October 31, 2003	Friday	Ramazan 4, 1424

WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush’s latest gesture to persuade Muslims both here and abroad that the United States is not seeking a “clash of civilizations” has not gone over well with its intended audience.

The White House was clearly hoping its Iftaar dinner on Tuesday evening, to which ambassadors from predominantly Muslim nations and individual US Muslims were invited to break their Ramazan fast with the president, would send a reassuring message to the Muslim world.

Mightily embarrassed by the controversy raging over the recently publicised anti-Islamic views of the US general in charge of the hunt for terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, administration officials no doubt were looking for ways to mitigate the damage.

But a denunciation of the White House event by a number of national US Muslim organizations just hours before it took place got more attention in the news media than the dinner itself, blunting whatever favourable impact Bush had hoped the gesture might make.

“It seems that the only time this administration wants to meet with us is for photo opportunities, not to hear our concerns about policies here at home and abroad,” Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation, told reporters at the National Press Club on Tuesday.

He and the leaders of several other Muslim organizations held their own Iftaar dinner across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park.

While the incident hardly made headlines, it spoke volumes about the growing anger felt by US Muslims, a fast-growing and increasingly politicized minority of as many as five million citizens, towards the Bush administration.

That Bush’s “war on terrorism” and his almost total backing for the right-wing policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has alienated Muslims abroad, especially in the Arab world, has already been well established by polling data and media coverage.

Indeed, on his recent trip to Asia, Bush himself emerged from a meeting with top Muslim religious leaders in Bali, Indonesia clearly taken aback by what he had just heard. “Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?” the president was heard asking his aides.

The Indonesians had reportedly pressed him about US intentions in the ‘war on terrorism’, as well as his support for Israel in the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. But they were also provoked by reports about the incandescent comments of Lt Gen William ‘Jerry’ Boykin, Bush’s undersecretary of defence for intelligence, the Pentagon’s man in charge of tracking down high-profile targets in the anti-terrorist campaign.

Boykin, who made it a practice to preach in uniform before various evangelical churches around the United States, was taped telling one group that the ‘war on terrorism’ pits the Judaeo- Christian tradition against ‘a guy named Satan’.

He has also said US enemies “will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus”. And, speaking of a Muslim warlord in Somalia 10 years ago, Boykin said, “My God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol”.

Bush has tried to distance himself from Boykin’s views, while the Pentagon has initiated an investigation to determine if the general violated any US laws or regulations. In his most direct statement, Bush said Tuesday that Boykin’s remarks do not “reflect my point of view, or the view of this administration”.

But why Boykin has not been fired, or at least re-assigned, from such a critical post in the anti-terrorist war is increasingly a source of aggravation, not only for Muslims abroad — who see the general’s attitude as confirming their worst fears about US intentions — but also for Muslims at home.

Speaking of the contrast between Bush’s Iftaar dinner and the lack of action against Boykin, Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told the ‘Los Angeles Times’, “Again we see a disconnect. We hear pleasing words about Islam, then we see complete inaction. He’s not reassigned. He’s not removed. Nothing”.

CAIR, one of the nation’s largest Muslim groups with chapters in 15 states, was not invited to the Iftaar dinner although it had taken part in White House events in the past. Hooper said he supported the decision by other Muslim leaders to break their fast in Lafayette Park.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.