ANADOLU AGENCY, WASHINGTON
America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization announced Monday a new initiative which aims to increase the registration of American Muslim voters for the 2016 elections to 1 million.
During the last presidential election, 91 percent of registered Muslim voters had intended to vote, according to a report from Council on American-Islamic Relations CAIR.
The announcement came after more than 100 Muslim leaders across the U.S. gathered Sunday for a summit led by the U.S. Council of Muslim organization to discuss the increase of anti-Muslim acts in America.
Major educational outreach and civic empowerment initiatives were discussed during the summit to “address the growing Islamophobia in America and to enhance the promotion of freedom and justice,” said the Secretary General of the U.S. Council of Muslim organizations, or USCMO, Oussama Jammal in a press briefing.
The very first proposed initiative of the group will be to “drive to register 1 million voters prior to the 2016 elections,” according to Jammal, who added that the campaign was called “One America”.
“We will be doing everything possible to make our community vibrant, active, energetic, understanding that this is their country and that they have to make their choices, they have to be part of it,” Jammal said.
“We will use every democratic tool [so] that your [Trumps] candidacy never succeeds,” the vice president of the Islamic Circle of North America, Altaf Husain said during a speech at the briefing.
Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad said the group would not endorse a particular candidate.
As part of the campaign, a “National Open Mosque Day” will also be launched to help increase interactions between American Muslims and citizens of other faiths and backgrounds.
“The council will seek to increase emergency preparedness for Islamic institutions and individuals to address the rising number of incidents of hate crime that are unfortunately happening nationwide,” USCMO’s Jammal noted.
As part of the campaign, a “National Open Mosque Day” will also be launched to help increase interactions between American Muslims and citizens of other faiths and backgrounds.
Republican front-runner in the polls, Donald Trump, called for a complete ban on Muslims entering the U.S. in the wake of the San Bernardino attack in which 14 people were killed by two suspected Daesh sympathizers. Trump’s statement has been largely condemned both in the U.S. and worldwide.
Saying that Daesh killed Muslims more than any other group, Jammal stressed that the American Muslim community would combat all types of violent extremism including Daesh.
“We will not allow neither ISIL [Daesh] nor Islamophobia to define us,” Jammal said. “We’ll define ourselves.”
Last week, a New York Times report revealed that anti-Muslim incidents across the U.S. had tripled after the deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
The study by the California State University research group showed that the incidents consisted of assaults on hijab-wearing students, arson and vandalism on mosques as well as shootings and death threats aimed at Islamic-owned businesses, the media outlet said.
Article Courtesy: Daily Sabah
US Muslim voters called to register for 2016 elections
2 Responses
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Assalamu aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu.
Donald Trump and the other bigoted vultures circling around the corpse of what was once a great nation, should not cause us to lose sight of the enmity of the Democrats towards Islam as well. Madeleine Albright in 1996 ( see the 24-second 60 minutes clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP1OAD9jSaI ) supported the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children under the UN (US, really) sanctions program, a figure that later rose to over 1 million dead Muslim kids. In May, 2012, Obama conferred upon Madeleine Albright the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And 8 years after Obama was elected, Muslims are still being held in the Guantanamo concentration camp.
The problem with would-be political “experts” from a variety of Muslim organizations on how Muslims should interact politically is that they do not see how American politics works.
The correct way in the US is you wait openly for politicians to come to you to seek support and if they don’t even try, you ignore them.
Then you sift among those who do come to you for those who seem the most capable.
Works for AIPAC, works for the NRA, works for business and labor and virtually every other political interest group in America.
Instead we have the perennial spectacle of Muslim groups chasing after this or that politician humbly petitioning him or her for their support with the catastrophic results we saw when “W” Bush got elected to the presidency by 60,000 Muslim votes in Florida that had been cast in 2000 at the behest of a coalition of Islamic groups.
Note well: that doesn’t mean that Muslims shouldn’t vote.
Muslims can and should write-in as candidates the names “Muhammad SAW” for President and “Abu Bakr RA” for vice-president. If a million Muslims nationwide support “Muhammad SAW/Abu Bakr RA 2016” in November, the political parties will be made acutely aware of their loss of a million votes – and they’ll know exactly why and whom to blame for that loss – their own fear and hatred of Islam and the Muslims.
That should start motivating them at least to shut up the bigots in their midst and insha’Allah this open Muslim rejection of their nominees may even kick start a process of reversal in which the politicians come begging us, rather than us begging the politicians.
Muslims also can and should vote in state referendums to oppose haram things from becoming law.
The very registration of a Muslim name on the voter rolls can have a positive effect. So naturally, I support ICNA’s call for voter registration. I just don’t want to see that call diverted into crawling before politicians.
Now I just know that someone is going to respond with something like this:
“But the organizations aren’t campaigning this year for a particular candidate. Didn’t you read the article? It even says that CAIR won’t endorse a particular candidate.”
Such reasoning is wrong.
“‘We will use every democratic tool [so] that your [Trump’s] candidacy
never succeeds,’ the vice president of the Islamic Circle of North
America, Altaf Husain said during a speech at the briefing.”
With Trump being the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, that sure sounds like a de facto endorsement for either Hillary or Sanders, whoever becomes the Democratic nominee. Yet, the failure of the Democrats to curb Islamophobic rhetoric is quite telling. After the election, that will translate to more policies that lead to more Muslim deaths abroad and the loss of more Muslim rights domestically.
Insha’Allah, Trump will be soundly defeated in any case in November by the American people with probably the biggest majority loss since McGovern (1972) or Goldwater (1964). Trump’s opposition includes a wide spectrum of Hispanics and many more victims of his bigotry. Insha’Allah, he’s going down and there’s no need to back the Democrats as such.
Instead, make the Democrats back the Muslims.
Until the politicians are made to approach the Muslims rather than the reverse, the situation of Muslims in America is not likely ever to change.
May Allah SWT protect us. Ameen.
In the US, there is no Islam. In the US, there are only anti-Muslims, genetic feces of the Devil which must be exterminated.