NAMAW Muslim 2010 Voters Guide

"Change it with your hands...vote!"


As Salaamu Alaikum!

In our effort to ensure Muslim representation in the US political process, we are issuing this 2010 election voter's guide.

The purpose of this guide is simply to offer some advice as to which candidates, in the most important races should be considered by Muslims as worthy of our vote. We must all decide on our own, according to our own consciences which candidates we will vote for. Still, we must also keep in mind the criteria for judgment that God has taught us in the Qur'an and through the prophet Muhammad's sunnah or way of life.

Over the past months leading up to this election, Muslims as a community who exist within the larger community of American citizens, were subjected to a hellish campaign of hatred and demonization of our community, our religion and our beliefs. Gross misrepresentations of Islam, and horrible lies about Muslim attitudes towards the US and non Muslims were allowed to be aired across mainstream media airwaves with little or no concern for the dangerous climate that was being created, leading to acts of violence against Muslims and destruction and desecration of Mosques.

There are those who will look at these events and say that there is nothing that we can do to prevent ignorant and hate filled people from saying and doing such evil things, and desiring harm for Muslim. We disagree and feel that when Muslims speak the truth upon every opportunity, falsehood flees. The Qur'an teaches us that when truth arrives, falsehood flees, because it is the nature of falsehood to be weak and and when confronted with the truth, to run and hide its ugly face. We must always take every opportunity to speak the truth without ambiguity.

The political campaign season, which is now near its end, is a wonderful time and opportunity to speak out about the things that are important to our community, and also for our country. It is a great time for us to speak to our neighbors and colleagues, friends and associates about Islam and about the things we believe are best for our country. We cannot seclude ourselves. We are Americans, and we must live and coexist as part of the American society, even if we don't like everything about the society.

Having said that, it is important for us to also say that the only way to change the things we don't like about our government and society is to vote. In our representative republic, we make our voices heard at the ballot box. This is why it is essential that we vote and that we vote according to a set of priorities, and based upon what we believe.

We have seen and heard enough over the past two years since the Obama election to understand very clearly what is at stake for Muslims in the United States and for our country in this election cycle.

Our first priority is the survival of our community, our safety and our rights. Our 1st amendment right to choose our faith, to practice our faith openly without fear of government or any other type of reprisal are key issues for us. The safety of our children and the rights of Muslim women to wear the Islamic attire if they choose and to feel safe and secure in their person are also important priorities for us.

There are many candidates who are running for election under the guise of being strict Constitutionalists. They make this claim, yet they are a very dangerous threat to our Constitution and the rights of Muslims. Some are calling for the repeal of the 14th amendment, an amendment that guarantees equal protection under the law for every citizen, not just for some.

Many of us might remember that US Senator Joseph Lieberman suggested that US citizens should be stripped of citizenship and deported for criticizing Israel. The 14th amendment stood in his way. It says:

"Persons born or naturalized in the US and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and the states wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the US, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of the law, nor deny to any person its jurisdiction equal protection under the law."


This is only one example of how deceptive , devious and cunning Zionists in the US are, and to what extent they are willing to go to deprive US citizens of rights, hoping to cement their dominance in our society and to silence all dissent. Whereas it is only one example, it is not the only threat to our rights represented by the Tea Party and other so called Constitutionalists who are calling for amending the US Constitution to suit their extreme and fanatical religious and political views. Another so called Tea Party candidate competing for a seat in the US Senate representing the state of Delaware, said in a debate that the US Constitution does not prevent the establishment of a national religion, nor prohibit preferential treatement of any religion over others. Others want to curtail free speech rights hoping to criminalize dissent.

It is our opinion, and our advice to Muslims to avoid , and do not vote for any Tea Party candidates, and only those moderate Republicans that we endorse. It is not enough to merely "not" vote for a candidate. We must vote "for" those who are running against them. In some instances this will be a vote for the lesser of two evils. This is permissible in Islam, especially when the very survival of our community is at stake.

We also advise Muslims to not be distracted by the so called culture war issues such as gay marriage, abortion, prayer in schools, etc. Republicans are exploiting these issues hoping to get what they call the moral vote. We are moral voters. Muslims are moral voters with priorities. In this election cycle, culture war issues are not our priority. The survival of our community and our Constitutional rights are our priority. Issues like gay marriage and abortion, etc., will increasingly be resolved at the state level, so if you are interested in these issues, work in your local communities to educate, but do not throw away your important vote in this election, thinking your vote will help to resolve these issues, because it wont.

We also ask that you help us to circulate this guide to Muslims throughout the US via e-mail, or by printing and distributing at Muslim gatherings, family gatherings, etc.

The following endorsements represent our guidance in respect to a few key states where candidates are running that we feel threaten our community's rights, and who we feel are wrong for our country. If you live in the states and districts where these candidates are running, we suggest that you do not vote for any Tea Party candidate and that you vote for the candidates we have endorsed. May Allah help us, guide us and protect us, and forgive us for our sins and imperfections.



Candidates running for US Senate that we endorse
Alaska Senate race we endorse write in candidate Lisa Murkowski

Arizona Senate race we endorse Rodney Glassman

California Senate race we endorse Carly Fiorina

Colorado Senate race we endorse Michael Bennet

Delaware Senate race we endorse Chris Coons

Florida Senate race we endorse Charlie Crist

Kentucky Senate race we endorse Jack Conway

Nevada Senate race we endorse Harry Reid

Ohio Senate race we endorse Rob Portman

Pennsylvania Senate race we endorse Joe Sestak

Wisconsin Senate race we endorse Russ Feingold

Candidates running for US House of Representatives
Minnesota race for House of Representatives we endorse Michael Cavlan

North Carolina race for House of Representatives we endorse Mike McIntyre

Ohio race for House of Representatives we endorse Mary J. Kilroy

Pennsylvania race for House of Representatives we endorse Patrick Murphy and Paul Kanjorski

Candidates running for Governor
Arizona's gubernatorial race we endorse Terry Goddard

California gubernatorial race we endorse Jerry Brown

Colorado gubernatorial race we endorse John Hickenlooper

Illinois gubernatorial race we endorse Pat Quinn

New York gubernatorial race we endorse Andrew Cuomo

Ohio gubernatorial race we endorse Ted Strickland

Pennsylvania gubernatorial race we endorse Dan Oronato


Contact Us

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Neo-conservatives, their town hall mobs, the media and America

Neo-conservatives, their town hall mobs, the media and America

It is both intriguing and also disheartening to listen to the cable TV punditry’s characterizations and frustrations regarding the anger of the US public over the health care debate. They are characterizing the people as a mob, and calling them political terrorists. I guess any group can be both, but to be a criminal mob they must be committing crimes, and to be terrorists they must be committing violent crimes aimed at political coercion. To talk loudly, to demonstrate anger and to demand that your elected representative show you at least the minimum of respect owed to taxpayers, is not yet criminal in the US. Of course, if the people harm or even cause another person to feel that their life or property is in any way threatened by the other’s anger and outspokenness that might be a crime, especially if threats of physical harm are made.

Now, let’s stop here for a moment and try to understand what is really happening in the United States. We have three hundred million people in the US of different races, religions and social-economic backgrounds. Politicians and especially neoconservatives are astute in the art of dividing and conquering this three hundred million people, almost at will, and without much effort. Good examples of this control and exploitation are the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. When the neoconservatives decided that the country should go to war, they exploited the fear and anger of the public following 9/11, created a Muslim boogeyman to use as a scapegoat and whipping boy, and took the country to war. The people that the media are now calling the mob and political terrorists, were then the real America, the patriots and the good Christians, when they were needed to serve as a constituency that supported the war, and the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars per month to carry out an illegal act of aggression against a country simply because the people of that country are Arab and Muslim, who control natural resources like oil and natural gas.

Neoconservatives courted the far religious right, empowered them, and even adopted their religious jargon and lingo to create a political language of hatred against Muslims and Arabs that was powerful enough to engulf, and incite an entire world into participating with what they called a war on terrorism, yet what is increasingly being revealed to be a war on Muslims and Islam. This was done in spite of the US Constitution strictly prohibiting the establishment of a state religion, ideology or theology. To many people, this Constitutional prohibition includes a prohibition against showing preferential treatment to any religious group or groups over others.

Yet, since it served neoconservatives to empower and to exploit the far religious right, the preferential treatment the religious right received was overlooked even by many Democrats and people on the left who were benefiting politically and financially from turning their heads to the pro religious fanaticism, pro war, and anti-Muslim and Arab sentiment that was poisoning our country. Hatred of Muslims and Arabs grew to such an extent in our country, that our presidential candidates could not even allow Muslim citizens to be photographed at their gatherings without fear of neoconservative reprisal. In exchange for the support of the Christian Zionists, and neoconservatives, US politicians almost never attempted to reach out to Muslims and/or Arab Americans in any substantive way, in comparison to how they fawned over Zionists for endorsements and votes.

Today, these same people are filling town hall meetings throughout the US, shouting down politicians and expressing their fears, racism and hatred and not surprisingly, it is no longer welcomed by the mainstream media. It is not welcomed because they are no longer railing against Islam and Muslims, or demanding that Muslims and Arabs be tortured. Now they are railing against health care reform, increased taxes and an African American President that they refer to as Hitler. They are now calling the Obama administration Nazis and Obama Hitler, using language that is clearly aimed at inciting anger in Christian and Jewish Zionists, who make up the majority of the far right. In other words, the Frankenstein created by the political elite to serve their desire to invade and destroy Muslim and Arab countries hoping to wipe out Islam and to take control of natural resources, has turned against its government master, not because it no longer shares the desire of neoconservatives to destroy people who are not white and not Christian or Jewish, but because they are possibly angry that the same political elite which they served and even sacrificed their children in wars to please, allowed a Black man to be elected to the US presidency, and before a Zionist Jew was elected to that coveted post.

Neoconservatives are angry because their crimes against the US and the world are almost daily being exposed in the criminal activity of organizations like Blackwater, and the scientific proof that Muslims did not commit the atrocious crime of attacking the US on 9/11 as they had claimed. Their Frankenstein, the religious right is also angry because their role in all of this is exposed, and their political clout is waning. They are so angry that they are oblivious to the fact that the neoconservative politicians, left and right are still exploiting their racism, religious intolerance and hatred, but this time it’s not to incite a fake war on terrorism, but rather it is to insure that the far right wing creates enough political chaos here in the US to prevent a new investigation of 9/11, and to make sure there will be no audit of the Federal Reserve, and no real political reform in the United States, or political success for Barack Obama, which means that health care reform must be undermined.

That is only one side of the story, and it is a side that should not be underestimated for its potential to drag our country into a violent civil war. The other side of the story, though not as complex is equally, if not more important, since it is essential that the political elite get it right in respect to dealing with what is the real silent majority in this country who have decided to be silent no more. They are not Christian right fanatics. They are American citizens from the poor and middle class who are fed up with political corruption, elite entitlement and being ignored.

These are the mostly uneducated blue collar workers of our country and their children, whose manufacturing jobs were exported to Zionist owned firms in India and Israel, and to communist countries like China in globalization schemes. These are the people who lost their homes due to the many mortgage scams and fraud that only came to light once our economy was nearly pushed over a cliff by a failure in the housing and mortgage market that cost the US taxpayer, the same people who have buried nearly 5,000 of their children fallen on foreign soil in wars that have been shown to be wars of choice, more than 700 billion dollars, much of which went to pay bonuses to corporate fat cats who had nearly collapsed the US economy due to their greed. These are angry people who are not religious fanatics, but who are frightened by what appears to be a final push by the political elite to eliminate the middle class and to force them into greater poverty, servitude and desperation.

For the first time in their lives many of these people are on food stamps, and have lost their homes and jobs and most importantly, they have lost their pensions and fear that they are also about to loose Medicare should there be health care reform. They feel humiliated and betrayed by the government.

These people are showing up at the town hall meetings and asking questions that might sound stupid to the political elites and politicians because the elites have become accustomed to listening only to professional corporate lobbyists while eating $100.00 per plate dinners and lunches at fancy restaurants and fund raisers. They have forgotten the sound of the voice of the American citizen, poor and Middle Class because they never talk to these people until they need their money and then its through controlled environments like cable TV and orchestrated town hall meetings where people are pre screened, and allowed to ask only the right questions, or on talk radio where the hosts control the dialogue to serve the elites, while filling the listeners’ heads with propaganda mostly aimed at creating fear of one thing, or another. And in these so called public debates, the citizen is always told that the only way to be saved from the latest and most recent boogeyman, is to give away billions more of their hard earned tax dollars. These people are real. Their anger and fear and frustration is real. They are not all white, or Republican or right wing. They are all Americans.

If the media is sincere in its desire to tone down the anger of this group of Americans, they should first realize that talking angrily to your elected official is not criminal. It does not make you a right wing nut job, or a member of a mob, or a cult. It does not make them political terrorists, or religious fanatics or Zionists. They are the silent majority that Jerry Falwell ignored. These are the people who were content to go to work each day, watch the game or go shopping on weekends, and put their kids through college by working two jobs. Their vision of old age includes sitting on the porch watching kids and cars walk and ride up and down crumbling streets. They vote when it’s important, but most stay away from politics because they know that they don’t really understand much about what is going on, and they know that’s not by accident. Their elected officials don’t talk to them to educate them about the issues, only to indoctrinate them. The politicians, rather than looking for ways to understand better the needs of their constituents, look for ways to put distance between themselves and their constituents, while making themselves more accessible to corporate lobbyists. These Americans are showing up at town hall meetings because they are afraid and angry that their silence and their willingness to just go along, rather than being rewarded, is being punished by what they see as a government that simply has lost touch, and does not care about our country’s poor and working class.

It is important that rather than allowing the media to chastise, criticize and attempt to criminalize these people that we insist that the media and the political elite learn to listen to them. Media pundits are claiming that these people are shutting down the political debate on health care, knowing very well there was never any debate, or discussion taking place. The people have been purposefully silenced by the corporate owned media who regularly stage town hall meetings and decide who will be heard and who will not. The people are shouting because they have decided that they will be heard and that even if their elected representatives will not talk to them, and the media screen them out, they will talk to their elected officials, and if necessary, they will shout.

It is time for the political elites, and the corporate owned media to realize that the people of this country are waking up and they are angry. It would be wise to use this awakening as an opportunity for all of us to reconsider the direction in which our country is headed and to take the necessary steps to heal its rifts and to restore the power that has been usurped from the people, our civil rights and liberties and hopes for happiness. As for the neoconservatives and far religious right, it is time for them to realize that their reign has ended and sanity is returning to America.

Who speaks for Muslims in the US; and who should?

In the 80s and early 90s prior to the establishment of the now defunct American Muslim Council (AMC), many mainstream Muslims were discussing how desperately we needed a Muslim organization that could compete with AIPAC. Others wanted a political organization that would unite Muslim Americans around social rather than political issues, and there were still others who wanted to organize and establish a national human rights organization. Whatever the particular point of view, or cause to be adopted, it was clear to many of us then, that Muslims lacked a representative voice that was not only able, but also willing to step into the ugly and sometimes very intimidating world of public policy in the US, hoping to speak truth to power from an Islamic perspective. The mission to organize and participate was seen less as a mission to garner Muslim power or influence, and was seen more as a mission to fulfill what appeared to many as a duty to help our country formulate moral policies that not only served the interest of Muslims, but also our country.

The objective of Muslim American Muslims to organize, though met with its share of suspicion by both Muslims and non Muslims, was sincerely intended by most, to be a first step in the presentation of a type of non traditional dawah or Islamic teaching that would allow our government and fellow citizens to recognize the important role that Muslims could and would play, providing sometimes missing facts, and unique perspectives, particularly in respect to US foreign policy, and humanitarianism. Contrary to what people like Steven Emerson would have our government believe, the first major foreign policy issue to galvanize US Muslims was not Palestine. It was apartheid in South Africa.

Muslim Americans of all races and ethnicities joined millions of other Americans who were calling for US divestment from the South African apartheid state. Under the tutelage of Muslim brothers and sisters, mostly African Americans who had served as activists in the civil rights movement, Muslim Americans united behind the call to end apartheid in South Africa, and joined coalitions led by non Muslim African American civil rights organizations and personalities. There was very little activism or interest in the issue of Palestine, or the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine as was feared by outsiders, and there were no prominent Palestinians at the forefront of Muslim American political activism.

It wasn’t until the mid nineties, and after the release of the deceitful shockumentary Jihad in America, that Muslim interest in organized political and even humanitarian activism was publicly mischaracterized as conspiracies to commit terrorism, or support for terrorism. Steven Emerson, who produced the propaganda piece, suggested in his production, that all Muslims are either terrorists or potential terrorists, and that US mosques had been radicalized by Afghani Mujahedeen and Palestinian activists, and turned against the US. Nothing was further from the truth. What was happening was that Palestinian Muslims and other Muslims had began to attend one another’s mosque and lectures, and to fellowship with one another outside the mosque. This became an opportunity for many to learn the truth about the negative impact of our country’s foreign policies on the lives of fellow Muslims in other countries. Whereas this new awareness seemed harmless to Muslims, it was very threatening to US Jews who already knew and were perpetuating the horrors that we now know as an illegal and brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, as well as a myriad of other injustices against Muslims in other countries, all mostly associated with the illegal occupation.

The Jewish American solution to what they feared would become a serious challenge to their monopoly over political influence, that was denied to minority groups in the US, religious and racial minorities, was to create such mistrust of US Muslims that our government and also our fellow citizens would not only come to fear us, but also to hate us. Other anti-Muslim and anti-Islam activists soon joined Emerson the Jewish American Goebbels, in his campaign to create hatred of Muslims, just as the Third Reich had created enough hatred of Jews in Germany to substantiate a Holocaust.

Muslims in the US did not experience a Holocaust, perhaps only because there is a US Constitution that protects rights, and a respect for rule of law that lingers in the hearts of US citizens, preventing us from too easily accepting that we should deconstruct 250 years of successful republicanism to accommodate the fear of exposure, and competition being suffered by American Jews. It appears that the Jewish American leadership, rather than to reach out to US Muslims in an effort to find ways to achieve peace in the Holy Land, decided they would rather employ a campaign of defamation, intimidation and psychological terrorism in the US, all as mentioned earlier, in an attempt to create fear and hatred of Muslims in the US.

At the inception of this insidious campaign, very few US Muslims had access to the media, or enough knowledge of US foreign policy and the situation in Palestine to respond to the myriad of terrifying accusations being made by the Jewish and Israeli operatives employed to undermine Muslim political activism and to poison relations between Muslims and the US government. A new organization, founded by a Palestinian and an American who was a former news reporter, an organization named CAIR, Council on American Islamic Relations, took the challenge presented by Emerson and others, and moved to the forefront of organized US Muslim activism. CAIR became the heroes of the US Muslim community, a community that had experienced only the first of a series of unexpected and vicious attacks to be launched at us by the Zionists in this country. This position was hard for CAIR to hold onto, since other Muslim organizations formed, many relocating from smaller towns to Washington DC, most hoping to earn their share of heroism, donations, and community support as CAIR had.

Following 9/11 and the inception of a horrendously evil and hateful campaign mounted by Christian Zionist and Zionist Jews in the US who had hoped to place the final nail in the coffin of Islam in America; Muslim Americans, sensing almost immediately that there was a lack of leadership, began to reach out to our government and people of other faiths, sometimes on their own, and in an unprecedented way. They were hoping to initiate dialogues with our government and law enforcement officials, and other citizens to ensure them that Muslim Americans are not a threat to our country, and that we are not a threat to Jews or Christians in the US as had been falsely charged.

Interfaith groups, and encounter groups were formed in almost every mosque, community center, Islamic center and even by Muslims generally who felt the urgency to speak out in an attempt to rebut the false accusations and slander against Islam that had become a backlash against US Muslims that included mosque burnings, violent attacks against women in hijab, and the detention of Muslims who were being entrapped in government stings for voicing anger, or making meaningless threats.

Shamefully, this was also a period in time where many Muslims turned against one another, and used the backlash against other Muslims. Sometimes this was done to seek revenge against other Muslims for all types of reasons including professional and romantic jealousy, professional competition and sometimes simply because Muslims adhered to a different school of Islamic thought than another Muslim. Not due to any fault of their own, US law enforcement became confused, and began to wonder who to believe and what to do to protect innocent Muslims from the wrath of other Muslims, as well as from what was eventually recognized as a campaign undertaken by some Christians and Jews to also defame and to levy false accusations against more vocal, and prominent Muslims and activists.

This, along with hundreds, if not thousands of interfaith dialogues where so many different renditions of Islam have been presented, has caused our government and others outside the US Muslim community to ask “who really speaks for Muslims in the US?” Even some Muslims are beginning to feel that it is necessary to reign in some of these non representative spokespersons, and to issue the call for organized and united activism that is represented by a single Muslim personality and voice, meaning that as a community we have come full circle since the founding of the first national Muslim organization. Now rather than looking for an organization, we are longing for a leader who will be given the mission to carry the Muslim political and humanitarian voice into the US market place of ideas.

There is no simple answer to the question, “Who speaks for US Muslims?” while there is a very simple answer to the question “who should?” The Qur’an and the teachings of the beloved prophet Muhammad (sa) give us a tremendous amount of guidance in respect to this question, and his Sunnah provides us with a perfect model for Islamic community and leadership. Some might ask if this is so, why we find ourselves in a situation where we lack a representative voice for our national community that is able to articulate our concerns and to protect our interests without sacrificing our rights, while simultaneously educating us and also guiding us into the mainstream market place of ideas, without frightening and intimidating our fellow citizens with our powerful message.

Before we look critically at those who are obviously vying for the positions of spokespersons for, and leaders of the US Muslim community, we must first look at ourselves and ask ourselves the question asked by a prophet who was sent to people who had been forced from their homes and who suffered from oppression at the hands of a tyrannical people. The story and the question is found in the Holy Qur’an, in Surah Al Baqarah, Chapter 2, verse 247. It says,

They said to a prophet among them, “Appoint for us a king that we might struggle in the cause of God.” He said, “Is it possible if you were commanded to struggle hard that you would not?” They said, “How could we refuse to struggle in the cause of God seeing that we were turned out of our homes and out of our families?” But when they were commanded to struggle, they turned back, except a small group of them. “Their prophet said to them “God has appointed Talut as king over you. “ They said; “How can he exercise authority over us when we are better fitted than he to exercise authority, and he is not gifted with wealth in abundance?”


The Qur’an also says, “and when they gave up hope in everything except God, God sent them leaders…”

In the Sura Nur, or “Light,” God gives us another example of a people who would not be rightly guided, not because of the deficiencies of their leaders, but because of their own lack of faith, and the diseases of their own hearts. Chapter 2, verses 46-57 say;

We have indeed sent down signs that make things manifest; And God guides whom He wills to a way that is straight. They say “We believe in God and in the apostle, and we obey” but even after that, some of them turn away, they are not really Believers. When they are summoned to God and His apostle, in order that he may judge between them, behold some decline to come. But if the right is on their side, they come to him in all submission. Is it a disease in their hearts, or do they doubt, or are they in fear that God and His apostle will deal unjustly with them? No, it is they themselves who do wrong.

The answer of the Believers when summoned to God and His apostle, in order that He may judge between them, is no other than this; they say, “We hear and we obey.” It is such as these that will attain felicity. It is such as obey God and his apostle and fear God and do right that will win. They swear their strongest oaths by God, if only God would command them, they would leave their homes, say; “Swear you not, obedience is more reasonable; verily God is well aware of what you do.


The mantle of leadership in Islam is conferred by God, and good leaders are given to communities who are ready to be guided. We must give up hope in all false gods including people, power and money and place our hope and faith in God only. God has promised us that He will send us leadership that will guide us to our desired victories when we are humble enough to be an obedient people, who fear none other than him, who have faith in His signs, or scriptures, and who are ready to take up the struggle in God’s cause, which is the struggle not only for inner purity and enlightenment, but also the outer struggle against tyranny and injustice and oppression. This is our challenge today, to become these people to whom God has promised to “change their state after the fear in which they lived, to one of security and peace” ( 24:55).

May Allah guide us to that end, and make us worthy and ready to receive the righteous leader of His choosing. And may God open the eyes of our hearts that we might recognize our leader when that time arrives.