Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, right, being greeted after he delivered a speech in Philadelphia, PA, on Oct. 25. (Photo: AFP)

Presidential candidate John Kerry made a last minute pitch to appeal to Muslim Americans that he would protect their civil rights and build strong relations with Arab nations willing to fight the war on terror.

Senator Kerry’s Finance Director Shahid Ahmed Khan, a Pakistani American, appealed to voters, “including Muslim Americans” to support his candidate.

“John Kerry and John Edwards will not tolerate threats, violence or discrimination against the Muslim-American community,” he said in a press statement, adding that top Democratic Party leaders “recognize the many contributions that Muslim Americans have made to our nation,” assuring them that Kerry would favor immigration laws.

“They will offer a reform bill in the first 100 days of a Kerry-Edwards administration that allows immigrants to earn legalization, encourages family reunification, and strengthens our border protections,” Khan maintained in what is sure to become a “Kerry-watch” in a post-election scenario.

Apart from reiterating the Kerry plan on anti-offshoring of jobs, health care and good education, Khan said, a Democratic White House would “end the era of John Ashcroft” which has “unfairly targeted American Muslim and Arab Americans and has selectively enforced the immigration laws against these communities.”

He also emphasized that all citizens held as detainees would receive access to counsel, something the courts in the country have already upheld. “While John Kerry and John Edwards support majority of the Patriot Act, they, along with a growing number of both Democrats and Republicans, believe that certain provisions should be modified,” Khan qualified.

Currently, most Muslim Americans and civil rights advocates have opposed the Patriot Act. “Both the leaders support efforts, such as the bipartisan-sponsored Security and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act, to amend the Patriot Act to set reasonable limits on access to library, medical, and other records containing the sensitive, personal details of the lives of law-abiding Americans and on the conduct of so-called “sneak and peek” searches, Khan insisted, pointing to Kerry’s former job as a prosecutor. Kerry, he said, knows that “racial profiling is nothing more than ineffective law enforcement and must be prohibited.”

He and John Edwards, Khan said, “support End Racial Profiling Act, which would ban racial profiling and require federal, state, and local law enforcement to take steps to end and prevent racial profiling,” and that both are working to strengthen hate crime laws.

Both, he noted, “have led the fight for the Workplace Religious Freedom Act which will ensure that no American is forced to choose between the job they need and the faith that sustains them.”