Mr. Rahaman’s allegations are not substantiated by facts

Jun 24, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
I was quite bemused reading Mr. Mohamed Rahaman’s attack titled “Tone of Bisram’s letter condescending” published Kaieteur News June 12 and Mr. Bisram’s reply in SN Jun 13 titled “No Negative Comments about Obama”.
I honestly think Mr. Rahaman is not a regular reader of Mr. Bisram’s weekly columns in Caribbean New Yorker. Otherwise he would not have made false conclusions. His allegations are not substantiated by facts and as such owes Mr. Bisram an apology. He also owes Muslims an apology for suggesting that Muslims automatically supported Obama because of some loyalty to him perhaps for his Muslim ancestry or Islamic middle name.
Mr. Bisram performs yeoman service to the Guyanese community in NY. He is a prolific writer who pens countless stories on the community. Few other Guyanese give so much of time and energy gratis to the Guyanese community in New York. I am disappointed that SN which is supposed to be a serious paper would publish a letter without checking Rahaman’s claims for their veracity. Did Bro. Rahaman check with the Obama campaign to verify his claim whether Bisram supported Obama?
I recalled reading a commentary from Mr. Bisram stating that he was volunteering to make phone calls for Obama and urged others to become involved in the election campaign regardless of who they supported. I read many opinion pieces and analyses from Mr. Bisram that were positive about Obama and his campaign. There was also a lengthy letter in Caribbean New Yorker (CNY) in which Mr. Bisram stated that he worked with Mr. Obama at City College in the early 1980s. It seems to me that Bro. Rahaman did not read all these pieces. Otherwise, he would not have leveled his unsubstantiated charge that Bisram did not support Obama. Bro. Rahaman lives in Maryland and it is unlikely he would have access to the paper, which is distributed in the NY area.
Another issue that offends me has to do with Bro. Rahaman’s claim that Muslims overwhelmingly support Obama all over the globe. That is not factual. And I doubt Rahaman did surveys in all 54 Muslim countries that he claimed he surveyed to find Muslims overwhelmingly support Obama.
Mr. Rahaman has done the Muslim community of Richmond Hill and Muslims all over the globe a great harm. I feel deeply insulted, and I am sure most Muslims feel the same, of Mr. Rahaman’s insinuation that Muslims automatically supported Barack Obama – perhaps because of his Islamic middle name (Hussein) or his Islamic ancestry. Muslims did not and do not automatically support Obama. And it is not factual that they overwhelmingly support Obama in every Islamic community in America and country.
I talked to Guyanese Muslims and they were divided about support for the candidacy of Obama. Some said they voted for him because of his Muslim background (although he said he is a Christian) and some said they did not vote for him because he is not Muslim. Others said they could not vote for him because of the racism they experienced in Guyana. And yet others said they supported him because they want change. If Rahaman had read media reports, he would know that reports say only about 25% Muslims in Pakistan favoured Obama, 35% in Iraq, 30% in Afghanistan, 11% in Palestine, 17% in Afghanistan, 13% in Iran, etc. The numbers are also low in several other countries like Sudan, Somalia, etc. Only in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Morocco, Jordan, India, Guyana, etc. did Muslims overwhelmingly support Obama. Muslims are angry with the US with the way Palestinians were ill-treated by America and how Muslims are targeted in America.
With regards to CNY, Bro. Rahaman is right that the paper did not offer fulsome support to Obama. But that is the paper’s freedom of press right. And the paper has a right to change its position at any time to support Obama.
But it is not true that the paper did not carry one positive report on Obama. The paper praised Obama on his magnificent victory and wished him success with a full front page colour photo of his family.
With regards to coverage of Muslims, no other West Indian paper in NY has offered the kind of coverage of Muslim events (Ramadan, Eid, Youman Nabi) like CNY. I thank CNY on behalf of the Muslim and Guyanese communities for its generous press coverage and its focus on Guyana.
Mohamed Zamdin

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