M. Zuhdi Jasser is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander. He is the President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona. AIFD, founded in 2003, is a think tank and activist Muslim organization which provides a platform for an American Muslim movement to separate spiritual Islam from the political. AIFD seeks to build coalitions of Muslims which not only reject the means of terror as an anathema to Islam but more globally reject the ends of the Islamic state which Islamists seek. AIFD believes that the only way to genuinely wage the contest of ideas and counter the root cause of terrorism is for Muslims to be given ample opportunity for debate between one another-- especially within the mosques. AIFD believes that the outcome of these debates will ultimately be the primary method to defeat the ideology of political Islam which ultimately inspires radical Islamism. Dr. Jasser believes that it is essential for devotional Muslims to lead the ideological war against militant Islamism. This Muslim led effort seeks to establish the synergy of Americanism and our Constitutional democracy with a post-modern, pluralistic Islam.
Thanks, Kas and good work, that definitely has to be him.
He has a pretty impressive bio. I thought Jasser sounded a little familiar, I’ve read a few of his pieces at FSM and Washington Times.
Thanks for doing the research and confirming Jasser’s identity.
However, I remain skeptical about any Muslim who says the religious and political aspects of Islam can somehow be detached from each other. So Jasser wants this debate to take place `within the mosques’? IIRC, eighty percent of mosques in America preach Islamism and hatred of infidels; I doubt if the `peaceful Islam’ proponents would get very far trying to initiate debate. They might be lucky to escape with their lives.
Or, maybe it’s another Trojan horse sanctioned by the Islamists (who are, after all, in the driver’s seat) to lull the Kuffar (us) into dreamy kumbaya. After all, Huma of the Ummah broke practically every rule a Muslimah is supposed to be bound by, and she still has her head.
There’s an exception to every fatwah, and a fatwah for every exception. Or maybe Jasser is just one more of those suave, soft spoken clean-shaven western attired Muslim spokespeople whose own personal brand of Islam would never countenance beheadings or honor killings. Again, I think he has been granted an imamic dispensation, otherwise he’d have to travel with bodyguards like one Robert Spencer.
Or perhaps Jasser is a cafeteria Muslim. In any case, his private version of Islam is not what propells Jihadi terrorism in the world today, nor is it what gives Islamic regimes the license to persecute those who are non-Muslim as well as those who are not Muslim enough.
I would take anything he says with a large grain of salt.