What Muslim Member of Congress?
by Askia
Muhammad
"The first Muslim in Congress owes his co-religionists to
at least study the subject, before joining the stampede, and voting for a
war-mongering condemnation of members of his faith in another country."
This article originally appeared in Black Journalism Review.
Each of the 435 voting members of the House of
Representatives has four options on each of the hundreds and hundreds of
recorded votes which are called for in every session of Congress. A member can
vote "Yay" or "Nay" or "Present." In addition, a member can choose to not vote
at all on any issue.
On Nov. 7, 1916, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman
elected to Congress. She was a Republican from the state of Montana. Like
others who go forward to blaze the trail, she had an awesome responsibility,
and with courage, she upheld that responsibility with dignity.
Shortly after Rep. Rankin took office in 1917, Congress took
up the debate over U.S. participation in World War I. Women and others who have
not always been welcome at the table of power-sharing in this country could
learn a lot from Jeannette Rankin.
With the 19th Amendment to the Constitution granting women
the right to vote, still three years from ratification, women suffragettes were
extremely conscious of the conduct and image of women in the public arena.
Women wanted Rep. Rankin to go along with the prevailing sentiment for the
United States to hurry on and join her European allies who were already
fighting "the war to end all wars." They did not want the first woman in
Congress to be perceived as "feminine" and less able than men, to make the
tough decisions required to govern a powerful nation. Ms. Rankin opposed the
war.
"They did not want the first woman in Congress to be
perceived as ‘feminine' and less able than men."
On that fateful day, to the consternation of many women, she
was one of only 50 votes in the House, opposing U.S. participation in WWI.
In 1918 when she ran for re-election, Jeannette Rankin, the
peace-loving first woman to serve in Congress, was defeated. Proudly, Jeannette
Rankin was later a Founding Vice President of the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) and a founding member of the Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom.
In 1940 Ms. Rankin was re-elected to Congress, this time on
an anti-war platform. But following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she
once again voted against U.S. entry into a World War. She was the only House
member voting against World War II. On that occasion she violated the tradition
of silently casting her vote. "As a woman, I can't go to war and I refuse to
send anyone else," she said. "I vote ‘No.'" She did not vote against declaring
war on Germany and Italy following their declaration of war on the U.S.
Instead, she merely voted "Present."
An admirer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, she led
more than 5,000 women who called themselves The Jeannette Rankin Brigade, in a
march to the U.S. Capitol, opposing U.S. participation in the Vietnam War.
I am an admirer of Rep. Jeannette Rankin, and those who
follow in her tradition, like Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the only House
member to vote against the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
In late June 2007, the House voted 411-2 (with 11 members
voting "Present" and eight members not voting) on a modern matter with profound
future war implications. House Roll Call No. 513 was a Concurrent Resolution
with the Senate, "calling on the United Nations Security Council to charge
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the United Nations
Charter because of his calls for the destruction of the State of Israel."
"Rep. Keith
Ellison voted yes to condemn the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as did
all Congressional Black Caucus members, save one: Rep. John Conyers."
Sadly, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first and only
Islamic believer elected to Congress did not follow in the tradition of Jeannette
Rankin. He voted yes to condemn the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as
did all Congressional Black Caucus members, save one: Rep. John Conyers
(D-Mich.), the Dean of the CBC did not vote on that flawed measure. Anti-war
Presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) cast
the two no votes.
I say the resolution was a flawed measure because it
condemned remarks by Pres. Ahmadinejad, which he did not make. Yes, he said
something harsh and politically un-palatable to the pro-Israel lobby, but he
did not call for the murder of Jewish people!
Pres. Ahmadinejad did not incite genocide, calling for
Israel to be "wiped off the face of the map," as his critics claim. What he
said in Persian, according to University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, was
an old saying of Ayatolla Khomeini of Iran, who called for "this occupation
regime over Jerusalem to vanish from the page of time." As Prof. Cole points
out, calling for a "government" to "vanish" is not the same as calling for innocent
people to be killed.
The first Muslim in Congress owes as much to his
co-religionists to at least study the subject, before joining the stampede, and
voting for a war-mongering condemnation of members of his faith in another
country. He could have just voted "Present" and not taken one side or the
other. Like Rep. Conyers, he could have just not voted at all.
Ironically, the country whose president Rep. Ellison - the
first Muslim in the U.S. national legislature - voted to condemn, has had a
Jewish member in its legislature, representing 20,000 Jews living in Iran, and
he has served even longer than this country's first Muslim in Congress.
With all the options House members have when casting their
votes, and with the precedents of Jeannette Rankin and Barbara Lee, and Dennis
Kucinich and Ron Paul and John Conyers to guide his way, Rep. Ellison's
betrayal on House Roll Call No. 513 leads me to wonder: What Muslim member of
Congress?!
Askia Muhammad is a veteran
journalist. He publishes the Black Journalism Review, and can be contacted
at askia99@verizon.net.
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