Essay: Muslims in Politics - 11/20/06

Robert Francis Kennedy, my personal political hero, would have been eighty-one years old today. Except, of course, that he died when he was forty-two, gunned down moments after winning the California presidential primary election.

Had he lived, this world would have been a better place. He was murdered by an unbalanced freelance Palestinian terrorist who was unhappy over Kennedy’s support for Israel.

We were so politically naïve then that the American media mostly did not see the Palestinians as a people who could have any coherent or rational political aims. Looking back at the coverage, the general conclusion was that Sirhan Sirhan must be a lunatic. We saw him as we would John Hinckley, who later tried to kill President Reagan to impress the actress Jodie Foster.

We’ve all learned a lot more since then. About Arabs and Muslims, Sunnis and Shia, and the complex tapestry of ethnic politics. Here’s something else I can tell you. If Robert Kennedy were alive today, he would be one of the biggest boosters of Arab Americans running for office, especially if they were Democrats.

I can see RFK having come to Michigan four years ago to campaign for Ishmael Ahmed, when he ran for University of Michigan trustee. I can see him coming to Dearborn after September 11, to reassure frightened people who feared mob violence.

We have a long way to go. But I am hopeful because of people like Imad Hamad, and my friend Rudy Simons, who is Jewish and Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who together took considerable risks to take medical aid to Arab children in Iraq.

We aren’t going to get there overnight, and the racist and genocidal and nihilistic statements of Muslim extremists are a big roadblock. But electing Arab-Americans to positions like judges and local mayors and city councils and hopefully, statewide boards and agencies is a start. The more any people have invested in America, the more they feel part of the fabric and tapestry of America, the more they have to lose when bad things happen to America.

Robert F. Kennedy knew that. That’s why he went into ghettos when no other politician would and sat there and took it when angry young black men full of rage screamed at him.

We still have plenty of racial problems in this country. But we have come a long way since 1968. For the last years we have had  two secretaries of state, both of them black, one of them a woman.

Forty years after 1968, one of the most talked about presidential prospects for 2008 is a black U.S. Senator whose mother was white and whose father was not African American, but African.

Someday I want to see an Arab American elected to office and then defeated for reelection by the voters. Not because he or she was Muslim, but because they didn’t like what they did on the job.

When that happens, I know we’ll be all right.

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Comments

[JL Glass]

Hey,

I enjoy reading a few blogs every day and today was your day. Interesting take on things are always found in every blog. I'm always researching to find out what the world is thinking. Good stuff and very entertaining as well.

Keep it up.

JL glass
www.jlglass.com
Minneapolis, MN

[Anonymous]

Two noteworthy Arab-Americans who should figure more prominently in Michigan's public affairs but do not are Spence Abraham and Judge Henry Saad. Senator Abraham was inexplicably beaten by Debbie Stabenow in what was surely one of the worst decisions by the Michigan electorate in the last couple of decades.
Judge Henry Saad of the Michigan Court of Appeals, an experienced, thoughtful, articulate and respected judge, has been twice nominated to Federal judgeships by both Presidents Bush, 41 and 43. He was both times foiled by Democratic partisanship in the U.S. Senate, including a vicious back-room blackballing by Carl Levin.
You said it, Jack. The Democrats would love to see more Arab-Americans in public life, as long as they are Democrats. Republicans need not apply.

[Jack Lessenberry]

I feel I need to correct the previous "anonymous" poster, or at least to dispell the impression that I was attacking the Democrats. Spencer Abraham won in 1994 and lost in 2000, each time for reasons that have had nothing to do with being Arba-America. Nor did Democrats hold up Saad's nomination because of his ancestry. It was mainly, so far as I can tell, because Republicans were doing the same thing to President Clinton's nominees.

[Anonymous]

Jack, I never thought you were attacking Democrats. I was just pointing out that the Republicans had very actively promoted two Arab-Americans (who happen to both be Christians and not Muslims) for higher office.
And, it is true that Judge Saad's nominations to the federal bench were not held up because he is an Arab-American. I never claimed such a thing.
But let us be clear that we are already at a stage (one that Jack seemingly hoped for) where a Republican who happens to be an Arab-American can get mugged by backroom Democrats' wheeling and dealing just like any other conservative Republican.
This state of affairs is sort of like the African-American Republicans who ran for statewide offices in Maryland, Ohio and elsewhere. Barack Obama could go to those states and be as duplicitous in campainging against those Black Republicans as he would in campaigning against any other Republican. Obama could go to Tennessee and proclaim that the Senate needed more black members, like Harold Ford, Jr. Then he'd fly to Maryland and tell black voters that the right thing to do was to set aside issues of race. Vote the issues, he urged. An African-American like Michael Steele was not needed in the Senate. (Democratic African-
Americans is what the Senate needs, I presume.)
I hope that this kind of color-blind party politicking has made Jack happy. Party politics above all, including race.

[Jack Lessenberry]

It is difficult to judge the motivation behind anonymous remarks, and as a journalist I make a practice of seldom taking anything seriously someone is not brave enough to sign with their name. I do wish to say -- signed with my own name -- that there is too much back-stabbing in general in politics, and has been at least since 79 BC. But nobody with any degree of knowledge thinks this is limited to one party or ideology.