Among Young Muslims, Mixed Emotions on Obama

From the New York Times - November 7, 2008

Annie Tritt for The New York Times

Muslim students at New York University gathered on Wednesday to discuss the presidential election, among them Momtaz Yaqubie, Meherunnisa Jobaida, Sule Akoglu and Wamiq Chowdhury.

New York Region

Among Young Muslims, Mixed Emotions on Obama

By PAUL VITELLO

Published: November 7, 2008

For many, the excitement over Barack Obama's candidacy and election was muted by a sense of being marginalized politically.

Full article from the New York Times

Video: Islam and the Election

In a forum at New York University, Muslim students consider how Islam was used by the McCain and Obama campaigns.

Iranians Hope Obama Lives Up to His Name

From Time Magazine

An unidentified Iranian man wears a badge supporting President-elect Barack Obama in Tehran

Hasan Sarbakhshian / AP

Full article from Time.

Survey Shows High American Muslim Voter Turnout; 89% Picked Obama

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Poll: 89 Percent of Muslim Voters Picked Obama
Survey shows high American Muslim voter turnout

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 11/7/2008) - The American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT) today released the results of a poll indicating that almost 90 percent of American Muslim voters picked Barack Obama in Tuesday's election. That survey of more than 600 American Muslim voters also indicated that just two percent of respondents cast their ballots for Sen. John McCain.

SEE: American Muslims Overwhelmingly Voted Democratic (Newsweek)

Poll Findings:

• Of those who voted, 89 percent cast their ballot for Barack Obama.
• Just two percent of respondents said they voted for John McCain.
• Most of the respondents (78 percent) reside in ten states: Illinois, New York, Virginia, Michigan, California, Texas, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
• Ninety-five percent of respondents said they voted in the presidential election, whether at the polls or by absentee ballot. This is the highest American Muslim voter turnout ever reported.
• Of those who voted, almost 14 percent said they did so for the first time.
• One-fourth of respondents said they volunteered for or donated money to a political campaign in this election.
• American Muslim voters are increasingly identifying themselves with the Democratic Party. More than two-thirds said they consider themselves Democrats. Most of the rest, or 29 percent, still consider themselves independent. Only four percent said they are Republicans.
• More than two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents said the economy was the most important issue that affected their voting decision. This was followed by 16 percent who said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the most important. (In January 2008, a sample of 1000 Muslim voters rated education and civil rights as the top issues.)

For complete poll results, click here.

At a news conference today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., representatives of AMT and partner organizations shared the results of the poll. Speaking at the news conference were AMT Chairman Dr. Agha Saeed, Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society-Freedom Foundation (MAS-FF), and Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

"We are pleased to see such a high turnout by American Muslim voters, particularly in states that helped determine the outcome of the election. This shows that the American Muslim community is fully engaged in civic life," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.

SEE: Muslims Drawn to Obama (Chicago Tribune)
SEE ALSO: Michigan Legislature Getting 1st Female Muslim (AP)

The poll, conducted by Genesis Research Associates, was commissioned by AMT. Random digit dialing was used to conduct phone interviews with individuals drawn from a large American Muslim voter database. A total of 637 Muslim voters were interviewed November 5 and 6, 2008. The margin of error is 3.87 percent.

AMT is an umbrella organization that includes: American Muslim Alliance (AMA), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), Muslim American Society-Freedom Foundation (MAS-FF), Muslim Student Association-National (MSA-N), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), and United Muslims of America (UMA). AMT observer organizations include: Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and Islamic Educational Center of Orange County (IEC).

- END -

CONTACT: CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-488-8787 or 202-744-7726, E-Mail: ihooper@cair.com; CAIR Communications Coordinator Amina Rubin, 202-488-8787, E-Mail: arubin@cair.com

Rashida Tlaib, First Muslim Elected to Michigan Legislature

Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat, is photographed outside the Michigan Capitol Thursday, Nov. 6, 2008, in Lansing, Mich. Elected to the 12th District of the state House, Tlaib is the first Muslim woman ever to serve in the Michigan Legislature. (AP Photo/Al Goldis)

Michigan Legislature Getting 1st Female Muslim

From the Associated Press - November 6, 2008

By DAVID N. GOODMAN

DETROIT (AP) — Michigan is getting its first female Muslim legislator, thanks in large part to her Jewish boss, the incumbent.

Rashida Tlaib, a lawyer, community activist and daughter of Palestinian immigrants, easily won a House seat in Tuesday's general election after emerging from an eight-way Democratic primary with 44 percent of the vote in August.

Tlaib, 32, said she wouldn't have run but for the repeated urging of Democratic state Rep. Steve Tobocman, who is stepping down because of term limits. Once she decided to run, she threw herself into it, knocking on 8,000 doors and hitting each household twice.

Southeastern Michigan has about 300,000 people with roots in the Arab world, but few of them live in Tlaib's largely black and Hispanic district in southwest Detroit.

"We view her victory as a sign that Michigan Muslims are welcomed as a part of our state's multi-faith and multiethnic society," said Dawud Walid, Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

According to the American Muslim Alliance, only nine Muslims were serving in state legislatures nationwide before Tuesday's elections, and only one of them is a woman. There are two Muslim members of Congress — Democrats Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana.

The Michigan Legislature's first known Muslim member, James Karoub, served three terms in the state House in the 1960s.

Tobocman said he first met Tlaib about five years ago when she was working for the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, where she did advocacy work for immigrants.

"I was just really, really impressed," he said. When he later became majority floor leader and got another staff slot, he recruited Tlaib for the job. He said she brings a passion for social justice and the ability to work with people across the political aisle with very different outlooks.

"She's someone who just intuitively understood the process right off the bat," Tobocman said.

The election was only one of many firsts for Tlaib. The eldest of 14 children of a retired Ford Motor Co. worker and his wife, she was the first in her family to earn a high school diploma. She went on to finish college and law school while helping raise 13 siblings.

"My parents ... are amazing Americans," she said. "They never thought this would ever happen."

Smears Against Obama Energized Muslim Voters: Experts

From Reuters - November 6, 2008

By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - False rumors that Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim or had ties to Islamic extremism angered Muslim-Americans, who overwhelming supported him in Tuesday's presidential election, experts said on Thursday.

Unpublished polling data indicated that the Democratic President-elect got somewhere between 67 percent and 90 percent of the Muslim vote, probably nearer the higher end, Ahmed Younis of Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, said in a telephone briefing.

A "watershed" moment for U.S. Muslims occurred in mid-October, he said, when former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican who endorsed Obama, addressed the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumors which had circulated for months, and condemned the idea that this would be a slur.

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" Powell asked on NBC's "Meet the Press." "The answer's no, that's not America ... Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion 'he's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists.'"

Younis said that for U.S. Muslims Powell's comment capped a decades-long search "to become part and parcel of the nation."

Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population of 305 million, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, though some believe that number is low.

Obama, whose father was Kenyan and whose mother was a white woman from Kansas, has the middle name Hussein, and lived for part of his childhood in predominantly Muslim Indonesia. He is a Christian.

Jen'nan Read, professor of sociology at Duke University, told the same briefing that not only did the whisper campaign about Obama being a closet Muslim fail, but that distribution in closely contested states of a video on Islamic extremism backfired.

VIDEO BACKFIRED

More than 20 million copies of a film called "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" were included as advertising supplements in newspapers, distributed by a private group unaffiliated with Republican John McCain's campaign. The film features suicide bombers, children being trained with guns, and a Christian church said to have been defiled by Muslims.

Read said the video was a subtle attempt to link Obama to Islamic extremists but many of the states where it was handed out "were strongholds of Muslim American voters" who were prompted to work for Obama.

"It may actually have brought out voters for Obama," she said.

But beyond that issue, she added, Muslim voters looked a lot like many other American voters. They moved away from the Republican party, which they had backed heavily in 2000 but less so in 2004 -- and voted their concerns for issues such as the economy and a desire for a change in leadership.

Mukit Hossain, executive director of the Muslim American Political Action Committee, said at the briefing that support for Obama among Muslims "changed dramatically" in the last three to four weeks of the campaign "when people started calling Obama a terrorist" in the crowds at Republican rallies.

He also said a concern for erosion of civil liberties since the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, has driven Muslims away from the Republican party in recent years.

Although hard numbers are difficult to find, Hossain said from 2 million to 3 million Muslims were probably registered to vote in this year's election.

Muslims Delay Obama Endorsement

From the Worcester Telegram and Gazzette News Thursday, November 6, 2008

Muslims delay Obama endorsement

WORCESTER— On a day that Americans turned a new page in the country's history of race relations with the election of an African American to the presidency, Muslims were still riding the back of the political bus.

A national coalition of 12 Muslim American organizations known as the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections waited until the day before Election Day to publicly release its "indirect endorsement" of Barack Obama. While endorsements traditionally are timed to give them maximum exposure, an e-mail received by the Telegram & Gazette was deliberately sent so late that Mr. Obama's opponents had little time to react, according to Tahir Ali, national coordinator.

By making an "indirect endorsement," but keeping it low profile, Mr. Ali said, the organization avoided two pitfalls: "creating problems for the Obama campaign (and) accepting exclusion from the American mainstream," by not endorsing at all.

Islamic organizations were sensitive to the false assertions of the opponents of Mr. Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, that he is a Muslim. "The problem if we were to announce this endorsement earlier: it would have fallen in the wrong hands."

Rather than extolling Mr. Obama's virtues, the e-mail notes the "indirect AMT endorsement is embodied in the AMT-PAC scorecard … which gives 981 points to Obama and 291 to McCain." The scorecard weighs candidate positions on topics including civil rights, ending the war in Iraq, the economy and healthcare, said Mr. Ali, a Westboro resident.

"It's going to be used politically against" Mr. Obama, said Mr. Ali, a Westboro resident. He harkened to the 2000 election, when the American Muslim Alliance donated $50,000 to Hillary Clinton for her 2000 campaign to become a U.S. senator from New York.

Rick Lazio, her Republican opponent, called it blood money and Mrs. Clinton returned the donation, Mr. Ali recalled. While Muslims continued to support her Senate run, the humiliation was a factor in their support of Mr. Obama against her in the Democratic primary this year, he said.

There did not seem to be a similar backlash when Muslim organizations backed Gov. George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election and gave "qualified" support to Sen. John F. Kerry for president in 2004, Mr. Ali said.

The 7 million U.S. Muslims — with an estimated 4.9 million of them registered to vote — represent a potent political force, according to Mr. Ali, author of the book "The Muslim Vote Counts." Muslims know how to harness that power, he said.

In the 1996 presidential election 56 percent of Muslims voted Democrat and 32 percent cast Republican ballots, Mr. Ali said. But Muslim organizations rallied their people behind Mr. Bush, resulting in 80 percent of them backing the Texan in 2000 and possibly making the difference in Florida, where Mr. Bush won by fewer than 600 votes, Mr. Ali said.

Al Gore "completely ignored us," he said. Mr. Bush met with representatives of Muslim organizations and addressed the needs they raised, saying that American law at the time was being used to discriminate against Muslims and the United States should be "an honest broker" in the Middle East peace process, said Mr. Ali, a naturalized American born in Pakistan.

The Muslims came to regret their support. Mr. Ali, who remains a registered Republican, said the policies of the Bush regime after 2001 have been hostile to them.

Despite moderate Republicans like Colin Powell, Muslims face a "neocon-led nefarious Islamophobic nexus of bigotry" from others, he said. Mr. Ali said he told a Muslim crowd in the battleground state of Indiana this past weekend, where he engaged in a get-out-the-vote effort, "On one hand we have a party that is hostile to us, on the other we have a party that completely ignores us, and to sit out the presidential election will be political death for sure."

But yesterday, after Mr. Obama won the election — including the traditionally Republican state of Indiana by 26,163 votes — Mr. Ali called it "a proud moment. Now I can say I belong to a country where they can elect a minority.

"It shows America has come a long way. It has matured itself out of these bigotry issues. That Jim Crow mentality has gone."

The American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections is an umbrella organization representing American Muslim Alliance, American Muslims for Palestine, Council on American Islamic Relations , Islamic Circle of North America, Muslim Alliance in North America, Muslim American Society-Freedom Foundation, Muslim Student Association — National, Muslim Ummah of North America, and United Muslims of America. Islamic Educational Center of Orange County, Islamic Society of North America and Muslim Public Affairs Council are affiliated with AMT as observers.

Statement on Prop. 8 by Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of CA

The Rt. Rev. Marc Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California
A Change in Consciousness - 12 hours ago

The people who were born after the Apollo pictures of the Earth seen from space represent the first people who will fully inhabit a new consciousness. Those of us, like myself, who took this amazing picture in as someone already living on the Earth, had to learn this consciousness; for those born after me it is their birthright.

The recognition of the civil rights of lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people is part of the broad shift in consciousness towards which we are moving. Same-sex marriage in California is an important vehicle in the on-going work of making sure all American citizens enjoy the same rights in civil society.

This shift in consciousness, including same-sex marriage,  is a move towards the good. I affirm this from a spiritual, religious point of view. As a Christian, I view the trajectory of history as moving us towards global reconciliation and global justice. The Gospels tell us that Jesus said that God's love is pervasive. He used the idea of rain and sunshine, both of which fall on all the world, irrespective of people's prejudices about who is deserving or who is not.

If Proposition 8 passes, which I hope it does not, those of us committed to civil rights for all will simply continue to hope, and continue to work. Perseverance, knowing that God continues to travel with those who are disenfranchised, is a path we know. I trust, however, that the great Californians with whom I live will continue their tradition of forging ahead towards what lies before our whole great country.

U.S. Muslim Voters are Election-Year Outcasts

From the Associated Press

U.S. Muslim voters are election-year outcasts

By RACHEL ZOLL AP Religion Writer

Article Date: Sunday, November 2, 2008

Lepers. Untouchables. Politically radioactive.

These are ways American Muslims describe their status in an election year when Barack Obama's opponents are spreading rumors that he is Muslim, when he is Christian, and linking him to terrorists.

So when Colin Powell, a Republican, condemned using Muslim as a smear — a tactic he said members of his own party allowed — there was an outpouring of gratitude and relief from American Muslims.

"That speech really came out of left field and really shocked us," said Wajahat Ali, 27, an attorney and playwright from Fremont, Calif. "The sense is that it's about time. He said something that needed to be said."

The retired general, who was President Bush's first secretary of state, made the comments on NBC's "Meet the Press," as he broke with his party to endorse the Democratic nominee for president. Powell noted in last Sunday's broadcast that Republican John McCain did not spread rumors about Obama's faith, but Powell said he was "troubled" that others did.

"The correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America," Powell said. "Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated (with) terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

Powell said he felt especially strongly about the rumors because of a photo he saw in The New Yorker magazine of the mother of a Muslim soldier in Arlington Cemetery embracing her son's grave, which was marked with a Muslim crescent and star. The solider, Kareem R. Khan of New Jersey, was 20 when he was killed in Iraq.

"We American Muslims have talked about our patriotism and the heroism of some American Muslims till we were blue in the face, and neither the media nor the people listen," said Seeme Hasan, a Pueblo, Colo., Republican whose family has given tens of thousands of dollars to the GOP.

"Gen. Powell made people listen and at a very humane level," said Hasan, who is backing McCain. "More people in leadership positions need to say this and recognize this — that American Muslims have worked very hard to fight this war on terror."

The inaccurate claims that Obama is secretly Muslim started as soon as he was mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. There were false rumors that he was educated at a radical Islamic school as a child in Indonesia and that he was sworn into the Senate on the Quran.

His opponents emphasized his middle name — Hussein — and circulated a photo of him wearing traditional tribal garb on a 2006 visit to Somalia.

Kari Ansari, a mother of three from Villa Park, Ill., said the allegations upset her 10-year-old son.

"It sort of made him feel like, 'If they won't elect him president just for trying on Muslim clothes, they will never elect me because I'm a real Muslim,'" said Ansari, a founder of America's Muslim Family, a quarterly magazine. "That's heartbreaking for us as Muslim parents."

Obama has fought the claims in speeches and on a campaign Web site dedicated to debunking inaccuracies about him. But the belief persists.

A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found 12 percent of voters believed the Illinois senator is Muslim. That poll was released Tuesday — coincidentally, the same day the head of a New Mexico Republican women's group called Obama a "Muslim socialist" and said "Muslims are our enemies." County and GOP officials condemned the statements.

"Muslims feel jaded by the 2008 election precisely because they see the smearing of their identity," Ali said. "Muslim or Arab is seen as a scarlet letter, political leprosy, kryptonite. There is that taint there. We're the lowest of the low."

The experience isn't entirely new for American Muslims, who have struggled for acceptance in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The major parties have quietly courted them for years, yet presidential candidates have refused to publicly associate with them, leaders say.

The exact number of U.S. Muslim voters is not known. But many are wealthy professionals who came to the country to earn graduate degrees in engineering, medicine and business. They settled in significant numbers in key states including Michigan and Florida.

Presidential candidates "are not willing to have their photo taken, they don't meet with Muslim organizations, and they shy away from any issue that may link them to the Muslim community," said Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a Los Angeles advocacy group leading a national Muslim voter registration campaign.

"We're treated as untouchables in politics," al-Marayati said.

Yet, this year has been especially painful because of the attacks on Obama.

Hesham Hassaballa, a physician and author from Chicago, said this month he formally left the GOP, partly because of the allegations.

Like many other Muslims, Hassaballa had joined the Republican Party because of its small-government philosophy, social conservatism and pledge to limit taxes. In 2000, he supported McCain in the primaries, then Bush in the final election. Four years later, he backed Democrat John Kerry for president, partly to protest Bush policies on detaining and interrogating terror suspects, but remained Republican.

Now, he says the party has abandoned its principles.

"The McCain of 2008 is not the McCain of 2000," Hassaballa said. "With the way the campaign has been going and a lot of the anti-Muslim rhetoric, just how the McCain campaign has conducted itself, just really turned me off."

The McCain campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

In defending himself, Obama has rejected the idea that being called Muslim is an insult. His campaign also has an outreach coordinator to the Muslim community.

Some American Muslims said they wished the Illinois senator would say more forcefully that their religion should not be used as a smear, but said they understood that it could damage his presidential bid in this political climate.

"I don't think there could have been any better messenger than Colin Powell, being someone who is a well-respected Republican, a former secretary of state and an army general," said Arsalan Iftikhar, a Washington, D.C., civil rights lawyer and writer who supports Obama. "American Muslims feel slightly politically radioactive at this time. This sends a resounding message of inclusiveness."