Author: Islam Online& News
Agencies
Publication: Turks.US
Date: September 2, 2003
URL: http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=20030902112920372
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.
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."
