The first Muslim American congressman offers his thoughts on the American Muslim community's involvement in the political and social life of the US, Mohamed El-Sayed listened in Perhaps Congressman is the best- known United States congressman in the Arab world. His popularity could be attributed not only to the fact that he was the first Muslim American to be elected to Congress, and the first African American to be elected from Minnesota, but also because the Democratic- Farmer-Labour Party representative refused to be sworn in on the Bible, insisting on taking a ceremonial oath of office on the Quran -- the personal copy of Thomas Jefferson, which he borrowed from the Library of Congress -- in his first appearance in Congress. "It wasn't a violation of the American constitution, since Article 6 states that there is no religious test for fulfilling the requirements of an elected office," Ellison said in reply to a question by Al-Ahram Weekly during a video conference from Washington, which was sponsored by the American Embassy in Cairo. "The Quran is the book that inspires me and which I read every day," he pointed out. Offering his thoughts on the conditions of the Muslim community in America and the challenges facing it, Ellison sees that political life for US Muslims is better than many might suppose in the Arab world, where America's image has taken a beating after the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the horrifying stories told by Arabs released from Guantanamo Bay. "The Muslim community in the US is still in its infancy or embryonic stage," he said. "There is no body stopping American Muslims from taking part in politics, but they always lacked organisation and leadership," he added. He pointed out that after the Bush administration took some measures which had "an impact on people's ability to immigrate [to the US], as well as their privacy, personal rights and liberties, Muslim Americans were concerned about the possibility of a negative impact of these policies on their ability to be fully engaged in the American society." Nevertheless, about two- thirds of American Muslims are immigrants. "Traditionally immigrants focus on business activities and education, and so it takes a generation or two to actively take part in politics. But because of the developments in the political scene following 9/11, we have seen an upsurge in civic engagement. Muslim Americans are now getting involved [in politics] quickly," he said. The election of Ellison, in fact, is seen by many observers as just the beginning of a movement among the Muslim community in America to actively participate in political life. Many in the Arab world wonder whether Muslim Americans could repeat the success of the Jewish lobby in the US. Ellison is sanguine about the prospects for an influential Arab- Muslim lobby in America. "Palestinian Americans have got to form an active lobbying bloc to help push the US government to advocate for Palestinian statehood," he said. "No one in America is going to help you; you have to help yourself. You have to organise your community to get something done." However, Ellison stressed that ethnic communities should not fall prey to "tunnel vision" by being self-centred around their own problems, and that they had a lot to offer American society in general. "The Muslim community should not focus on issues that will only impact the Muslim community," he said. "Certainly they should promote some [of their own issues], but there are so many problems American Muslims share with other Americans." While conceding that the immigration policies of the US have become "too restrictive", Ellison sees that American society is getting more tolerant and inclusive of all people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. He points to himself as a Muslim congressman elected to represent a state where Muslims constitute only two per cent of its total population. Also, he considers Senator Barack Obama's successful campaign for securing the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party as a good example of Americans transcending their different ethnic origins to advocate a common goal. "People are increasingly coalescing around ideas and not just ethnic identity." Although Ellison is taking part in efforts made by the US State Department to improve America's image worldwide, especially in Muslim and Arab countries, he took the liberty of criticising American policies on the Middle East. "Because of our lack of even-handedness in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, many people in the Muslim world have doubted our commitment to democracy, doubted our commitment in promoting civil and human rights. The invasion of Iraq has done real damage to the reputation of the US," he said. He is also of the opinion that it is very important for America to have "an open policy that would help build good relationships with the 300 million people in the Middle East. And it is very important as well that the next president believes in dialogue and negotiations, builds [good] relationships, and tries to build bridges of understanding." Therefore, Ellison supports Obama "like most Muslim organisations [in the US], since we believe he would do that." Ellison is of the opinion that American troops should get out of Iraq right away, since this invasion has done severe damage to the reputation of the US. "It's about time to tell the world we are leaving [Iraq] and try to stabilise the situation there." He argues that most of the Democrats share his point of view on this issue. When it comes to imposing American- style democracy on other nations, and Islamic nations in particular, Ellison begs to differ. "I don't think that we should impose our democracy on other nations, simply because this is not the right thing to do. Rather, the US should encourage democracy. We have many countries in the world that have elements of democracy but still have a long way to go to be fully democratic, and America should develop institutions and freedom of expression in these countries and should lead by example." The rise of the religious right in America in the past few years rang the alarm bells in the minds of Muslim Americans and the Islamic world in general. But Ellison tries to assuage such fears. "They reached their peak in 2004, but now their views are widely discredited, because people are rejecting their ideology," he said. "In fact, large numbers of Evangelical Christians are now questioning the viewpoint of the religious right. This trend that we saw is being challenged as many religious people are standing for the rights of the immigrants, standing against racism, and standing in favour of the environment," he added. Asked whether Muslim NGOs in the US do enough to promote a good image of the Muslim community, Ellison answered, "a lot of these NGOs are really doing a good job, but they still have a lot of work to do like the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA], the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR], and the Muslim American Society. But we still need more people to get involved and more groups starting up." As far as discrimination against Muslims is concerned, Ellison says he personally has had to endure insults, and stresses that there have been incidents of the desecration of mosques. "Some people spray anti- Islamic, nasty comments on the walls of mosques, break their windows, and even knocked one of them down." According to Ellison, many Muslims are arbitrarily discriminated against. "There was a case of a Muslim chaplain in the US Armed Forces who was singled out for being a Muslim and was sent to Guantanamo Bay for 78 days in solitary confinement. And the whole case was then dropped because there was no case to begin with." However, he argues that most people in America "are good-willed, and when an attack happens, people from all faiths come together and try to help correct the problem. And we are trying to reach out to those people." Ellison pins high hopes on Muslims' active participation in social and political life. "Overwhelmingly, Muslims in America are rising to the challenge of civic engagement at a level we have not seen in the past, and they are responding positively to such a challenge," he concluded.
