Do You Count? Find Yourself and Find Out

Five million American Muslims vanished last week. Gone—as if they never existed. Is this the mass deportation we have been fearing? And who has spoken up out of the silence?



The Pew Foundation published their survey of Muslim American attitudes last week. While finding various interesting trends, both reassuring and unsettling to the powers that be, the survey also asserted that the total Muslim American population is 2.35 million. Quite a difference from CAIR and MPAC’s estimated 7-8 million! Much lower than what most have us expected; our credibility with elected officials may now fall drastically. Can’t Muslims count? Then Muslims may not count in the next national elections.



Questioned about the disparity, Pew’s Professor Keeter stated, “It might be low because Muslims may be more likely to be cell-phone only than the rest of the population. There certainly may be some reluctance to identify as Muslim. We didn't pick up people who maybe were born Muslim but have lost their identity and are completely secular. We don't include those.”



Certainly if we estimated that 80 percent of our brothers and sisters do not go to the mosque, and that many have become assimilated, and that many are reluctant to self-identify, we would get a much higher number, though perhaps not a group that can be counted on to vote as a bloc in any election. And yet the suspicion remains that our Muslim advocacy groups have also wildly overstated their case at over 7 million.



Can CAIR or MPAC bring back these millions from virtual rendition? Can we challenge the Pew assertions-- or are we going to leave it alone, believe what we wish in our own private dream of wishful thinking?



Of course, the US has a history of making people disappear. Not even mentioning the poor and black victims of Katrina, we see how many states have found ways to keep black voters from voting. But this happens everywhere. In chaotic Iraq, vastly increased child mortality means that one in eight children vanish. Moreover, two million have fled from Iraq in the last two years. Where are they? And though there is talk of changing this, one should note that in the last 9 months only 67 Iraqis have been admitted to the US. It is possible that we will not see them any more frequently than images of flag draped coffins of soldiers returning home.



If our community spoke out as we should on such moral issues, it would not matter how many millions we are or are not. But we are silent. We speak only to each other about renditions of Muslim suspects. There have been so many, perhaps we are bored by the subject? Just one bit of good news: Khaled Meshal has just returned to New Jersey. After he fled the recent war in Somalia, the FBI interrogated him and then--somehow-- Kenya deported him back to several months in the rare comforts of an Ethiopian-run jail in Somalia in the midst of war.



Contrasted to the US, the UK government has always said it opposes "extraordinary rendition". However, according to recent BBC reports, telegrams sent by the British security service led to the rendition of two UK residents now in Guantanamo Bay. Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna were first arrested at Gatwick airport in November 2002. Their lawyer Brent Mickum told BBC News: "They were taken out in chains and hooded... to separate rooms, where there were seven or eight individuals all of whom were dressed completely in black and wearing black masks."



Mr al-Rawi's brother Wahab, later released, said that when he asked to see a British representative he was told: "Who do you think ordered your arrest?" Mr. Mickum added: "Their clothes were cut off... nappies were put on them. Then they were taken in chains to a jet” The two men were first flown to a CIA facility in Afghanistan known as the "Dark Prison", where the conditions were "hellish."



Mr al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen with UK residency, was sent to England in 1985 after his father was arrested by Saddam Hussein's secret police. Mr al-Banna is a Jordanian refugee. Both men deny any involvement with terrorism. They are among at least eight UK residents held at Guantanamo.



But Muslim countries are at least as bad. In Pakistan, recent public riots relate to President Musharraf’s suspension of Pakistan’s top judge Iftikhar Muhammud Chaudhry, who has pushed authorities to reveal information about Pakistan’s ”disappeared” — hundreds of men detained without charge by the shadowy police and intelligence agencies, tortured and abused.



Imran Munir, 27, disappeared after reporting to one of these shadowy agencies. His family heard nothing for months until the authorities recently admitted to holding Imran and a court order forced them to take his sister Adeela in a blacked-out car to see him. “He was afraid and weak. At first he did not recognize me,” said Adeela, “He is being tortured inside, we are being tortured outside. They say he is a spy, but he has never been charged. The agencies are above the law.”



Of course, Iran has recently started detaining (or taking hostage) foreign researchers and claiming they are spies. And in Syria, “scores of Syrians, including children, have been arrested or remained detained incommunicado without charge or pending unfair trials, at risk of torture which continues to be widespread in Syrian detention and investigation centers” according to Amnesty International last year, naming, “ Muhammed Osama Sayes, held incommunicado without charge since he was deported from the United Kingdom on 3 May 2005, Nabil al-Marabh, who "disappeared" in May 2004, four months after he was deported from the USA, and several others.



Lebanese poet Ali Ahmed Said (Adonis) writes, “I am that final leaf that no one sees. My people have died as fires die—without a trace.” But Muslims can have a voice. With a humble and clear awareness we can awake from this strange unreality. We have been vanishing. But you and I can still find ourselves again.