SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 16: American Muslim leaders have urged the Bush Administration to address the root cause of terrorism and re-evaluate its foreign policy in the Muslim world in order to eradicate terrorism.
The Muslim leaders who gathered in San Jose to attend the sixth annual convention of a major Muslim organization, the American Muslim Alliance, also said that the US needs to address poverty, illiteracy and other problems in the Muslim world.
This was the first major gathering of American Muslims from across the country after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC.
The one-day convention, that attracted more than 500 people from across the country, was addressed by the leaders of major Muslim organizations, academicians, Islamic scholars, religious leaders as well as political activists.
On the current American military operation against Afghanistan, speakers said that hurting innocent civilians by dropping bombs in Afghanistan, supporting a violent and usurper Israeli state and placing sanctions on Iraq is no way to eradicate international terrorism.
“Killing Osama bin Laden will not be enough. Unless we have a fair foreign policy, such Osama’s will keep coming.
Our foreign policy has been too one-sided,” said Dr Shabbir Safdar, vice chairman of the AMA.
Dr Agha Saeed of University of California, Berkeley, said he is confident that the United States would rebuild Afghanistan, although such an effort had already been delayed by 12 years.
He said the US failed to provide adequate assistance to the war-torn country after the defeat of Soviet Union in the late 1980s. “What we left behind was a failed state,” Dr Saeed said, adding, “an Osama bin Laden arises where there is poverty and other social ills”.
“We support the president in going after these criminals and bringing them to justice, but if we really want to eradicate terrorism we must replace the culture of despair with the culture of hope and possibilities,” said the AMA chairman, Dr Agha Saeed.
There are no Muslims in the Congress, on the Supreme Court or in any high-ranking positions in the Bush administration.
This exclusion is part of the problem, Dr Saeed pointed out.
Former Congressman Paul Findley said that although Muslims form the second largest religious community in the United States, and better educated than most Americans, but no Muslim serves in the President’s administration.
“To my knowledge, there is no Muslim in an important assignment on the staff of the National Security Council, or on the personal staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell or Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld”.
Findley pointed out that the advisory teams and delegations that served president Bush, senior, and president Bill Clinton on Middle East policy consisted of people sympathetic to Israel.
“Imagine how offensive this tradition must be to people in the Muslim countries, not to mention the sensitivities of American Muslims,” he added.
He suggested: “President Bush should promptly state US support for a viable Palestinian state that will serve two vitally important objectives. It will help meet the urgent needs of the president’s campaign against terrorism and at the same time, it will constitute a long-needed reform in the US Middle East policy.”
Omar Ahmad, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, urged the American Muslims to take an active part in changing the US policy in the Middle East.