On January 20, 2001, George W. Bush was sworn-in as the country's forty-third president. In one America’s closest elections, Muslim Americans were optimistic for the future. For the first-time ever, they had organized a coalition of major political and civic organizations, and based on Pres. Bush’s supportive position on a series of domestic and international issues important to the Muslim community, Muslim Americans offered a unified endorsement of the former Texas governor.

Then-Governor Bush readily met with Muslim American leaders, actively sought Muslim American support, and was the first presidential candidate to invite a Muslim to open a session of a national convention with a prayer. And in the second presidential debate, in response to a question regarding racial profiling by law enforcement, he sought out the opportunity to further condemn the Clinton administration's use of "secret evidence” against individuals suspected of supporting terrorism.

The African American community did not end segregation — the racist practice of separating Whites and Blacks prevalent in the US South even until the 1960s — by sitting at home and complaining about it. They ended it by “taking a seat at the lunch counter” and sitting down at the front of the bus where they weren’t supposed to be.

But what does this have to do with the American Muslim community today?

I’ll tell you.

As a child growing up — be it in Northern Virginia or Eastern Saudi Arabia — the work of my parents in the fields of education and the environment inspired me to try to work to improve the state of society in which I lived.

Yet when I graduated from university in the late 1980s, and began my own effort to improve the state of my own society — America — I decided to get involved in electoral politics supporting campaigns and referendums. Many in my family were at best puzzled, and more frequently highly discouraging. With an undergraduate degree in economics from a top university, my parents pushed me to pursue a “respected career” in banking or finance.

As the presidential primary elections come to a head, the campaigns have reached a fever pitch as the candidates on both sides of the fence make a last-ditch effort to win the nomination. One thing that has struck me most is the language used by candidates in an effort to garnish the vote. Specifically, Republican candidates have chosen to employ language of fear and division rather than language of unity and inclusion.

The tone of a campaign sets the tone of a presidency – put simply; the language used by candidates is reflective of the policies he/she will enact. This is why the language used by Republican candidates in the past moths is so disturbing. It reflects more of the same misguided policies currently enacted by the Bush Administration -policies that have jeopardized the basic foundations of the U.S. Constitution, diminished America's influences in the global arena, and economically weakened our country.

The words used by Republican candidates to describe inhuman acts of terrorism wrongly associate those who practice these horrendous acts with the 5 million Americans and 1 billion people throughout the world who practice Islam. This has been in direct contrast to Democrats, who have opted to use language that does not make such an association.