Yes, it is your choice if you want to endorse killing Muslims or not.

This whole idea of electability is flawed. Also reasoning that Muslims as a group should vote as a block is also flawed.

Muslims differ in many ways and their interests are often times not the same. Their political ideologies, class and sophistication differ so that having a united Muslim block is near impossible.

Furthermore, regarding electability, this is a phenomenon that creates stagnated thinking and a stagnating political process.

What one should do is on an individual level make an informed choice as to which candidate is the best for this country and vote for that person. This is called voting your conscience. Sometimes this may mean voting the “unelectable” candidate, sometimes it may even mean staying home and voting from no one.

If you cast your vote for anyone else then you are being dishonest with yourself.

Also I would like to mention that you did not mention one concrete reason why anyone should vote for Obama except that they were prefixed with “may” and “might.” Dont endorse candidates because they are the lesser of two evils. They are still evil.

Both Obama and Hillary are in bed with AIPAC, they both have corporate sponsors, they both have shady pasts.

As one commentator has said, “Obama is trying to win this election by pure sophistry.” He calls for change, but what is that change? Who knows? “The Audacity of Hope.” Hope is not audacious, attacking the roots of corruption and immorality, that is audacious. I can think of at least one candidate who is audacious. But I dont endorse anyone. Like I said, vote your conscience.

T4K, a couple of years ago Dr. Ron Paul gave me a Roll out Constitution replica and I’m sure that you understand what that kind of present means for a strict constitutionalist like him. Plus I’ve been a member of his Republican Liberty Caucus for many years so it’s with a little bit of philosophical insight that I tell you this. Ron Paul is not for or against Israel, he’s simply a strict non-interventionist. A lot of Muslims misunderstand his philosophy simply because too many of us are grasping for any major league political supporters we can find.

Obama would be great and my dad who’s been sending him money for almost a year would cheer for him louder but as for me, I don’t believe that defeating the Clinton machine is as easy as people assume. But the good thing is that my wife’s no longer a Clinton supporter, so hopefully that’ll mean that Obama’s support amongst women’s rising. As for fyi, I’m uncommitted to any Presidential Candidate.

I too realized that the reason I like Dr Ron Paul is because of the non-interventionist foreign policy issue as well. But I don’t agree with libertarianism besides that on other levels because essentially the philosophy is that the government should have no control of anyone’s life–in that sense, libertarians are very socially liberal (gay marriages, etc.).

Realistically speaking Obama does seem better than Clinton though I wouldn’t mind her either (I thought Edwards was pretty cool with his anti-poverty and anti-lobbyists ferocity)–another realistic thing is this: if Clinton wins the nomination, a LOT of people will vote against her, which means getting a Republican in office again… :-S (even though McCain doesn’t *seem* as bad as Bush)

So overall, Obama does seem the lesser of the two evils.

with that said, I would appreciate some info on the Islamic perspective on voting…. :)

assalamu alaykum,

if you check out “The Israel Factor” by Haaretz (A Jewish Newspaper), they are rooting for Hilary over Obama cuz she’s more friendly towards Israel:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerPage.jhtml

However, for them, McCain gets the highest score of 7.75 (out of 10).

With that being said, I’m for Obama…

There’s no doubt that AIPAC (a Jewish lobby group, which happens to be the LARGEST lobby group in D.C.) has connections throughout the Democratic Party and even the Republican Party.

If everyone remembers, Hamas and Fatah signed a peace agreement in Makkah, which seemed to “concern” Mr. Barack Obama as he said in his own words:

“We should all be concerned about the agreement negotiated among Palestinians in Mecca last month. The reports of this agreement suggest that Hamas, Fatah, and independent ministers would sit in a government together, under a Hamas Prime Minister, without any recognition of Israel, without a renunciation of violence, and with only an ambiguous promise to respect previous agreements.”

http://jta.org/images/cached/JTA_PHOTOimage4881w326hnorm-.jpg

I agree with manoffewwords. Muslims shouldn’t vote as a block.

Frankly, I think a LOT of domestic change needs to happen fast and should be a priority, and I think the gov’t should play a strong role in that. There’s more to a presidency than foreign policy. I don’t think anyone will do as poorly as our current president, so I’m not as worried about that.

As far as healthcare is concerned… I mean honestly, what changes are we really gonna see? Health care is such a big entangled web that has corporate interests meshed with politician interests. Hilary does have a drawn out plan, and the support of a previous president, I’m sure, doesn’t hurt her.

Obama isn’t very specific about his plans. I’m not really sure exactly what change he’s gonna bring. He sketches dreams in his charismatic speaking style. It’s better to know what to expect than not, and frankly, I don’t know what to expect from Obama.

http://www.naderexplore08.org/

He’s trying to see how many supporters he can get, and whether he should run in ’08

I recall Hillary saying that if they had any suspicion that there were still al qa’idah in Iraq, the process of removing the troops wouldn’t end so quickly. I don’t trust this woman. Not like I trust any politician, but her, not one tiny bit.

Musa – Your comments help explain a position against Muslim bloc voting.. as always Masha Allah quite articulate.

I still think that the daw`ah is overwhelmlingly the other way, with Muslims promoting and debating their “constituent” POV.

In Umar Lees’ book review blog enty: http://umarlee.com/2008/01/24/error-in-the-war-on-error/

“Muslims already know that if you completely assimilate into non-Muslim society and take the values of secular humanism as your own you will be accepted, that is no big surprise. If you are a Muslim male who is an effete latte sipper carrying a man bag in Manhattan on the way to the art gallery you will be accepted by that crowd because you have accepted their values as your own and given them supremacy over the values of Islam. The same can be said to any other number of Muslims who assimilate into different segments of American society. It is a given, it is a known, that if you leave your deen, or at least have a very loose commitment to it, you can gain acceptance into mainstream American society by most people (outside of the Ann Coulter, Robert Spencer, Joe Kauffman crowd).

What I am more interested in knowing is if America is ready to accept Muslims who are observing the sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) in their lives? If this society is as diverse and open as it proclaims to be then one should not have to act and believe like everyone else in order to be accepted. Therefore, it is of a greater interest to me to find out how an average hijabi gets along in her daily life then how a Muslim raver gets along with her fellow druggies.”

Unity of our hearts, in love and commitment to Allah, the Qur’an, the Sunnah, the Ummah, is what pre-conditions success, and whatever political unity is useful would stem from that.

Amad, of course. I’m simply saying from amongst the democrats. Any democrat is better than Mccain, Romney, and Huck.

wa ‘alaykum as salam

It is, but not all. Ron Paul doesn’t spend any of his time trying to attack our religion. We’ll see what happens today.

FYI(more on the others as well): from http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/24/where_do_the_presidential_contenders_stand

ALI ABUNIMAH: I don’t know if they’ve been asked in a debate, but whenever they have been asked, they have all gone out of their way to express full support for what Israel is doing. Barack Obama is not distinguished from the rest of the pack, except by for how far he has moved to try to appease AIPAC and pro-Israel movements.

I remember, Amy—I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator—when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that’s just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation. And just yesterday, he apparently sent a letter to Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador at the UN, to urge the US not to allow any resolution to pass criticizing Israel and saying how Israel was forced to impose this barbaric medieval siege on Israel.

And some more (other info on other candidates as well): http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us

AMY GOODMAN: Barack Obama?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Obama’s top adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski gave an interview to the French press a number of years ago where he boasted about the fact that it was he who created the whole Afghan jihadi movement, the movement that produced Osama bin Laden. And he was asked by the interviewer, “Well, don’t you think this might have had some bad consequences?” And Brzezinski replied, “Absolutely not. It was definitely worth it, because we were going after the Soviets. We were getting the Soviets.” Another top Obama person—

AMY GOODMAN: I think his comment actually was, “What’s a few riled-up Muslims?” And this, that whole idea of blowback, the idea of arming, financing, training the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, including Osama bin Laden, and then when they’re done with the Soviets, they set their sights, well, on the United States.

ALLAN NAIRN: Right. And later, during Bill Clinton’s administration, during the Bosnia killing, the US actually flew some of the Afghan Mujahideen, the early al-Qaeda people—the US actually arranged for them to be flown from there to Bosnia to fight on the Muslim/NATO side.

Another key Obama adviser, Anthony Lake, he was the main force behind the US invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years during which they brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to support a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians and set the stage for the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti.

Another Obama adviser, General Merrill McPeak, an Air Force man, who not long after the Dili massacre in East Timor in ’91 that you and I survived, he was—I happened to see on Indonesian TV shortly after that—there was General McPeak overseeing the delivery to Indonesia of US fighter planes.

Another key Obama adviser, Dennis Ross. Ross, for many years under both Clinton and Bush 2, a key—he has advised Clinton and both Bushes. He oversaw US policy toward Israel/Palestine. He pushed the principle that the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government—in other words, their desires, their desires to expand to do whatever they want in the Occupied Territories. And Ross was one of the people who, interestingly, led the political assault on former Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Carter, no peacenik—I mean, Carter is the one who bears ultimate responsibility for that Timor terror that Holbrooke was involved in. But Ross led an assault on him, because, regarding Palestine, Carter was so bold as to agree with Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa that what Israel was doing in the Occupied Territories was tantamount to apartheid. And so, Ross was one of those who fiercely attacked him.

Another Obama adviser, Sarah Sewall, who heads a human rights center at Harvard and is a former Defense official, she wrote the introduction to General Petraeus’s Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the handbook that is now being used worldwide by US troops in various killing operations. That’s the Obama team.

Hillary is horrible.

I am somewhat uneasy about Obama, but probably he’s better than Hillary. Ron Paul really impressed me, but the “he’s not going to win” campaign has killed him!

Salaams again. Thank you for the response, Amad.

On a brief note, I was watching a popular dialog program on one of the Arabic satellite channels. The moderator – a popular contemporary Muslim speaker – had opened a question about the oppression of non-Muslims in Muslim lands, particularly in the Arab world. It was interesting because he had invited a Christian minister from an Arab country who spoke about problems for Christians in that particular country.

Any way, there was another Muslim guest who spoke about how Islamic Fiqh might address the circumstances of particular Muslim communities in Muslim or non-Muslim societies, whereas the Islamic Shariah is constant.

Moving on to the topic at hand, I hope we don’t use this particular post to get into candidate bashing. People already think Muslims are heathens, so let’s not give the “Muslim hate monitors” any more ammunition for their continuing onslaught against Muslims and Islamic values.

Why individual candidates have entered this particular race, or why they were nominated in the early stages is their particular struggle.
The issue will eventually be the general election and the two major candidates who will pretty much face off for the presidency.

Interestingly enough, there was a conference held at Oklahoma University, or will be held to deal with the question of whether the United States political system should seriously consider a third political party. . . anyone hear any more about the results?

I will try to avoid my personal opinions about the current candidates, although I do share feelings concerning some of them. What I would really like to enter into the dialog is what shape our registered political affiliation should take. . .

I tend to see that Muslim Americans should be conservative & independent by conscience. That way, we could really vote and organize according to the issues, and not according to the whims or any particular political party.

We might be in favor of the Democrats’ vision of equality – though obviously flawed in many ways. On the other hand, our family values and morality concerns would lend toward a more conservative view on some issues.

What really bothers me is that no one candidate, including the Junior Senator from Illinois (for understandable reasons) has not opened any dialog concerning the mistreatment of Muslim Americans and other groups due to stereotyping, and profiling another abuses of power that have taken place in the post 9-11 world, in particular with the policies of the present administration.

So we, as a social-political population group are still stuck in limbo trying to figure out who will do what for us – or to us if he/she takes office.

Another issue of concern is that Muslim Americans are so fragmented with regard to our collective political views. Then again we have the problem with the gap of views held by Muslim American converts and our brothers and sisters from the historical Muslim world whose block vote may or may not have contributed to the election results of 2000. Muslim American converts might be more in tune with the pulse of American society, having come from either the majority population or any one of the minority groups, whereas the Muslims who have earned American residency & citizenship have in many, but not necessarily all cases adopted the mainstream American lifestyle & viewpoints including sometimes attitudes that border on and slightly resemble bigotry.

Until the issues of this disparity within the Muslim American population, and our addressing serious issues that plague our members, we will never be able to forge an impact to engage our society with positive impact.

Allah guide us all in our affairs.

Im am not challanging any of the fatwas given on the permissiblity of voting. Yet, It doesnt sit well with me. I remember back in the 2000 elections, many Muslims were saying that we should stand for Bush because Lieberman was a Jew and so on. Reflecting back on that, how many Muslims who voted for Bush feel proud of checking him off as the presidential candidate? And how many feel ashamed?