Dalia Mogahed                 Rashad Hussain

As I mentioned on this blog a few weeks ago, President Obama was given a book of resumes of some of the brightest Muslim Americans for jobs in his administration. Well, some of these posts have been filled recently: Dalia Mogahed, the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, was appointed to the new White House Faith Advisory Council. And so was Eboo Patel, the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago. And Rashad Hussain, a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, was named Deputy Associate Counsel to the President.  I welcome these appointments to the Obama administration, but I hope Muslims will participate in American politics not only because they’re Muslims. We don’t always need Muslims from this high a platform to speak strictly about religion or from the vantage point of their faith. We need Muslims who can serve in non-religious functions as well whose faith is not always a headline. It would be more useful if Muslims are not primarily seen only defending their faith and correcting stereotypes. I don’t want to slight the important work of those who do it, but we need to move beyond the re-action mode, which has been draining our energies for quite some time. We’re beginning to see this in other areas, but not so much in politics. American Muslims like Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Congressman, has paved the way for hopefully more Muslims to run for political office, and if the 2006 elections are any indication, 2010 should see a great number of Muslim candidates. The assumption that Muslims’ religious identity trumps all other loyalties is a social construction, and I believe more participation in politics at all levels, and not only in faith-based functions, should convince those 48% of suspicious Americans that the vast majority of Muslims in this country have no split loyalties. If you need further proof, read Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond, a 2009 book from the University of California Press.