Watching Osama all these years unleashing outlandish terror threats with such calm and conviction is horrific. But as a Muslim American, what troubles me most is his sense of divine entitlement to speak for all Muslims all around the world, roughly a billion and half. “The United States must stop threatening the security of Muslims if it wants to avoid ‘another Manhattan,”’ he threatened. I often wonder how many Muslims around the globe are actually inspired by this skinny guy with the funny name.
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As a Muslim American myself, however, I’m inspired by another skinny guy with a funny name who has taken a different road to change America, the son of an African immigrant who was inspired by the generosity of the American dream and, in spite of the last Republican onslaught, was elected a Senator from Illinois. Mr. Barack Obama, is the upcoming Democratic star who single-handily energized millions of Americans of all political convictions during the Democratic primaries. He spook of confident, inclusive, one America, America of hope progressive, enlighten America. However, the conservative evangelicals Americans of the republicans party, the party of god in this election; who seems to declare jihad against Islam and insist on taking America to a dangerous place; a different America, a fearful America; hateful, evangelical, regressive, and isolated. A party who is led by leaders as Juan Cole reported In Salon magazine ….. not competing against … Hillary or Barack, but against what they call Islamic fascism. …. Even the remaining front-runners, have said bigoted things about Muslims and their religion” as she explained. Back when the GOP presidential field was still flush with tough-talking right-wingers, no one was more outrageous in targeting Muslims than Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who suggested that Muslim terrorists inside America were plotting the imminent detonation of an atomic bomb on U.S. soil. How to prevent this Tom Clancy scenario? “If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” Tancredo declared, exposing his dark midlevel side. As Muslim Americans who overwhelmingly voted for Kerry in 2004, according to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) 80% voted for Kerry), we have a special obligation in 2008 to help this country to get ready of its insecurity complex and before starting a mass exodus to Canada asking for asylum, as the whole country is quickly tilting to the abyss of the red right, we need to stay the course, we need to work with the millions of progressive Americans who voted to rid the country of its fear, its hate, its religious fanatic and its political juvenile delinquency. In other words, we need to take the road of Mr. Obama, the road of political activism with the same zeal as a pilgrimages path to Mecca would inspire. As we tried to weed out the Neo-Cons religious extremists and their stone age ideology of “good and evil” from the White House, we also need to use the same vigor to weed out radical hate addicts , from our community, our coffee shops, schools, our mosques, we need to weed out benladinisim from our public and private debate. As Muslim Americans, we need to be inspired by another skinny guy with a funny name… Obama instead of Osama. Ahmed Tharwat/ Producer/Host of the Arab American TV Show Belahdan Minnetonka, MN
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