Last week, the Rev. Jerry Falwell told Beliefnet.com, a religion
website, that when it comes to applying for federal funds under
President Bush’s proposed faith-based initiatives program, “Islam should
be out the door before they knock. … The Moslem faith teaches
hate.”
Falwell was swiftly attacked by Muslim groups and was forced to
apologize, explaining to USA Today that he meant that any group that is
anti-Semitic, racist or in any way bigoted should be disqualified from
the funds. He clearly told Beliefnet, “I think that when persons are
clearly bigoted towards other persons in the human family, they should
be disqualified from funds.”
But my experience with President Bush’s star Muslim recipient of the
proposed funds — Imam Hassan Qazwini, religious leader of Detroit’s
Islamic Center of America mosque — illustrates that Falwell was right.
When he held his January press conference announcing the issuance of an
executive order for the faith-based funds, President Bush featured
Qazwini front and center, among the 35 religious leaders on stage with
him. He introduced Qazwini, the only Muslim and Michigan’s only
religious representative at the White House press conference, as “my
friend from Michigan.” According to the Detroit Free Press, Qazwini met
with Bush in Texas in December “to advise him on formulating the pair of
executive orders issued” for federal funding of faith-based initiatives.
Qazwini’s mosque will certainly be a major recipient of the funds.
But Qazwini’s receipt of tax-funds, let alone his close friendship with
Bush and attendance at the White House, should disturb all Americans.
When I attended Qazwini’s mosque on Nov. 15, 1998, it was one of the
most frightening, hate-filled occasions I’ve ever experienced. On that
day, at Qazwini’s invitation, the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan
spoke to the mosque’s congregants and was received with a hero’s
welcome. Qazwini and Osama Siblani, editor of the Arab-American News,
introduced Farrakhan as “our dear brother,” “a freedom fighter,” and “a
man of courage and sacrifice.”
Farrakhan’s same old anti-Semitic, anti-White canards were no surprise.
It was the cheers and fervor of Qazwini and his congregation that were
so chilling. Watching the audience of more than 1,000 Arab-American and
Black Muslims who surrounded me in the mosque rising up and hatefully
screaming about “the Jews, the Jews,” I realized how my grandparents
must have felt in Nazi Germany.
During his hour-long rant, Farrakhan spouted his usual pap claiming the
Jews control the U.S. government, saying that the “core message” of his
speech was “the evil power of the ‘Zionists.’ … [They are] forces
of evil.”
But, clearly, “Zionists” was his euphemism for the Jews. He shouted out
Jewish-sounding surnames of Clinton administration cabinet members and
asked the crowd, “Rubin, who is he? Cohen, who is he?” The audience
stood up and — in an angry frenzy — shouted, “A Jew, a Jew!” (Actually,
former Secretary of Defense William Cohen is not Jewish. He’s a
Unitarian.)
Farrakhan denounced the Jews as “forces of evil. … We should
perform a jihad (holy war). [They are] frightened, and we must frighten
them even more.” This garnered thunderous applause and cheers from
Qazwini and his congregants. He continued to describe Jews as “these
people in positions of power with a Satanic mentality … [who]
deceive us.” More cheers and applause from Qazwini and the crowd.
As Yale professor and black writer, Julius Lester once wrote about
attending a Farrakhan event, “It is one thing to read the words of
political, racial, and religious anti-Semitism in books; it is another
to hear them spoken with intensity, urgency and conviction, to hear them
affirmed with cheers, the stamping of feet, laughter, applause and arms
thrust toward heaven.” My experience at Imam Qazwini’s mosque was
identical to that — my experience at the mosque to which President Bush
wants to give our tax money.
Ironically, this display of racism and bigotry, sponsored by Qazwini and
his mosque, came within a week of Qazwini’s complaints about alleged
bigotry against Arabs in the movie, “The Siege,” which had just come to
movie screens at the time. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
This past Sunday, on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Education
Roderick Page said that faith-based organizations “are very good at
after school programs for kids. They teach kids things like empathy,
compassion, tolerance.” But that’s hardly what they were teaching the
many children who attended Farrakhan’s speech at Qazwini’s mosque. Yet,
that’s, de facto, what the federal funds to faith-based
organizations — at least in the case of Qazwini’s mosque — will go to.
While Bush appointee John DiIulio, who heads the new Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives effort, maintains that “Washington’s not funding
[religious beliefs],” it can’t help but indirectly fund the type of
vitriol spewed by Farrakhan at Qazwini’s mosque. Even if there are
strong restrictions on the use of the funds, the receipt of them will
offset other amounts in the budgets of such bigoted religious
organizations-offsets that will allow further funding of such racist
speeches.
While there are Muslim leaders, like W. Deen Mohammed, son of the late
Elijah Muhammed, who’ve abandoned the separatist, anti-White,
anti-Semitic rantings of mainstream black Islam, the fact remains that,
in poll after poll, Farrakhan is the most popular black leader, Muslim
or otherwise. And the fact also remains that Qazwini’s mosque is one of
the largest Arabic mosques in North America. Qazwini’s invitation to — in
fact, promotion of — Farrakhan and his hate is typical of mainstream
Arabic Islam.
If Qazwini’s Islamic Center of America is any indication — and it
certainly seems to be — of the behavior of Islamic recipients of federal
funds for faith-based initiatives, Falwell is right. They should be
ineligible for taxpayer-funded means of spewing such hate.
But Bush feels he owes Qazwini and Muslims. Why is not clear. He met
with Qazwini while campaigning in Michigan, and a coalition of major
Muslim political groups, for the first time issued a “Muslim
endorsement” of Bush for president. But their endorsement meant little,
and their political power was overrated. Michigan, home to the largest
concentration of Muslims and Arabs in North America, went for Al Gore.
And even Arab-American Sen. Spencer Abraham lost his re-election bid.
While the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim
Public Affairs Council both denounced Falwell’s comments, neither they
nor Bush’s “friend from Michigan,” Imam Qazwini, ever denounced
Farrakhan’s bigoted, hateful comments. And President Bush’s strong ties
to Qazwini are troubling, especially with the advent of federal funding
of faith-based initiatives — and Qazwini as Bush’s star recipient of
them.
Bush should heed Dr. Julius Lester’s prescription regarding Farrakhan:
“[T]o speak only of the man is wrong. Not to speak of the people who
give him credence and legitimacy partakes of evil.”
