If you can stay up later this day Tuesday I urge you to tune to KAET-TV Channel 8 at 10 p.m. for a searing documentary, Islam vs. Islamists: Voices From the Muslim Center. It is moderate Muslims quest to be heard in all the noise about Islam as a either a toxic, militant faith or one that can, in fact, exist peacefully with other beliefs. Anti-Muslims in the U.S. have been seething about what they see as dangers of giving accommodations to Muslims while Islamists seem intent on seeing the decadent Wests downfall. Moderates in the middle have sought to show radicals in the faith that historic Islam can thrive in western culture and democracy.M. Zudhi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and chairman of the Valley-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy, speaks in the 90-minute documentary produced by Martyn Burke. Originally Islam vs. Islamists was to have been incorporated into PBSs 11-part, six-night America at the Crossroads that examined post-9/11 America. But it was pulled when WETA-TV in Washington said it wasnt finished in time for use with the other documentaries and that it was alarmist and not objective. It received $700,000 in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds. It was dogged by other controversy as well. Now that it is finally being shown, its distribution nationally is spotty and its impact lessened.On Tuesday, Jasser had a My Turn column in the Arizona Republic to tout the film. Islamist sympathizers censored the film, Jasser asserted. The suppression of the film was part of the persistent marginalization of Muslim moderates who are anti-Islamist, Jasser wrote. It sends a dangerous message to other like Muslims searching for courage to speak out.FrontPageMagazine.com, in April, interviewed filmmaker Burke. He said he had assembled a crack team of award-winning journalists to do the documentary but we found ourselves enmeshed in politics unlike I have never seen before. He said it appeared that PBS wanted him to be an apologist for Islamists, those who are the fundamentalists in this world.They wanted us to portray the Islamists in a way that would represent them as being the truer strain of Islam, the truer representatives of Islam, Burke said. And we say they represent a very virulent, aggressive form of Islam. He asserted that moderates Muslims have an equally valid voice and should be widely heard.Jasser says the same thing in his Tuesday commentary. Islamism is a movement that seeks to put into place governments or societies in which the Quran is not only A source of law, but THE source of law, the doctor said. When holy books become the source of law, we become a theocracy. Islamists may believe in democracy, election and parliaments, but the do not support governments that dont promote Islam. Jasser, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who has been active in interfaith dialogue in the Valley and nationally, said he was heartening that a documentary has been made that can validate that a wider American audience would actually begin to get a fair glimpse of what happens to Muslims who speak out against the entrenched Islamist power structures in our community.Moderates love for their faith, he said, is both demonized and ignored by those imams and supporters of a political Islam. Jasser said that before the 9/11 attacks, moderate Muslims had hoped that, with each new generation, there would come believers who would reject extremist ideology and would topple the Islamists controlling our communities. He pointed to blind political correctness that allows historic Islam to be hijacked by zealous Islamists.Jasser said the metro area has a large Muslim population with numerous opportunities to begin opening the doors of debate about Islamism and begin creating a modern and moderate interpretation that separates the 1,400-year-old faith from a political agenda bent of a showdown with non-Muslims to establish religious tyranny reflecting their world view.
 Moderate Muslims’ case to be aired on PBSAugust 14th, 2007, 3:57 pm · 1 Comment · posted by lawngriffithsOne CommentLeave a Reply |
I beg to differ with Mr. Griffiths’ apparent equivalency of “anti-Muslims” vs. Islamists with only the Moderate Moslems in the middle, as if the “moderate Muslims” have more right and relevance on their side. Even Dr. Jasser wrote about needing to “begin opening the doors of debate about Islamism” and to “begin creating a modern and moderate interpretation “. It follows that, if we still need to begin it, it does not yet exist and never has existed. Whether it ever can exist is an interesting question. So far, however, there is only a courageous but pathetic call to begin the process. There is every reason to conclude that there never can be a modern, moderate Islam.
First, Islam is based on the Koran, which all Moslems, even Dr. Jasser, are required to believe is Allah’s literal word, perfect, immutable and valid for all of eternity. In addition to the Koran, the Hadith (the sayings by and about Muhammed which have been accepted to be authentic) are also considered sacrosanct and untouchable. The very notion of modernizing Allah’s literal word is considered blasphemy — which has been punishable by death according to Islamic law ever since the time of Muhammed.
Second, there is a reason that all the Moslem terrorists and fire-breathing imams quote the Koran. The Koran contains many calls to violent jihad against non-believers. The Koran clearly labels all non-Moslems to be “inveterate enemies” and the “vilest of creatures”. There is just no way to reinterpret these and many other passages in the Koran so that they sound benign. And, Moslems have no option to disregard these passages.
Third, there is no such thing as “moderate Islam”. Islam is one. There is no moderate movement within Islam. There are only a few isolated individuals like Dr. Jasser, but they have no movement behind them. Dr. Jasser founded an organization pretentiously called “The American Islamic Forum for Democracy”. After four years, he has only less than a dozen members! Poor Dr. Jasser continually calls on the so-called vast majority of moderate, peaceful Moslems to make their voices heard, but none of these moderate, peaceful Moslems ever answer his call.
Fourth, the entire religious establishment of Islam is deeply political and Islamist — as Dr. Jasser says. Dr. Jasser is totally wrong, however, when he says that historic Islam has been hijacked by zealous Islamists. He is wrong because Islam is a belief system; and a belief system cannot be hijacked even in theory. Only a system with a central control can be hijacked, such as a car with a steering wheel, or an airplane with a cockpit, or even an organization with a board of directors. But there is no such central control mechanism in Islam. Therefore, the notion that Islam has been hijacked is absurd. It is theoretically impossible. If the entire religious establishment in Islam is politicized it is because Islam, as a belief system, is a political ideology. Islamism cannot be saparated from Islam, and the attempt to make people think that such a separation is possible will raise false hopes and prevent us from taking the measures necessary to deal with the ideology. Therein lies the great error in the very title of the film “Islam vs. Islamists”. The title begs the question, and it only fosters confusion. The bitter truth is that the Islamists have Islamic history and theology on their side. The moderates are never religious authorities, but only secularly educated folks like Dr. Jasser, a medical doctor. They cannot win any theological debates with the religious authorities because they just do not know Islamic theology. The upshot is that we non-Moslems cannot rely on moderates like Dr. Jasser to turn Islam around after 1400 years and modernize it. The best way to begin combatting the very religious authorities whom Dr. Jasser is courageously attacking is to expose the supremacist, totalitarian, imperialist ideology inherent in the Koran and the Hadith. We must learn the truth about Islam, and the only way we can to this is to read the Koran, the Hadith and the words of respected Islamic religious authorities. Anyone who is interested in these questions can send an email to ideologyofislam@cox.net.