By: Shafi Refai, President, UMA
American democracy has to go through the ritual of the presidential elections every four years. This year happens to be the election year. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on the campaign advertisements. Yet a large number of Americans would not even care to vote. The question is: why? Perhaps the reason is their feeling that no matter who they vote for, things would not change. This year's choice between Bush and Kerry would confirm their apathy. The difference between the two major parties - Republican and Democrat - has narrowed to such a degree that they are hardly distinguishable from each other. There is the need for the multi-party system. There are other parties but in the foreseeable future only two parties will continue to control the power.
The last elections held in year 2000 were not any better than this one. Most of the American Muslims voted for Bush because he had agreed to repeal the Secret Evidence Law under which many Muslims were harassed. President Bush had scheduled a meeting with the American Muslim leaders in the afternoon of September 11, 2001 when he was going to announce his plan to repeal the law. That meeting never materialized because of the terrorist attacks in the morning of that fateful day. Subsequent to the attack Bush embraced the neo-cons in his administration and adopted their plan 'The Project for New American Century'. We know the rest of the story. Needless to say that many Muslims are not happy with the performance of President Bush and are eager to see him leave the White House.
American Muslims leaders once again are working hard to prepare the Muslim community for the election. E-mail has become a common mode of communication. The community members have been urged to register to vote. The criteria are being developed on the basis of which they would recommend which candidate to vote for. It is dejavu all over again. It is not uncommon for the politicians to promise things in the heat of an election and then go back to doing the business as usual. American Muslims lack the political clout to hold the politicians responsible for what they had promised before the election.
In the USA it is corporate America that buys the politicians and the politicians in return buy the votes of the common people through advertisements. The greatest beneficiaries of the system are the TV, radio and the print media. Howard Dean has learnt the hard way that it is not easy to win an election with grassroots support only without the blessing of the media.
American Muslims are estimated to be around 2% of the population. Many of them are not US citizens and many of those who are citizens are not registered to vote. Many of those who are registered to vote do not vote. With this record, we are not going to create a significant political clout with the bloc vote. The politicians are not unaware of this fact.
The elected politicians usually follow the policies determined by the parties much before the elections. The Muslim community is absent from the political parties and other institutions where opinions are shaped and policies formed. The involvement in the political parties does not come cheap. Few of the Muslim activists who get involved in the political parties get burnt out with the constant demand on their pockets and time.
The Jewish population in the US is not much larger than that of the Muslims. However, we do not hear about their bloc vote. It is said that 50% of the Democratic Party funding and 30% of the Republican Party funding comes from Jewish sources. Besides, they have established their presence in the White House, Capitol Hill, Wall Street, Hollywood, Media, and Academia. These are the institutions that shape the opinion of the American people.
American Muslims can learn a good lesson from the experience of the Indian Muslims. In India the Muslims form 12%�of the population. For fifty years they voted en bloc for the Congress party for fear of the fundamentalist Hindu party without getting anything in return. The Hindu party used Muslims' support for the Congress party as an appeasement of the Muslims by the Congress party and garnered the support of the majority community at the great peril of Muslims.
There is a great need for the Muslims to get involved in the complete political process and not just to wakeup at the time of the elections. And there is a need for the Muslim leaders to make our community face the reality, rather than keeping them under the illusion that they can make the difference with a bloc vote.
