By Salmy Hashim, NNN-Bernama,
Washington : Muslim leaders in the United States remain cautiously optimistic about the incoming Obama Administration’s seriousness in bringing about change in the country, says the Executive Director of the Muslim American Society of Freedom (MAS), Mahdi Bray.
He told Bernama here Monday that as a longtime activist, “we just have to keep the pressure on” to ensure that the civil rights of American Muslims were preserved.
President-elect Barack Obama had promised to close the US military’s detention camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and to review the USA Patriot Act which had come under fire by many for trampling on civil rights.
“I don’t think that the Obama administration could realistically close Guantanamo immediately. It’ll take time. As for the Patriot Act, a knee jerk reaction to 9-11 (Sept 11 attacks on US soil) it’s easy to pass laws, but it’s harder to undo them,” Bray said.
Two Malaysians, Mohamed Farik Amin and Mohammed Nazir Lep, suspected of committing terrorist acts, are still being detained at Guantanamo and Malaysian Foreign Minister Rais Yatim hopes they will be sent home when Obama takes over as the president of the United States in January.
He said the US had all this while ignored the foreign ministry’s request for the Malaysian detainees to be allowed to face charges back in Malaysia. “No charges have been brought against them, and this is worse than the ISA (Malaysia’s Internal Security Act),” he said in Kuala Lumpur.
At a press conference here Monday, the Chairman of the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT), Dr Agha Saeed, read out an open letter to President-elect Obama congratulating the 44th President, and containing a list of priorities for Obama to consider.
The AMT, an umbrella organization representing 12 member and umbrella organizations, called on the Obama administration to restore due process, objective justice, to repeal the unconstitutional clauses of the USA Patriot Act, ending the COINTELPRO programmes, and ensuring that Americans reject the use of ex-post facto laws.
COINTELPRO is the acronym for a series of FBI counter-intelligence programmes designed to neutralize political dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s. The programme was directed against the civil rights movements, especially against the community leadership of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans.
In the 1980s a similar programme was used against Central American solidarity groups. The Arab, Muslim and South East Asian communities are currently facing a new FBI counter intelligence programme similar to the COINTELPRO operation against the African Americans during the 1960s, says Dr Hatem Bazian, a professor at the Near East and Ethnic Studies Department of the University of California at Berkeley.
Saeed said it would be beneficial for the nation to appoint a new envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and an Ambassador-at-large to improve US-Muslim world relations.