- WASHINGTON (Inter Press Service)
-- United States President George W Bush's latest gesture to persuade Muslims
both in the US and abroad that Washington is not seeking a "clash
of civilizations" has not gone over well with its intended audience.
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- 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 Ramadan fast with
the president, would send a reassuring message to the Islamic world.
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- Mightily embarrassed by the controversy raging over the
recently-publicized anti-Islamic views of the US general in charge of the
hunt for Osama bin Laden and ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, administration
officials no doubt were looking for ways to mitigate the damage.
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- But a denunciation of the White House event by a number
of national US Muslim organizations just hours before it took place received
more attention in the media than the dinner itself, blunting whatever favorable
impact Bush had hoped the gesture might make.
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- "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, said at the National
Press Club.
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- He and the leaders of several other Muslim organizations
held their own Iftaar dinner across the street from the White House in
Lafayette Park.
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- The incident spoke volumes about the growing anger felt
by US Muslims, a fast-growing and increasingly politicized minority of
as many as 5 million citizens, towards the Bush administration.
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- 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.
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- Indeed, on his recent trip to Asia, Bush himself emerged
from a meeting with top Muslim clerics 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.
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- 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 Lieutenant-General William
"Jerry" Boykin, Bush's undersecretary of defense for intelligence,
the Pentagon's man in charge of tracking down high-profile targets in the
anti-terrorist campaign.
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- Boykin, who made it a practice to preach in uniform before
various evangelical churches around the US, was taped telling one group
that the "war on terrorism" pits the Judaeo-Christian tradition
against "a guy named Satan".
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- He has also said that 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."
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- 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 on Tuesday that Boykin's remarks do not "reflect my point of
view, or the view of this administration".
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- CAIR, one of the nation's largest Muslim groups with
chapters in 15 states, was not invited to the Iftaar dinner although it
has taken part in White House events in the past. Hooper told Inter Press
Service that he supported the decision by other Muslim leaders to break
their fast in Lafayette Park.
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- The main reason why Boykin remains on the job is the
pressure that has been brought to bear by Christian Right groups, backed
by some Jewish neo-conservatives, who share the general's worldview and
make up a core Bush constituency. The Pentagon and White House have reportedly
been swamped with calls and emails defending Boykin.
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- "This notion that religion is not at the heart of
the hatred directed at America from outside and now inside the country
qualifies as extreme denial," said columnist Cal Thomas, a close associate
of televangelist Jerry Falwell. Any attempt to muzzle Boykin, he wrote
in the Washington Times, "is silencing, instead of sounding, the alarm
that this enemy is bigger than any threat America has ever faced".
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- The fact that the Bush White House is apparently swayed
by such pressure has only stoked alienation and anger among Muslims both
here and abroad. Khalid Toorani, director of American Muslims for Jerusalem,
contrasted the welcome often accorded by the White House to prominent Christian
Right leaders, like Reverend Franklin Graham and Attorney-General John
Ashcroft, and neo-conservative figures like Daniel Pipes, with the far
less frequent invitations to prominent Muslim figures.
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- "We ask that the president engage more with the
Muslim community," Toorani said at a news conference to announced
the dinner boycott.
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- One Muslim leader who did attend Iftaar at the White
House, Khaled Saffuri, the chairman of the Islamic Free Market Institute,
said he, too, was distressed by the administration's failure to at least
reassign Boykin. Calling Boykin's statements "counterproductive"
and his continued presence as certain to "hurt the war on terrorism",
Saffuri said in an interview that the reaction from the White House and
the Pentagon "should have been swift and immediate".
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- As to accepting the invitation, Saffuri said that he
was able to raise his concerns about Falwell's anti-Islamic statements
with Bush at a similar occasion last year when he was seated next to the
president. "I wasn't seated as strategically this year," he said.
"It was all diplomats at my table."
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- Copyright 2003, Asia Times Online
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- http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EJ31Aa02.html
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