The Perennial Victim

"U.S. Muslims Taken Aback by a Charity's Conviction"
A23, Wednesday 11/26/08
By Laurie Goodstein

In a follow-up piece to an earlier article on the guilty verdict found against the leaders of the Holy Land Foundation charity (for providing funding to the terrorist organization Hamas), this report discusses the resultant shock and "uncustomary silence" within the Muslim-American community. Similar to the previous article, the NYT once again portrays Muslim-Americans as victims of some sort of post September 11 Islamophobic trend.

The author writes that this case "had long revealed a divide among Muslim Americans" -- "Some saw the prosecution of the foundation primarily as evidence of anti-Muslim bias by the American government, while others suspected that the charity might indeed have operated as an overly politicized money funnel for Hamas in the 1990s." Despite the reporter's framing of the issue, she actually shares no quotes that express the American-Muslim leadership's dismay that a supposedly legitimate charity was diverting funds to support the work of a terrorist organization, humanitarian or otherwise.

Instead, the reporter gives voice to Muslim leaders who express their resentment at the U.S. government, accusing it of tainting philanthropic Islamic charities as supporters of terror:

• Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute: "It [the court ruling] seems to give a green light for further intimidation of Muslim charities. It makes people even more unsure of what they are supposed to do to avoid having a problem."
• Dr. Ziad J. Asali, "founder and president of the American Task Force on Palestine": "We wanted to be able to go to the donors and say, if you donate to this entity you don’t have to worry about someone accusing you of terrorism."

According to the journalist, the problematic issue is that "giving to charity is a religious obligation" for Muslims. If Muslims cannot confidently contribute to Islamic charities, then they will fail to perform their religious duty. Therefore, it is the government's fault for creating such an atmosphere of "intimidation." In this formulation, Muslim-Americans become the hapless victim in the face of the overwhelming power of the government.

Perhaps the U.S. Muslim community is largely a victim - not of the government's policies but of the radicals within their own ranks. The U.S. government should rightfully be vigilant of terrorist funding and American-based Islamic charities must do their utmost to ensure that their generous contributions are not diverted to terrorist organizations. The American-Muslim community needs focus on what it can do - mainly marginalizing and condemning those Muslims who would fund terrorism, directly or indirectly - rather than focusing on some U.S. government conspiracy to demonize Islam.

It is unfortunate that the NYT frequently portrays Muslims as the perennial victim - of colonialism, imperialism, prejudice, Israel, U.S. gov't policies, etc. - rather than mining for a deeper story.