Mr. Beckel should make up his mind

Every time I see the smiling face of the little boy who was killed in the Boston bombing, my heart breaks. I have taken a stand and spoken out for years on end, but no one seems to want to lend me, a Moslem immigrant and apparently member of the silent majority, an ear.

On April 23rd Mr. Bob Beckel in his remark on the Fox Cable News program, The Five, criticized the silent Moslems who do not stand up and oppose terrorism.

What Mr. Beckel seems to willfully forget is that, we did. Moderate and liberal Muslims did in fact gather in New York, in early March of 2012 to support the NYPD. We held a press conference at New York’s 1 Police Plaza and stated our support for the NYPD’s tireless efforts. And once again, the mercurial Bob Beckel rejected us and claimed that ‘there was all of 43 of us and that it was some kind of a public relations stunt’ .

In case Beckel did not read my March 16th, 2012 response in the American Thinker, I’ll repeat it again, hoping that this time it does sink in:

“When a group of us — American Muslims — went to New York City to voice the concerns of the silent majority and support the law enforcement there, we were confronted by the mainstream media’s unabashed hostility.

I was surprised at how some of them practically harassed us, rather than wanting to know our opinions. They were argumentative and seemed to resent us for siding with the NYPD; they clearly had a highly suspicious attitude toward us Muslims, who were not falling in line with the pronouncements of those who echo the edict handed down from their local pulpit and did not represent those Muslims who prefer to represent themselves as perpetual victims.

Then I saw The Five on March 6, and I was amazed at Bob Beckel’s rejection of our group and message. “There were only 43 people, that was a complete set up, it was a public relations move, brining these guys,” Beckel said with a dismissive attitude.

What this arbiter of political correctness is clearly unaware of is that his labels are irrelevant here and that he cannot use us to rationalize his weltanshauung. We were not set up, and we were not just hired extras. We are all educated and thinking people who will not be used by either Mr. Beckel or the hijackers of Islam in order to fit into a prefab social and ideological pigeonhole. Thanks to the U.S. Constitution, we are free to speak our minds in America and organize genuine grassroots organization that celebrates the diverse American Muslim community, and counters those very Islamists and their apologists who reject the heterogeneity of Muslims, rather than some runaway unilateral dominion run by elitist insiders.”

Mr. Beckel does not seem to see his own contradictions unfortunately. If we speak out, there aren’t enough of us and therefore worthy of being dismissed, rather than promoted and when we are shot down, as he has done, we aren’t there. I wish he would make up his mind!

Sadly too, this isn’t only Beckel’s mandate as, even Fox cable news is not interested in inviting us and hear our analysis of the issues or promoting our efforts.

Often, the extent of what we know and how much more in-depth we can explain it is key to proper and effective analysis. And analysts on major media these days simply neither have the historical or cultural backgrounds to properly deconstruct the information but also haven’t the proper understanding of how to contextualize it in a global format for both the viewers/listeners and policymakers. It seems that the media people like the politicians do not want to hear from us. They always have a list of certain people that they bring in to give the public their view. It is now essential that those audiences hear from American Moslem moderates and liberals who have lived through the issues and can elucidate on the realities.

Of course, this dissonance is not only on the part of the major international media, but also the U.S. government has refused to hear from and dialogue with those of us who can shed a light on the issues facing Muslims who have actively rejected and stood up to radicals. What we are seeing is that this administration is only listening to the Islamist lobbyists whose ideology is rooted in anti-Americanism and their mission to render America passive enough to influence her culture.

Dr. Zuhdi Jaser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) forwarded his application for the membership of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and was refused by the State Department to be considered because of his overt patriotism for his country and because his interpretation of Koran faces down the radicals which have and are being appeased and pacified at every turn. Organizations that are known lobbies of the Islamist formula like; Council for American Islamic Relations, CAIR, a radical Islamist organization, financed by some of the most notorious elements in the Middle East, carries enough weight within the State Department that prevented Dr. Jaser’s appointment.

The Iranian regime’s corrupt lobbyists in Washington, National Iranian American Council (NIAC), and American Iranian Council (AIC) among others have dragooned every corner of Washington, bought politicians and hornswoggled the U.S. government in order to allow the terrorist regime in Iran to buy time for the completion of their Nuclear bomb. These discredited organizations have repeatedly and falsely claimed to speak on behalf of the Iranian American community but among their mission, is also to keep the opposition, away from the media and the government.

Mr. Beckel should grasp the very simple fact that it is the media and the government who push away the knowledgeable, respected Americans, who happen to be Muslim, prevent them from being heard and block them from contributing to the anti Islamist terrorist policies.

Mr. Beckel’s broad stroke generalization on the issue betrays his abject ignorance of the real issues. We, the Moslem-Americans have come to America from three different continents, 57 different countries, many different races of people, different languages, different cultures and historical backgrounds, not to mention the many different sects of Islam. Some of us come from the countries that have been in existence only half century and some come from nations as old as three thousand years.

Mr. Beckel; the only thing that American-Muslims have in common is America. We are as diverse as American Christians are and America needs to learn this fact and look at us by our nationalities, cultural identities and various historical backgrounds, rather than sloppily lumping us all together, slapped with the ‘Muslim’ label, to be treated by one unequivocal rule and one suspicious cure!

There has never been one Iranian individual terrorist, but the regime of Iran is an Islamist international terrorist. Yet the regime is allowed to import as many people under the UN and diplomatic pretense into America and send their children to Harvard, Princeton and Columbia. But when the young political refugees, the brain-drain pack who have fled the Islamist regime’s prisons want to come to America, Mr. Beckel, bloviates about them being prohibited from entering into the U.S.