How Bush Repaid the Muslim Vote

If you believe the 2000 exit polls, Bush won almost three-quarters of the Muslim vote. Post-election, the White House needed to pay their political debts.

Click here to read the entire series.

The Bush-Cheney campaign tilted far to win the Muslim-American vote.

George W. Bush denounced "secret evidence" and ethnic profiling in the Oct. 11 Wake Forest University debate against Vice President Gore.

Bush raised significant funds from the Arab-American community. Important Muslim-American groups endorsed Bush. If you believe the exit polls, Bush won almost three-quarters of the Muslim vote. (Al Gore's selection of Joe Lieberman as a running mate may have been a significant driver of Arab and Muslim votes away from the Democratic party.)

Post-election, Bush moved to pay his political debts. Sami al-Arian was invited into the White House complex to participate in talks on the faith-based initiative. When an al-Arian nephew was refused entry to the White House complex because his name showed up on a Secret Service watch list, the deputy director of the Secret Service called the al-Arian family to apologize.

But the real pay-off came after 9/11. Despite its pro-Hamas antecedents, the Council on American Islamic Relations was accepted as a respected partner in the US Muslim community. CAIR representatives were invited to the White House, and joined President Bush's post-9/11 to the Washington mosque on Massachusetts Avenue.

And when these people and others came to the White House, the person who usually met them at the gate was the White House liaison to the Muslim community, a very well-dressed young Californian named Suhail Khan, the person now the flashpoint of the Gaffney-Norquist clash.

Click here to read part 5.

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