Muslims Make Inroads in Dispelling Terrorist Image

In the three weeks since the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Muslim organizations in the United States have produced a major public affairs offensive designed to combat the public perception that Islam is synonymous with terrorism.

The groups, including two major ones based in Southern California, have become a significant presence in the American national debate from which Muslim voices were largely absent until recently. They are faxing statements and urgent missives to the White House and media, delivering lectures, calling news conferences and protests, and alerting members of the Muslim community on how to protect themselves in case of violence.

So far, they can claim slow but steady progress. In 1995, after the federal office building in Oklahoma City was bombed--an act that many in the news media initially and mistakenly blamed on Arab terrorists--one Muslim group documented 220 cases of violence and harassment. Included on the list was an Oklahoma City Muslim woman so traumatized by a hooligan throwing rocks at her home that she went into premature labor and lost her seven-month fetus.

This time, by contrast, Muslim groups say few such incidents have surfaced, although U.S. officials have blamed the embassy bombings on a terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi businessman who says his anti-American actions are guided by his Islamic faith. However, although violent incidents have decreased, the number of discrimination cases has increased, according to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In a major success for the groups, President Clinton, in his address to the nation announcing U.S. retaliation against Bin Laden, emphasized that Islam does not condone terrorism.

On Wednesday, in the latest element of their campaign, Muslim protesters held a news conference to attack the new 20th Century Fox film “The Siege” for what they criticized as dangerously negative stereotypes of their religion.

The sizable media contingent--including 13 television cameras--and advance coverage of their grievances by three newspapers nationally illustrated their growing success.

Organizations such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles and the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim are at the center of the campaign, grinding out op-ed articles--”Extremists Do Not Define Islam,” for instance--and issuing reports and position papers on everything from “Islam in Central Asia” to “Voice of American Muslims and Its Critical Absence in the Middle East Peace Process.”

The organizations are controversial in some circles. Critics have accused them of serving as front organizations for Middle Eastern groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that the government considers terrorist organizations.

Steven Emerson, a Washington-based investigative reporter who specializes in Middle East topics, for example, recently declared in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article that the Muslim Public Affairs Council had “repeatedly defended Hezbollah and other Islamic terrorist movements.”

Muslim civil rights groups “in fact operate as propaganda and political arms of Islamic fundamentalist movements,” Emerson charged.

Such assertions are “astounding” and “baseless,” said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim council.

Both Al-Marayati’s organization and the Council on American-Islamic Relations say they are funded by private donations, mainly from American Muslims. The public affairs council says it specifically refuses to accept money from foreign governments and survives on an annual budget of $240,000 for its Los Angeles and Washington offices by using volunteers and summer interns.

Questioning the Questions

On a recent afternoon, at his office in the Islamic Center of Southern California on Vermont Street, Al-Marayati whirled about, supervising an avalanche of staff projects.

“Hebrew Union College. Oct. 13. Can you put that on the calendar, please?” Al-Marayati yelled to his two summer interns, Sadiya Nasir, 19, an international relations major at USC, and Wajma Ahmady, 22, a writing major at UC San Diego.

Al-Marayati and Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Southern California office in Anaheim are two of the Islamic community’s most public faces.

Both men are thirtysomething former engineers with U.S. citizenship, articulate command of English, engaging personalities and quick-witted intellects that beam in on questionable assumptions about Islam like radar.

Ask “Why have Muslim fundamentalists moved toward terrorism against the United States?” and Ayloush promptly questions the question.

“Most Muslim fundamentalists do not resort to terrorism,” he said with the practiced air of a person who has delivered this explanation a thousand times.

“The ones who resort to terrorism are not Muslims; basically they are extremists in their own right. Anyone who promotes terrorism is a terrorist, period. He is not an Islamic terrorist or Christian terrorist.”

That many Americans view Islam as a code word for terrorism is at the top of Al-Marayati’s list of public misperceptions he aims to correct in his various activities.

Others: “We’re wife-beaters, women oppressors. We’re Arabs.” (In fact, African Americans constitute the largest single group of American Muslims at 40%, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Asians make up the largest group internationally.)

And more: “We’re a sect, the anti-Christ. We’re an Eastern faith, like Hinduism or Buddhism, as opposed to a Western faith. We’re anti-Semites, even though we’re Semites ourselves.

“It’s a long list,” Al-Marayati said with a weary smile. “The hardest part is to prove you’re normal.”

Such portrayals were the target of Wednesday’s protest in Rancho Park in front of the 20th Century Fox studios. Although the stream of speakers said Fox had met with the community and softened some of the film’s most egregious images, their demands to change the film’s basic plot line were rejected.

The film, which stars Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Annette Bening and Tony Shalhoub, centers on a bombing plot by Muslims in New York that provokes the U.S. military to declare martial law and make mass arrests of Muslims.

But the news conference underscored the steady inroads that Muslims are making in getting their message across. In addition to the sizable media response, the event featured supporters from the Latino and African American communities, along with a representative from the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission’s Media Image Coalition, co-president Don Bustany.

The bridge-building to other ethnic, political and religious organizations, backers say, is paying off in integrating the Muslim community into mainstream American society. When Al-Marayati began his job a decade ago, he said, it was a fight even to get his calls returned.

Although Al-Marayati says his organization still has not been able to gain direct access to some politicians, such as Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, or U.S. Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Sacramento), others have embraced Muslims--including, he says, the Clintons, who have invited Muslims to the White House to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Al-Marayati said. “It’s been literally one brick at a time.”