WASHINGTON, Dec 15: A Muslim advocacy group on Saturday joined other organizations in urging Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi to resign for remarks widely denounced as supporting racial segregation.

The American Muslim Council, an umbrella organization with dozens of chapters across the nation, also backed President George W. Bush’s criticism of Senator Lott’s controversial remarks about South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond’s segregationist presidential bid in 1948.

The council said Bush spoke for all freedom loving Americans when he said segregation negates America’s founding ideals. The group called for an end to all race, religion and sex-based discriminations.

“We join other organizations, groups, and individuals, in asking the senator to step down from his leadership position in the Senate,” remarks,” said Dr. Nedzib Sacirbey, secretary of the AMC Board.

Bush rebuked the comments by Lott, who is set in January to become the Senate majority leader.

“Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals,” said Bush. “And the founding ideals of our nation and, in fact, the founding ideals of the political party I represent was, and remains today, the equal dignity and equal rights of every American.”

Endorsing Bush’s remarks, Sacirbey said: “Senator Lott’s comments implying his support for segregationist policies of the past, and his nostalgia of a terrible era in the history of our country is immoral and meant to undo our gains we made as nation in the last 50 years.”

The controversy stems from remarks at a 100th birthday party last week for Senator Thurmond, at which Senator Lott said, “We wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years” if the rest of the country had followed Mississippi in backing Thurmond’s Dixiecrat campaign.

In 1948 Thurmond ran for president on the pro-segregation platform declaring: “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force . . . the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches.”