Flyer Attacking Candidate’s Religious Beliefs Condemned

The Orange County Human Relations Commission on Thursday condemned an anonymous political flyer that attacked the religious beliefs of a Democratic candidate for Congress just before the June 2 primary.

The commission, in a unanimous decision, described the flyer as “disgusting and appalling” and called for an investigation.

The flyers--printed on bright yellow, letter-size paper and left on cars in Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove--accused candidate Nazeer Ahmed of running for office to further Islamic interests in the Middle East rather than represent Orange County residents.

Ahmed, 52, of Santa Ana, who is a Muslim, described the attack as “intolerable.”

“It spreads hatred against a religion, Islam, and spreads hate against Middle Eastern people that has nothing to do with my campaign,” he said.

Ahmed said that whoever produced the flyer must have thought he was Middle Eastern because of his name. Although he is active in the Islamic community, Ahmed said he was born and raised in India but moved to the United States 31 years ago.

Ahmed, an engineer and manager at Hughes Aircraft, said he can’t gauge what effect the flyer had on voters. He finished fourth in a field of five Democratic candidates vying to be on the November ballot to run against Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Santa Ana) in the 46th Congressional District, which includes Santa Ana and parts of Anaheim and Garden Grove.

Ahmed said he also doesn’t know how many of the flyers were distributed. He said he learned of them during telephone calls to voters in the district to drum up support before the June 2 primary.

Ricardo Nicol, one of Ahmed’s rivals for Democratic nomination, said Thursday that he was approached by two unknown men with copies of the flyer before the election who asked for his opinion on it and whether he was aware of Ahmed’s Middle Eastern ties.

“I told them I didn’t want to get in the middle of anything like that . . . and they left,” Nicol said.

The Human Relations Commission said it would try to determine who those men were by questioning Nicol. The commission discussed the flyer at the request of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, commission director Rusty Kennedy said.

Salam Al-Marayati, director of the council, said the flyer was an attempt to exclude American Muslims from the political process.

“It was an attack against (Ahmed). It was an attack against Muslim people. It was an attack against Islam,” Al-Marayati said.

Ahmed said he kept silent about the flyers before the election but has been talking about it more often to get the issue out in the open.

“I’m sure (the authors of the flyer) are people that need education,” he said. “You don’t solve hatred by punishing people, but you do solve hatred with education.”

Kennedy characterized the flyer as “a pretty low blow. It’s a hateful and bigoted collection of innuendoes and anti-Muslim kinds of rhetoric.”

The flyer begins with big, bold letters stating, “Stop Dr. Nazeer Ahmed From Going to U.S. Congress.”

It contains six paragraphs, beginning with one saying that women are “a possession” in Islamic society and that Ahmed wants to represent women in Congress. The flyer also accuses Ahmed of wanting to “send all jobs” to the Middle East and invest U.S. oil money in the Middle East.