Important news about a conference that took place last night, from Walid Phares in FrontPage:
Now, finally, after three years of hard work since the tragedy of 9/11, another face of Mideastern Americans is surging to the forefront. Slowly but surely, American groups from Mideastern descent, in disagreement with the established political elites of the 1980s and the 1990s, came to the surface. Four days after September 11, a powerful letter of support was sent by the World Lebanese Cultural Union (WLCU), a diaspora-based organization, to President Bush. "Millions of Lebanese around the world are standing with the United States against Terrorism," wrote the authors.
At a time when Washington-based Arabist groups were circulating analysis indicting America and its policies for the actions of al Qaeda, other Mideast-Americans took the fight to the public sphere. Lebanese-Americans were the first to break the wall of American Jihadism. With the longest standing historical experience in this regard, their community organizations pioneered all aspects of the efforts against Terror: translators, analysts, experts, poured into government agencies.
Next were the Chaldo-Assyrians, mostly concentrated in Chicago and Detroit, who were followed by the Copts from Egypt. These American groups had good reasons to join the campaign. For decades, their mother nationalities had been brutalized in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Then came Muslim and Arab groups who rejected the diktat of the dominant Wahabbis and Ba’athists. Shiites who have suffered under Saddam and Sunnis who have suffered under Assad felt America was wounded by the same forces of Terror, which caused them and their communities great harm.
A new wave of Muslim groups against terror appeared. Isolated and constantly intimidated by well-financed radical Islamist lobbyists and organizations, American Muslims began to gather together in smaller associations. Syrian Reformists, Lybian democrats, Yemeni intellectuals, and Palestinian dissidents declared their own entities.
As the new anti-terror Arabs struggled to affirm themselves, Iranian-Americans and Kurds came to the front of the American debate to confirm the thesis that the peoples of the Middle East "want freedom and democracy."
Meanwhile, the African side of the Mideast communities of America rose to visibility. First Southern Sudanese, followed by Mauritanian and joined by the exiles from Darfur. This tiny African American immigrant community exposed the regime of horrors in North Africa. Berbers came to witness as well. Day after day, between 2002 and 2004, a new "community" of activists made it to the national media, the US Government and finally to the edges of the global debate.
Today in the United States, thousands of Americans of Middle East descent are joining forces to answer the anxious questions of their neighbors: "Yes we are fully Americans and we feel this is our country which we love and want to defend against Terrorists," said the organizers of a historic conference to take place in Washington DC on Friday October 1, 2004. "It is time for our communities to break the silence imposed by the oil backed elite," said Tom Harb, a member of the American Lebanese Coalition, a group that co-sponsored the event. John Michael, a medical doctor from Chicago revealed that, "tens of thousands of Assyrians and Chaldeans have sided since day one with the U.S. when it decided to liberate our mother country ? Iraq ? from the bloody Saddam." &nb
More than 30 organizations, from all ethnic and religious backgrounds, have been meeting and planning for what will become a "beginning for a new era in Mideast-American history" as qualified by Dr Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim activist heading the American Muslim Forum for Democracy. "The mass graves in Iraq shook off the basis of our consciousness" said Zainab al Suwajj, the courageous Arab female leading the Islamic American Congress.
Walking hand in hand with Muslim moderates, Coptic groups are raising the issue of persecution of Christians in Egypt at the hands of fundamentalists. Michael Meunir, President of US Copts said "it will be interesting to see that this new wave of Americans from Mideast descent will show the world and the fanatics that Muslims would stand by Christians when persecuted and the other way around." Moyammed Yahia from Darfur's exiled community agrees: "We saw Christians coming to our help, when we Black Muslims were massacred by the Janjaweed.”
This talk wasn't politically correct a few years ago. Now it is out in the open. Soon, it will have a national umbrella. The "Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy" will hold its sessions on this first Friday of the Fall of 2004. According to the press release issued by these organizations, "Americans of Middle Eastern descent will gather in Washington, D.C., to show their support for the efforts to defeat terrorism and radicalism and to create a free and peaceful Middle East."
The forum will include speakers from different affiliations, a mosaic never seen before in Middle Eastern America. “At these dangerous and critical times, we want to provide a forum for all Middle Eastern Americans who support the United States in the war against terror and applaud the fact that the Middle East has one less tyrant after the fall of Saddam,” said Dr. Joseph Gebeily, the Convention’s executive director. “As primary victims of the prevailing intolerance in the Middle East, we strongly support the war on terrorism and efforts to promote democracy in all nations of the Middle East.”
I'll bring you updates on how this went as soon as I have them.
Morning all!
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but:
A google search on the title of this conference, does not appear to find one single instance of it covered by the 'mainstream' media.
I find a Lot of conservative sites covering it, both blogs and commentary site. I find a lot of ME coverage of it.
Nothing from left-wing sites. Am I wrong? I hope so. But I would like to see what they say about the conference. They Can't have ignored something this important to the discussion, could they?
What I would like to see happen is for this group of activists to define islamism, then to make it a goal to erradicate it. Turkey and Indonesia have (technically) secular governments but they, as of yet, do not treat non-muslims very well. Their populations don't always see non-mulsims in a very egalitarian or tolerant light. Another concern is that often when secular muslims immigrate out of these countries to a western country their children seem to do something strange...many often regress back into an islamist mentality/outlook. So, while I see this movement as an encouraging sign, I am more cautious than anything. Only time, that is several generations, will tell if this movement will really result in a trully pluralistic and secularised muslim world. Up to date such a phenonomenon has never trully occured anywhere in the muslim world in my opinion. We will just have to give these people a chance and see. I am not pessimistic, just cautious.
I do hope that this meeting will result in more than the proverbial "straw" that the rest of the world can grasp.
I have to agree with obl r us with respect to watching the proceedings with cautious hope. We know that deceit is a strategy, and we have been bitten too many times.
It won't be until the Koran, "revealed" from Allah to the "perfect man," is changed to reflect a change in values. As it stands now, all of Islam is based on a moral code with the fundamental value of converting the Earth into an Islamic planet, and granting its followers the moral authority to use any means whatsoever to accomplish that goal. Death is the weapon of choice, closely followed by pain and anguish.
When the committee is chosen that will re-write the Koran and incorporate human life, theirs and the rest of ours, as the fundamental value upon which the rest of its moral code is based, then I will begin to have some serious interest in what is happening.
Until then, I will await with modest interest the reports of what is going on.
Talk is cheap, let's see some action.
Yes, they are middle easatern allright but with one BIG difference from the terrorists, they are Christians! Chaldean Assyrian, Copts, most lebanese in the US. They have also been persecuted in their country of origin, like stated in the article.
It would be a GREAT thing if we'd hear from the majority of Muslims in the US. I', still waiting, and waiting, and waiting ..........
What would be the most interesting is to have an survey done such as was done in the UK wherein muslims were asked to define themselves (without of course having to give their names which I think would lend more truth because the muslim responding wouldnt have to worry about backlash from neighbors and employers because of his answer) and few if any identified themselves as "British", they were muslims merely RESIDING the UK, the responses were mostly the same...they are MUSLIMS and thats it, where they reside makes no difference. I would like to see a survey done in the US and Canada to see how many muslims would identify themselves as Americans or Canadians...in the UK survey they didnt even like the term British Muslims....they stated over and over they were just MUSLIMS.
This JH article mentions this conference (Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy) and states . . .
"Walking hand in hand with Muslim moderates, Coptic groups are raising the issue of persecution of Christians in Egypt at the hands of fundamentalists."
*****
Unfortunately,
*****
somewhere in the translation between JW and the limited exposure granted by the media (is the web considered part of the media?) -
*********
the Muslim moderates evaperated.(?)
*********
According to Jeremy Reynalds (bushcountryopinion)
Organizers dubbed the event "the largest Christian Middle Eastern American event ever organized in the USA."
worldnetdaily characterized it as:
"Mideast Christians rally in D.C.
Seek to dispel common notion Muslims majority in U.S."
It is difficult to relate any "Muslim" perception to this event based on these two links. BTW, these were the only valid links to come up through the Google 'news' search (post event)tonight.
I'm looking forward to reading further details.
The report above is one reason why I cannot see all Muslims as enemies--much as I disagree with Islam. I've always wondered where the Muslims who protested the attacks on Middle Eastern Christians and South Sudanese were, and now I see the are actually out there.
The Muslims and others participating in this conference seem to be the sort of people who have gone up to the ticking bomb of inter-civilizational war and cut the wires, doing themselves and the rest of us a great service.