U.S. Muslims set sights on the political mainstream

BY MARY OTTO
AND RICHARD SCHEININ
Mercury News Staff Writers

America's millions of Muslims -- adherents to what may be the nation's fastest-growing religion -- gradually are embracing politics.

The change is made visible by the politicians who flock to meet voters at California's Islamic centers, in Detroit-area mosques and at Muslim gathering places across the country where thousands are being registered to vote. These days, Muslims are holding back less from American politics, and the professionals among them are beginning to exercise their financial clout.

This new political activism, in part, reflects the increase in Muslim American population. Since the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect statistics on religion and not all Muslims are affiliated with mosques, estimates of Muslims in the United States vary from 3 million to 8 million and there is no yardstick of Islam's growth here. That lack of certainty betrays much, leaders say, about Muslims' diversity, class and cultural divisions and, in some cases, about the fear of being identified as Muslim in America.

Voice in politics

Recently, though, Muslims have begun to find a voice in politics. Muslim voters may be motivated by concern for foreign homelands, whether Kashmir, Kosovo or Palestine, or by the sense of anti-Muslim discrimination in America. Many share a reaction to the strength of the Zionist lobby in the United States, and believe it is committed to demonizing them in popular culture and outweighing them in the halls of power.

Undoubtedly, the new activism also reflects the impulse of immigrants to find and use established routes to power and expression, once they are settled in the United States.

In the 1996 elections, about 100 Muslims won public office. This year, 10 or 20 new candidates are running, said Agha Saeed, a political scientist at California State University-Hayward. Saeed calls this a dress rehearsal for 2000, when Muslim activists want to put 2,000 qualified Muslim candidates in local, state and national offices.

This year, only one, California Democrat Eileen Ansari, is running for Congress, in the 41st congressional district which encompasses the Riverside County town of Diamond Bar, where Ansari formerly was mayor.

No Muslim currently serves in Congress, and experts could not name a single Muslim who ever did. But now, enough Muslims work on Capitol Hill that Friday prayers are offered in a congressional office building.

Muslims entering politics tread the path of other religious minorities, notably Jews and Mormons, said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio.

The Bay Area is home to about 150,000 Muslims, and the South Bay's community includes Bosnians, Egyptians, Moroccans, Turks, Afghans, Somalians and Sudanese, as well as Pakistanis, Indians, Malaysians and small numbers of Chinese, Filipinos and Mexicans.

``There is a change in attitude toward participation in the political process,'' said Omar Ahmad of Santa Clara and president of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. ``Everybody's committed to getting out the vote: Recently we did a candidate forum at the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara and more than 500 people came. . . . The politicians were really surprised. One of them said, `We don't get this kind of crowd anywhere.'

``I think we have put behind us the question of `should we or should we not participate and work in the political process?' People want to participate.''

Sheikh Hisham Kabbani of Los Altos Hills leads the Islamic Supreme Council of America.

``Muslims are in the position today,'' he said, ``to play a role in America similar to that of the Jews of two generations ago.''

In a written statement, Kabbani amplified: ``As Islam has spread among Americans of all races, particularly among the blacks, and as an older generation of immigrants is succeeded by a new one, confident in their `American' identity and highly visible as `practicing' Muslims, the need for hiding has all but disappeared.''

The American Muslim Council commissioned a national survey in 1996 -- the only such study -- and counted 470,000 registered voters with Islamic names. Yet, it would have missed the highest-ranking elected Muslim official in America, North Carolina state Sen. Larry Shaw.

Clout in N.J.

If Muslims were to vote as a bloc, especially in areas of high concentration like California, New York, Michigan and greater Washington, D.C., they could tip elections, Saeed believes. Two 1996 races, he said, demonstrates: In New Jersey's U.S. Senate race, Muslims rallied to help Democrat Robert Torricelli beat Republican Richard Zimmer after Zimmer accused him of pandering to terrorists. Torricelli had attended an Arab-American gathering that reportedly included guests with ties to Hamas, the Palestinian organization whose secretive military wing is believed to have killed scores of Israelis in suicide bombings.

And in South Dakota's U.S. Senate race, donations from Pakistani-Americans around the country helped Democrat Tim Johnson defeat the incumbent, Republican Larry Pressler, who had helped to halt U.S. aid to the Muslim nation of Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons program.

These issues -- foreign policy, domestic discrimination and the shortage of political representation -- inspired Detroit-area Muslims to establish an Arab-American Political Action Committee.

``It's a new way of doing politics around here,'' said AAPAC's president, Abed Hammoud, an assistant Wayne County, Mich., prosecutor. ``It's generating a lot of excitement.''

Analysts say Muslims are evenly divided among Republicans, Democrats and independents. It's a trend that the activists like: They don't want their votes concentrated in any one party and ignored by others. Right now, though, that is the least of their obstacles.

Muslims may be united by holy texts, rituals and common political issues, but they are divided by class, culture and separate national histories. More than half of American Muslims are from immigrant backgrounds, from South or Southeast Asia, the Arab world or Eastern Europe, says the American Muslim Council. The other half are native-born Americans, mostly African-Americans, who converted since the 1960s.

In Fairfax County, Va., Sharifa Alkhateeb helped lead a 10-year effort to persuade the school board to add an Arabic-language program. Eventually they succeeded, she said, but it took the Muslim community years to learn how to wield public pressure.

``The average Muslim is quiet,'' she said. ``There are no PTAs in the Middle East. When you don't even have a PTA, how are you going to get up and say what you think about the government?''

It's hard to predict where Muslims' contributions would take American politics. Islam's conservative bent aligns Muslims with Christian conservatives on issues like sex education, gay rights and abortion. But Muslims can find commonality with liberals on urban issues, taxation, privacy and civil rights.

There is no one ``Muslim voice.'' Immigrant Muslims, for example, hope school vouchers could be used to support Islamic schools. But African-American Muslims in cities lean toward putting that money into public schools.

Prejudice, too, helps unify the immigrant and native born: When Oklahoma City's federal building was bombed, many Americans summarily blamed ``Islamic terrorists.'' In fact, U.S.-born, anti-government militants were behind the act. It was that experience that convinced many Muslims it was time to get active.

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