Source: Phoenix New Times

 

Two days after the mass shooting in San Bernardino at an office Christmas party that left 14 dead and 21 wounded, about a dozen Muslims held a press conference in Washington, D.C. to announce their prescription for the radical Islamist ideology that reportedly inspired the slaughter.

Authorities say Syed Rizwan Farook, an American-born citizen, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, a permanent resident from Pakistan, opened fire on a crowd at an event hosted by the San Bernardino Health Department, where Farook was employed as an environmental health specialist.

The couple later died in a shootout with law enforcement, leaving behind a 6-month-old baby, a cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives, and a lot of unanswered questions.

Since the incident, the Los Angeles Times has verified that before the massacre, Malik pledged her support for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in a Facebook post. And President Obama, in an address to the nation, has labeled the San Bernardino rampage as “an act of terror.”

Whether Farook and Malik merely were inspired by Islamic extremists or were part of a larger plot, such as the November 13 Paris attacks that left 130 dead, for which ISIS has claimed responsibility, remains to be seen.

But for Phoenix internist Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, the San Bernardino incident is another in a long line of terrorist acts that have resulted from the radical Islamist ideology he openly has battled since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Jasser’s American Islamic Forum for Democracy organized the two-day conference of moderate Muslims in D.C. that culminated in the December 4 media event, where Jasser and the attending imams, journalists, and activists declared the beginning of what they call the Muslim Reform Movement.

Jasser told the assembled media that he and the others were there to answer the oft-repeated question: “Where are the voices of modernity, freedom, and liberty in the house of Islam?”

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