Saturday, April 24, 2010

Dr. Jasser's Islam

This from M. Zhudi Jasser, noting that Muslims should not be portrayed as a monolithic entity:

. . . Jibril Hough and I represent two ends of an intra-faith conflict within Muslim communities. Hough is a leading supporter of the ideology of Political Islam. Islamism's faith in the supremacy of an Islamic State is in direct conflict with the ideals of liberty, religious freedom and the Establishment clause that founded the United States.

At the American Islamic Forum for Democracy we advocate for a preservation of the principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution. We believe Muslims can better practice their faith in a free and open society based in one law. We believe it is incumbent upon us as American Muslims to demonstrate to Muslim and non-Muslims alike that our faith does not have to be in conflict with American ideals.

If you are not visiting and supporting Dr. Jasser's American Islamic Forum For Democracy (AIFD), you should be. His objective, to reinterpret Islam and move it from the political to the religious realm, is in direct opposition to the goals of "radical Islamists." Simply put, if he wins, the world wins.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

With all respect to Dr Jasser & his sincere efforts (I think), there is no way to reform Islam. You would have to edit the Qur'an, discard many Hadith, forget about Shari'a, remove Mohammed the war-lord since his biography is hardly any sane person's idea of a religious prophet, & forget about 1400 yrs of nasty Islamic scholarship. Islam is an extremist ideology of hate & violence, incompatible with any notion of liberal democratic values, & is primarily political rather than religious. Reform in Islam is in fact the opposite of what we imagine - reform in Islam means becoming more extreme, not less.
Maybe Mr Jasser should consider becoming a Buddhist.