No Muslim American in Obama's Cabinet

More than two million Muslim Americans voted for President Elect Obama. This was a historic vote in which 90 percent of the Muslims vote went to the democratic candidates. This was in spite of Mr. Obama reluctance to be associated with any main stream Muslim organizations such as CAIR, MAS, American Muslim Task Force. He was careful to such an extent that he never came any where near a mosque or a Muslim gathering. His campaign sacked the Muslim coordinator.

Young Muslims campaigned enthusiastically for Obama even though two Hijab wearing women were removed from the a Obama rally by the his campaign workers. He refused to acknowledge his Pakistani and Muslim friends from college days. Despite all this Muslims voted for Mr. Obama. Their vote was taken for granted by the democratic party just like in the past African American voters were taken for granted.

Of course Obama's campaign collected record number of campaign contributions from rich Muslim physicians and businessmen. These persons were happy to have the fundraisers in their luxury homes and photographs taken with the different senators, congressmen, and governors. They tried to prove these surrogates that they are the good Muslims, the secular Muslims, and do not care for the mosques or majority of Muslims who have beards, wear hijabs, and frequent these mosques.

Guess what these secular Muslims got for their money; the glossy pictures and thank you notes. They did not any appointments that matter even on the transition team. On the other hand other communities who invited Obama and his surrogates to the synagogues and churches instead of their elegant homes, got the appointments that matter. According to all the Internet traffic and blogs of progressive citizens that I have seen, Mr. Obama is being already called the first Jewish president of the USA.

I hope that the secular Muslims have learned a lesson. You cannot disown others and call themselves as good Muslims. Muslims in USA have a common destiny and cannot achieve their goals without connection to the mosque and regular Muslims.

What a Waste - Jumma Khutbah

About 300-700 Muslims come to pray on Friday at each mosque. They are captive audience of the Imam and his speech (khutbah). However, I notice usually the attendees tune out what Imam is saying in the first five minutes. The Imam usually tells them how bad they are in their practice of religion. He talks about Hijab for woman 90 percent of the time. However, he does not tell the men that things like beard is also Sunah and pronunce them as Kafirs. Imagine what will be the reaction of a young girl who takes time of work on Friday and hears this. She is likely to stop coming. She needs encouragement. I have found that woman start wearing Hijab on their own when they are ready and are not motivated by Khutbahs.

The Imam's is usually a recent immigrant with poor command of English. It is almost impossible to undersatnd him. He thinks he knows it all about Fiqah and Sunnat. However, his knowledge is rudimentary. According to traditions of the prophet, the Khutbah should be shorter than the time it takes to pray. However, the average Imam holds the audience with his monlogue for 30 minutes instead of a schedule of 15 minutes. The audience are looking at their watches because they have to go back to work. He moves from subject to subject without any direction or central theme. If he was teaching a class instead, all the students will drop out.

I have seen congregations aroused by a young Imam with English as his native tongue. I have seen how the word spreads and mosque gets very active. However, most of the mosques in USA are usually taken over by so called conservative immigrants and they do not like to part their authority. These trustees are usually no where to be seen when the mosque is being built by avearge muslims; however, they appear on the scene immedately after the infrastructure is complete.

What we need is to encourage young bright Muslims to study religion here in United States and not in places like Saudi Arabia. We have to collect funds to award scholarships to these students. Furtermore we have to make the Imam's salary attractive for these bright persons after they graduate.