c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Well before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 put American Muslims in the center of a political and religious melee, two men opened a small office in Washington, D.C., with a mission to advocate for civil and political liberties for the nation’s Muslim community.

Since its founding 10 years ago on June 1, 1994, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has become the leading Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group in the nation.

With 26 regional offices in Florida, New Jersey, California, Arizona, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio and other states and a D.C-based staff of 25, the group is in a unique position to track discrimination against Arabs and Muslims, and educate the American public about the world’s second-largest religion.

When a major event happens that involves the Muslim community, from terrorism to an impingement on religious freedom, the 40,000-member CAIR is there with action alerts, media releases, public service announcements and a public-relations style that aims to get the word out.

Among the group’s first activities, says Ibrahim Hooper, who is CAIR’s spokesman and was one of the two founding employees, was to stage protests of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film “True Lies,” which CAIR said contained insulting depictions of Muslims.

Soon afterward, CAIR sponsored demonstrations outside card stores to protest a Hallmark card that contained a derogatory wordplay involving the Shiite Muslim sect. The card was taken off the shelves. CAIR later rose to national prominence when it protested a Nike sneaker that featured a logo that resembled the Arabic word “Allah.”

“We believe that you use one success to go to the next,” said Hooper. “We saw a need _ there was no organized effort to defend Muslim civil rights and empower the Muslim community in political and social terms.”

Beginning with the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City _ which many people initially and incorrectly attributed to Arab terrorists _ CAIR began to track the number of reported instances of discrimination or violence against American Muslims and Arabs.

The first of CAIR’s annual reports, which chronicle the number of reported incidents and the group’s efforts to rectify wrongful treatment, was released in 1996, when 80 incidents were reported.

After a period of relative stability between 1997 and 2000, the number nearly doubled after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The most recent report, which was released last month and covered 2003, reported 1,019 incidents, a jump of nearly 70 percent over the previous year’s figure.

The scrutiny that is placed on the Muslim community, CAIR leaders say, makes precise reporting and factual documentation crucial.

“When I stand before the media in a press conference, I have to back up every detail with information, information that is based on credible research,” said Mohamed Nimer, a researcher at CAIR.

However, a controversial aspect of reporting data on any community is the basic demographic question of how many members there are in America.

Debates rage over the figure of 6 million to 7 million American Muslims that CAIR has reported in its releases and materials. But Nimer, who says that there simply is no definitive statistical research to confirm a solid number, says that a better figure is that there are no fewer than 2.5 million to 4 million Muslims in America.

CAIR attempts to reach this population and encourage Muslims to participate in the political process by voting _ CAIR has held voter registration drives _ and running for office.

“Politically speaking, I think the Muslim community is establishing a high profile in society,” said Nihad Awad, who is CAIR’s executive director. “It’s very obvious that politicians are paying attention to Muslim voters.”

In addition to political action, the group seeks to mitigate the American Muslim role in post-Sept. 11 America. The group recently launched a “Not in the Name of Islam” campaign, which is a petition that denounces terrorism as un-Islamic. More than 650,000 signatures now appear on the petition.

But despite the group’s efforts to decry terrorist activities, critics have alleged that CAIR and other Muslim groups are generally unwilling to condemn terrorism _ specifically that CAIR would deny that the group Hamas is a terrorist organization.

“Hamas conducts terrorist activities,” said Hooper. “Whoever would blow up civilians anywhere, we would condemn it.”

Hooper expressed frustration with what he sees as the public’s unwillingness to hear what CAIR is saying to terrorists through public statements, full-page ads in newspapers and initiatives like “Not in the Name of Islam.”

“Other than having a condemnation of terrorism stamped on the foreheads of every Muslim in America, I don’t know what else we can do,” he said.

All of CAIR’s activities, however, from defending the rights of Muslims to wear headcoverings or beards in the workplace to supplying books about Islam to American public libraries, cannot meet all of the needs of its constituent community. Studies have shown that despite the efforts of CAIR and other groups, national Muslim advocacy organizations face a challenge when it comes to connecting to rank-and-file members of local communities.

Only 24 percent of mosque-goers in Brooklyn reported that they had a lot of confidence in Islamic advocacy groups, according to a 2003 study that interviewed 423 people who live near three mosques.

“The Role of Mosques in the Civic and Political Incorporation of Muslim Americans,” which was conducted by Princeton professor Amaney Jamal as part of the Columbia University-funded Muslims in New York Project, concluded that mosques, not advocacy groups, are the most important institutions in the Muslim community.

“The mosques are very central to people’s daily lives in the United States, even more than Islamic advocacy groups,” said Jamal.

As for national organizations like CAIR, “They invest a lot of their resources and energy in trying to set a policy agenda and a larger national agenda,” she said, and as a result, “they really haven’t won the grass roots at the local level.”

Jamal’s study showed, for example, that those surveyed who had personally experienced discrimination were even less likely _ only 11.5 percent of Muslim males _ to report confidence in national Islamic advocacy organizations.

Other American Muslim scholars note, however, that CAIR has made a significant difference because of its rigorous activity on behalf of Muslims who experience discrimination.

“It has reduced the ability to attack Muslims in America,” said Muqtedar Khan, who is the chair of political science at Adrian College in Michigan and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Khan added, however, that further development of CAIR’s activities will be needed, specifically increasing its legislative influence and gaining the ability to bring lawsuits in discrimination cases.

“They are still the best Muslim player in the game, but they do not fully understand the game” if CAIR remains outside the legislative arena, said Khan.

But, calling CAIR “the most successful Muslim organization in North America,” Khan said that the group “has filled the gap and has captured the imagination of the American Muslim community.”

KRE/PH END ROSSI