Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2003, page 68

Muslim-American Activism

Record Crowd at 6th Annual CAIR Banquet

More than 1,500 friends and members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) turned out for its 6th annual fund-raising banquet in the Hyatt Regency in Garden Grove, CA. “A United and Secure America: With Liberty and Justice for All” was the theme of the program attended by several civic and political leaders, including Orange County Sheriff Michael Corona.

Keynote speaker was Imam Wahaj of Masjid al-Taqwa of Brooklyn, NY. In an inspiring speech, he told how his congregation purchased the property for their mosque for $30,000 in a blighted area of crack houses and abandoned buildings, then turned it into a model Islamic institution.

The Rev. James Lawson, emeritus pastor of Holman United Methodist Church, welcomed CAIR members to the struggle for justice and human rights. Martin Luther King Jr. praised Rev. Lawson as the world’s leading theorist of nonviolence in light of the years Lawson studied with Mohandas Gandhi in India, where he served as a campus minister.

“For 50 years, voices in the U.S. have called for hate and bigotry,” said the cleric who spent 13 months in a U.S. jail as a prisoner of conscience. “We must change these voices.”

Referring to fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell’s verbal attacks on Muslims, Rev. Lawson said it was in India that a Muslim embraced him and called him his brother.

“President Bush should tell Falwell that his words are cruel and we don’t need to hear them,” he advised, “but Bush represents those voices of intolerance. If we organize and struggle, one day we will lift bigotry,” he concluded.

—Pat McDonnell Twair

CAIR Publishes Guide to North American Muslims

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced the publication of a guide to the North American Muslim community at a Sept. 30 news conference in its Washington, DC offices near the Capitol. The author, CAIR research director Dr. Mohamed Nimer, introduced the 350-page book, The North American Muslim Resource Guide, as the first analysis of Muslim communities in the United States and Canada.

Nimer said his book provides a close look at the history of Islam on this continent, beginning with slaves who first brought Islam to America, the first masjid, built in 1925, and the first Islamic Cultural Center, built in 1934 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The book, Nimer said, also introduces readers to Islamic institutions and details the growth of Islamic organizations like the Muslim Students Association, Islamic Society of North America and Islamic Circle of North America. It also assesses North American Muslims’ perception of themselves, according to the author.

The book “is an indispensable road map for any reader who hopes to move past the boundary of ethnic and religious stereotypes to view the human face behind one of the fastest growing and most vital populations in North America,” Dr. Nimer told reporters. Whether Muslims in America are cab drivers, construction workers, doctors, or technology experts, he said, each is contributing to the economic welfare of their country. Muslims are also reaching out to better their communities and combat crime, drugs, and homelessness. They are fighting civil liberty battles, and forming coalitions with Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans as well as Catholics, Methodists, and others.

America prospers because of its diversity, Dr. Nimer concluded, and Muslims are determined to live freely and interact with others. They want their children to grow up proud of their heritage and able to enjoy the religious freedoms granted to all Americans in our Constitution.

—Delinda C. Hanley