Islam 2.0?

-M. Zuhdi Jasser is president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith.” He is co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement and a former lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. He is a physician in private practice in Phoenix, AZ. Twitter @DrZuhdiJasser

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio. This is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as a, well, an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. There are truly few people whose intelligence, whose courage, whose tenacity, and whose leadership has meant more to me personally and I think in many ways to our country than a man we’re very privileged to have with us for a full hour. He is Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. You have doubtless seen him on FOX or other television programs, perhaps had a chance to see his book in your bookstore, A Battle For The Soul Of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight To Save His Faith. You may have read his writings in various publications around the country on the internet and elsewhere. Perhaps most recently you saw him leading a very inspiring and I hope very promising effort, a declaration of the Muslim reform movement earlier this month. It is my, as I say, honour to call him a friend as well as a person with whom we are very privileged to consult from time to time. Welcome back, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. Great to have you with us, sir.

ZUHDI JASSER:

It’s good to be with you, Frank. Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Well, I’m always delighted to talk with you, but rarely more so than in the wake of this initiative that you’ve unveiled and we’ve got a lot of things that we want to talk about with you in the course of this hour, most of which will be related to this capstone issue, but why don’t we start with it, because it is much in the news thanks to your efforts, Zuhdi. Talk first of all about what Muslim reform is, as you see it, and how this document might mark a milestone.

ZUHDI JASSER:

It really does. And you know, people who follow our work know that this has been a long time coming, but it’s not something you can just do overnight even though people have said where have we been, but I think the first point to make is that this is a war of ideas. We have a battle against countries that are Islamist, that basically are dominated by the OIC, so our declaration is, what does victory look like? So we said, you know, listen, there are a lot of reforms that may take generations that include modernization of interpretation of Koran and other things that will take hundreds of scholars. That may not happen in our generation. But what can happen is the building of an army of warriors for the ideas of freedom. So how do we do that? The first step in that victory would be to make a declaration of core principles that can be used as a firewall to determine which Muslims are with us, for secular governance, for human rights, and for free speech versus those Muslims that are against us or believe in a different worldview. So our Muslim reform movement got together, rolled up our sleeves, fifteen different leaders – actually there were over thirty that we invited that are part of this, but we were able to get fifteen together in Washington. We met for two days and our American Islamic Forum for Democracy convened it. But it was co-sponsored by a number of different individuals that you can see that are signatories and we said, listen, we’ll figure out the details of the strategy as we do this over the next few years, but number one is, we want to take some ownership of the concept of reform and that we can’t get to a modernization and a defeat of Islamism unless we reform the core ideas that inspire political Islam. And number two, we want to make a declaration of principles that we feel are that ideological firewall. So in the area of peace and counter-terrorism, we said, listen, we condemn violent jihad. We condemn the concept of the Islamic State, not only ISIS, but all Islamic states, we condemn the concept of caliphism and the caliphate. And we, then, into the areas of minority rights and free speech, we condemn blasphemy laws and apostasy laws. We said that we don’t believe that Muslims have a monopoly on heaven. We also condemn the concept that ummah, which is the inspiration of the Islamic State and where the concept of the Muslim army comes from, we believe ummah applies to the entire world community rather than simply to Muslims. These are all heretical to the leaders of our faith community if you will, however, as goalposts, if you will, for a future reform, there are many Muslims that believe in these principles and that’s why we live in America. So we’ve set these goalposts if you will and we’re trying to begin the move down the field, if you will, to get Muslims there.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Zuhdi, these principles that you have enunciated, where can people find them? And talk a little bit about the people who joined you in your American Islamic Foundation For Democracy in putting this program together. You mentioned fifteen – just, are there any that we would recognize as visible as you have been in this space?

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yeah, we started a website that’s still in development, but it’s muslimreformmovement.org. At our website, aisdemocracy.org, you’ll see the declaration. But at muslimreformmovement.org and at Facebook, we started a large community that already has over six thousand members at our community Facebook page at Muslim Reform Movement. We posted the declaration at change.org and it already has thousands of signatures. We did ask our neighbors, our non-Muslim neighbors to help us because the platforms that we have are essential to getting our voice out and having a seat at the table. And also, it’s amazing that this coalition is bipartisan. You know, we need both the left and the right, from the support we’ve gotten, the local, for example, here in Arizona, the Phoenix New Times, a liberal magazine, profiled our entire rollout of what we’re doing. Some of the names you may know include Ezra Namoni [PH] a liberal journalist who was a friend of Daniel Pearl. And has long been outspoken on the, what she calls the honor brigade of the OIC. Rahil Raza [PH] from Toronto, Selma Sidiqqi [PH] from Canada, from Ottowa. Imam Usemi Hassan [PH] who’s with the Colean [PH] Foundation. Naser Khader who founded an organization called Muslim Democrats in Denmark and is now a parliamentarian with the parliament in Denmark. So there’s just a broad spectrum. It includes some imams, some scholars and activists and intellectuals and professionals. Araf Miyun [PH] who is a fellow with our American Islamic Forum and a businessman in Portland, Oregon. So it’s a broad spectrum of courageous individuals that have put their necks out and are standing beside each other in courage and saying, listen, these are the principles we believe in. We’re ready to argue with the Islamists, we’re ready to create an army of ideologues that believe that our faith needs to come into the 21^st Century. And we have a preamble that we agreed on. And, you know, listen, we understand there’s a lot more details and footnotes and additions that need to come after this, but we took that declaration and marched to the mosque on Mass Avenue which is a Saudi-owned affiliated mosque and put it on their door, have a little video that shows them ripping it off and talking to us about the principles. We’re going to mail this, our AIFD is going to mail this to every Islamic organization in the country and ask them are you with us or are you against us?

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is our guest. As mentioned, he is the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He is also a now-retired lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. He served with great distinction, including on Capitol Hill in the physician’s office up there. Zuhdi Jasser is, I believe, still, if I’m not mistaken, on the international religious freedom commission. Is that right, Zuhdi?

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yes, yes, my term will be up in May since it’s term limited. But I had the opportunity to go to many countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and so many, looking at the issue of religious freedom.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, well, this is – this is a real public service that you’re rendering. I know it’s mostly a thankless task, but monitoring religious freedom, both internationally and really keeping an eye on what’s happening here as well is something that you’ve devoted an enormous amount of time, taking you away, it must be said, from your practice as a nuclear physician and this is, again, something that I think all of us who are hoping for reform within Islam are most appreciative of. Zuhdi, we’re going to pause for just a second. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit about something you alluded to there a moment ago, people saying to you, well, where have you been? I’ll remind people and talk with you about how we first met in connection with a film that helped explore where you, personally, have been and where others like you, including some that are with you in this reform movement have been. Because your stories provide an insight into what you are up against and really what we are as well. That and much more in our full hour of conversation with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Our guest is a remarkable man, a very courageous leader within the Muslim American community, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. He founded an organization called the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. A Terrific organization which I urge everyone to check out and support. He is the author of a Battle For The Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith. And he has been a driving force in a declaration of the Muslim Reform Movement, which in, I guess homage to Martin Luther, you posted on the door of a Wahhabi mosque in the Washington, DC area. It’s a remarkable testament that you came away unscathed from the experience. I imagine psychologically a little the worse for wear, but physically unharmed, thank God. But Zuhdi, just to remind folks of a film that you started, really, Islam Versus Islamists, that we had the privilege of putting together a few years back to try to address the question of if there are all these moderate Muslims out there, how come we don’t hear from any of them? You are among the few that we do. And one of the things that, you know, just was unmistakable, though that film did not get shown on Public Broadcasting System as it was supposed to, those who saw it, I think, had a clear takeaway, it’s probably in small measure because it’s terrifying to stand up against the so called leadership of this faith community in the United States. That you’re apostates and heretics and, you know, marked for death and all of that. Talk a little bit about your personal struggle in that respect and where you think this reform movement can be of help to people like you.

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yeah, you know, it was fascinating after 9-11, we, some of us, as we sat at home, looking at who was speaking on behalf of the Muslim community, I saw the same old pathologies of the Islamist groups blaming America, talking about anti-Zionist conspiracy theories that they had and all this other nonsense. And we said, you know, listen, we need to – terrorism is a symptom. We didn’t form our organization to counter terror; we formed our organization to counter political Islam. And our mission is the separation of mosque and state.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is our guest. We’re talking about this real menace within Islam, namely what you call political Islam, and others have called it different things, fundamentalist Islam, extremist Islam, radical Islam, shariah. But your challenge has been to counter it, Zuhdi, and what have you confronted in that regard in the United States, to say nothing of what others have elsewhere in the world?

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yeah, so you know, those of us that are honest realize that our faith has not gone through the same enlightenment process and the separation of the domain of God from the domain of man which the West went through in the American Revolution and all the revolutions in the West that marginalized the theocrats in their churches and universities and away from government and really we said this is the way to fight radical Islam is that radical Islam is a symptom of the theocrats that are dominating and controlling our communities. But there was a lot of fear because not only do the Islamists attack us directly as being nominal Muslims, and fake Muslims and tools of conspiracies, but the governments from abroad are also empowering the Islamists domestically, so when you take on Islamists in America, you are also taking on the Iranian regime, you’re taking on the Saudi regime and the Wahhabis, you’re taking on al-Azhar in Egypt –

FRANK GAFFNEY:

The Muslim Brotherhood.

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yeah, the Muslim Brotherhood. Entire populous movements and so there was some lack of motivation from any Muslims who were protected by the freedoms of America as a small minority here to do anything. But slowly the Arab awakening started to release some of that fear, the revolutions gave people some inspiration that we can push back against dictators. And then the scourge of radical Islam from ISIS has really been sort of a tipping point for American Muslims to say, listen, at least those of us that are not Islamists, to say this is a disease that we have to fix or else our children will be forever conflicted between being Americans and being Muslim and that conflict can only be defeated if we take ownership.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Zuhdi, can I just ask you on this point, because I think it’s so central to what you’re up against and frankly criticism that you have received from people who I think actually believe there needs to be a real fundamental reform of Islam for this kind of peaceable Islam to manifest itself, when we hear sort of alluded to, people are generally not very specific about it, but we do hear people alluding to the Islamic State ideology, or the al-Qaeda ideology, what does that mean in fact? Is that a made up program of these radicals, as some call them, or is this something that really has been enshrined in the faith to this point? The gates of, I believe it’s called ijtihad [PH] have been closed for centuries, this sort of scholarly process of reinterpreting the faith. And what you’re calling for really is an almost Lutheran kind of reformation that would build something that isn’t there at the moment. Is that fair?

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yes, I would agree with most of that. I think it’s important to note, however, that we love our faith. So we call this Muslim Reform Movement. We didn’t call it Islam or Islamic reform. And the reason is, is we have no illusion to the fact that we are not a dominant force in the leadership of our faith community. However, you know, the reality is, is that we do feel that our Islam is different from their Islam but we still feel that we’re adherent to the faith of God that we believe to be the message of the prophet Muhammad and so our question as reformers is not to abandon what the prophet did in the 7^th Century, but to say what would the prophet Muhammad do if he were alive today and we believe that he would say that secularism and Western liberal democracy is a far preferable system than the Islamic State concept that he had led in Medina and Mecca. So the issue is how do you get to a place of reform. And we don’t believe demonization of the prophet’s example is a way to do that, but rather to say that certain aspects of the Koran that applied to 623 AD do not apply today and that ultimately we can separate those passages that are historical versus those that are applicable to all time. And that’s sort of the weeds, if you will, of how we get there and the bottom line is that you’re right. The concept of the Islamic State is one promulgated by the current theology that abandons and stops reform, more ijtihad, which means the critical interpretation of scripture in modern days. And when ijtihad stopped in the 13^th Century, the concept of caliphate, the concept of the merger of societal law with Islamic law, was all there. So it had not – but then, globally, there was no example of a coherent separation of church or mosque and state for the societies to learn from and use as an example. So ultimately, what we want to do is take Islam and Muslims especially through the process in which we begin to see societies based on a legal system that’s human. And that’s why in our document it says we believe shariah is manmade. It’s not from God. And that obviously is heretical. But we believe that it’s the truth because shariah as a word is not even present in the Koran. It’s barely – it’s root is present once. And that’s it. So if it’s such a mandate – there’s a lot of laws in the Koran, but ultimately if shariah is such a mandatory program of society, we don’t think God forgot to include that in the Koran as being a mandate.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

It would seem like an oversight of rather epic proportions. Zuhdi, we have to pause for one more break. When we come back, I want to talk with you a little bit about that Muhammaden tradition and how you get around some of the thornier pieces of it, shall we say, and set the stage for a real honest conversation with both Muslims and the non-Muslim world about the kind of reforms you’re seeking. That and more with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

We’re back for what I consider to be an extraordinarily important conversation with a man whose courage and whose vision I think is indisputable. People question sometimes the basis upon which he is trying to reform Islam and we want to explore that with him in this block. He is Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, retired lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. A man now serving on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. And by training a nuclear medical doctor and also, as I say, very active in this space of trying to counter the jihadists in our midst and elsewhere and save the country he loves from their predations. Zuhdi Jasser, let me be pointed about this, you mentioned earlier some aspects of Muhammad’s life, the hadiths that chronicle it, the sort of DNA, I guess if you will, of this idea that the prophet was the perfect Muslim, which seems to govern so much of what has come down to us as I guess shariah. Let me just ask, this is a man who was indisputably a very accomplished if very brutal warrior. This was a man who married a child bride. This is a man who seemed to have countenanced beheadings and other harsh punishments even in some cases for petty crimes and the like. What does a reformer like you say about those aspects of the history of the faith and what you need to do going forward in light of them?

ZUHDI JASSER:

Well, thanks for asking me that, Frank, because it certainly is the elephant in the room if you will. And, you know, the bottom line is that Muslims do not in any way worship the prophet Muhammad. We believe he’s a man who was used as a vehicle for the message of God and the miracle we believe the prophet Muhammad had is the script, the Arabic script of the Koran. But his example, there are passages in the Koran which God corrects Muhammad for errors he made. Now ultimately, the inspiration of our moral example of how we live our life began with the prophet’s example and much of his life. So but there’s no doubt that in addition to being a messenger, he was the head of a military and also the head of state. So his acts, we can – you can call these apologetics or whatever they may be, but ultimately if we believe in the authenticity of the Arabic script of the Koran, we must also then believe in the moral character of the man that God chose to give us that script. So just as we believe in the moral character of Abraham, of Jesus, of Moses, and of the prophet Muhammad, then Muhammad had to have been a moral human. We cannot then say that somehow we’re going to reform Islam by condemning the prophet and saying that he had immorality. Now, certainly he participated in wars and I participated in wars as an American naval officer and my generals, my admirals said that we wanted to go kill the Taliban where we find them. And I think that’s a very moral thing. So ultimately the question is not that Islam is pacifist or not, but the question is at the time is there an apologetics that explains the battle that existed, the battle of Bedar [PH] or whatever battles that are chronicled in the Koran as being justified because of the abandonment of treaties or whatever it may be, is there an apologetics that makes sense for 623? But them we as reformists say you can’t apply that from thereon. We reject abrogation, for example. Because abrogation is the way you reject all the other conflicting passages in the Koran to say that – to say that it’s not peaceful because the last passages justified an act of war. And then do you call Christians, you know, infidels, when in fact God also allows us to marry them and allows us to have them be the mother of our children without conversion. The issue of a child bride, you know, the apologetic I learned – and I call it an apologetic because I have no way to prove this – but the apologetic I learned is that there were marriages that happened to prevent wars and that ultimately he may have married her, but the question – cause pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder. So the question is, is at what age did he consummate that marriage and most Muslims believe that that happened when she was much closer to adulthood at seventeen and eighteen.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

So there is some tradition of it being nine, too, so I mean – I guess what –

ZUHDI JASSER:

[OVERLAP] And that, yeah, those are the hadith that we reject.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, well, and I guess, Zuhdi, I think many of us who very much want to see Muslims, particularly in this country, but around the world as well, practice their faith in a way that is genuinely tolerant, genuinely moral, genuinely peaceable, genuinely aligned, really, along the very principles that you’ve laid out in this remarkable document, your declaration of the Muslim Reform Movement, it does seem, though, and I think to be fair, you’re sort of picking and choosing the parts of the practice, the traditions, the scriptures, the stories of the faith in order to bring forward something that is all of those qualities. And again, you don’t have a disagreement with me about that, it’s just that there are those – and certainly those in the Muslim community I need not tell you who consider this to be simply heretical and outrageous and probably a capital offence. So talk us through that, Zuhdi Jasser, if you would.

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yeah, I mean, when you say picking and choosing the issue is, and you’re exactly right that many people say that, but they are describing, what they’re describing as the faith of Islam is all human accounts, texts written by human beings, be it Ibn Tami [PH] or other scholars that are central parts of the cancer that has in many ways dominated Islam even at the moment that the prophet died. I mean, Tariq Fatah has written books in which he talks about the program of political Islam began right at the death of the prophet. Three of the first four caliphs were assassinated. And yet even with that, Bernard Lewis, one of the classic scholars of Islam, wrote a book about what went wrong and that he said that the golden age of Judaism, Judaic scholarship happened, living under Islamic rule, but yet at the time it was the most modern civilization on the planet. And if the prophet Muhammad himself was so dysfunctional and evil and a warrior and all these other things that are portrayed on him, how could you have had such a vibrant civilization with four thousand different schools of thought before itjihad actually closed down if the prophet’s example was so pathological? So I think the shortest way towards victory, which is going to be a long way, but still the shortest way is to say that the prophet’s example through the corruption of what is thought to be surah or the example of him is actually what we need to reform, number one. Number two, the Arabic scripture of the Koran which we believe to be authentic, its interpretation is what’s been destroyed and not – and still adhere to original script of the Koran.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

But that does require picking and choosing passages from it, it seems to me. Because there, well, some of the surah and the hadith and so on are clearly, as you say, manmade and perhaps thereby discountable if the Koran represents the received word of God, there are considerable number of passages in it, as you know, that I think are very much at odds with the kinds of principles that you’re espousing here. And again, I’m not in opposition to discarding them or simply not considering them to be guidance from God, it’s just that’s not generally regarded as Islam, is it?

ZUHDI JASSER:

Oh, and Frank, you’re exactly right. I mean, we say it, look, there’s a passage that permits polygamy. What do we do with that? All of my Muslim friends say, listen, that applied in the 7^th Century, but today that’s immoral. The passage on severing of the hands, the passage that says a woman gets a half of a vote of a man’s, all of these things, we need to say, listen, we’re not going to rip them out, God forbid, this is our Arabic Koran. But we’re going to say if Muhammad was alive today, he would tell us, listen, those apply to a 7^th Century pagan tribe that Muhammad was revealing his message to and it does not apply for equality of men and women and for all these other principles that we need to list off that there was a seed of the beginning in the 7^th Century, but now there’s such clarity that there’s a much better society and principle that we need to put a circle around those passages and say they just don’t apply anymore today.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah. Well, again, this is what marks you as courageous, to say the least, Zuhdi Jasser. We’re going to have to pause in a moment for a final break in our conversation with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. When we pick up on the other side, I’d like to visit with you a little bit about what you’re up against, Zuhdi. And as we’ve sort of indicated in a couple of remarks here, it’s not unfortunately just the violent jihadists that reformers confront, it’s also those who are engaged in what the Muslim Brotherhood calls civilization jihad. That is going to be a topic for our conversation with Zuhdi Jasser right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

This is a conversation that I personally will long revere and I appreciate very much the time of our guest and I hope those of you listening will remember it as well. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. He has now, for years, really going back to, as I recall, right after 9-11, been a champion within the American Muslim community of the kinds of principles and values and priorities that I think we all hope all Muslims would have and yet, Zuhdi, what you’ve confronted in the course of your efforts to speak out for a peaceable, tolerant Islam that respects a division between the mosque and the state, reveres the constitution of the United States, isn’t trying to supplant it with shariah, you have confronted not just the violent jihad that is much in the news these days of course, but also a more stealthy, insidious kind of jihad within the Muslim American community. Talk a little bit about the Muslim Brotherhood and its organs and operations here and what that’s meant for your efforts as well as what it means for our security.

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yeah, and I would even tell you it’s not that insidious, you know, the violent – it’s sort of like confronting drunk driving. You know, if you don’t confront the alcoholism, the driving is simply the last moments. And you’re not going to defeat that by simply waiting for them to grab their keys and get in the car. There is a program in which there is the intoxicant of political Islam and its supremacism that the Islamic State identity ultimately fuels, so the radicalization process unfortunately, Frank, our society, government, media, when we focus after every one of these attacks upon the militants, they talk about radicalization and really the whole conversation that we’re talking about ultimately is what I call operationalization. When they decide to put a military vest on and get weapons and start killing people. But radicalization, most of the Islamic organizations in this country are part of the radicalization process which is a separatist movement that demonizes the West, that makes Muslims feel like they’re under siege, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, these are Islamist groups that get their inspiration from a sense of collectivism of Muslims, that we should be a political entity, that we – were there a majority that it should be an Islamic State. And thus that ultimately is how the Nidal Hasans of the world start. They believe that ultimately their allegiance should be to the global ummah, the Muslim community, and ultimately the Muslim armies, so the only way to counter this sense of wanting to die for the Islamic State is helping our youth develop the sense of rather dying for America, dying for secular liberal democracy. And, you know, I laid out in the National Review yesterday a piece on how do we – what is our program and our strategy with this Muslim Reform Movement and the bottom line is that we are inherently decentralized as anti-Islamists. So this isn’t going to happen overnight. It took us years until we finally realized that many of us, be it left of center or right, we’re doing the same things and we needed to come together with a platform which this declaration gives us and unite around it and thus use that as a way to separate who is part of that program so that there’s no more debate, Frank, about who has – who is a Muslim Brotherhood entity and who is not.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Yeah, it’s, again, a very helpful fault line. I personally think it kind of is synonymous with the fault line of shariah. You clearly are rejecting, as you say, this man created doctrine or ideology. And I want to just ask you, Zuhdi, because this is obviously now much on the minds of lot of Americans. We’re hearing the Republican presidential candidates struggling with how to get their hands around or their heads around I should say what we’re confronting. A number of them have adopted, as I think it’s fair to say, an improvement over countering violent extremism, but they’re coming up with terms like radical Islamic terrorism. And I’m wondering if really based on what you’ve just said that there isn’t something beyond terrorism that’s afoot here, it’s kind of previolent jihad that is also to be worried about, not just the violent kind, isn’t it?

ZUHDI JASSER:

Well, in my piece, I laid out in National Review, I said, imagine fighting the Cold War and all we filtered for were do you believe in the imperialist Soviet desires of their communist program? No. We asked people, are you a member of the communist party? We filtered in the hundreds of people studying it for even socialist ideology let alone communist ideology because they all gravitate around that same center of gravity which is a collectivist mentality. So Muslim collectivists that believe in the Islamist dominance versus those Muslims that reject collectivism under political entities or in Arabic we call [ARABIC] Islamiyah [PH] which are Islamist movements, so those political movements that can win elections in Tunisia, in Egypt, that would win an election in Saudi Arabia if the royal family left, the bottom line though is that the only difference between the royal families and these populist movements is one is a corporate Islamist structure with a board of directors of thugs and the other is a populist movement. So we need – if we’re going to have a sense of where we’re headed with a vision that vision needs to be a third pathway to embrace the prisoners of conscience, the minorities, the Sunni reformers, the Shia reformers, that ultimately is the only program. And it really broke my heart to watch the debate and not hear any of the candidates lay out a doctrine or a vision for what they see above this sort of battle against terrorism. And we’re learning today the Saudis themselves that supposedly are creating this alliance, the alliance is a sham. Half the countries didn’t even know they were in it. Cause the Saudis themselves are sort of the progenitors of this entire ISIS ideology.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

I’m told they’re also creating an Islamic army to defend against enemies of the faith. That is further evidence of a problem there, I think. Zuhdi, I’ve got two other issues that are very important that I really would like to talk to you about quickly and we’re almost out of time. One is another of these Islamic movements, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and its war on freedom of speech. Which seems to have been basically embraced or at least accommodated by the Obama administration and frankly to some extent the Bush Administration. If you talk a little bit about that. And then secondly, before we run out of time, if you can, you are, of course, your family from Syria, I know you’ve been active in trying to help the plight of the Syrian people there. Your thoughts on how we can assure that we’re not bringing in, in the name of humanitarianism, more jihadists in trying to do something that might be helpful to people there in Syria among elsewhere.

ZUHDI JASSER:

Yeah, thank you, Frank. Those are two very important issues. First, with the OIC, at the top of our website which we just threw together, it says ideas do not have rights, human beings do. That’s why you’ll never see any of us reformers use the word Islamophobia. Islamophobia was created by the OIC as a concept in the 90s in order to suppress any criticism not of Muslims but of Islam. And that’s how they choke any type of itjihad and reform.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

[OVERLAP] Their program of action ten years on. That’s where we are. Exactly right.

ZUHDI JASSER:

Exactly. So yes, we talk about there’s some bigotry against Muslims that exists, but to call it Islamophobia is a way of making the West, supposedly the bastion of freedom, suppress any criticism of Islam and that’s what’s happening from the left. As far as Syria is concerned, I think we need a task force, I said, you know, listen, we need to pause all refugee resettlement until we have a filter for jihadism and especially for this Islamist political movement as we did in the Cold War against communism. And that task force, once it does that, we need to embrace Muslim reformers and those who are escaping both the evil of the Assad regime and the evil of ISIS because that narrative of what America stands for, if we shut down and say no Muslim immigration, you’re actually going to abandon the war of ideas which is the only long term solution. But we shouldn’t do that in a suicidal fashion. We need to have a task force that begins to set up I think our declaration as an example of how to tell which Muslims are with us and which ones are against us.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

It’s a tremendous public service, Zuhdi Jasser, as has been both that you’ve rendered in uniform and in so many other regards, now in the private sector as a medical doctor in Phoenix. And as the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. I am privileged to know you and consider you a friend and to have had this very important conversation with you. I look forward to doing it so again soon. Zuhdi, in the meantime, stay well and stay safe. I hope to have a conversation with the rest of you again tomorrow. Same time, same station. Until then, this is Frank Gaffney. Thanks for listening.