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Look who's
not coming to dinner
By Jim
Lobe
WASHINGTON - 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
He and the leaders of several other Muslim
organizations held their own Iftaar dinner across the
street from the White House in Lafayette Park.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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."
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".
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.
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."
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.
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.
"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".
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.
"We ask
that the president engage more with the Muslim
community," Toorani said at a news conference to
announced the dinner boycott.
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".
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."
(Inter Press Service)
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