Neither CAIR nor the AMC divulge their membership numbers, though both seem to be, as AMC executive director Aly Abu Zaakouk says, "working to be the voice of American Muslims in Washington, D.C., in state capitals and local governments, from PTAs to Pennsylvania Avenue."
But unlike, say, the Catholic Church, Islam in the U.S. doesn't have an organized hierarchy. That is, Asani says, "something the American Muslim community has been struggling with." There are moderate-seeming groups like the Islamic Institute and others that will likely gain greater visibility as this crisis continues. But with Muslims coming from so many different countries, with so many different sects within those countries, often the loudest group -- or the ones who lobby Congress -- are the ones the U.S. government turns to as representative of the estimated 6 million to 8 million American Muslims.
When leaders of these groups speak to the media, Asani says, "Very often whoever's speaking for them represents a very homogenized global form of Islam that refuses to recognize diversity of opinion.
"One of the things I have noticed as a result of this crisis is that there are so many people -- this imam and that imam -- and everybody is claiming they represent the Muslim community," he says.
Particularly problematic is the attitude of CAIR and AMC toward Islamic terrorist groups. CAIR was critical of the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman, whom U.S. authorities deemed the ringleader of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who was convicted with nine followers in October 1995 of conspiring to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel along with other New York City landmarks.
CAIR went so far as to list Abdul-Rahman's lawyers' criticisms of the trial as "far from free and fair" on a 1996 list of "incidents of anti-Muslim bias and violence" in a book called "The Price of Ignorance" which dealt with the "status of Muslim civil rights in the United States." And CAIR's founder, Nihad Awad, wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the World Trade Center trial, which ended in the conviction in 1994 of four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, was "a travesty of justice." According to Awad -- and despite the confessions of the terrorists from the 1993 attack -- "there is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad and the Egyptian Intelligence played a role in the explosion." (Awad -- who met with President Bush last week -- has been more circumspect in his comments after this World Trade Center bombing.)
Leaders of the AMC also have expressed concern for the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists who, it should be remembered, differ only from the Sept. 11 bombers in efficiency. "I believe that the judge went out of his way to punish the defendants harshly and with vengeance, and to a large extent, because they were Muslim," Abdurahman Alamoudi, then the executive director of the AMC, wrote to his members on Aug. 20, 1994.
Last year, questions about Alamoudi and the actual moderation of the AMC came to light when both Gov. George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton returned $1,000 given to their respective campaigns by Alamoudi, no longer the executive director but still a board member of the organization, according to the AMC. Last year, however, Clinton and Bush expressed concern not with Alamoudi's claim that the 1993 World Trade Center bombers were the victims of anti-Muslim bias, but because of his support for other terrorist organizations.
At a November 2000 rally against Israel in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, Alamoudi said to the crowd, "Hear that, Bill Clinton! We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they add that I am also a supporter of Hizballah. Anybody support Hizballah here?" The crowd cheered.
According to the State Department, Hamas engages in "large-scale suicide bombings -- against Israeli civilian and military targets, suspected Palestinian collaborators, and Fatah rivals." A pro-Hamas Web site proudly lists the organization's various acts of violence, against both Israeli military and civilians. Hezbollah, the State Department says, is "known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-U.S. terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of U.S. and other Western hostages in Lebanon. The group also attacked the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992."
But neither CAIR nor the AMC or other Muslim American organizations -- much like several of the Arab nations Bush is trying to bring into the anti-terrorism coalition -- appear to consider Hamas or Hezbollah terrorist organizations. Nor does it mean that Israeli civilians -- especially those who live on settlements in disputed territories -- are necessarily considered "innocent civilians" to these groups, either.
But Azar Nafisi, a culture and politics professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, says the support of certain terrorist groups poses a fundamental problem for any organization that hopes to speak for American Muslims. Even if they condemn bin Laden, "Different Muslim organizations in the United States support Hamas," she says. "Are some acts of terrorism valid and some not?"
CAIR's Hooper repudiates the charge wholeheartedly, arguing that no one can point to any example of the major American Muslim organizations supporting Islamic extremism. He says that they are faulted for "sins of omission, not sins of commission," and that criticism comes their way from other Muslims for not speaking out against terrorist organizations or human rights abuses in Muslim countries, not for necessarily voicing support.
Next page: Blaming it on "word games from the pro-Israel lobby"