Dr. Jasser sat down to share his thoughts on the latest news from Egypt, including the new Islamist, anti-freedom constitution. He says that it may take a while to defeat the well-organized machine of political Islam, and that the answer is in non-Islamists organizing like never before.
Click here: Dr. Jasser on the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi.
In the mid-1960s my family fled the oppressive Baath regime of Syria for liberty’s shores in the United States. Raised in Wisconsin as an American Muslim, I learned that my faith was best served by a nation founded in liberty with a Constitution that guaranteed genuine religious freedom.
As I watched the Arab Awakening unfold in 2011 and 2012, I had high hopes that my co-religionists might finally be lifting the yoke of their oppressive secular dictators for the freedom that I have enjoyed here in the United States. But now as 2013 opens, we are witnessing the frightening ascension of an even greater oppressive force than the dictators who had a stranglehold on the region for almost five decades — Islamism (political Islam).
Islamism combines the autocracy of the secular Arabist dictators with unrestrained religious supremacy. The primary battle front, where Islamists suffocate their enemies, is on religious liberty. The plight begins in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the royal family, in a bid to maintain power, essentially gave control of religious life to the radical Wahhabi elements within the country. The petro dollars of the Kingdom have spread this lethal Islamist ideology around the world. They are joined by the Qatari through arms like the Al Jazeera Media Group, which, after decades of failure, just recently acquired access to more than 40 million American homes through the purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV.
The recipe is simple: Islamists are government theocrats who promote a particular version of an Islamic doctrine in order to impose their fascist interpretation upon all citizens. They use elections and so-called “democracy” in order to empower a single version of Shariah – their interpretation of Islam’s legal framework for the “Islamic state.” Islamists exploit their own perceived divine mandate to justify a litany of draconian laws upon their people. The most obvious permutation of those laws leaves no room for religious tolerance let alone religious liberty.
Make no mistake, the victims of Islamist control are both religious minorities and those with dissident beliefs, whether Muslim or non-Muslim who are against the theocrats.
Throughout the region we are seeing a significant increase of oppression of religious freedoms. In Pakistan this week, the Ambassador to the United States has been indicted by the Pakistani Supreme Court under blasphemy laws for simply saying that the country needs to rework its blasphemy law.
In Iran, we continue to see case after case of devout Christians, Baha’i, and Islamic apostates who face death penalties for expressing their religious beliefs. It is not a coincidence that this plight coincides with a government that at the same time is pounding its collective Islamist chest in seeking nuclear arms and feeding the genocide against an entire dissident citizenry in Syria.
On Monday, a 32-year-old Christian pastor, former Muslim, and American citizen, Saeed Abedini will stand trial for supposedly “compromising national security.” His real crime to the Iranian theocrats is his own human expression of religious freedom through the development of an underground network of home churches. He will face the infamous Islamist Judge Abbas Pir-Abassi, known for sending innocent dissident believers to Iran’s dungeons.
In Egypt, with the ink hardly dry on the new Egyptian Islamist Constitution, the Muslim Brotherhood has wasted no time in bringing their Islamist justice to the people of Egypt. Nadia Mohammed Ali was sentenced this week to prison along with her children and the clerks who documented their Christian identity cards. The plight of Christians signals the future of religious freedom for all in Egypt. Ali and her children are now imprisoned simply for their chosen faith of Christianity.
The silence from devout Muslims around the world must end. It is time to rise up as free-thinking Muslims against governments and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood which exploit the faith of Islam for their own supremacist mission. The essential fuel of Islamist political parties and systems is the idea of the “Islamic state.” Nadia and her family are canaries in the coal mine of the Islamic state. The silence from the White House also must end. We must stand with Nadia as human beings. An Obama Doctrine is nowhere to be found and at this point the administration is unlikely to ever lay out a coherent foreign policy strategy with regards to religious liberty in the Middle East. Real global leadership for human rights needs a Liberty Doctrine. Free-thinking Muslims, however, are most directly positioned to repair this rupture within our collective soul.
The stifling of religious freedom is a natural evolution of an Islamist system fueled by an obsession upon one faith and its divine mandate. As a Muslim, I know the Islamist state will never evolve into genuine democracy. I reject the entire notion of the Islamic state and I see no other way to defeat Islamism but through the separation of mosque and state. Mollifying Islamism into some kind of tolerant form is a fool’s endeavor with example after example in Islamic history of failure. That is why my family came to the U.S.
In the U.S., I learned that whether I am in the minority or the majority, the only way to realize religious freedom is to live in a society where its governmental laws are based in reason and government stays out of the business of determining which religious legalisms are righteous. There are sadly hundreds to thousands more cases like these of courageous religious minorities and also dissident Sunni and Shiite Muslims from within the majority in countries like Egypt and Iran who are at the tip of the spear. They are often alone cutting through the battle raging inside the soul of Islam and Muslim communities across the world.
As leaders of the free world, our nation can choose to abandon these canaries in the Islamist coal mine or we can lift up their plights as beacons of freedom that can ultimately defeat Islamism. It is time to call out the governmental oppressors of innocents like Nadia Mohammed Ali in Egypt or Saeed Abedini in Iran for what they are—ruthless fascist theocrats (Islamists) who use religion as a tool to destroy the spirit of their citizenry.
If the United States stands for anything we need to vigorously and consistently stand for the protection of religious freedom abroad that is not only enshrined in our own founding documents, but in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which we are supposed to protect.
M. Zuhdi Jasser is the author of the recently released book, “A Battle for the Soul of Islam” and is President and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Ariz. He is also a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (the opinions here are his own).
The 2012 edition of the “500 Most Influential Muslims,” as determined by Jordan’s “Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre” is especially interesting this year: it is dominated by Americans.
Instinctively, one might think that Muslims promoting the ideals of individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and universal human rights might therefore dominate the list. Indeed, having such a significant amount of our own citizens on such a list would be a tremendous opportunity to showcase how the United States allows Muslims to lead in every arena, while embracing a pluralistic interpretation of our faith.
Sadly, it seems that this opportunity has been missed. The United States is represented instead by individuals like Nihad Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR); Imam Siraj Wahhaj (vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA], former national board member of CAIR, defender of The “Blind Sheikh”, etc); Imam Mohamed Magid (current president of ISNA); Sheikh Hamza Yusuf (founder of Zaytuna College), etc. These are, to say the least, not the best representatives of Islam in America.
On a broader scale, the picture of those considered the “most influential” Muslims is even more grim. Holding the top spot of most influential Muslim in the world is King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who, while certainly not admired by the majority of Muslims we know, absolutely heads the global Islamist enterprise with his kingdom’s petro dollars. Others in leading positions on the list include Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of increasingly Islamist Turkey; Dr. Mohammed Badie, the “supreme guide” of the Muslim Brotherhood; Ayatollah Khameini, Yusuf Qaradawi, and Muhammad Morsi (the new president of Egypt).
The creators of the list disclose at the start that these are not necessarily individuals they endorse – but that they are individuals they’ve determined to hold the greatest influence worldwide. While we wonder about the likelihood of some people having influence over those not on the list (for example, another American – Sheila Musaji – makes the cut, but not Fatima Mernissi, legendary and widely loved Moroccan feminist? Further, we know from the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center’s polling that American Muslims simply don’t feel represented by groups like CAIR and ISNA); we know that regrettably, those Muslims who have the most political and financial influence worldwide are Islamists. We also must note that the list itself was the brainchild of Prince Gazi bin Muhammad of Jordan; it is produced by a Jordanian think-tank bearing the name “Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre”; and Harvard’s John Esposito has served as a chief editor of the publication in the past – and so while its creators claim to be presenting only the objectively influential voices from within the Muslim community, such a claim is dubious at best. In fact, we find it both puzzling and troubling that Omar Sacirbey, whose write-up on the publication appeared in the Washington Post, called this a “respected think-tank.”
Even if the list itself were listing individuals based on reasonable and objective measures of influence, the devil is, as they say, in the details. The only individual listed as influential in Syrian politics is Bashar al-Assad, the mass murderer responsible for the slaughter of roughly 40,000 Syrians, and the torture, mutilation, rape of countless others. The paragraph about Assad is eerily neutral:
“Al-Assad is an Alawite Shi’a and president of the Syrian Arab Republic. Because of its strategic position in the Middle East, Syria is regarded as a major player in any peace agreement in the Middle East. The violent crackdowns on protests in 2011 have lead to what is now a civil war. Claims of atrocities and misinformation abound on both sides.”
Describing “claims of atrocities” in a way that suggests that there is any comparison in scale or scope of violence between the murderous and bloodthirsty regime of “Bashar the Butcher” and the many Syrians who seek to oust him is despicable – and reflects the overall quality and tenor of this report on “Muslim influence.”
We do recognize that the list isn’t entirely problematic. Listed also are individuals like Waris Dirie, a Somali model, author, actress, filmmaker and courageous fighter against female genital mutilation. A survivor of both FGM and forced marriage, Ms Dirie went on to found the Desert Flower Foundation, which works to end FGM with no exceptions for culture or religion. Naser Khader, former member of the Danish parliament, critic of Islamism and defender of free speech also made the list. So did Dr. Hawa Abdi, Somalia’s first female gynecologist and founder of the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation, whose work means over 90,000 Somali refugees have a place to live. Her foundation also works on education, agriculture and healthcare issues.
Whether the list is biased toward Islamists or not, it reveals what we at AIFD already know: liberty-minded Muslims have a long road ahead of us if we wish to overtake Islamists when it comes to having more influence than they do in the public sphere. While many of us are well respected in our personal and professional circles, and often have many Muslim friends and colleagues who think the way we do and support us in our work, the fact is that most majority-Muslim organizations (and countries!) are run by theocrats who see pluralism, liberty, and freedom of conscience as threats to be defeated rather than as the life forces of any healthy society.
149 years ago today, President Abraham Lincoln gave one of the briefest and most iconic speeches in American presidential history: the Gettysburg Address.
In it, President Lincoln remarked that while what we say in times of conflict can easily be forgotten, the sacrifices of those who fight for liberty will not be – as long as we, the living, remain “dedicated to the great task remaining before us” – remaining ever committed to the pursuit and protection of liberty for all.
The Gettysburg Address
November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Neil Munro, The Daily Caller, 10/22/12
White House visitor records show that administration officials have hosted numerous White House meetings with a series of U.S.-based Muslim political groups that have close ties to jihadi groups and push to reduce anti-terrorism investigations.
The visits were discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which compared the Obama White House’s visitor records with its database of Islamist advocacy groups.
For example, the records show that officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations have visited the White House 20 times, according to the organization’s report.
Members of CAIR were invited to the White House, even though an April 2009 FBI statement said the bureau “does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner” because of its ties to the Hamas jihadi group.
Read the White House Visitor Logs
Administration officials also invited Syrian-born Louay Safi to the White House twice in 2011, even though he had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two terrorism cases, and had been barred from Fort Hood following the 2009 jihadi attack by a Muslim U.S. Army major.
In contrast, White House officials have not invited Zuhdi Jasser, an Arizona-based, American-born moderate Muslim and former Navy officer.
“We’ve never been invited and nether have any of [the 24 leaders in] our American Islamic Leadership Coalition,” Jasser told The Daily Caller.
The absence of invitations to real Muslim moderates allows White House officials to pretend that members of the well-funded, U.S.-based radical group are moderates, even when they’re linked to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, he said.
Jasser’s nonpartisan coalition includes left-wing and feminist Muslims who are frequently criticized by the groups invited to the White House, he said.
“The White House has selectively omitted genuine [Muslim] moderates and instead has picked radical Muslims to meet,” said a statement from Steve Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The closed-door White House meetings legitimize the radicals, but do not bring them into the mainstream, Emerson told TheDC.
“The American public has a right to know why the White House is meeting with Hamas front groups,” he added.
The visitor logs show that many of the Muslim advocates met with coalition-building officials in the White House, rather than with national security officials. The officials they met with include Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and Amanda Brown, assistant to the then-White House director of political affairs Patrick Gaspard.
Gaspard is now the executive director of the Democratic National Committee.
The White House’s Secret Service guards do not veto invites from White House officials, but merely tell the officials if the guests will be arrested on existing charges if they arrive at the gates.
The meetings were likely intended to boost the president’s nationwide effort to bind often-rivaling constituency groups into the Democratic Party’s diversity coalition.
That disparate coalition already includes groups claiming to represent environmentalists, blue-collar workers, immigrants, African-Americans, Hispanics, gun-control advocates, Jews, gays, tort lawyers and many others.
In April, White House officials invited members of the National Network for Arab American Communities to a White House meeting.
“Our issues are American issues that affect our entire nation … and we will ensure that our community’s voice is at the forefront of public debates around healthcare, immigration and national security reform,” Linda Sarsour, NNAAC’s national advocacy director, said in an April press release.
Sarsour has been a White House visitor on seven different occasions. Her network includes 23 separate member associations, including the Illinois-based Arab American Action Network.
That group’s director, Hatem Abudayyeh, has been under criminal investigation at least since late 2010, when FBI agents raided his home as part of an investigation into terror-related financing.
Abudayyeh visited the White House in April 2010, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s study.
Muslim voters likely comprise less than one percent of the nation’s electorate. Many are in blue states, including California and Illinois, but a significant number of Muslims have settled in Michigan and Virginia, where every vote could potentially sway a close election.
Overall, 75 percent of Muslim Arab Americans support Obama, while 8 percent support Gov. Mitt Romney, according to a poll of 400 Arab Americans taken in September by the Arab American Institute.
In turn, Christian Arabs strongly favor Romney by 16 percentage points, reducing Obama’s overall support among Arab Americans to 52 percent, according to the poll.
In 2008, Obama won 67 percent of the Arab-American vote.
James Zogby, the Arab-American founder of the AAI, estimates there are a combined 833,000 Arab-American voters in Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.
The White House’s Muslim constituency group meetings are supplemented by additional meetings outside the White House.
In June, George Selim, the White House’s director for community partnerships, told TheDC that “there is [sic] hundreds of examples of departments and agencies that meet with CAIR on a range of issues.”
Selim’s office was formed in January to ensure cooperation by law enforcement and social service agencies with Muslim identity groups in the United States.
The CAIR meetings were arranged even though CAIR has extensive ties to jihad groups, including Hamas — the Palestinian affiliate of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.
Top officials, including President Barack Obama, have participated in the Muslim outreach.
Obama has chosen to meet personally with leaders of several Muslim groups, including the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
That group’s co-founder, Iraqi-born Salem al-Marayati, visited the White House six times. He has denounced several successful convictions of jihadi terrorists, and has repeatedly called for Muslims to stop cooperation with the FBI except when it is mediated by MPAC or other Muslim groups.
The Islamic Society of North America was declared an unindicted co-conspirator in a successful 2008 trial of a Texas-based Muslim group that smuggled funds to Hamas. In October 2011, Mohamed Magid, the Sudanese-born president of ISNA, told top Justice Department officials that “teaching people that all Muslims are a threat to the country … is against the law and the Constitution.”
Some of Obama’s deputies, especially Valerie Jarrett and Tom Perez, who runs the civil-rights section in the Justice Department, have also been enthusiastic supporters of the outreach policy.
Jarrett spoke at ISNA’s 2009 conference, and Perez spoke at its 2012 event.
TheDC emailed or called the White House, MPAC, CAIR, Safi, Sarsour’s press secretary and Abudayyeh for comment. None responded.
Examiner.com, October 14, 2012
While the Obama administration and many members of the elite news media appear confused as to the true nature of the national security threat posed by al-Qaeda, and its offshoots Al Shabaab, Boko Haram and al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, Congressman Peter King (R-NY) appears to be the “go-to” lawmaker for all things involving Islamic terrorism. As evidenced by his appearances on CNN, Fox News Channel and interviews with reporters in the print media on Wednesday, King presents an alternative to the touchy-feely, politically-correct anti-terrorism of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, many within the law enforcement and intelligence communities told the Law Enforcement Examiner on Wednesday.
“Islamic terrorism is the most diabolical threat facing our nation today. No American ever wants to relive the attacks of 9/11. This is particularly true on Long Island where hundreds of our friends and neighbors were murdered on that horrific day,” stated King in a statement on his web site.
In his statement, King noted that he and his Homeland Security Committee conducted a series of hearings on the extent of radicalization in the Muslim-American Community. “We must move beyond political correctness and address the root causes of how and why certain individuals are being radicalized here in the United States and participating in terrorist attacks against Americans,” Rep. King noted.
On Mar. 10, 2011, King’s House Homeland Security Committee held the first of several hearings that focused on the extent of radicalization in the Muslim-American Community and that community’s response to these homegrown Islamists.
“At the hearing we heard from two individuals whose relatives became radicalized and were encouraged to commit jihad. We also heard from noted Islamic expert Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, the Founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy,” stated King.
That hearing was followed by three subsequent ones dealing with the threat of Muslim-American Radicalization in U.S. Prisons (Jun. 15, 2011), Recruitment and Radicalization within the Muslim-American Community by Al-Shabaab (Jul. 27, 2011), and a joint-hearing with the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee regarding the threat to military communities inside the United States as well as the threat from radicalized Muslims within our military (Dec. 7, 2011).
King concedes that he was heavily criticized by special interests and their allies in the media for conducting these and other hearings, but most Americans supported him according to polls.
“I stood by them because I knew they were the right thing to do to publicize and discuss this grave threat to Americans. That is why I have held additional hearings this year on the Hezbollah threat in the U.S. (Mar. 21, 2012) and the response of Muslim Americans to the radicalization hearings (Jun. 20, 2012). The outstanding witnesses at the June hearing were Dr. Jasser, Asra Nomani and Dr. Qanta Ahmed,” King said.
As Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, King pushed both sides of the aisle to pass legislation securing U.S. ports, chemical plants, and airports. He said he also reached across the aisle to pass legislation protecting the nation’s rail and transportation systems.
by Karen Lugo, Gatestone Institute, October 17, 2012
‘Even though the Syrian-American artist was disinvited and the award cancelled, his parents in Homs, Syria, were beaten and their home was later ransacked. Jasser points to extortionist campaigns to force on Americans policy that does not have popular support and calls on liberty-minded Muslims publicly to criticize such tactics.’
The Iranian Green Revolution had brave Neda Agha-Soltan, and the Pakistanis have the stubbornly courageous Malala Yousufzai. At fourteen, when the Taliban tried to assassinate Malala for promoting education for girls, she had been defying the Taliban for years. Whether these girls are catalysts for sustained revolutions may well depend on how many in the West champion their heroism.
Russian dissident Natan Sharansky tells Westerners that demonstrators would rush to the streets for minutes, risking the gulags, in hope that “at least one foreign journalist was present so that, the next day, at least one Western news source would come out with a story that could in turn elicit a chain reaction of more and greater press attention and, we hoped, a vocal Western response.” The Russian dissidents knew that a vocal response from the West would lend a megaphone to their cause. How devastating it would have been if President Reagan and Americans had failed to rally with them.
One of the insistent voices currently calling on Americans to champion liberty in the face of aggressive “Shariahites” — Shariah is hardline religious code whether pushed under Shia, Sunni, Salafist, or Wahhabist banner — is self-described devout Muslim, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. At a time when the West is asking how to identify and trust moderate Muslims; wondering what to do about insular Islamist communities that are burrowing into city surrounds; and, calculating how to block Islamist political infiltration, Dr. Jasser suggests that moderate Muslims can play a pivotal role in exposing and discrediting the Islamist agents.
In his first book, A Battle For The Soul Of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith, Dr. Jasser demonstrates that his devotion to preserving American ideals against aggressive Islamism has required that he pledge of his own sacred honor as did the founding-era freedom fighters. Close observers would say he has also committed much of his life-energy and fortunes to speaking, writing, and organizing for the cause of American-style individuals’ rights.
Dr. Jasser was born to immigrant Syrian parents in Canton, Ohio. His parents, taking stock of their recent flight from Hafez Assad’s oppressive regime, taught Jasser reverence for the American model of consensual government based upon the rule of law created by elected representatives of the people. He wrote that he also learned what he calls an “intense love” for the American military and the symbolism of democratic alliances that the troops represent around the world.
Jasser’s maternal grandfather was head of the Syrian Shariah Supreme Court from 1975 to 1985; and his paternal grandfather was a journalist-turned-dissident, who ultimately lost his business and his home as exaction for his outspoken criticism of Baathist fascism. Inspired by his grandfathers, Jasser spent many hours with his father re-interpreting Islamic text to provide contexts based on reason and a modern perspective.
The record shows that Jasser, in a society that offered opportunities, excelled in scholarship, and served with distinction in the US Navy. Trained as in internist, he served as a physician on a Charlie-class amphibious cargo ship. Although the Black Hawk Down debacle occurred at this time, Jasser was not singled out as a Muslim for persecution or “hate” messages. He says he comported himself as “an American officer who happened to be Muslim.”
Before entering the private sector with a medical practice in Phoenix, Arizona, Dr. Jasser’s public service culminated with his selection to the highly competitive position of Attending Physician for Congress and the Supreme Court.
Dr. Jasser’s character was most vividly revealed — they say that adversity does not create character, but simply reveals it — in 1995 when he confronted an Islamist “Muslim brotherhood legacy group” head on. After presenting a paper at a medical convention, Jasser stayed an additional day for the opening of the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) annual convention to see what 15,000 Muslims — some in military uniform — had gathered to discuss. One of the headliners, Imam Siraj Wahhaj made claims about replacing the US Constitution, a suggestion that enraged Lt. Col. Jasser to the point where, in his dress whites, Jasser took to the microphone at the close of Wahhaj’s tirade to confront the sedition-like statements. Jasser encouraged military personnel who were in the audience to leave. However, even the most supportive of those who approached Jasser told him he was overreacting.
Americans ask why there are not more Zuhdi Jassers speaking out against outrageous Islamist pronouncements and plans generated by mega-conventions and mosque co-operatives. One reason, often overlooked by those impatient to see greater anti-Sharia-law activism coming from the moderate Islamic community, is the monitoring by “minders,” who threaten economic and physical retaliation against family members back in the homeland for what is said by Muslims in America.
The U.S. has been complicit in this coercion: it has created conduits between petro-dollar rich Middle Eastern power centers and American universities, publishers, media outlets, mosque developers, and community groups. With just one example, Dr. Jasser illustrates how efficiently American interests can be influenced: in 2011 a Syrian-American classical pianist and composer was selected for an Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee award; but the honor was withdrawn when the honoree refused to change song selections in deference to demands that Syrian freedom lyrics were provocative. Even though the artist was disinvited and the award cancelled, his parents in Homs, Syria, were beaten and their home was later ransacked.
Beyond these syndicate-like controls, Jasser explains, residual tribalism is an even stronger force. For many Americans this is a tough sell, as it is all but impossible to imagine a community morality so restrictive that everything familial, social, and political is judged according to generational customs. Although Dr. Jasser does not ask Westerners to accept this mentality as an excuse for passivity in the face of Islamist oppression, this real syndrome does handicap efforts to reform Islamic thinking — including Muslims who are substantially Westernized, such as Jasser’s own family.
The question is whether, in light of the Muslim reluctance to defy establishment Islamists, it is worth making overt efforts to recruit Muslims to the campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood’s brand of political activists. If Dr. Jasser calls these passive, or currently undeclared, Muslims “indispensible to countering Islamism,” then what do Americans have to lose in standing with them?
If the number of Muslims congenial to American constitutionalism does indeed constitute a sizeable majority, it makes good sense to try to understand their predicament and to engage them as allies in the cause of liberty. Complaining that there are not enough moderate Muslims to make a difference is self-defeating; this is resignation before a sound strategy has even been developed. In fact, the very assertion that a certain number is required before the effort is credible discounts the value of leaders capable of reaching this community from within and it deprecates the courageous efforts of current reformers.
Some doubt the fidelity of so-called moderate Muslims to American constitutional standards of equal rights for women, uncensored speech, freedom of religious choice, and separation of civic life from religious oversight. On these issues Dr. Jasser asks Muslims for clarity to the degree that they note and oppose politico-religious codes. Citing examples of the “lawfare” tactics — the use of subversive lawsuits to create privileged status for Muslim rights in the courts — behind stunts such as the “flying imam” demonstration and the teacher who demanded excessive time off to go on a hajj, Jasser points to extortionist campaigns to force on Americans policy that does not have popular support and he calls on liberty-minded Muslims publicly to criticize such tactics.
Modern Muslim reformers such as Irshad Manji, Dr. Tawfik Hamid, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, and now young Malala Yousufzai are looking for more dissidents to join them in the public square and they also desperately need the material aid and support that freedom-loving Westerners bring to the cause.
Dr. Jasser recently spoke for the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia where a reporter summarized that Jasser’s “American Islamic Forum for Democracy is engaged in the right kind of jihad.” This columnist said that Jasser’s organization “deserves the support of anyone worried about what kind of American Muslims emerge to lead that community.” The writer closed with this simple and prescient warning for the West: “Their jihad is our jihad.”
link to story at Philadelphia Daily News
Stu Bykofsky, Daily News Columnist
Philadelphia Daily News
October 15, 2012
AMERICAN MUSLIM Zuhdi Jasser is a jihadist.
A veteran of 11 years in the Navy and a medical doctor, Jasser is on a jihad for democracy, the American-style democracy he has enjoyed since birth as the son of parents who fled Syria.
I believe immigrants – especially those coming to freedom from dark lands of terror and oppression – appreciate America more than most native-born Americans who don’t know how good they got it. Jasser was born here, and his parents taught him to honor both his faith, Islam, and America, with its faith in freedom and democracy.
The Muslims who have trouble with the West are those who do not believe in separation “between mosque and state,” Jasser says. Intheir Islam, state and mosque are intertwined, but that is not the way of America or the West.
Jasser argues the West is not effectively defending its values, and recently told a luncheon meeting with members of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum that “political Islam” is the biggest threat to world peace. The antidote is “moderate Islam,” a product that American Muslims are “uniquely qualified” to sell.
Jasser is president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, which he founded with eight other Muslim-Americans in 2003, in response both to 9/11 and to what they felt was inadequate denunciation of the attack on America by U.S. Muslims.
Since its founding, five of the original members have left AIFD, the result of “tribal pressure,” Jasser tells me in a later private sit-down. He is not usually confronted openly by Muslims – with one big exception – but is pressured “behind the scenes” to “stop airing dirty laundry.”
The exception is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which Jasser says sows “victimization” among Muslims and is slow to condemn terror.
The compliment is returned by CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper. He says both accusations are “complete fiction” and Jasser is a “sock puppet for Islam haters and Muslim bashers.”
To counter the charge of being slow to condemn terror, Hooper says CAIR, a civil-rights organization, put up a reward for the capture of an arsonist who set a Toledo mosque ablaze. (A suspect has been arrested.)
Tellingly, Hooper’s response focused on terror committed against Muslims, omitting terror committed by Muslims, which is far more common worldwide.
Jasser is as politically conservative as he is religiously liberal, even though he says he is devout and prays five times a day.
Perhaps his most incendiary luncheon statement was that of 3 million American Muslims, 5 to 7 percent are potentially dangerous. Supporting his opinion, he points to a 2011 Pew Research poll stating 8 percent of U.S. Muslims think suicide bombing and other violence against civilians is often or sometimes justified.
Condemnation of his extremist co-religionists is no different than Christians blasting the hate-spewing Westboro Baptist Church, but they are not called anti-Christian, while he is painted as an Islamophobe.
I don’t believe he is an Islamophobe. His American Islamic Forum for Democracy is engaged in the right kind of jihad. He deserves the support of anyone worried about what kind of American Muslims emerge to lead that community.
Their jihad is our jihad.
Oct. 5, 2012, 3:32 p.m. EDT
Debate Will Air on NPR Stations Nationwide and Telecast on WNET/Thirteen on November 3rd at 3 PM
NEW YORK, Oct. 5, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Intelligence Squared U.S. continued its Fall 2012 season with a sold out debate and a victory against the motion “Better Elected Islamists than Dictators.” In the final tally, Daniel Pipes and M. Zuhdi Jasser won the Oxford-style debate by convincing 16% of the audience to change their minds and oppose the motion. After the debate, 47% of audience members agreed that elected Islamists would not evolve Middle Eastern political systems, up from 31% pre-debate.
Arguing for the motion, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Brian Katulis sought to prove that elected Islamists, rather than dictators will lead to the dissolution of violence and radical ideologies of groups like al-Qaida that threaten the West. But at the end of the evening it was Daniel Pipes’ and M. Zuhdi Jasser’s arguments that elections will not influence centuries-old Islamist supremacist beliefs that convinced the audience to vote against the motion.
This latest intellectual match up was IQ2US’s 64th debate and was streamed live on WSJ Live.
Key Excerpts For the Motion:
REUEL MARC GERECHT:
“The only way you’re going to get a more liberal order in the Middle East is through people of faith. It is through the fundamentalists participating in the system that you’re actually going to develop the jousting ethic that is going to allow liberals to have greater chances. It’s only through them participating that you’re going to have people become responsible for politics.”
BRIAN KATULIS:
“Elected Islamists, not dictators, will defeat the radical ideologies of groups like al-Qaida. …al-Qaida, over the last three decades, essentially, has tried to build its ideological platform on two core pillars. Number one, tapping the popular discontent with dictators. Number two, anti-Americanism. That’s a combustible mix, and breaking that, and having the people in the region break that, I think, is extremely powerful. The fact that al-Qaida and its affiliates had virtually nothing to do with the removal of leaders in places like Egypt and Tunisia and the widespread calls for political reform and the battles that are still going, I think, is telling. The fact that Ayman Zawahiri, the head of al-Qaida, wrote a book attacking the Muslim Brotherhood for actually participating in democratic politics is telling. Looking ahead, it seems that al-Qaida’s popular appeal, I think, will remain low, given that many of the protesters are out there supporting democratic reforms. People are going to the ballot box, the very thing that radical jihadists are opposed to.
Key Excerpts Against the Motion:
DANIEL PIPES:
“Expect the worst of the Islamist regimes. These are people who are not going to let go of power. One man, one vote, one time or maybe two times is what you can expect. And therefore I say, better the greedy dictators that we can push around that we can change than the Islamist dictators who are our deepest enemies who we cannot change, who will be there for decades to come, who will do enormous — inflict enormous damage on their own populations, be aggressors toward their neighbors and deeply mired in anti-Americanism.”
M. ZUHDI JASSER:
“I’ll tell you, as a Muslim, I’m insulted at people who believe that Islamism is progress for me as a Muslim, that somehow the theocrats and those with robes that memorize their scripture, that somehow know how to run democracy, when, in fact, it’s an illusion. I think one of the things our opposition hasn’t even begun to tell you is how they can trust one word that the Islamists tell them. They’re deceptive theocrats who will do anything to monopolize and control our societies. This is far more dangerous than a simple dictator…. And once you understand that Islamism is no different than what our Founding Fathers fought against when we fought against theocracy in this country, you’ll realize that fighting against theocracy is the only way to achieve liberty.”
Before the debate, the IQ2US audience voted as follows:
* 38% of audience agreed with the resolution
* 31% of audience against the resolution
* 31% undecided
After careful consideration of the points by the audience, Daniel Pipes and M. Zuhdi Jasser won the debate: the team that moves the most votes at the end of the evening is determined the winner.
* 44% of audience agreeing with the resolution (+6%)
* 47% of audience against the resolution (+16%)
* 9% undecided (-22%)
To learn more about the debate and review a detailed breakdown of how the audience voted pre- and post-debate, please visit us at: http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/762-better-elected-islamists-than-dictators&tab=2
The showdown at Kaufman Center in New York City puts the leading public intellectuals in the limelight in front of a live audience for nearly two hours of heated debate.
Tiffany Gabbay, The Blaze, September 21, 2012
With the turmoil in the Middle East reaching a fever pitch, everyday people in the U.S. have, at one point or another, likely found themselves wondering: “Why? What do Muslims abroad really have against us? Why do they hate us?”
There could hardly be a one-size fits all answer to a question (and topic) so deeply textured, but for the sake of this exercise TheBlaze has attempted to delve into what Muslims abroad claim are their key grievances against America.
Interestingly, both Islamists and secular “men on the street” in Islamic countries harbor varying degrees of resentment for America and the West, each for their own distinct reasons. Below is an examination of the most prevalent issues concerning Muslims abroad.
Power plays and Arab nationalism
For Daniel Pipes, scholar and founder of the Middle East Forum (MEF), it boils down to one simple reason: Islamists hate America because “they believe Muslims should be in charge” and they, simply, “are not.”
The resentment, according to scholar, while most “acute” for fundamentalists is actually widespread even among Arab seculars.
Another motivation cited by experts is anti-Semitism. Take, for instance, the Palestinians. Both Hamas and Fatah have routinely waged terrorist acts but have not done so for the purpose of religious extremism. Rather, their animus is intended to justify their Arab nationalism and prop-up various acts of aggression against the Jewish State – land they seek to claim as their own.
Islamists outside the Palestinian territories will often join the anti-Israel bandwagon for purposes of Islamic solidarity and Arab unity. Again, leaders of Fatah and Hamas, while also vying for power within their own ranks, still present a unified front to the world when it comes to blaming the West and Israel for all their woes.
Raymond Ibrahim, a fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center agrees.
“Even secularists there [across the Middle East] will be anti-Israel.”
He explained that a lifetime absorbing anti-Semitic, anti-Western propaganda has shaped an entire culture’s world view.
“You can’t be born and raised in the Middle East and not be anti-Israeli,” the historian told TheBlaze in an exclusive interview.
“There no sense of responsibility. You can even talk to the most secular, intelligent, suit-and-tie guy and that is still his mentality.”
He added that Arab nationalism has “quickly morphed into an Islamist thing.”
“It’s the same hatred.”
“When something goes wrong it’s always – even when it comes to a secular Arab mentality – an Israel-U.S. ‘conspiracy.’”
Ibrahim, a Coptic Christian whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt, also explained that while not every secular Muslim in the Middle East will rise up in violence, they consider themselves above all to be Arab nationalists, thus will collectively turn a blind eye to the carnage being leveled by their more radical counterparts.
A series of U.S. “blunders?”
Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), spoke to TheBlaze about Muslim perceptions of the West. He claims that a strong contingent of Muslims harbor a belief that U.S. policy is definitively “anti-Islam” and that Americans are protective of Christian and Jewish communities exclusively while remaining silent in the face Islamophobia.
Al-Marayati — perhaps best known for equating jihad with Patrick Henry’s stance on “give me liberty or give me death” — explained that Muslim views are shaped around what they consider a series of U.S. foreign policy “blunders,” including a belief that:
Raymond Imbrahim, a Coptic Christian best known for his translations of jihadist propaganda material in his book, The Al Qaeda Reader, also pointed to several factors that sway anti-American sentiment among Muslims, among them is a belief that:
Whether their beliefs are founded or not is irrelevant, as they are perpetuated by Muslims local and national governments and across state-run media.
A bad PR campaign?
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), believes Arab-Muslim perceptions of America and the West are a direct result of how America is packaged in their media. He said that Muslims across the Middle East ironically still desire living in the U.S. and enjoy certain elements of Western culture but “hate American policies as they have been portrayed in the media.”
For the former U.S. Naval officer, it is “all about perceptions.“ He believes America needs to do more ”to promote ourselves and values in the Middle East” and refrain from appointing statesmen who he considers a “failure at…advancing a freedom agenda.”
“For a country that spends billions on campaigns inside the country, we’ve done virtually nothing to promote ourselves in the Middle East,” Jasser told TheBlaze pointedly. Otherwise, “we have been played for a fool by the Islamists” and their well-engineered, “Soviet-style” propaganda campaigns.
A “blame America” attitude, even for internal poverty
It is perhaps prudent to note that governments of Muslim countries are no stranger to corruption, relegating their citizenry to live in a perpetual state of poverty, illiteracy and unemployment. For instance, reports indicate that the illiteracy rate in the Arab world hovers at around 35.6 percent compared with a global rate of 18 percent. Likewise, the youth unemployment rate across the Middle East is 25 percent, exceeding that “of any other region in the world,” the International Monetary Fund said in its April 2011 regional outlook for the Middle East and Central Asia. J
When the people’s discontent boils over, rather than assume responsibility, political and religious leaders across the Middle East attempt to deflect blame, thereby pointing a finger at the West. to claim that America is the genesis for all of their country’s societal ills.
Experts consulted by TheBlaze for this article claim Islamic operatives will cite any number of “reasons” to blame the West for their countries’ stagnant economies and poor living conditions, including telling the public that America has even “stolen its oil and other natural resources.”
“If you are leading a movement anathema to Western ideas and to freedom and liberty,” Jasser said, leaders in the region “must develop grievances against a common ‘enemy’ to deflect attention away from themselves.”
He said the practice engaged by Islamic leaders in countries currently experiencing upheaval is by all means “Machiavellian,” adding that the best way to prevent proponents of human rights (i.e. the U.S.) from having a voice is by discrediting them.
“They shifted the discussion from ideology to grievances,” Jasser said.
Foreign and domestic policy
According to Pipes, of the many grievances aired by Islamists, insults to their Prophet Muhammad ranks at the top of all that is verboten, followed by “Western sexual freedom” and other liberated social practices concerning faith, speech, dress, personal relationships and so on.
Pipe’s assertion echoes statements made by one of North America’s most influential clerics, Imam Mohammad Qatanani, during an interview with TheBlaze. The prominent Islamic scholar confirmed that slandering the “final” prophet will in no uncertain terms, “ever be accepted” by Muslims.
The cleric’s strong words on slander do not only apply to Islamists. Islamism, for instance, may be much more prevalent in countries like Pakistan than it is (ironically) in Iran, but mocking the Prophet Muhammad appears to be universally taboo across the Islamic world, whatever the level of a religious observance.
U.S. answerable for all Western nations?
While both cultural and religious differences have fomented hatred for the U.S. among Muslims across the Middle East, so too has American foreign policy. Pipes, author of an array of books on Islam, dates the “tipping point” for U.S. policy to 1989 and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s edict against “The Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie.
The novel was said to have been inspired in part by the Prophet Muhammad and the title drew from a phenomenon in Islam dubbed the “satanic verses,” an alleged compilation of Quranic verses allowing prayers to be offered to three pagan goddesses. Polytheism is expressly forbidden in Islam, thus Islamists considered Rushdhie’s work blasphemous.
Iran’s Supreme Leader issued a fatwa — an Islamic mandate calling for a specific person to be killed — on the Indian novelist. Ironically, the argument used by Islamic clerics at the time claimed that Rushdie misused his “freedom of speech.” The author has lived under threat of death ever since and TheBlaze reported that the bounty on his head has recently been increased to $3.3 million.
“Had the West been firmer in that and the many succeeding examples,” he began, “I believe Muslims would see that they cannot intimidate us and the furor would calm down.”
How America is responsible for an Indian author who was not even in the U.S. at the time of the Satanic Verses’ release remains unclear. Still, when it comes to “blaspheming” against Islam, it seems the deeds of the entire Western world fall under America’s purview in the eyes of Islamists.
To befriend or not to befriend (despots, that is)
Another reason a contingent of Muslims resent America, according to experts consulted by TheBlaze, is that the U.S. has “hugged…kissed and befriended” many of the world’s “worst oppressors.” While not a consensus opinion, Jasser, considered a voice of Muslim moderation, believes that referring to Hosni Mubarak as a “close friend and ally” does naught to endear Americans to Muslims abroad.
He said America can no longer operate with a mindset of choosing the “lesser of two evils” when it comes to leaders in the Middle East.
“It can’t be a linear choice between the Shah and the Ayatollah,” he said.
In terms of where America has botched its foreign policy in the Middle East, Ibrahim countered Jasser’s point, immediately condemning President Obama for throwing our “staunch ally” Mubarak under the bus. Unlike Jasser, Ibrahim believes Mubarak was an important counter-balance to Islamists in the region and explained that one of the reasons the late Egyptian president was so loathed at home was specifically because of his close ties with the U.S.
“We empowered Islamists,” Ibrahim declared. ”Same thing with Libya. Gahdafi was terrible but what’s the alternative? The same people are now attacking Americans. It is ironic to me that Libya and Egypt are the ones retaliating in such a vicious way.”
Ibrahim also noted that if America were to step in and aid any Middle East uprising, it should have been Iran’s Green Revolution as it comprises mainly pro-Western students and other seculars seeking to free themselves from the grip of their hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
“We could have publicized it [Green Revolution] in the way that our media publicized the Arab Spring. I don’t remember media being fixated on the Iranians. Obama was silent. It’s so amazing, the question is ‘why?’: Why did we help the Brotherhood and not the seculars?”
He answered his own question: “Because the Islamists have infiltrated American government.”
While condemning the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is now being engaged at the White House, Ibrahim believes there is still a window of opportunity for the U.S. to side with the secularists and other pro-West groups.
TheBlaze also spoke with Larry Greenfield, a Los Angeles-based senior fellow at the American Freedom Alliance, who shared his thoughts on America’s current foreign policy as it relates to Islamic countries and what the U.S. should be doing differently.
“The left has adopted an approach of appeasement,” Greenfield, a former Naval Intelligence officer, told TheBlaze.
“Obama’s policies toward radical Islam have been to deny its existence, fail to name it or fight it effectively.”
Greenfield intensified his onslaught, criticizing “Obama the weak” for failing to condemn the murderer of Neda Agha-Soltan — a young Iranian woman who was shot to death during a dissident protest in Iran, and for his failure to respond to the protesters’ plea: “Obama, Obama, are you with us or our tyrants?”
“Obama’s entire foreign policy of sorrow for American strength and historical global leadership for freedom has invited danger. He has dithered in Afghanistan , bowed to the Saudis and betrayed allies like Britain, Hondurus, the Czechs, Poland, and Israel and emboldens bad actors.”
In closing, Greenfield asked if the president would like to return the Nobel Peace Prize bestowed upon him “now that it is evident his strategy of appeasement has collapsed.”
The idea Greenfield put forth is that by kowtowing to those who live outside the U.S., yet who demand Americans live in accordance with their Islamic ideology — even if that ideology is anathema to American values, laws and beliefs — extremists will only become more emboldened. Thus, a foreign policy that takes a more authoritative stance when dealing with extremists who shed American blood in the name of Islam might better serve U.S. interests.
Can America do anything right?
At the end of the day, Muslims are not a monolith. Their views vary from country to country, sect to sect, culture to culture. But history would seem to indicate that, at least where Islamists are concerned, if they are not upset about one set of American, or further, Western “transgressions” they will in short order be upset about another.
Whether it is demanding the release of the “Blind Sheik,“ or insisting that the Pope apologize for 2006 comments in which he criticized past Islamic ”tyranny;” a Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad, or America’s support for Israel, there may very well continue to be a thorn in Islamists’ side no matter how often America apologizes for itself or the entire Western world.
To achieve our mission we need your help, together we can lead the conversation and movement
We need your financial support to continue confronting the ideologies of political Islam
© Copyright 2016 American Islamic Forum for Democracy