Praise be to Allah (swt), the Cherisher and Sustainer of the universe. In America we have experienced the expansion of masjids from a few major urban cities to the rural south. In the mid-west heartland we’ve got masjids, Muslim schools, businesses, political organizations, associations and institutions. Despite Islam’s growth in America there are certain political factors that weakens the emergent American Muslim movement. The most glaring of these factors are political fragmentation, a superficial and naive approach to the American political process and insularity juxta-exposed against a pluralistic society. The need to address these factors is both a civic, moral and spiritual imperative.

For the well being of Muslims living in America and throughout the Muslim world, certain interest groups in and outside of America have used bigoted distortions of Islam, portraying Muslims in America as seditious, dangerous and totally incompatible with American life. Since the September 11 tragedies these same forces have intensified this propaganda with reckless abandonment. It is important that Muslims in America not be viewed as a fifth column. We must continue to build a grassroots movement that supports an all encompassed approach of total integration into the American society for the express purpose of fulfilling the mandate of the laws of Allah (swt) that is "enjoining the good and forbidding the evil." It is a quest to make America better for ourselves, our children and indeed all Americans. Once again I will add it is indeed a quest to make life better for ourselves, and all of humanity. My presence here today is just a small humble step in those directions.

Having said that, the profound question is, are you really saying brother Mahdi or as we say in African-American, we call our living area the hood, as we say in the hood: "Brake it on down." What I’m saying is that we have come to a stage in America as Muslims that we are sick and tired off being sick and tired, and therefore we feel that there are certain things that we must do in order to protect our liberties, our religion firstly, and the well being of our Muslim community. I think that we have moved on several fronts, and I would like to highlight them today just in general.

I would give you the five, but they aren’t in order of priority:

Active civic participation of the Muslim community and the greater society.

The understanding of direct action campaigns, meaning that everything cannot be resolved simply by sitting on a chair, that type of activism is not an option in America. In America the squeaky wheel gets the oil, if you say nothing you get nothing. If you’re not willing to go out and peacefully assemble and demonstrate, if you’re not willing to challenge through direct and creative non-violent actions the injustices that are facing you in this society, then you will continually be marginalised, brutalised and taken advantage of.

Number three is coalition building. Once again, exercising my ethnic origin in the hood, "Who got your back?" - meaning, who’s with you. When something happens often we say in African-American: "I’ve got your back," meaning I support you, you can count on me. That aspect is very important in terms of our ability to function in America as a Muslim community. We must build coalitions. Later I want to talk about the principles of coalition building, because sometimes we shy away from it because we feel that it will dilute our religious integrity, or for some reason it will bring about a certain assimilation of our religious practices and our religious faith. How do we build coalitions in a pluralistic society without diluting or weakening our iman (faith) and without compromising the principles of our faith?

Something that I think Muslims have been very weak at in the West especially in America and that is litigation - the ability to bring legal suits and legal challenge to the government when it has misbehaved in it’s conduct towards Muslims and their civil rights and civil liberties. One of the reasons we avoid it is because in the Muslim community, especially in America, we have doctors and lawyers, but most of them have no experience in constitutional law, civil rights or civil liberties. And we have engineers, engineers and engineers! One of the careers that we have lacked in the Muslim community is how to bring about litigation that deals with the challenging principles of government and challenges the principles of civil rights and civil liberties.

The other thing about litigation is that it is a long and laborious process. The civil rights movement took us ninety years just to institutionally abolish the principles of apartheid. We are in the McDonald age and want every thing fast and instant — the concept of instant gratification sometimes takes away our job and that is to do the work. We know the qadr (decree) belongs to Allah (swt), but we have to do the work and not worry about the time factor. One of the things that we really have to do is invest in legal advocates, who can indeed advocate on our behalf. In the US, we have a mentor program for young law students where we are placing them with prominent civil rights lawyers and lawyers who have had experience in dealing with the government in the anti-war period so that they could learn the principles of litigation and dealing with human rights and civil rights issues on behalf of Muslims.

Lastly, we have action and education in grassroots involvement. Nothing is more important than that. Just like here in Australia as you continue to build your infrastructures and organizations, one of the things that you can learn from your Muslim brothers and sisters in America is that we went the inverse way. We built national organizations without building a grassroots base. That spelt disaster for us when 9/11 hit because what we had were institutions that were very ceremonial and symbolic gestures were made. Muslim leaders were able to talk to the president and take a picture, they were able to talk to the Secretary of State and were able to meet with members of Congress. Muslim organizations were able to do that, but in the final analysis they were only able to produce a picture and take that around to produce a fundraising event. What happened was that there was no grassroots foundation. I call it a system of a lot of fluff but no stuff.

We had a lot of fancy meetings with high officials and so on and every time George Bush wanted to bomb a Muslim country or invoke a certain aggression on Muslim lands all he had to do was to call a bunch of the national organizations and Muslim leaders and get them to take a picture and send them to the Muslim world to say that things are all right with the Muslim community in America. I want to point out the importance of developing on the local level, grassroots participation. One of the things that we are doing in MAS is we are not waiting for people to come Washington D.C, we’re going to the masjids where we are training them on civic participation. We’re doing training on how to do Direct Action Campaigns. We’re helping the imams and their different offices on how to do press releases, we’re teaching the process, not doing the work but teaching and providing the skills. So what I’m saying is that education on the local level is an important aspect.

In fact, we had our first Imam’s Conference, where we trained imams from over fifty different cities in Washington D.C and we went through the process of how to develop public relation campaigns with members of local officials, how to meet local officials, not just members of Congress. And just to make sure that we got it right we took them and broke them into groups and marched them onto Capitol Hill and let them meet members of Congress to see if they had really learnt what we’ve done in the process. It’s not just theory, but a process of teaching with validation. Which is one of the reasons why I think interactive workshops are most effective.

These are some of the basic things that we are working on, but all of this means nothing if we do not put this into human terms. I ask for your indulgence as I put a human face on all that we are facing. First let me say that I am one of those Muslims who have the double whammy. In America I have to worry about DWB (Driving While Black) because of the overall racist history of America, but I also have to worry about FWM (Flying While Muslim). And I just wanted to share with you some of the things that we are facing. Every day men who I pray with and who other Muslims in America pray with leave their homes and get picked up by the INS and we don’t know where they are. In America we have "The Missing." Muslim men are missing and their families don’t know where they are and even their appointed lawyers can’t find them and the law has said that the Attorney General does not have to give that information.

An activist Somali sister was told that if she does not cooperate with the FBI against her masjid, they will find some very elementary way of revoking her permanent resident status. They said that if she so much as has a traffic ticket they will deport her. And, since Somalia is still in the middle of a civil war, she would definitely have to stay in the detention center. And, they would take her three kids away from her while she’s in detention and perhaps Christians would raise them.

And then there’s what I call the strange good cop bad cop scenario, in the hood we call it the "one two." When the police gets you, one plays helpful while the other plays tough — "work with me and I’ll keep that bad guy away from you." That is the process in which the Justice Department has played upon our community. How else can you explain our Commander-in-Chief, president George W. Bush while espousing his great love for the Muslims, his great love for diversity and the contributions of all the great faith traditions, he took the oath of office from one of the most right wing, foul-speaking anti-Muslim, Christian cleric, Franklin Graham. But, don’t stop there, let us see who is administrating the laws of the United States Government, Attorney General John Ashcroft, who with his father, is an active member of The Assembly of God, one of the right wing Christian organizations. Not only does he believe that Muslims would go to hell but also Catholics would find their way along with the Muslims. He along with many others has now become a expert on Islam, the Quran and terrorism.

Now I ask for your personal indulgence. I think that when we face all this, the human dynamics, we need to understand that we serve an awesome God, that our faith is a dynamic faith, that this final revelation for all of humanity is dynamic and it will overcome all of this. Let me give you my first experience with terrorism. It was 1955 and there I was sitting with my two-year-old brother and we were watching a Western. As we were watching TV the whole side of the house began to be engulfed in flames and before I could realise what was happening the glass flew and I heard a loud shooting sound. The next thing I can remember was my grandmother’s body falling on my brother and me. My grandfather was outside. He was a civil rights activist and wanted for African-Americans to have the right to vote. He had been warned by the segregationists not to do it and so their reaction was to try to burn us in our homes and shoot us. We didn’t call the police and we didn’t call the firemen because they were the same ones underneath those white sheets trying to burn and shoot us. That was my first experience with terrorism.

So at a very early age I began to wonder, what is it with life that merely because of the colour of my skin people would harm me. Where’s the justice in that and where is the justice in only being able to go the zoo on Saturdays from 1:30-4:00 - Colored Day they called it. Where was the justice in receiving in segregated schools textbooks that had been used by white kids before that had pages torn out. So at a very early age my quest for justice began and I became active in the civil rights movement and I learnt a lot of things there. I learnt about organizing and I was mentored as a young person. This is an example that we can really learn from in the Muslim community — the importance of mentoring our young people. I learnt a lot but I didn’t really find in my heart the justice that I was looking for so then I moved and gravitated away from the King movement and I heard of this orator, Malcolm X and was really excited about that. I moved more towards a militant organization in the United State looking for justice and all of a sudden I was into nationalism looking for justice but still could not find it. So then I moved to college, the days of Marx and socialism and I moved into that state and I learnt a lot but still couldn’t find the justice that I was seeking. So I did a 360 and said to myself that maybe I could buy some justice so I joined the music industry. I became a record producer and a concert promoter and made an awful lot of money and as the young kids say, I was "living large." And then I found myself with lots of money, big offices, major so-called celebrities surrounded me but I was emptier than I was at first.

I found no sense of justice in my soul and then I remembered that I had a copy that I had always kept of the Yusuf Ali translation of the Quran that was given to me by a Pakistani brother. And then during one of my most deepest moments and darkest moments of despair having gone through all the isms and schisms and found justice completely abandoned within my heart, I opened up to Surah Rahman - what an irony, the chapter of mercy. And then I saw the translation that said: "Allah (swt) has set the scales of justice high in the firmaments in order that the human being should not transgress; therefore establish just weights and fall not short on the balance." It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had gone through all these different movements and if I really wanted justice, the first thing I had to realise is that justice does not come from a man, it is not man oriented. And if I really wanted justice I had to do justice to my soul and the only way to do that is submit to the Lord of Justice by testifying that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad (s) is the Messenger of Allah. Based on that I found the real justice I was looking for all that time - Islam, submission to Allah.

We serve an awesome God and have no reason to fear. The only thing that we should fear when we talk about Muslims Under Siege is Allah (swt), because if we fear Allah, if we realise that we serve an awesome God, that there is no mighty power save that of Allah (swt), it doesn’t matter if it’s the Prime Minister of Australia, the UK or the United States, there is no mighty power save that of Allah. And we submit to that understanding and we’re willing to take that and act upon it. Then we will indeed beat back those who would wish to minimise us, marginalise us, terrorise us, and oppress us. I’m confident today. I didn’t come today with a message of doom and gloom. I’m confident today my brothers and sisters in Australia that we serve an awesome God and I’m confident knowing that we understand that Allah never changes the condition of a people until they change that which is within themselves. Therefore I say to you my brothers and sisters: "O you who believe! Stand for justice, hold on to the rope of Allah (swt) and be not divided."