Rule #1: Taking "Victories for Islam" will not be tolerated.

Mississauga, Ontario - Though he was born in the Saudis' kingdom, "Omar Alghabra came to Canada at a very young age, and immediately knew Canada was his home."

It didn't take very long for him to settle in and pursue the immigrant dream. He went to college and earned his engineer's degree, followed by the coveted MBE (a Master's in Business and Engineering). Even in his early thirties, he was getting famous: the Canadian Arab Federation made him its president, while the Toronto Star newspaper counted him among the unpaid members of its community editorial board. Had he lived in the States, he might well have been one of the Bright Young Men at CAIR.

But this was the Greater Toronto area of Canada, where Muslim- or Arab-Canadian participation in the political process has advanced much farther than in the USA. The Liberal Party of Canada (center-left on the political spectrum) became interested, and encouraged him to run for nomination as its candidate for the national Parliament in Ottawa. The riding chosen for him was the Erindale section of Mississauga, a safe Liberal seat in a growing city at the west end of the metropolis. There, the immigrant vote was strong, with Muslims and Arabs abundantly represented.

On December 2, 2005, the nomination meeting took place at the Coptic Christian Centre of Mississauga's Church of the Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius. It ran very much like a caucus in the USA. The Muslims supporting Alghabra (He was "one of their own"!) operated very much like an old-style ethnic political machine from the Irish or Italian neighborhoods of Chicago, Boston, and New York. According to reliable sources, Desi and Arab Liberal voters were hauled in masses to the venue to cast a ballot. The result was assured: Omar Alghabra took 488 of 773 of the votes cast. Here was a case of everything moving according to plan, just as ISNA's big thinkers dreamed about it back in the 1980's and 1990's.

What happened immediately after that, however, is not entirely clear. It is said that when the tallies were announced, the Muslim participants exploded with joy. This created a terrible din, where few could hear clearly what was being said in other parts of the hall, if at all. Even reporters from the local newspapers lacked certainty about what was going on. Some people heard somebody say, "This is a victory for Islam! Islam won! Islam won!...Islamic power is extending into Canadian politics! Somebody else said, "We (Muslims? Liberals?) have the East (suburbs of Toronto), we have the West, and now we have Mississauga!...Do not vote Conservative ; they are against Islam and Muslims."

About two weeks later, some of the Coptic Arab participants were complaining that Alghabra had said "Islam won" during his acceptance speech, or perhaps while chatting with well-wishers off the cuff soon after. Khalid Usman, a City Councilor for Markham, Ontario, was also blamed for making all or part of the statements mentioned above. Interestingly enough, this latter politician had wanted the Parliamentary nomination for himself; but his Liberal Party leadership reportedly warned him to back off. The observer from the Toronto Star had not heard anything, nor did Alghabra's predecessor, Carolyn Parrish, who had been kicked out of the Liberal Parliamentary caucus partially for saying too many nasty things about Washington's leadership in public.

Nevertheless, the reports, true or not, made it to the web; and the reaction was pretty predictable. The conservative blogosphere, and the thousands of hot-blooded young men who post their comments in it, went incandescent with rage . There was all the usual talk about Islam's plot to take over Canada, burn down churches, and force the ragged, wretched remnants of Christians and Jews to become Muslim. There was Conservative Party opportunism playing as well, with accusations flying about the Liberal Party's treasonous support for Islamists. South of the border with the US, Daniel Pipes could not resist redoing the Chicken Little act, with the usual attention-seeking about Western governments "enfranchising their enemies."

Alghabra's response to what his people called an "ethnic smear campaign" was predictable, too. In the Mississauga News for December 20, 2005, Alghabra denied making any pro-Islam remarks at all. "I don't agree with mixing politics and religion. Yes, I'm a Muslim, but I'm also a Liberal, a man, and an engineer." Elsewhere, he described himself as a "secular" Muslim who immigrated to Canada "because it's the home of diversity, fairness, and compassion." He was certainly not a "spokesperson for the Muslim community."

Significantly, these were sentiments echoed by many influential Muslims in Mississauga. One informant, when questioned, regretted all that had happened at the nomination meeting at the Coptic Church. It looked bad, he said, to turn out the Muslim vote so blatantly. Muslims, he continued, should not form blocs of voters or look like they are promoting some kind of special "Muslim political agenda," because Muslims in Canada should be Canadians first. They should vote for political parties that do not support discrimination against their co-religionists, but that is all they should do in the political process as Muslims.

At such times, this writer is reminded of a letter he received 20 years ago during the Reagan years, when the debate about Muslims participating in the American political process was barely getting under way. In those days, he was editing the newsletter for a masjid in Cleveland. ISNA's Majlis-ash-Shura had passed a resolution admonishing Muslim citizens of the USA and Canada to register and vote as good citizens and "get involved in the political process at all levels."

Now this writer believed, and still believes, that such a stand reflected a very poor understanding of Islam-and of democracy. In response, the very next issue of his newsletter was headed with the editorial, "Making a Chicken Lay a Duck Egg." The title alluded to a metaphor from an old Malcolm X speech, making the point that a political system based on injustice could not possibly create conditions where an Islamic system might rise in its place. (Then, masjid executive councils trembled much less than they do now.)

Some time later, the young editor received a letter for publication from an equally young former colleague, another native of the American heartland who was, at the time, one of the rising stars at ISNA and head of its "Islamic Teaching Center." His reply bore the ITC letterhead and read:

REPLACING THE CHICKEN

The Nov. '86 editorial, "Making a Chicken Lay a Duck Egg" raises some interesting points, although I disagree with many of its assumptions and conclusions. The participation of Muslims in the American political system is not motivated by the intention to make a chicken lay a duck egg, but rather to replace the chicken. We do not advocate legitimizing or supporting the "taghuti" institutions. On the contrary, Muslims must infiltrate and slowly but ever so surely replace anti-Islamic or un-Islamic systems with Islamic ones.

The alternative the editorial offers is ineffective and perhaps un-Islamic. Political isolationism will only de-politicize Islamic action in America, and a de-politicized Islam is an incomplete Islam. Likewise, screaming "kafir" and "taghut" from the sidelines will hardly usher in the Islamic state, Again, on the contrary, it will only ensure that the kafir chicken maintains control and appropriates money, weapons and energy to destroy Muslims throughout the world. (Using your analogy, the chicken is eating the duck egg.)

We have a choice as Muslims in America. We can support the system with our tax dollars as followers of the "taghuti" system, or we can politically mobilize and see that tax dollars go toward the formation of the Islamic state under the leadership of Muslims. If you live in America, you financially support it even if you fulminate against it. The question is whether you want to do that as a repressed follower or a bold, Islamically committed activist. The choice should be clear, all poultry and poultry products aside.

Of course, the controversy about voting for rulers and representatives, whether Muslim or otherwise, via the Western system went on anyway. Unfortunately, the fallout from the events of September 11, 2001 gradually stifled open discussion, with the advantage falling to the ISNA and CAIR camp for the time being.

But the present victory of the "participationists" over their rivals has proved hollow. All the promises that they made to Muslims in the 80's and early 90's have been broken, one by one. CAIR and ISNA spokesmen do not dare speak of a separate Muslim political agenda, let alone having real political power. In the last US presidential election, for example, Muslim "leaders" encouraged their followers to cast their votes, above all to show their devotion to the political system. Islamic action in America has slowly become de-politicized anyway, with a whole new generation of young Muslims growing up believing that Islam is just one religion among others. CAIR tries to hold its head up, presenting itself as a two-fisted fighter against anti-Muslim discrimination. But the "civil rights" model has not worked well for Muslims in the USA: non-Muslims just don't accept Islam as an "ethnicity." In fact, they have a more accurate understanding of Islam as an ideology than many Muslims do. Finally, the present Muslim leadership in the USA already accepts the permanence of Israel as a wedge splitting the Muslim world; and they are facing heavy pressure to give their blessing, not to an Islamic State, but to Washington's permanent mastery over the Middle East.

Muslims in Ontario, Canada have gone much further along the participation road, but they have fared little better. They still can't use the Shari`ah as a basis for binding arbitration in settling divorces and other issues of personal status. (In the USA, the issue hardly arises now, even though it was a top priority at the Shari`ah Scholars Association of North America's annual conference as late as 1999.)

Omar Alghabra, for his part, did win in the general election on January 23, 2006; and he should be taking his seat in the Canadian House of Commons soon. However, he will be a lowly backbencher in a party that slandered Muslims and tossed them into jail when it ruled the country. But even with the Liberal Party now out of power, he will still have to submit to its rigorous discipline, remembering that his predecessor lost her job for failing to do this. His every move will be watched by rightist bloggers, as well as "progressive" Muslims ready to trip him up should he say or do anything that smells faintly "fundamentalist." This is what we all have gained for all our compromising and conceding.

Of course, many readers might still say, "Brothers, we know that participating in the Western political systems has not gained us anything; yet what's the alternative, especially if you are not white or native born, but vulnerable like us? Well, we at HF2T have been trying to point people to the alternative for quite some time now ("Option #3" merely represents our latest article on the topic). First of all, let's not open our mouths to endorse Washington's reshuffling of the Middle East. Next, we must scrupulously avoid being used to advance the careers of ambitious politicians, whatever their background or political affiliation, at our expense. Those among us who have the strength can prepare themselves for the ongoing battle of ideas between Islam and capitalism. It won't be the Path of Least Resistance: much time, preparation, and a lot of patience are needed to get a good grounding in Islamic political concepts, as well as the ability to explain them to others. We will succeed brilliantly even if all we do is win the hearts and minds of our own children, so they can take up the task later. Eventually, the Islamic State based on Islamic principles will return as the Prophet (SAAW) promised ;and we will share in the reward, God willing, long after we are gone.