Katherine Stapp

Although xenophobia has ebbed somewhat in the 30 months since the terror attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, some rights groups are worried that Arab and Muslim Americans are once again being demonised as national security takes centre stage in the nascent US presidential campaign. They point to a new George W Bush televised campaign ad accusing his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, of trying to “weaken the Patriot Act used to arrest terrorists and protect America”.

As the female narrator utters the words “war on terror”, several images float across the screen, including one of an olive-skinned, dark-haired young man squinting menacingly into the camera. While the individual in question is, it turns out, an Italian American actor, Arab and Muslim organisations say the obvious intent is to stereotype those of Middle Eastern descent as “terrorists”.

A recent poll of Arab American voters in the swing states of Michigan, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania found that nearly two-thirds planned to cast ballots against the president in November. The respondents, representing a likely turnout of more than half a million voters, said their three areas of greatest concern were civil liberties, the war on Iraq and US support for Israel.

If the election were held today, the poll found, Kerry would beat Bush among Arab American voters in those states by a margin of 54 to 30 per cent. Arab Americans are not the only group with whom Bush has lost favour. A recent national poll of Chinese Americans found that just 15 per cent approved of his performance, even though Asian Americans were the only minority to back Bush by a majority in 2000. Some see this shift as stemming in part from high-profile prosecutions like that of US Army Captain James Joseph Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre who was just exonerated of spying after spending 76 days in solitary confinement.

The perception that the “war on terror” is a code phrase for racial and religious profiling is common within the Muslim and Arab community, who have seen family and friends detained, deported, and generally treated with suspicion. “In any election, there’s a great temptation to demagoguery,” Hussein Ibish of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee told IPS. “Voters hear about the problem of immigration, foreigners infiltrating the US, all of that stuff is very easy to do and it will probably have some appeal”. “However, it’s possible for the president to overplay the 9/11 card.”

It is this last group that a new alliance of Muslim groups is hoping to energise ahead of the November election. Called the American Muslim Taskforce, its nine member organisations have drafted an agenda focusing on peace and civil rights, and set an ambitious goal of registering 85 percent of an estimated 3 million Muslims who are eligible to vote in the presidential election.

“We will mobilise American Muslim voters at the local, state and national levels, with a primary focus on those states and races that may have the most impact in the coming elections,” said taskforce coordinator Agha Saeed in a statement. “Our vote is the best guarantee of our civil rights and the best expression of our citizenship.” — IPS