New hope in Obama | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press
By Mahvish Rukhsana Khan • November 10, 2008
Last Tuesday night, we the people, redeemed the notion that America is more than a great country, but also a raw and innate idealism—a dream—that thrives within us all. It expands beyond “the land of opportunity” and speaks to our innate sense of justice and equality; that men and women should only be judged on their merits, not their skin color or religious faith.
Yes, there is much mess of the past decade that needs an urgent clean-up: we have shameful institutions like Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons littered across the planet, codified torture and an economy in shambles. But in the moments following the election of the first African-American president, when millions of united Americans of all colors, ages, and religious beliefs cried and celebrated Barack Obama, the latent American idealism within us emerged reinvigorated, that despite our shortcomings—everything had become possible once again.
As a Muslim born and raised in America, Barack Obama’s election has allowed a renewed trust that the religious barriers and appalling vilification faced by America’s 8 million law-abiding and peaceful and Muslims will too subside.With the divisive name-calling and hurtful anti-Islamic jeers, this election has been a tough one for Muslims. Sadly, the main stream media stood idle as heinous slurs linking Muslims with terrorism and anti-Americanism were flung.
No one batted an eye when the Republican supporters suggested that Obama secretly followed the teachings of the Qu’ran, as if it were an al-Qaeda training manual, or when he was sneeringly referred to as Barack Hussien Obama. How un-American to suggest that people like me are somehow not as patriotic or trustworthy as the Christian or Jewish friends I grew up with. Attacks on either of latter faiths would have been met with severe and appropriate reprisal.The result was an outpouring of American Muslim support for Obama. The American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections reported that of more than 600 Muslims polled from more than 10 states, a whopping 89 percent voted for Obama. Just 2 percent of American Muslims gave their vote to McCain.
And Last Tuesday night, when the votes were in and the results were announced, America was at its best again—brimming with hope and possibility; the very qualities that drove my Pashtun parents—and all American immigrants throughout history—to leave their homes in other countries and seek a new idealism and way of life in the United States; the very qualities that make me proud to be an American.Mahvish Rukhsana Khan is an American lawyer and author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “My Guantanamo Diary”.