US Vice-President Kamala Harris. [Picture: Getty Images]
In The Name of God, The Compassionate, The Merciful
August 26, 2024
An Open Letter to VP Kamala Harris
Dear Madam Vice President:
I begin by congratulating you on the history making journey that you have achieved, thus far, with “hope” and a prayer that your success will continue on all fronts. From here I would like to offer some unsolicited, but sincere advice.
While the recently concluded DNC event appears to have been a success, it wasn’t the success that it could have been, and should have been. A Palestinian voice was needlessly and shamefully absent from the main stage; and to make matters worse, entirely too much deference was shown to the security interests of an apartheid state perpetrating a genocide in real time, before the eyes of the world!
The consequence of this has been substantial. A Muslim Women for Kamala Harris group disbanded; and a growing number of voices within the Muslim American community have soured on your candidacy. It’s not too late to right your course, Madam Vice President.
One of my favorite quotes of yours is the following “….and I know a criminal when I see one.” The question arises, does this rule apply to criminal countries as well?
While I am profoundly disappointed by one of your remarks at the convention, and the DNC’s unconscionable denial of main stage access to a Palestinian voice, if the vote was held today, I would still vote for you. Not just because I think the alternative would be disastrous for America and the world, but because I truly believe you are a far more compassionate and capable leader. I want to believe that someone like you can (and hopefully will) make a positive difference in the highest political office in the land. To do so, however, will require courageous morality and steely determination!
In conclusion, I just arrived back in Texas for a political prisoner who’s been brutally and unjustly imprisoned for 21 years – Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. The late [former U.S. Attorney General] Ramsey Clark labeled her plight, “The worse case of individual injustice I have ever witnessed.” I agree. In my decades of human rights work in America it is the worse I’ve ever seen!
If you do make it into the Oval Office as president of this potentially great, but deeply disturbed, nation called the United States of America (and I sincerely hope you do), I pray that you will “DO SOMETHING” about this profound stain on America’s honor! Both you and the better of the two Americas will be better for it!
I am reminded of a thought-provoking quote of one of my African-American freedom fighting forefathers. Frederick Douglas famously said: “A man [and this equally applies for a woman] is worked on by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances; but his circumstances will carve him out as well.”
May God bless you with the strength to follow the dictates of truth and justice wherever they lead.
Respectfully submitted,
El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan
Director of Operations
The Aafia Foundation, Inc.
El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan is a presenter for Salaamedia and director of the Aafia Foundation, based in the United States.
