Arab-Americans and Muslims could take some -- some -- comfort in a Reuters/Zogby poll released Monday. Eighty-four percent of those polled said that the U.S. was at war with a small group of terrorists who may be Muslim, as opposed to 8 percent who assessed the U.S. to be at war with Islam in general.
On the other hand, 38 percent in the poll stated that they believed Islam to be a religion that encourages fanaticism, with 42 percent disagreed and 20 percent unsure. Arab-Americans scored higher approval ratings than did their brethren abroad, as did Muslim Americans when compared with Muslims in general.
During the last presidential election, Bush made a big push for the Arab-American and Muslim vote, which is sizeable in the swing states of Michigan and Illinois. In an October meeting with around 30 Arab-American and Muslim leaders in Dearborn, Mich. -- the figurative center of Arab-American life -- Bush expressed support for an end to both ethnic profiling and secret evidence.
Days later, in the second presidential debate on Oct. 11, 2000, Bush endorsed the group's domestic policy objectives, albeit in a rather confusing way, seeming to combine the two issues. "Arab-Americans are racially profiled in what's called secret evidence," Bush said. "People are stopped, and we've got to do something about that."
Soon after, Bush started receiving endorsements from a number of Arab-American and Muslim groups, many of whom thought of the Clinton-Gore administration as too pro-Israel. (To say nothing of Gore's vice presidential selection.) On Oct. 23, the political action committee of the American Muslim Political Coordination Council -- made up of the American Muslim Council, the American Muslim Alliance, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council -- formally endorsed Bush for president.
Now, members of those four organizations -- scheduled to cash in their endorsement chits last Tuesday -- must be wondering if the most they can ask for is that Bush continue to express support and respect for their right to live free of intimidation and harassment.
"All I can say is, we're sensitive to it," said Justice Department spokesman Dan Nelson when asked about the "secret evidence" provision. Nelson did acknowledge that "since last Tuesday things have changed," but couldn't say how the new paradigm would affect the problems some have with the practices of ethnic profiling and secret evidence, concerns that probably couldn't be more remote for most Americans right now.
Monday afternoon, Ashcroft outlined a number of law enforcement measures he feels are needed to combat terrorism -- making it easier to obtain wiretaps, for instance -- all of which are on the side of security in the civil liberties vs. security debate. Which to most Americans is more than fine. According to the Los Angeles Times poll, 61 percent of the American people think that curbing terrorism will necessitate the average person giving up some civil liberties. And 84 percent think that the U.S. government should toughen restrictions on visas for foreign students and others.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council's Bray says that he remains concerned about the issues he was hoping to speak with the president about last Tuesday, but he recognizes that now is not the time to push for these items. "As it says in Ecclesiastes, 'there is a season for everything,'" Bray says. "We're not so pressed. Our concerns are urgent, but we have to juxtapose our concerns with what the nation is going through."
About the writer
Jake Tapper is Salon's Washington correspondent and the author of "Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency."
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