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.

Vindicating Islam

Being Muslim in the United States is interesting. It’s very different from being Christian, or Jewish. As a Christian, or a Jew, one can do pretty much anything; good or bad, and no one will attribute it to your religion. As a Muslim, if you do something good, it is assumed that it is because you are not “too” Muslim. On the other hand, if you do something bad, it is said to be exactly because you are Muslim. It’s hard to know whether this is because people in the US don’t feel that Christianity, or Judaism impacts the thinking and behavior of their adherents, or if they believe that Islam employs a special sort of brainwashing technique that every Muslim is subjected to, even if they never attend a mosque, or go to an Islamic school, which is unfortunately true of most Muslims.

Following the attacks on September 11th, quite a bit was written about Islamic schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though most of the hijackers supposedly came from Saudi Arabia. A lot was written about Saudi Wahabism, even though it is reported that Osama Bin Laden practiced something called Deobandism, which is said to have actually originated in India, while Al-Qadea’s religious leader is an American Jew named Adam Pearlman who attended Hebrew school. To make sense of these oddities, hoping to understand the impact that we assume education has on Muslim behavior, it would have been helpful, by way of comparison, to also talk about what type of teaching takes place in other schools ran by other religious organizations and sects. In the sixties, when we were trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with African Americans that could lead to riots, we tried to blame it on poor education and poverty, yet ignorance and hunger alone does not cause people to burn down city blocks in their own impoverished neighborhoods. If it did, every major city in the US, and also the rural south, would be on fire, and many Whites, Hispanics, and African Americans would be fanning those flames.

Those who were guiding our post 9/11 discovery of Islam clearly wanted to make an impression, and that impression had nothing to do with fact, and was actually quite a bit of fiction. It was a type of fiction that is malicious. Not only because it led to so much harm to many innocent Muslims and Arabs, and the murders of many non-Muslims who looked like Arabs, but also because it distorted the truth about the beliefs of 1.5 billion human beings with whom we must share a world, in peace. Kind of makes you wonder how and why the idea of perpetual war crept into our national conscience and conversation, along with preemptive strike, and war on terrorism around the same time. It seems that acceptance of any one of these ideas is dependant upon acceptance of the other. For either to become rooted in our national psyche as acceptable, a very formidable enemy must exist, or so we have been told. And so we have the brainchild of Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson, better known as “Islamism.” According to nearly every Zionist pundit writing in our newspapers, or preaching to us after 9/11, “Islamism” is our enemy, and it is what led to 9/11. You are perhaps asking now, what Islamism and Deobandoism, and Wahabism and Adam Pearlman has to do with Islam. The right answer would be nothing the real answer is everything, if you believe the media.

Comparing the technique of Muslim teachers in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Afghanistan, with the techniques employed by Jewish or Christian teachers in Israel, or Rome, might have helped those seeking to understand religious education, that a relationship between religious education and horrendous acts of terrorism is almost non-existent. It may have also helped everyone to understand that religious education is designed to indoctrinate students about how to be righteous according to Books that are said to be Divinely revealed or inspired, and that is why it is usually religious people who send their children to religious schools and not atheists. It is true that “what” is taught is what matters, and not whether it is deemed religious or not, except when you are talking about religious education, and adherents to a particular or any religious faith. So true is this fact, that it is absurd for us to accept that Islam inspired the 9/11 terrorism or any act of terrorism, and more than absurd for us to continue to believe this lie, or to allow those who continue to perpetuate this lie to go unanswered and unchallenged The perpetrators of 9/11 never even went to religious schools. They were not from religious families. They did not expect or seek to die as martyrs as the Muslim bashers and Islamaphobes told us. Instead, they sought to die full of booze, after having spent the previous night at strip joints and with whores.

I mentioned this at a talk that I gave at Columbia University, and after the talk one of the students approached me and said, “what if they thought that by dying as martyrs, they would be forgiven for all of their sins, and so they just had a good time.” Poor child, I thought to myself. He doesn’t understand that people who are taught in religious schools, are not taught that watching naked women swing on poles, drinking booze, and sleeping with whores is a good time. He obviously had not read Emerson’s description of the Islamists mind. Emerson said they hate liberalism, and everything that is part of the Western culture, which is a gross exaggeration. That religious Muslims, like all pious people, abhor sin would have been closer to the truth. Pipes said Islamists are religious fanatics who want to create a paradise on earth, where they eliminate sin and the sinful, another exaggeration, but it at least makes the point that they would not seek nearness to God in whorehouses. It’s as mind boggling as Jews who say that the sole cause for the holocaust was anti-Semitism, even though there were Jewish SS, and Jews who also worked with the Nazis in other ways against their fellow Jews. You can call them self-hating, but you can’t attribute their acts to Judaism, or even Zionism. Similarly, you can call the 9/11 hijackers murdering dogs and cowards, but you can’t call them Muslims, or Islamic, and you cannot blame their behavior on Islam.

It seems that the Muslim organizations, the media and the so-called moderate Muslims have launched another round of Muslim renunciation of terrorism campaign. That’s innocent enough on its face, yet when you think about all of these apologies, you start to wonder if the apologizers don’t secretly feel that perhaps Islam did in some way inspire the behavior of the 9/11 hijackers, and you start worry that all of these apologies might cause others to openly believe the same. Let me take this opportunity to assure everyone that Islam did not inspire 9/11, and to ask Muslim leaders to spare the rest of us the bi-annual ritual of Muslim apology for 9/11. CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, went so far as to send out an e-mail that said, “true Muslims denounce terrorism.” Let me respond by saying that true Muslims also denounce adultery, lying, stealing, and other moral and legal violations of law. Let me add that terrorism is not an Islamic phenomenon. It is an act of violence that is carried out against innocent civilians to achieve political aims. Starving 500,000 innocent children to death, hoping to compel their parents to overthrow a dictator might be included among acts of terrorism, along with 60 years of illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine that has resulted in the murders, displacement and imprisonment of more women and children and other innocent civilians than can be counted. So, if Islam inspired 9/11, who or what inspired the deadly US sanctions against Iraq after the Gulf war, and what inspired the illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine? The answer is that neither, Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism inspired any of these evils, and just as the Church has rightfully refused to apologize for the war in Iraq, and atrocities associated with that war, and Jews have never apologized for the crimes associated with the continued illegal and brutal occupation of Palestine, even though they believe in collective guilt and punishment, and fund the occupation, Muslims should stop taking the blame for 9/11. We should spend our time teaching the truth about Islam and responding to the many lies that have gone unchallenged that seek to link Islam, and Islamic education with terrorism, and that seek to create a relationship between Islam and terrorism that simply does not exist. Most importantly, we must also live our lives in such a way that people come to understand that it’s not our clothes or names, or accents, that make us Muslim. The Qur’an says it is our submission to the Will of God, which is a will of righteousness as understood universally, and not evil. That doesn’t mean that Muslims don’t sin. It means that when we do, we are not practicing Islam, or following Islamic teachings, and that we are uninspired.