Reformer advises Muslims to embrace Western values

A controversial visiting Islam reformer tells unhappy young Muslims in the West: try complaining in the Middle East.

“The only way to counter radicalisation is to inoculate Muslims against the separatism of political Islam.” These are the words of Zuhdi Jasser, words that could get him killed in some parts of the Middle East.

Jasser, the controversial founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, visits Australia this month for a series of talks and meetings with Australian Muslim groups. He will also meet Jewish leaders and some secular Christian leaders.

Jasser is something of an anomaly in the Islamic world. Born in the US to a Syrian family that fled the Assad regime, he is a practising Muslim who served in the US Navy for 11 years as a doctor and was deployed to the Middle East.

However, at a time when Islam (and religion in general) is on the nose, he is a brave reformist, a civil libertarian and a passionate Amer­i­can patriot.

“If I had started this organisation in the Middle East, I would probably be dead by now,” he says.

Jasser makes no bones about the core teachings in Islam that need reformation. Basically, it is the idea of political jihad. “This is a big issue ­because a quarter of the world’s population is Muslim.”

Jasser points out that after every terror threat or attack since 9/11, there have only been two ­responses from imams, and both have been “unacceptable”.

The first response is to apologise: “We don’t know where al-Qa’ida came from … It has nothing to do with Islam.” These apologies continue in the face of the development of Islamic State and its terrorists.

The second response is dialogue: “They did not want to come to terms with the fact that the root cause is jihadi ideology, no matter what the group. The root cause is a fundamental antagonism towards Western secular democracy, the idea of the separation of mosque and state.”

Consequently, his work is not to fight against terrorism. “Our mission is not to counter terrorism because we believe terrorism is a symptom. ISIS is a symptom (of that ideology).”

But he believes that the conversation has now changed.

“When ISIS came into being, many Muslims began to realise that those that want to put ­relig­ious law into governance of the state, a theocracy, or a quasi-theocracy like Egypt or Turkey, it is not going to benefit them as Muslims. Democracy, the American constitution and the rule of law are actually the best protection for Muslims and other religions.”

Although Jasser’s family were political refugees, they, like most immigrants, sought to better their economic situation and wholeheartedly embraced what he calls “Americanism”, which he defines as “a social contract of constitutionalism and individual rights of all under God”.

He speaks frequently to schoolchildren and college students, whom he encourages to read French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville. And he thinks the imams should read him too. As a doctor, he can see that ­Islamic radicalism is not solely, as it has been characterised by some armchair experts, a problem of anti-modernisation. Rather it is a problem of lack of political modernisation, hamstrung by ancient apologetics. He explains: “Muslims can be totally modern in science and technology, but com­pletely in a different world politically.”

Jasser talks about being anti-establishment. “Ninety per cent of Muslim leadership is steeped in 13th-century interpretation of our laws. The Christians solved this hundreds of years ago, when the religious establishment was ­pushed out of the political secular spectrum.” This revisionism is ­ongoing in the Christian world.

But in the Islamic world things will get better only after they get worse, and he points to Iran. “They will never go back to the­ocracy. They went through a per­iod of learning after the Shah when they had a theocracy. They won’t vote for that again.”

He says young Muslims need to understand the social contract about being American or Australian, that under democracy and constitutionalism you are in fact safer if you embrace Western democracy.

He also points out to students that while they complain about intolerance or the status of refugees, or perceptions about women or whatever, they have a right to complain in the West — try doing so in the Middle East. “I tell them, it is easy to complain, but you can only do this in the Western world. All these points of controversy like the role of women are important because, at the end of the day, that is what democracy and the rule of law is about.”

Where does this put Islam as a voice in the democratic public square? After all, Christian churches are always saying they have this right. In the US there is a more definite view of the separation of church, mosque and state. So, does he think Islam has a place in the public square?

“Yes, absolutely. That is why we encourage our students to read de Tocqueville. It is not freedom from religion but freedom of ­religion. The reason that Europe has so much of a problem is ­­the ­alternative ‘imposition’ of secularism, as in France, where even expression of symbols of personal religion is forbidden.

“If you push it underground you ‘feed the radicals’.

“However, a free and democratic religious atmosphere provides a ‘laboratory’ where you can be critical and open about certain elements of religious dogma. But you cannot give the sharia courts status … and we have to make people understand that the cover of religious freedom is not an excuse to oppress their own community.”