The horrific bombings in Madrid Spain yesterday killed more than 190 people and injured more than 1,200. This was obviously an al-Qaida operation with 10 simultaneous explosions within Madrid’s transportation system in a diverse country that was part of the coalition in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Al-Qaida and their ilk are frenetically pushing all available buttons of barbarism as Iraq heads toward a Constitutional government and their cells from America to Europe to Iraq are being slowly uncovered or neutralized. Let not one Spanish life lost on March 11 be forgotten. Let it remind us and keep us forever vigilant of the fact that we are at war. We need continued firm leadership at home and abroad. Attacks in Baghdad, Karbala and Madrid that were like those before in Bali, Istanbul, and Riyadh make it imminently clear that our troops abroad and our citizens at home have our work cut out for us as we fight terror in all its manifestations. Al-Qaida’s increasing agitation of late must mean that the noise around their foxholes is increasing. Al-Qaida’s extermination can only come with the resolve to persist in Iraq with our coalition until a capitalistic democracy is in place and maintained safe. If Iraq was so irrelevant in the war on terror, how is it that a network of suicide bombers sprouted in Iraq? If Iraq was so irrelevant why Spain, now, near their elections, when their Prime Minister showed great leadership in his support of the coalition in Operation Iraqi Freedom? The war on terror has many fronts and on March 12, 2004 it is more clear than ever that leadership, consistency, and resolve like that of President Bush is essential. On every possible front, the time is also now more than ever for moderate Muslims to put into high gear a national and global effort to find and expose those who may be part of an anti-American or anti-western terror network whether in America, Europe, Iraq or beyond. This column originally appeared at this link at the Arizona Republic.

It was only two months ago that the Saudis were funding radio advertisements throughout the United States on our need as Americans to be patient as they move toward reform and tolerance. Now, this next month, in a program which slipped through their “western laundering police,” they initiated a program to improve tourism into their beloved autocratic state with the caveat that “Jews and Israelis need not apply for visas.” In fact, their website for tourism had the following exclusions for visa applicants: ﾕ An Israeli passport holder or a passport that has an Israeli arrival/departure stamp. ﾕ Those who don’t abide by the Saudi traditions concerning appearance and behaviors. Those under the influence of alcohol will not be permitted into the Kingdom. ﾕ There are certain regulations for pilgrims and you should contact the consulate for more information. ﾕ Jewish people. And if that insult to principles of Islamic tolerance and hospitality is not enough, when the world took notice of their anti-Jewish travel policies they quickly changed the Saudi tourism website and pretended they were a tolerant tourist trap. While we continue to listen not to the Saudi monarchs who have self-interest in portraying tolerance and change, but to the Imams in Saudi Arabia (i.e. the war cry from Mecca during Hajj Jan. 31, 2003) who continue to preach hatred, reform will need to be genuine and based upon Islam’s sacred tradition of interfaith equality and brotherhood with Christians, Jews, and all humanity. The Saudi’s slipup over visas in their push for tourism is a sign of a far deeper rooted problem in intolerance, racism, and paranoia that will need real Islamic reform from the grass roots of the Saudi people – not from the government or from the pulpits. Here is a picture of what the Saudis deleted off their website. The updated entry had the offensive entries removed. This column originally appeared at the Arizona Republic at this link.

appreciated fellow blogger, Jay Heiler’s insight into the theological message and national dialogue on The Passion of the Christ. One cannot deny the fact, as Jay eloquently points out, that the hard question this movie poses is the most obvious – who was Jesus Christ? Jay, I do feel obliged to humbly point out that the binary proposition you present concerning Jesus as written by G. K. Chesterton is not so binary to some, or at least humbly in the mind of a moderate Muslim. In the teachings of Islam, a religion revealed around 610 C.E., Jesus is held in the same prophetic respect as the prophet Abraham, Moses, and Mohammed to name a few. In fact, most would not remark on a dichotomy regarding Jesus between the great monotheistic traditions of Judaism and Christianity, but rather a ‘trichotomy’ of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition of monotheism. As you eloquently imply, the issue has filled many a course on comparative theologies. There is little doubt that the movie will certainly bring to the fore the obvious religious conflict born of this signal moment in human history between Jews and Christians. But, it is also quite interesting to stop and take a different side route: To note that the religion of Islam, so maligned today by media because of a few barbarians who claim to be Muslim, does in fact take a middle ground on Jesus, believing in his divine message, believing in Mary and his virgin birth, and in fact believing in the divine origins of the Torah and the Gospels from the same God. While most interfaith dialogue points to common ground as the fulcrum of cooperation and free religious expression, eventually most dialogue must end up confronting the differences. We must cherish these differences in the light of our similarities that bring us together. For as we each take our individual paths in life, our ability to, not only tolerate, but celebrate the divine nature of our differences while also cherishing our common values will be the beacon of freedom for us all. This column first appeared at the Arizona Republic at this link. http://www.azcentral.com/specials/pluggedin/articles/0225jasser0225passion.html

Paul Bremer has now opened the long awaited discussion. Will the new Iraq call itself “an Islamic state?” Will there be a state religion? What role will the religion of Islam as potentially dictated by the clerics and Islamists play? What role and what rights will women have in the new government? What rights will non-Muslims or any minorities have? Most importantly will the Constitution derive the essence of its authority “from the people and by the people” or from a defined group of clerics who want to impose their own so-called learned interpretation of sharia (Islamic Laws) for the Iraqi population? Is there a moderate interpretation of Islam available to the Governing Council that can get past the concept of an “Islamic state”? As America, Britain, and coalition forces oversee a transition of power back to the people of Iraq by June 30, two obvious elements need to come together for the sustainability of Iraqi self-governance. The constitution needs to embody principles that empower a free and liberated Iraqi population based upon equality of all individuals. It must also contain the checks and balances so that the new government can remain free from internal coercion and usurpation by nationalistic or theocratic demagogues standing by for the departure of coalition forces. The discussion of the type of constitution most fitting for the Iraqi people should be first an internal Iraqi issue. However, this cannot happen in a vacuum. Over three decades of Baathist oppression have left very little in the way of institutions and learned liberal individuals who can serve as beacons toward the enumeration of Iraqi principles of liberty. Some liberty-minded Iraqis are slowly making themselves known (many of them women), but no one can deny that among those in Saddam’s mass graves or Arab-Iraqi diaspora all over the world are individuals that would have been far more facile in the legal and political gymnastics of a constitutional convention within a majority Arab and Islamic population. For now, the Iraqi population that remains will have to move forward quickly with the creation of its first free constitution. While Bremer’s most recent language may sound a bit autocratic in nature, it is purely reflective of the level of discourse of the Governing Council. While no one is expecting individual Iraqi leaders to divorce themselves of their faith of Islam and its personal inspiration in the creation of legal foundations for their country, time after time, when they label their foundations as “Islamic” or empowered by a defined set of Islamic theocratic dictums, it becomes no longer the document for a “free” Iraq but rather a “theocratic” Iraq. As the constitutional conveners seek to bring together Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd, while empowering male and female free of autocracy, monarchy, sexism, racism, or fascism, they will need to hold fast to the exclusion of any specific religious discourse from constitutional prose. In any secular system principles can be applied to carry the beliefs of any faith but just not in the name of a specific faith. Semantics? Not hardly when dogma is so often imposed by so-called ‘learned’ religious scholars. Such is the conflict of every religious court of inquisition given jurisdiction over a secular court or government. To codify Islam, as a state religion, or its sharia as its pre-defined body of laws into Iraq’s constitution will be, regardless of intention, a sign to those of others faiths, no matter how small a minority, that they are not as welcome or as equal. Their rights and opinions will be secondary forever. This discussion in Iraq’s constitutional infancy is sure to be fueled with the new-found freedoms of individuals of all persuasions. Freedoms available to all from the moderates to the orthodoxy. Yet, I still cannot understand how it is that any clerics ended up on the governing council? Clerics could always have advised the council rather than represent. Not only does Islam have no clergy, but the concept that a man (thus excluding women) of Islamic theology is the obvious precursor of a man of government is the dogma that requires the deepest reform within Iraqi society, if not Muslim society in general. Certainly, religious laws play a role in marriage, inheritance and other aspects of Islamic life, but that in no way translates into representation or dominion over the populace and any branches of government. A religious advisor in Iraq in 2004 is a far cry from a head of state, but yet clerics were placed on the council. The steps toward democracy in Iraq cannot be forced in a timetable as Fareed Zakaria argues in his recent book, The Future of Freedom. He describes the need to foster constitutional liberty first and then a liberal democracy in developing countries. Self-rule can only arise out of a state of liberty. Liberal democracy, Zakaria describes, arises out of the development of pervasive autonomous institutions and most importantly out of free markets and capitalism. What is in most dire need is the input of moderate Muslims in America and the west. For those living in beacons of democracy like America can share through our experience as Muslims the value of separation of religion and state. This separation will give lasting stability for a nation like Iraq with a Muslim majority reborn in 2003 into freedom. The next few months will be most telling in its test upon the maturity of the Muslim mind in Iraq and beyond as it approaches the affairs of the state while peeling away overt religion. This column first appeared at the Arizona Republic at the following link.