veiled4allah: is the Muslim community finding its voice?

A couple of blog posts lately have touched on an issue that is very close to my heart: the political mobilization of the Muslim community in America. In an article that is mostly about how Howard Dean is supposedly the Awaited One for the Democratic party, Shadi Hamid comments on the lack of political organizing among Muslim Americans (he apparently hopes that Muslims will become enthused enough about Dean from his extolling Dean's virtues that they'll start getting organized; the flaw in this logic is that even with Shadi's best efforts, Dean does not have anything special to recommend him to Muslims other than his popularity). Elsewhere, Haroon Moghul mostly rants about what he perceives as the moral decay of Western society (illustrated in his view by the acceptance of homosexuality) but also comments on the lack of open, public debate among American Muslims about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the political parties and the candidates.

In my opinion, the problems pointed out by Shadi and Haroon both have the same cause: the weakness of the national Muslim organizations in America. If these groups are not actively involved in organizing the community, anybody else who wishes to do so has to start from scratch and I can tell you from experience that this is extremely difficult. And however much ordinary Muslims may be talking among themselves about the parties and the candidates, if the national Muslim organizations are not promoting these debates then it remains private.

There are nine Muslim organizations that have taken a leading role in political mobilization (for fun, see how many of these have been accused by right-wingers of being terrorist front organziations). Four are umbrella organizations whose membership tends to be dominated by immigrant Muslims and their descendants. These are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)¹, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Two represent the interests of indigenous (predominately African-American) Muslims. These are the Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA) and Project Islamic Hope. Another two are specifically intended as political steering committees. These are the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the American Muslim Alliance (AMA). Finally there is CAIR, the one Muslim organization that most non-Muslims have heard of. CAIR is a civil rights organization similar to the NAACP or the ADL. Because of that function, it has been the organization most often in the media and it seems to have ended up in the public role of "spokespeople for American Muslims" but it was not intended or set up to take on that role and sometimes its nature as a civil rights organization hampers its ability to fulfill the role.

One of the problems with this coalition of nine is that it's unwieldy. CAIR and MSA pretty much have their particular "markets" covered (civil rights and students, respectively) but there are three immigrant associations, two African-American organizations, and even two political steering committees. Islamophobic commentators seem to think that American Muslims are like the Borg collective, but actually there is a major lack of unity and this accounts for the "silence" that people often accuse American Muslims of. If the media have to go to five different groups to get all the views of the Muslim community, they aren't going to bother. If they only go to one, it's obvious that it doesn't speak for everybody And the groups move so slowly at trying to come together that by the time they might agree on something to say with a single voice, it's too late.

That is probably the root cause of the problems that I mentioned above and I'd now like to turn my attention to those. MAS and ICNA are relatively small organizations, although each has a number of regional branches. Project Islamic Hope, as far as I can tell, is standing in for the American Society of Muslims (ASM), which is currently adrift after its leader, W.D. Mohammed, stepped down this last August. The absence of ASM makes it difficult for African-American Muslims to have a real voice. MANA is a relatively new organization that has a strong board but not a very large membership yet. From this summary we can see that four of the five "umbrella organizations" do not actually have a large membership to back them up. Mostly what they bring is the celebrity of their leadership among Muslims so that people who are unaffiliated with them might be influenced by them. Of the four, ICNA and MAS seem to be the strongest.

ISNA and ASM are the two organizations that really have some numbers behind them. ASM, as I said, seems to be out of the picture at the moment. So that leaves ISNA. In addition to a strong board, ISNA has a very large membership not only of individuals but of mosques. Contrary to the "Borg" view of the Muslim community, ISNA has little control over any of its members. Instead, it seems that they mostly get some magazines and other publications and go to conventions. The board does represent the members in the way that it would in an organization that had chapters.

One thing that ISNA could do but that I am not aware of it doing[One thing that one of the involved entities should do, but I am not aware of its being done]¹ would be to send out information on the political races to its affiliated [be posted at] mosques [in a public notices area, as CAIR announcements are done] along with a questionnaire. People who attend these mosques [Interested parties] could pick the materials up, read them, and respond. The key part would be to include the information (prepared by MPAC or AMA, perhaps). A survey by itself will probably only be taken by those who are already interested. It makes no attempt to reach out to the disinterested and it makes no attempt to help shape informed opinions.

Ultimately, the goal of these organizations should be to direct Muslim support to those candidates that best represent and will work for the interest of Muslims. People might select Howard Dean in a survey because they heard his name on the news, and they have no knowledge of what his positions are. It might be that Dean would be a bad candidate from the Muslim point of view and that giving an endorsement to him just because of his popularity would be a major mistake.

That's what happened in 2000, after all, when in a fit of what now seems to have been madness, the Muslim organizations endorsed George Bush (yes, it's true). One would think that we had learned from this mistake and would be making efforts to seek an informed response this time around.

Getting back to the suggested information packets, what would those be compiled from? Here is where the leadership of the organizations should be taking an active role. Hosting events at which this candidate or that candidate speaks for fifteen minutes is a good place to start, because it allows the attendees at the event to hear each candiate as they present themselves. But it doesn't go into very much depth. Sure, candidate X says that civil liberties are important to him, but does he actually have specific policy proposals that he wants to implement to safeguard peoples' rights? Or is it just talk?

By meeting with the candidates or senior representatives of their campaigns, the community leadership can find out where the candidates really stand and how interested they really are in reaching out to the Muslim community. They can then pass this information on, along with their impressions and recommendations, to the people.

Is this happening? If it is, nobody is bothering to mention it. If the leadership are in fact meeting with candidates or campaign representatives, they aren't passing it on. Instead, all we seem to have are scattered efforts by individuals and small groups to gain and distribute information while the leadership takes a few surveys of a small number of people (a CAIR survey in August had only 600 responses) that reflect little more than who's in the news and (as Haroon noted in his blog entry) don't attempt to find out what people think is good and what is bad for the community. An endorsement based on such uninformed views will not carry any real weight nor do anything to genuinely advance Muslims in the political process.

Having said that, we are doing a heck of a lot better than four years ago. The Muslim organizations are attempting to get involved during the primary season, not in October right before the general election. They are holding those public forums at least and taking some surveys, however inadequate. As I said above, the lack of unity within the community is probably responsible for the slow progress. Perhaps by 2008, it will be done in the more thorough manner that I'm suggesting, inshallah. That's a lot of progress in a short amount of time. May it come to pass, by leave of Allah.

¹Although ISNA is listed as being an organizational member of the sponsoring coalition, it appears that this is not technically correct. Rather, ISNA's board members are taking part in the coalition in their individual capacities. ISNA, like mosques that have obtained non-profit tax status, is unable to give endorsements to political candidates or take part in the process thereof. When I originally wrote this, I assumed that ISNA was in fact an organizational member, as the listing seemed to imply, and therefore that it was able to take part in the endorsement process. That led me to make a suggestion regarding ISNA's role that it cannot actually fulfill. I've marked that section by striking it through and inserting the text in square brackets to replace it. I apologize for the error.