Wednesday, January 21, 2009

NAMAW congratulates Obama; calls for end to war on terrorism


Dear President Barack Obama,

The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) congratulates you on your inauguration as the United State's 44th President.

With heartfelt sincerity we wish you a successful presidency, and we look forward to working with you and the members of your cabinet in a joint effort to get our country, and the world on the path to peace and prosperity.

In our opinion the first step towards that end must be ending the US/Israel war on terrorism.

The US/Israel war on terrorism that began following the tragic attack on our country September 11, 2001 has been a misdirected war to kill people who have been tagged Islamic "radicals" and "extremists." It is a war that is aimed at killing and depriving Muslims and Arabs of human and legal rights.

The US/Israel so called war on terrorism, is a war that is based upon anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and also anti-Islamic propaganda that began to saturate the world media even before 9/11, almost as if an environment of hatred against Muslims and Arabs and Islam was being created purposefully to yield the ugly backlash inflicted upon Muslim and Arab people following 9/11. This backlash includes the war on terrorism.

There is enough proof now, showing that the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by Muslims. There is also enough proof that the religion of Islam does not condone terror, nor does it compel its adherents to act violently, or to carry out acts of terrorism and political violence. There is also widespread belief that whoever did carry out the attacks on 9/11 used Muslims, Arabs and Islam as scapegoats with the hope of dragging the US into what would become an endless and perpetual war whose real aim is to create what the former Bush administration called a New Middle East. A Middle East whose natural resources are controlled by the US and Israel, and whose people are subjugated to Israel, and its indiscriminate violence.

The US/Israeli war on terrorism is an act of collective punishment that has taken the lives of millions of innocent Muslim and Arab people, including 650,000 innocent Iraqi children who were starved to death and who died from curable diseases as a result of an inhumane economic embargo placed upon Iraq by the US, that mimics almost exactly the criminal and inhumane economic embargo that Israel has imposed for 18 months upon the Gaza Strip in Palestine.

The recent Israeli assault on Gaza that has resulted in more than 1000 deaths, mostly women and children, and the almost complete destruction of Gaza's infrastructure is also reminiscent of the US invasion of Iraq, and the destruction that has been wrought upon Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. Ironically none of these countries had anything to do with 9/11, and neither did Palestine.

It is time for the US/Israeli so called war on terrorism to end and for the US and the Muslim and Arab people of the world to begin a new relationship, one that as you stated in your inaugural speech, is based upon mutual respect.

We hope that you will make ending the war on terrorism one of your administration's first priorities along with initiating a US/Muslim dialogue that is aimed at resolving the differences, real and imagined that have led to the present state of regrettable and tragic affairs.

Again we congratulate you on your inauguration, and we pray that it is the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity for the United States and the entire world.

With Best Regards,

Anisa Abd el Fattah, Chairwoman
NAMAW

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