Agha Saeed: Harbinger of a New America

By Delinda Curtiss Hanley

The president presided over a swearing- in ceremony of 29 immigrants at the nation’s once-busiest depot for new citizens [Ellis Island], welcoming them to America by declaring, “With a single oath, all at once you become as fully American as the most direct descendant of a Founding Father...You see, citizenship is not limited by birth or background...We welcome not only immigrants themselves, but the many gifts they bring and the values they live by.”

—The Washington Times, July 11, 2001

Our founding fathers weren’t content with the status quo. According to historian David McCullough, the nation’s founders were gutsy people of character “in the hands of fate.”

Today we are fortunate to live among a new generation of gutsy Americans with the patriotic zeal of their predecessors who wrote the Declaration of Independence, fought in the American Revolution, and built our young nation. These new Americans truly believe in the principles and ideals upon which our country was built, says Richard H. Curtiss, executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

“Muslim Americans, the newest group of immigrants to seek freedom and prosperity in America, have seen all the alternatives in the countries they left behind,” Curtiss explains. Their dedication to and love for this land are untainted by cynicism or ennui, he adds, “and they won’t settle for leaders who fudge, hedge or spoil American ideals. Their idealism will renew the American spirit.”

One such dedicated American is soft-spoken, personable, dignified and unfailingly polite Muslim political activist Dr. Agha Saeed. By rights, this Pakistan-born author and political philosopher should be surrounded by books in his comfortable office or by students in his California State University classroom in Hayward. Instead, Saeed is constantly on the move, traveling across the United States and speaking to groups of American Muslims. Give this quiet man a podium and he galvanizes his audience—wrapping them in his patriotic arms and lifting them up. They leave a meeting eager to get out and help return America to the principles of freedom, justice, fairness and equality for all on which this country was founded.

Former Congressman Paul Findley (R-IL) described Agha Saeed as “a driven man” (Jan./Feb. 1999 Washington Report) who has spent nearly every waking hour building organizations to politically empower U.S. Muslims. Saeed and his nationally recognized civic education organization, American Muslim Alliance (AMA), with 94 chapters in 34 states, have worked tirelessly to strengthen the Islamic community’s political muscle and to increase voter turnout.

“He is not a lone wolf. Far from it—he is more like the proverbial Pied Piper.”

“He is not a lone wolf,” says Findley. “Far from it—he is more like the proverbial Pied Piper, a modern-day one who is able to rally scores of people to the worthy causes he embraces and the organizations he formulates.”

In his profile of Saeed in the December 1997 issue of the Washington Report, retired U.S. foreign service officer Curtiss described him as “an unassuming but charismatic six-footer-plus who unconsciously becomes the center of attention in any room he enters. Born Dec. 24, 1948 in Quetta, Pakistan, Agha Saeed’s entire life seemed pointed toward his present catalytic role in making Islam a force to be reckoned with in the political life of the world’s only remaining superpower.”

Curtiss concluded with some prophetic words: “Watching this intense, eloquent and tireless visionary in action is convincing evidence that not only America’s deeply religious Muslims, but also their Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and other American compatriots, soon will agree with Dr. Agha Saeed that the time has come for Islam to make its immensely positive contributions to the American heritage.”

In May 1998, two years before the recent presidential elections, Saeed joined forces with leaders of America’s other major Muslim organizations and founded the American Muslim Political Coordination Council (AMPCC). This umbrella group, a coalition of American Muslim political organizations, is the equivalent of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

Troubled by challenges to their civil rights at home—especially the use of secret evidence in deportation hearings, profiling at airports—and threats to Muslim interests in the Middle East, Saeed believes that America’s Muslims, whether of immigrant or indigenous stock, must unite for effective political action.

A Dramatic Step

In his newest book, Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Images of Islam, Paul Findley recalled last year’s Labor Day convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), when Dr. Saeed helped Muslims take “the most dramatic step toward nationwide Muslim unity.”

Near the end of his speech to an audience of more than 10,000 American Muslims, Findley recounts, “Agha Saeed announced that AMPCC had decided to…recommend bloc voting by Muslims in the presidential election.” Saeed invited all the heads of Muslim groups to the speaker’s platform where, “to a roar of approval from the audience, the Muslim leaders joined hands and raised them high as they shouted, ‘We will make a difference!’”

After much discussion and polling, AMPCC officials decided on Oct. 23, 2000 to support Republican George W. Bush for president. They arrived at their decision after meeting with the Texas governor and hearing promises to address Muslim concerns on domestic and foreign policy issues. Democratic candidate Al Gore had canceled an appointment with AMPCC leaders.

Three days after the AMPCC endorsement of Bush, Muslims were under attack from the New York Daily News, which reported out-of-context remarks from a 1998 speech by Saeed. Then-candidate for Senate Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) called a press conference to announce she was returning $50,000 in campaign contributions received from the AMA three months earlier, deeply offending Muslim supporters. Clinton was quick to say, “I strongly disagree with the positions taken by this group [the AMA].” She accused the Muslim donors of making “offensive and outrageous” statements and said Agha Saeed supported Palestinians’ use of “armed resistance” against Israelis.

Upon reading of Clinton’s decision, Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council(MPAC) said he “got a sinking feeling.”

“It was happening again,” he said. “Agha Saeed was successful in unifying the Muslim vote and, for the first time, in creating a voting bloc. It is no surprise that he is now the target. It happens to any of us who are successful in gaining access for Muslims.”

Seeking to outdo Clinton at Muslim-bashing and win New York’s Jewish vote, Clinton’s opponent, Republican Rep. Rick Lazio, accused Clinton of accepting “blood money” from U.S. Muslim organizations with links to terrorism. He even attacked Clinton for hosting Muslims at White House events. Muslim voters threw their support behind Clinton, despite her refund decision, and helped her defeat Lazio.

In Georgia, Republican congressional candidate Sunny Warren imitated Lazio’s Muslim-bashing tactics, attacking her opponent, incumbent Rep. Cynthia McKinney, for taking “blood money” from Muslim supporters. McKinney, an African-American, responded that “racist innuendo and hate-mongering have no place in an election campaign or any respectable discourse,” and easily won re-election.

In fact, all political candidates who resorted to Muslim-bashing in their 2000 election campaigns were defeated. With seven million Muslims in the United States and Islam the country’s fastest growing religion, neglecting or insulting Muslims is simply not smart politics—as the presidential vote illustrates. The national turnout of Muslim voters on election day 2000 was 3.2 million. Of those voters, 72 percent, or 2.3 million, cast their vote for Bush. In the pivotal state of Florida, Bush received 91 percent of the Muslim vote—compared to 256,000, or 8 percent, for Gore. Some 900,000 of the American Muslims who voted in 2000 were casting ballots for the first time.

Muslim voters put themselves on the political map last year and became a crucial, even decisive, voting bloc that politicians ignore at their peril. Former U.S. Ambassador Andrew I. Killgore, publisher of the Washington Report, recently commented, “I really think that the time has come that politicians will be careful about lambasting Muslims.”

Today American Muslims are gearing up for the 2002 elections. They will continue to take a critical look at President George W. Bush’s record to decide if their valuable votes will be used to make him a one- or a two-term president. So far, although his administration is addressing civil rights abuses at home, President Bush has disappointed his Muslim constituents, who hoped for more access to the White House, the appointment of qualified Muslims, and an even-handed Middle East foreign policy.

More recently, New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler found himself under attack for speaking at an April 28 AMA New Jersey chapter meeting. Jewish spokesmen quoted in the New Jersey Jewish News said they were shocked that Schundler even shared a podium with Saeed, “whose past remarks were roundly criticized by Jewish leaders.”

According to a June 7 article in the New Jersey Star Ledger, Shai Goldstein, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said he was “troubled” by Schundler’s attendance at the AMA event. “This group has had its leadership make incredibly inflammatory, bigoted, anti-Semitic statements with regard to Israel,” said Goldstein. “We would hope that the mayor would attack those statements and views expressed by the leaders of those organizations.”

A Principled Stance

Days before theelection Schundler, under fire from the Jewish community even though he happens to be a staunch supporter of Israel, rose to defend his AMA hosts. To shun the organization would be caving in to anti-Muslim bigotry, Schundler said, adding that most Muslims have anti-Israel sentiments and that, if he ruled out talking to anyone with such views, he would isolate an entire community.

“There is no doubt there is a hostile view [toward Israel]. But they are still American citizens,” the gubernatorial candidate and mayor of Jersey City, which is 9 percent Muslim, told the Star Ledger. Muslims, he said, “shouldn’t be isolated in our society, especially by our political leaders.”

One has to wonder why a patriotic American like Dr. Saeed who encourages American citizens across the country to vote and work to improve our nation is criticized at every turn. The answer is not so difficult, however: it is because of his unabashed support for Palestinian resistance against Israel’s occupation of their land that his reputation and integrity are attacked.

The AMA supports a two-state solution with justice and security for both Israel and Palestine: “We support the Oslo peace process in the context of all relevant U.N. resolutions, particularly Security Council Resolution 242 that stipulates the ‘inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war’ and demands the ‘withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent [1967] conflict.’”

Among these “relevant resolutions” is General Assembly Resolution 31/34 of Nov. 30, 1976, which reaffirms “the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

When Agha Saeed cites these U.N. resolutions, however, he is labeled anti-Semitic in hopes that Americans will close their ears to his all-American message. The last thing partisans of Israel want is for Americans to see the parallel between their forefathers’ resistance to British occupation in 1776 and the Palestinian struggle for self-determination today.

In fact, compared to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in Gaza and the West Bank, England’s treatment of its American colony was magnanimous. Americans were not subjected to British checkpoints, searches, closures, bulldozers, and land confiscations. The British didn’t take over American homes and fields, or use rubber-coated steel bullets, F-16s, and state-sponsored assassinations of colonial leaders.

George Washington, like Saeed, left the comforts of his home to lead his countrymen. After Americans declared their independence in 1776, rebelling against many of the same wrongs the Palestinians suffer today, they had to win their freedom by using force. The American Colonies embarked on their Revolutionary War without a formal army or a navy, counting only upon citizen-soldiers who were ready to defend their homes and families when danger threatened.

Washington helped inspire and lead rag-tag militias to victory over an army of well-trained and highly disciplined British soldiers. With support from France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, American patriots were able to win independence. Ever since, our country’s story has inspired oppressed peoples like the Palestinians, who are seeking self-determination as well.

Thomas Jefferson is best remembered as a great president and as the author of the Declaration of Independence. He regarded himself simply as a public-spirited citizen and a broad-minded, practical thinker. Like Agha Saeed, he, too, preferred his family, his books and his home to public life, but committed himself to molding the American spirit and ideals. Through some four decades of public service, Jefferson remained faithful to his vow of “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Whenever Dr. Saeed is labeled an extremist or an “anti-Semite,” this patriotic American must ache. Yet he never wavers from his mission to restore fairness and justice to America’s domestic and foreign policies. He has demonstrated that he will not rest until American Muslims have succeeded in renewing the spirit their countrymen have temporarily lost and helping us regain our commitment to human rights in our own land and throughout the world. This gutsy harbinger of a new America has a refreshing gift for our country. When America finally appreciates the nature of its latest legacy, it will be a grateful nation indeed.

Delinda Curtiss Hanley is the news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.