Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 35-36

Speaking Out

Professor Agha Saeed Sets Fast Pace for Political Empowerment of U.S. Muslims in Year 2000

By Paul Findley

Dr. Agha Saeed, a professor of political science and speech at the California State University, Hayward, was having brunch with me in the coffee shop of a large hotel near the Los Angeles International Airport.

Responding to my request for an appointment, he had taken an early morning flight from San Francisco. His wife, Ameena, and daughter, Mariam, 9, were sound asleep when he headed for the airport from their residence in nearby Fremont. The night before, when he returned home near midnight from a long day’s agenda that encompassed several cities and five discussion appointments, they were already asleep.

When Mrs. Findley and I first met Agha, he was a graduate student. Before my lecture at the university, he brought us to his home for tea with his wife and a glimpse of his infant daughter. Asked about his “baby” in our most recent meeting, Agha, producing photographs, said, “My baby is now five feet three inches tall.”

Saeed is a busy man. More accurately he is a driven man. By his own accounting, he has spent 90 percent of his waking hours for the past two years building organizations that will convey political empowerment to the U.S. Muslims. He is not a lone wolf. 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.

His three-year goal: Strengthening the Islamic community’s political muscle sufficiently so that 2,000 U.S. Muslims will be elected to public office by the year 2000. He hopes that among those elected will be a member of the U.S. Congress. His short-term goal this fall was inspiring 200,000 California Muslims who had never before voted to be a decisive factor in the Nov. 3 general elections.

Although he never seems agitated or in a hurry, Saeed moves steadily down at least three complex tracks at once: first, providing leadership for the intensive nationwide program of the burgeoning American Muslim Alliance (AMA), an organization that he set in motion four years ago; second, organizing the voter-turnout program that is focused on California, America’s most populous state; and third, providing leadership as the national coordinator of the American Muslim Political Coordination Council (AMPCC), a new “umbrella” organization that hopes to harmonize and coordinate the activities of major Muslim groups.

AMPCC is the counterpart of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an organization that consists of the chief officer of 52 of the 200 or more national Jewish groups. Five Muslim group leaders formed the nucleus that brought AMPCC into being. Taking part in the organization meetings held in Fremont, California, earlier this year, in addition to Saeed, were Dr. Yasmeen Khan of the American Muslim Caucus; Mujahid Ramadan of the American Muslim Council (AMC); Nasif Majeed of the Coalition for Good Government; Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmed for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR); Ghazi Khankan of the National Council of Islamic Affairs (NCIA); and three representatives of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPFAC), namely, Dr. Maher Hathout, Dr. Aslam Abdullah and Salam al Maryati.

When I talked to Saeed on a Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, he had directed four informational meetings in four cities during the weekend, and expected to do three more in the next 48 hours. These meetings were designed for Muslims who have not previously voted. Instructions were provided for voter registration and information on candidates and issues that would be on the California ballot.

AMA is growing fast in major U.S. cities beyond California. Four new chapters, the latest in Hawaii, were awaiting Saeed’s presence for organization and election of offices.

To date, 78 AMA chapters in 27 states are chartered and functioning. Before a chapter is established, a minimum of 30 members is required.

Saeed supports all of these varied and complex chores mainly with enthusiastic volunteers, most of them professionals—scientists, engineers, physicians, teachers. Until recently, his paid staff consisted of a part-time secretary.

In the wake of the successful Third Annual Convention of the American Muslim Alliance, held early this month in Hempstead, New York, the part-timer will become a full-time employee. Compared with resources of the other national action groups, the AMA budget is peanuts. In 1997 expenditures were $37,000, $4,000 less than income. It was about the same for 1998. For 1999, the goal is $147,000.

Saeed seems to be a one-man think tank. Despite the scarcity of funds, he has managed to produce 27 different publications, ranging from a brief introduction to the U.S. political system and an analysis of the worldwide strategic system to the nuts and bolts of winning political support in a neighborhood.

He has produced a perceptive and, I believe, accurate assessment of why Senator Bob Dole squandered his rightful claim to the Arab-American and Muslim-American voters in his 1996 bid for presidency. Here is Saeed’s analysis:

“Democratic President Bill Clinton was being hailed in the Israeli press as the most pro-Israel president in history, a theme that was picked up by the U.S. press as the campaign wore on...Dole was one of the fewer than half a dozen senators who had recommended a cut in aid to Israel...It was Dole and his campaign advisers who muddied the waters. First Dole [proposed moving] the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a perennial bill he had personally killed in 1994...The idea was to overcome his image as a critic of Israel. Unfortunately for Dole, the tactic didn’t influence Jewish voters who were expected to vote for them, Dole was as bad, or worse, than Clinton. The Dole campaign compounded the impression by appointing a campaign ‘Middle East Advisory’ that included two notoriously pro-Israel figures from the Ronald Reagan administration, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jeane Kirpatrick and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle...

“Perhaps the most decisive factor for Arab Americans, who probably include a slight preponderance of Christians over Muslims, was Dole’s demeaning performance after Israel’s voters elected hard-liner Binyamin Netanyahu prime minister. Dole implied he would be a better friend of Netanyahu’s Likud-run Israel than would Clinton and, in an ill-conceived flash of partisan rhetoric, warned Clinton against putting pressure on Netanyahu in attempts to get the Middle East process...back on track.”

As one who has admired Dole and considered him a friend ever since we became freshman members of Congress together in 1961 and served on the House Agriculture Committee as seat-mates for six years, I agree completely with Saeed’s analysis of the 1996 campaign. I am convinced that fawning over Israel did not win Dole a single Jewish vote, but it totally demoralized millions of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans who had been eagerly and enthusiastically in his corner. Eager as I was for a Dole victory despite his disappointing campaign tactics, I considered it an exercise in futility to attempt to win Arab Americans and Muslim Americans to his side.

Saeed’s strategy for presidential year voting in the year 2000 centers on 14 states that taken together will dominate the national elections. His endeavors will focus on these states, first of all because they have 304 electoral votes—10 percent more than needed to elect the next president—and secondly because Muslims are concentrated in the largest of these states.

Electoral votes are crucially important, because they, not popular totals, will determine the outcome of the presidential voting. The candidate who gets the largest vote total will receive all the state’s electoral votes, even though his opponent’s popular vote is nearly as large.

Saeed’s goal: “ to establish effective political presence in the 40 most populous cities of the 14 major states.” He adds: “The focus of the Fourteen State Strategy will be on political education, leadership training and organized participation.”

A model for future campaigns were some 20 instructional meetings he conducted in California prior to the November elections. His organization provided information on the 10 propositions, in addition to choices for elective office, that California voters would confront when they entered polling places on Nov. 3.

With the help of a team of university graduate students, Saeed’s AMA set forth pro and con presentations for each proposition, in addition to a paragraph that discussed how Muslims might view the choice.

When I asked what inspires him to devote himself so totally to the political empowerment of Muslims, he said it came in his childhood in Pakistan. There two statesmen who were constantly and fearlessly in motion became his heroes.