Muslims drift, not run, towards Kerry

The discrimination has changed with the times -- indefinite detentions, closed hearings, secret evidence, and racial profiling have replaced segregated schools, diners, and beaches -- but the sense of being a second-class citizen is the same.

Or at least that's the contention of the leaders of the US Muslim community, who are fighting to make Muslim civil rights an issue in this November's US presidential elections.

"There is a crisis of civil rights for Muslims in this country," said Agha Saeed, chairman of the American Muslim Alliance, (AMA) at a national gathering of US Muslims this weekend.

"Today, Muslims and Arabs are second-class citizens in the United States."

The parallels between the experiences of black Americans and Muslim Americans have not been lost on ordinary Muslims like computer engineers Suhl Kahn and Badar Hussain.

"Blacks weren't really Americans until 9/11," noted Kahn, in a wry observation on mainstream America's shifting perceptions of "us and them" in the wake of the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Like many of his Islamic brethern, the 36-year-old computer engineer from Chicago supported the Republican presidential nominee in 2000 -- part of a Muslim bloc vote that boosted George W. Bush.