Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

ELECTION 2008:

A low political profile

Valley Muslims say they don’t want to inflame GOP’s false claims about Obama’s faith

Islamic Society of Nevada

Leila Navidi

Gathered for Friday prayers at the Islamic Society of Nevada are, from left, Meher Moten, Rashida Aziz and Naseema Ansari. Ansari, who supports Barack Obama for president, says she didn’t wear her head scarf to a rally she attended.

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A group of 10-20 Obama backers gathered in front of Henderson Pavilion's gates during Gov. Sarah Palin's speech. As McCain/Palin supporters exited the rally, many became enraged at the sight of the protest. Photo by Leila Navidi.

For Nevada's Muslims, their support must be subtle

Men pray during at the Islamic Society of Nevada Launch slideshow »

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Khalid Khan attended a rally for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry four years ago holding a banner that said “Muslims for Kerry.”

This year, Khan is voting for Barack Obama, judging him the superior candidate based on foreign policy and economic concerns. But this time Kahn, president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, is not publicly displaying his affection. Doing so, he said, “might have a negative effect on his campaign,” playing into the hands of Republicans who seek to disparage Obama, who is Christian, by labeling him a Muslim.

So Kahn, who supported Bush in 2000, and other Muslim leaders interviewed by the Sun over the past week say they are keeping a low profile in what has been a difficult election season, even though they want to become a stronger presence in civic groups and politics. They say attempts to link Obama to their faith has again cast it in a bad light, recalling a time after the 9/11 attacks by Muslim extremists when many Americans grew suspicious of the religion and its followers in the United States.

“The term Muslim, the term Islam and the term Arab are being used as slurs, as though being labeled that is somehow a criminal category,” said Yasser Moten, director of the Las Vegas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Muslim leaders say perceptions were aggravated by a DVD distributed last month in newspapers in swing states, including the Las Vegas Review-Journal. (The Las Vegas Sun is distributed with the Review-Journal but has no say in advertising decisions.) The video was produced and distributed by a conservative nonprofit group that condemned what it called “Radical Islam” as a “threat to Western Civilization.”

Muslim leaders in Las Vegas saw the video as a condemnation of their religion — connecting all Muslims to fringe terrorists.

The Islamic Society paid for an advertisement to respond to the claims, stressing that the Muslim community in Las Vegas has many doctors, engineers, teachers and businessmen “dedicated to preserving the founding principles of our nation.” The Las Vegas area is home to an estimated 18,000 Muslims. (National estimates vary widely, ranging from 2.4 million to 7 million.)

A copy of the ad hung on the lectern at the Islamic Society during a recent Friday prayer service while Mohammed Shafi, a local doctor, gave a sermon on the importance of community involvement and correct adherence to the Muslim faith. Congregants listened attentively, sitting barefoot and cross-legged on expansive green carpet inside the mosque.

Obama and his supporters have forcefully denied rumors that he is Muslim. But former Secretary of State Colin Powell went one large step further last week as he endorsed Obama. Powell said Obama’s faith is beside the point.

“Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?” said Powell, a Republican and retired general who served in President Bush’s Cabinet. “The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described a photo he saw of a gravestone of a fallen soldier engraved with the Islamic crescent and star. It belonged to Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, an American born in New Jersey who died in Iraq. Powell said the image affected him profoundly.

For Khalid Khan (no relation) and other leaders of Las Vegas’ Muslim community, Powell’s remarks were seminal.

“We had been waiting a long time for any politician to have the guts to speak out against this bigotry and all of a sudden you have this individual, an American general, and he says these very eloquent words,” Moten said.

In the past week, Muslim leaders insist they have noticed subtle changes. Khan cheered the image on TV of a woman in a head scarf standing behind Biden at a rally last week.

In June, two women in head scarves said Obama volunteers asked them not to stand behind the candidate at a rally in Michigan for fear of tarnishing his image. Obama apologized for the incident.

The presidential campaigns this year have been mostly coy with the Muslim community in Las Vegas.

McCain and Obama sent high-level surrogates to the 700-family Jewish synagogue Temple Beth Shalom. But Obama’s outreach to Muslims was limited to voter registration drives outside the mosque. McCain’s campaign has had no presence in the Muslim community.

Nationally, neither candidate has campaigned in a mosque.

Islamic Society Director Aslam Abdullah estimates that Muslim voters number about 7,000 in the Las Vegas area. UNLV political science professor Ted Jelen said Muslims are often not strongly courted by campaigns in part because they have not historically been a consistent voter bloc.

Nevada Muslims are trying to change that.

At the prayer service, Shafi said congregants should become active in local neighborhood, school, and business groups. And Abdullah reiterated the importance of voting.

In an interview after prayer and song had concluded, Abdullah said he has fielded 500 to 600 phone calls from congregants in the past few weeks asking advice on the election.

“What I tell them is that there are certain special interest groups that don’t want Muslims to be part of the American fabric, but it’s up to us to assert ourselves,” Abdullah said.

Islamic Society leaders and congregants say they aren’t disturbed by the lack of attention from the campaigns, or from Obama’s response to the question of his religion. If Obama had taken a strong stance of support for Muslims, he would have conformed to the Republican playbook, Abudullah said.

Naseema Ansari, who volunteers at the bookstore at the Islamic Society, says she didn’t wear her hijab, or head scarf, to the Obama rally she attended. But she often doesn’t wear her hijab anymore in public, preferring a bandanna. It’s just easier that way.

“I don’t want to be flaunting it, since 9/11,” said Ansari, who is passionate about universal health care and supports Obama because his position is closer to hers. “I try to downplay it.”

Bir Azam, president of UNLV’s Muslim Students Association, has volunteered for the Obama campaign by doing data entry in campaign offices and helping to set up Obama events at UNLV. He was particularly impressed that campaign officials introduced him around the office as the president of the Muslim Students Association and didn’t play down his faith.

“They were very welcoming,” Azam said.

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