Solomonia Archive: The Free Muslims' Lonely March

Friday, May 6, 2005

The Free Muslims Against Terrorism are organizing a march...against terror...and it should come as no surprise that none of the 'major' national Muslim advocacy organizations are joining in, and frankly, of the 66 "groups" listed as participants, there are some pretty marginal names on there, including some individuals' blogs.

And why would the big groups attend? The party line is that Muslims are not particularly responsible for terror - that only 'Islamophobes' believe so - so that they have nothing to apologize for, or particularly speak out against. Signing on to a march like this would just be admitting that they did.

To date, 70 organizations have sponsored the first ever Muslim led March Against Terror. Approximately 20 of the 70 organizations are Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern. This is the good news. The bad news is that of the leading Muslim organizations four have refused to participate or endorse the rally. The absence of these organizations is ironic. For the past 10 years, these organizations have complained that they are unfairly being accused of not doing enough to fight terror. But when a Muslim organization takes the lead to organize a March Against Terror they argue that it is not necessary and refuse to join.

These organizations have done enormous damage to the American Muslim community and Muslims are finally rising up to tell them “you don’t represent us or our American Muslim values.”

Over the last three years, American Muslims have witnessed the creation of several new progressive, moderate and secular Muslim organizations that actually represent the views of the silent majority and are bypassing the organizations that falsely claim they represent main stream Islam. Their monopoly is coming to an end...

I truly wish them luck in that.

Posted by Solomon at 11:10 AM on Friday, May 6, 2005 | Comments (3)
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3 Comments

#1 misskelley | May 6, 2005 11:50 AM

Ever since I first heard about this march, I had that bad feeling that the majority of marchers would be mostly lefty/liberal non-Muslims. There will be many kaffiyeh scarves worn by people with no Middle Eastern descent.

The MSM will probably cover the march in glowing terms (it'll be a cover page story at the Boston Globe). The crowd size will be greatly overestimated, like the "Million Man" march that drew 100,000 people.

In spite of my crabbiness, I also wish the Free Muslims well in their efforts.

#2 misskelley | May 6, 2005 11:57 AM

Looked at the list of sponsors, there are more Muslim/Middle East groups than I would have thought. Great! What's a sponsor or vendor? Are they all marching? If this is a Muslim-led Muslims Against Terror march, what's the point of including Republicans, Protest Warriors, Copts, and Family Services folks?

#3 Solomon | May 6, 2005 2:05 PM

I don't know the answers. Everyone is welcome, but the more interesting question to me is how many Muslim/ME groups support it, and from what I can tell of those on the list, they all look pretty small time to me.