I kid you not--a USA Today correspondent is here tonight at the New Freeway Hall on Rainier Avenue South, covering the Freedom Socialist Party meeting. I mean, come on--the Freedom Socialist Party? A "revolutionary, socialist, feminist organization dedicated to the replacement of capitalist rule?" Heck, they'd have trouble getting coverage in Eat the State these days. But here's the USA Today reporter, Pat McMahon, standing in the rec room among the bright-green-and-yellow-tableclothed cafeteria-style tables, the propaganda card table where they're hawking El Salvador belts, and a motley crew of about 50 folks eating barbecued chicken or vegan barbequed tofu and veggies.
USA Today is here for the same reason KIRO-TV's cameras were on hand earlier: Mustafa Ujaama--the younger brother of the Pacific Northwest's biggest story, accused al Qaeda supporter James Ujaama--was speaking tonight, Saturday, September 21.
With James hidden away in federal custody, 34-year-old Mustafa Ujaama (pronounced MOO-stuh-fa Oo-JAH-ma) has become the main character as the media awaits James' trial.
At James' initial September 9 hearing--where he quietly pleaded not guilty--Mustafa grabbed the spotlight, getting into it with FBI agents outside the courtroom. "There is a presumption of innocence, but not with you guys," Mustafa told the two terrorism task force agents. And tonight, brow furrowed, hands clasped, calmly quoting Malcolm X, Mustafa condemned the Bush administration for "teaching our children that settling issues through the bomb is the American way." He also criticized the media: "Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?" he asked, referring to the sensational media coverage of James and the Muslim men recently indicted in Lackawanna, New York. (Interestingly, Mustafa doesn't directly challenge his brother's indictment.)
Mustafa, who currently lives in Denver, looks something like actor Forest Whitaker, and he sports the kind of beard you see on devout Muslims--shaved clean directly under the mouth, but full along the lower jaw and sprouting curly wisps.
From the recent media accounts of James and Mustafa's militant mosque at 23rd and Union, I'd been expecting an angry man--a Zacarias Moussaoui firebrand. That's not the case. First of all, thanks to the brightly lit space--the Columbia City meeting room looks like a lefty bookstore crossed with a kindergarten class (flat brown carpet, fluorescent lights, art and posters taped to the walls)--I quickly realize I'm in Seattle, not a clandestine meeting in Karachi, Pakistan.
Mustafa is a short man with puppy-dog eyes. In his starched oxford shirt and pleated beige dress pants (with attached pager), Mustafa looks more like an AT&T Wireless sales guy than a revolutionary.
And here's the thing: His speech, while decidedly left-wing, is something you'd hear from a Democratic representative like Jim McDermott, not Osama bin Laden. (Heck, one athletic-looking fiftysomething woman in the supportive crowd is wearing an oversized Eastside Democrat Heidi Behrens-Benedict pin.)
After reciting an Islamic blessing, Mustafa decries the Enron scandal, reduced education funding, increased military spending, and civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also blasts PlayStation for selling violence to children. His big theme: teach tolerance and diversity. (I told you this was Seattle.)
Sure, he trots out the Noam Chomsky line, asserting that the 9/11 attacks were a result of U.S. imperialism. ("If the slave master experiences tragedy, we cannot expect the slave to feel anything but joy," he says, describing the Muslim world's reaction), but Mustafa hardly speaks like al Qaeda. There's no talk of jihad, no singling out Israel--in fact, Mustafa includes P.L.O. Chairman Arafat on a list of bad guys, and ends up condemning terrorism.
"Destruction can never be good," he says. "Two wrongs just don't make a right. Evil plus evil will always equate to evil." He even cracks a joke about his older brother's "nice little Afro," grown since James' arrest last July.
After the speech, he's all smiles, goofing with James' young son and chatting up the USA Today reporter, who Mustafa seems to know on a first name basis.
