days in comfort in the south of France? And Idi Amin Dada who ended up sheltered in Saudi Arabia? Why are mass murderers treated so kindly when both rank and file Taliban and innocent Muslims are kept in cages and denied access to lawyers?

Please mark your calendars, and let your hearts remember.