Strong Security, Strong Liberty

 

We here at Muslims For America practice the philosophy of our favorite President, Ronald Reagan, in stating that “Government is not the solution, it is the problem.” – a statement that was made during the height of the Cold War, when Soviet spies were working hardest to harbor sleeper cells all over America.

As Muslims and Americans, we not only seek to keep America safe – we seek to proactively prevent any future terrorist attacks from ever taking place. Which is why we support and harbor the relationships being made between America’s Muslim organizations and intelligence-gathering ones. Recently, the Muslims Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and our FBI and CIA offices have met frequently, in an effort to bring great relations between Muslims and our intelligence services.

We believe that this war cannot be won unless American Muslims are working directly with our intelligence agencies, in providing help in understanding the culture of the Muslim World, in addition to tracking down terrorists. Muslims For America has facilitated the recruiting of American Muslims to the FBI, for the purposes of translating voicemails and emails from suspected terrorists. We are proud of these efforts and we will continue them.

Muslims For America is against any curtailing of civil liberties. Our own Co-President, Muhammad Ali Hasan, has been asked off of an airplane, in addition to being detained for over an hour at Los Angeles International Airport. Hasan would be more than happy to be detained and racially profiled, if it helped prevent any future terrorist attacks. Sadly, racially profiling increases the chances of a future attack.

Recent Al-Qaeda tapes, on both American and British news media, prove that Osama Bin Laden has succeeded in recruiting potential suicide bombers of many ethnicities, including white men. Should racial profiling tactics succeed, our security systems would fall right into the hands of what Al-Qaeda desires.

We applaud President Bush for banning racial profiling at all federal levels. As of today, no American Muslims are being held, without access to a lawyer, under President W Bush, leading us to believe that his management of the Patriot Act is extremely responsible.

However, outside of President Bush, we do not entrust any other politician with legislation that curtails civil liberties. We support eavesdropping as long as a FISA court judge does; we do not support it without court approval.

As the 9/11 Commission Report shows, our intelligence services knew about the incoming 9/11 attacks, as well as the threat of Mohammad Atta; yet, the resources were not available to scrutinize these reports in a timely manner. Future terror attacks will not be prevented by simple racial profiling; they will be prevented by excellent intelligence gathering and analysis.

We support strengthening our FBI and CIA agencies to accommodate for this additional gathering and analysis. And we promise to continue in our efforts of delivering more American Muslims to the FBI and CIA, in our effort to end this War on Terror.