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The Muslim Link - March 3, 2006
Muslim Task Force discusses civil rights issues
By Farkhunda Ali
The American Muslim Taskforce (AMT), in coordination with Dar ul Hijrah Islamic Center in Northern Virginia, held a quarterly public meeting on Saturday, March 18th, at Dar ul Hijrah. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the current civil rights issues of Muslims and the upcoming elections. Approximately 100 community members attended the event to outline the political, civil rights, legal, social services, and religious aspects of the underlining concerns of American Muslims.
Eveery three months AMT holds a public meeting at different cities to gather input of grassroots organizations on the issues regarding American Muslim civil rights and participation of American Muslims in the elections. After accumulating the opinions of all the leaders and community members, AMT draws a general consensus to formulate advocacy campaigns with the US government locally and nationally.
Every two years AMT endorses Muslim candidates who are running for political offices, either in US Congress, or the White House. During the meeting AMT asked for the general American Muslim position on how to address the civil rights situation in the DC Metropolitan area with Muslim friendly and American Muslim candidates.
"We ask each and every Muslim citizen of this great country to get involved in the nation's political process and to give us feedback of situations in your local communities so that we can do advocacy for you and help you", said Agha Saeed, Chairman of AMT.
The representatives of AMT agreed that the present civil rights situation of the American Muslims is serious. The leaders commented that one of the major concernsthat has affected the Muslim community is the rapid closing of several charity and humanitarian oeganizations based in US that were working to fulfill the social, humanitarian, and civil rights needs of the American Muslims.
"In the year 2005, about 2,000 instances of violations of civil rights of American Muslims were brought to the attention of CAIR. Our legal department is working on these issues with government authorities. We at CAIR are committed to improving the bad civil rights situation of the Muslim community", said Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR.
AMT encouraged for everyone to organize political events, fundraisers for candidates, forums on political issues that are of interest to the Muslims, and to actively get involved in an interfaith dialogue.
"Interfaith dialogue with Christians, Jews, and others is one of the most important avenues to remove their misunderstanding about Islam and the American Muslim community," Said Kaleem Kawaja, a Board member of AMT.
The meeting sent a motivating appeal to the diverse DC area Muslim community to become more involved in building bridges with non-Muslims and to increase participation in political activities. AMT believes that American Muslims' political participation will help to bring awareness of the overwhelming civil rights abuses of the American Muslims. The attendees also learned how the remaining population of approximately 7 million American Muslims is pursuing similar activities in the rest of the nation.
AMT is a national umbrella organization which consists of ten Muslim organizations, namely AMA, CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, UMA, MUNA, MANA, MAS, MSA and Project Islamic Hope. The objective of AMT is to bring the American Muslims into the mainstream of the nation's political arena. AMT's focus is only the US domestic policy issues as they relate to the American Muslims.
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