Each year, CAIR Oklahoma (CAIR-OK) develops policy priorities to advance key issues and promote civic engagement among Oklahoma Muslims. The priorities are informed by research, community interest, CAIR-OK’s mission, and is approved by our Board of Directors.
If you have any feedback regarding our policy priorities or would like to get more involved in CAIR-OK’s government affairs advocacy, please contact us at info@ok.cair.com.
Public Health
We support any measures to help Oklahomans stay healthy and see an end to the COVID-19 public health crisis. Furthermore, we believe that personal decisions about one’s healthcare that do not affect the public should be private decisions between an individual, their healthcare provider, and only the individuals they choose to include.
COVID-19
- Enabling Schools, businesses, and other organizations, whether public or private, to enact measures that promote public health and safety
- Disapproving of business practices and individual behaviors that undermine health and safety measures
- Opposing measures that would weaken our healthcare infrastructure’s ability to deal with an ongoing health crisis
Reproductive Health
- Protecting an individual’s autonomy and ensuring privacy and safety for those who need access to reproductive healthcare.
Voting Rights
Our democratic system begins and ends at the ballot. The ability for all citizens to voice their concerns in government by voting, regardless of class, gender, religion, or ethnicity, is foundational to the establishment of liberty and justice for all.
Voting Access
- Expanding voting access to marginalized and disenfranchised populations
- Increasing online and early voting opportunities
- Updating antiquated registration and voting systems
- Opposing voter suppression and any measures that make the ballot harder to access
- Challenging attempts to obfuscate the election process
- Allowing those who have been locked out of the process to rejoin the civic engagement process
Discrimination
Discrimination occurs in many of the systems and structures that govern our lives, and it can be either entrenched or eradicated as a matter of governmental priorities. We recognize that a violation of the rights of one impacts the rights of all, especially in the Muslim community, and we stand firmly on the side of justice for all.
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- Ending systemic practices of shaming individuals or groups based on economic status, age, sexual orientation, gender and gender identification, religion, ethnicity, or immigration status
- Challenging the denial of support, benefits, or other privileges or rights based on poverty, race, parental status, gender or gender identification, religion, ethnicity, or immigration status
Civil Rights
As a civil rights organization, we fight every day to ensure that the rights of Oklahoma Muslims, and of all minority and disenfranchised communities in our state, are protected. Our civil liberties should never be subject to abuse or infringement at the hands of the state. None of us are free until we all are free.
Religion
- Protecting First Amendment rights to the free practice of religion according to one’s conscience
- Ensuring religious tolerance and plurality in a free society
- Subverting attempts to favor one religion or religious practice over others in violation of the Establishment Clause
- Ending the appropriation of state funds or tax exemption benefits to agencies, organizations, or private businesses that discriminate
Freedom of Speech
- Ensuring the right of all citizens to express their views through peaceful assembly, access to the press, and petitioning their government for redress
- Challenging the censorship of fair, truthful, and equitable education
- Opposing the criminalization of protest, demonstration, or other exercises of constitutionally protected rights
- Halting the suppression of speech and teachings related to race, sex, sexuality, religion, gender, etc.
- Demanding that the processes of government be transparent and accessible to the public
Criminal Justice
Oklahoma’s current draconian criminal legal system ruins hundreds of thousands of lives. In addition to disproportionately attacking our Black and indigenous neighbors, our prison system routinely punishes those who are experiencing poverty or struggling in other ways. We believe that we can end our dangerous and deadly punitive system in favor of rehabilitative methods that benefit the whole community.
Pre-Trial
- Reforming the predatory and inequitable bail practices that essentially criminalize poverty
- Encouraging the reform of plea bargain policies which do not provide due process to the accused
- Reducing pre-trial detainment time and amending practices to ensure that the rights of the accused are adequately protected
- Decreasing the number of individuals jailed for financial reasons
- Reducing Oklahoma’s abysmally high prison population
- Increasing funding and access to rehabilitative and divergence programs for people with mental illness, substance use disorder, and/or people experiencing crisis or trauma.
Sentencing
- Ending formulaic sentencing practices which block courts from exercising discretion in sentencing those who are found guilty of non-violent crimes (three-strikes laws, mandatory minimums, etc.)
- Decreasing the fines and fees assessed for crimes across the board, which unfairly harm marginalized communities and do nothing to provide restitution
Policing
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- Reforming policing policies that unfairly target Oklahoma’s most marginalized communities, including more training on implicit bias and responsible crisis intervention services