scholarly work | American Islamic Forum for Democracy

Save Syria Now!

Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Syrian catastrophe on the verge of imploding the Middle East while U.S. has no discernible strategy

Iran spreads violence across region as Syria records 5,000 deaths in August under an intransigent Assad

PHOENIX (September 5, 2012) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the co-founder of the Save Syria Now! issued the following statement regarding the latest developments in Syria:

“August has been recorded as the bloodiest month in the year and a half campaign for the revolution to remove the tyrant Bashar Assad and his military apparatus from power in Syria. With over 5,000 dead at the barbaric hands of the Syrian military and the UN recording over 100,000 refugees last month alone, there is no indication that Assad’s military tyranny is abating.

Despite this, we still see no discernible strategy from the Obama Administration on how to secure a free Syria. Secretary Clinton has failed yet again this week in negotiations with the Chinese to find a path forward. These negotiations fail primarily because the Chinese know that the President does not have the resolve or inclination to act in this region.

This administration has clearly determined that action of any sort is not in its best interest heading into November’s presidential election. That inaction has essentially given the Assad regime free reign to decimate the Syrian people and opened the door to the jackals of the region in the form of Iran, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday the Iranians have resumed airlifts through Iraqi airspace of arms and personnel to support Assad’s regime. Iran’s Quds force has become the de facto training battalion of Assad’s ruthless Baathist Alawite militia. Even more disturbing, many experts believe that Iran is perfectly content to allow Syria to disintegrate into another Afghanistan if it means keeping the prospects of a Western influenced free Syria from emerging from its current hell.

That would be a disastrous outcome for the entire region. We are already seeing violence spill over into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. How long will it be before we see this violence knocking on Israel’s door?

Yet Clinton’s State Department cannot even articulate a clear position against the Iraqi government allowing the use of its airspace by the Iranians.

Further recent reports indicate that Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are ratcheting up their involvement in the country. In fact it appears that these organizations are turning the situation into an opportunity for sectarian violence against each other. While watching these two purveyors of American and Muslim tragedy destroy each other may sound enticing, ceding them the prize of Syria is simply outrageous. Doing so at the cost of Syrian lives is inhumane and criminal.

Syria deserves better from the West and the international community. It needs real leadership. It needs a focus on freedom for its people.”

About Save Syria Now!

Save Syria Now! is a group of Americans of Syrian descent organizing to put pressure on the United States to call for immediate action to be taken against the regime of Bashar Assad of Syria and to bring true liberty to the people of Syria. We stand with the Syrians protesting in the streets to end the tyranny of the Assad family. For more information please visit our website at http://www.savesyrianow.org/.

MEDIA CONTACTS: Gregg Edgar

Gordon C. James Public Relations

gedgar@gcjpr.com

602-690-7977

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Yesterday’s headlines rang with the not-so-profound revelation that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had now declared his allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The world heard about al-Zarqawi’s call for “unity against the enemies of Islam”. He reported communicating with bin Laden and joining the strategy of al-Qaida with that of his own fascist “Tawhid and Jihad.” The real question is who actually believes this to be a new revelation? This coverage yesterday appears to lend credence to the fact that much of the media establishment remained under gross denial of the obvious link between the Iraq war, al-Qaida, and Islamo-fascist terror. The denial cannot last much longer. It is only a matter of time. The terrorists will remain bent on explicitly proving their associations no matter how slow the world coverage is on the uptake. It is going to become increasingly difficult for contrarians to the Iraq war to revel in the denial of linkage as al-Zarqawi and his fellow thugs make their associations clear and their obsession with Operation Iraqi Freedom clear for all to note. The Islamo-fascists came to us on 9/11 on the heels of Clinton’s foreign policy. We have now taken the fight to them in Iraq and Iraq seems to be infested with them. As Dennis Prager noted last week, “what would Zarqawi be doing today if he weren’t in Iraq today?” He is the head of a snake that has long been waiting to poison America. Taking the war to him and al-Qaida to liberate Islam from the true enemies of Islam and freedom will prove in the future to be a prescient foreign policy approach. Similarly, today will most likely yield little verbal responses from international Muslim leaders about al-Zarqawi himself being the greatest enemy of Islam. Perhaps someday soon, whether by ‘fatwa’ or a more modern pronouncement of a call to action of the moderate faithful, Muslims worldwide will declare their own clear disgust and intentions to lead the war against al-Qaida, al-Zarqawi, and their ilk – the real enemies of Islam. For until they do, the nauseating religious pronouncements of crazed zealots like al-Zarqawi will continue to be tacitly accepted by the world media on face value without criticism. Without massive worldwide immediate Muslim response and calls of action to defeat al-Zarqawi, he and al-Qaida will continue in their hijacking of the faith. A few countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are beginning to “get it.” In the setting of autocratic regimes in the absence of reform their motives will remain questionable, but time will reveal what role moderate Muslims will take in stepping up to the plate to defeat their own greatest enemy, the real enemies of Islam – Islamofascists. This column can also be found at this link at the Arizona Republic.