The Power of Popular Culture Chapter 10 Part # 7 Sufi Saints, Sufi Sinners, and Sufi Alternatives The Cult of Zuhdi Jasser It isn't clear that Zuhdi Jasser actually is a Sufi; he may not be. As definitive as he has been in public statements has been his comment that he is a "devout Muslim." That could mean almost anything: Devout Sunni, devout Shiah, devout Ismaili, devout Ibadi, devout whatever. However, in a de facto sense he qualifies as a Sufi; his views are often indistinguishable from those of the peaceful Sufis among Sufis. Not many people who know the subject would disagree. Jasser is also the darling of non-Muslims in the political establishment in the United States, especially among "Carl Rove Republicans" who detest Donald Trump. Jasser is a registered Republican voter and fits right in with supporters of former president George W. Bush. Still, he is sufficiently plastic in his views that some Democrats welcome his views as more-or-less compatible with their own. He is that dream of establishment people in politics, a "moderate Muslim." Of which there are so few that they should consider applying to the EPA for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Along with Spotted Owls and Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, there aren't very many moderate Muslims. Those few we have are treasured out of all proportion to their numbers. Jasser is no exception to this rule. This principle applies nationally but is especially true in his native habitat, Arizona, where he works as a cardiologist and makes a lot of money, living in posh digs in Scottsdale, and where he has ingratiated himself with local potentates of the press and with civic organizations. Jasser is the "pet Muslim" of the Arizona Republic newspaper, which treats him like an adopted son. From there, Jasser's reputation radiates out into the rest of the country as the prime spokesman for "good Muslims," the sort that all Muslims should aspire to become. Hyperbole aside, none of this is an exaggeration. James Woolsey, formerly the director of the CIA, is on record as characterizing Jasser as “the kind of man our government should listen to.” This sentiment has been repeated many times by other "official" personages and by people in the media. If only most Muslims could be like him, all our troubles would be over. Yes, indeed, and if pigs had wings they could fly, too. To discuss Zuhdi Jasser, be prepared to sort through a lot of oxymorons, you know, along the lines of terribly good, tiny elephant, honest thief, unpopular celebrity, open secret, virtual reality, or business ethics. Jasser is the great white hope among journalists, especially those who find it difficult to maintain their preferred narrative that Muslims are just like everyone else except for a few crazies -when, almost every day, one of these crazies blows up a restaurant killing dozens, or plows a truck into a crowd of people out shopping, or beheads a reporter who was after a scoop in a Muslim country So many Muslim crazies, so few Muslim moderates. But Zuhdi Jasser will fix that. He counts for at least 1000 of the crazies. Especially with a little help from his friends -in the news media. Needless to say, Jasser has his share of critics. Not so much because of what he advocates -a kinder, gentler Islam- but because various people who ought to know believe that he does not have a chance to reform Islam as he would like to do. On this subject everyone -that is, everyone who counts in the mainstream media- agrees that a reformed Islam is, so to speak, just what the doctor ordered. And surely the time has come for a Muslim Reformation similar to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. It would be about 400 years late, but you take what you can get, after all, and who wouldn't like to see a Mid East version of Lutheranism? Well, for starters, something like 80% of Muslims worldwide would not like to see it. What they would like to see is the triumph of Islam in its extant form over all rival faiths and cultures. Which is a prime reason that Jasser has had so little success in persuading other Muslims to sign up with his little group, the _American Islamic Forum for Democracy_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Islamic_Forum_for_Democracy) (AIFD), which he organized not long after 9/11. . Worse, Jasser has been widely condemned by fellow Muslims for making the effort. As they see it, Jasser is defying the authority of God's word on Earth in the form of the Koran, and snubbing the whole Hadith tradition, plus being guilty of blasphemy against Muhammad -who, not an incidental matter- claimed that Islam was "perfect" as he had promulgated it. You may as well try to "reform" Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung, which for serious Wagnerians is sacrosanct and perfect as it is. It can't be done and you should not try. Not that Muhammad was a spiritual Wagner, more like a mobster who had a religious streak, but to attempt to explain the obvious to people -journalists- who are clueless about religion, take your pick of religions, and feel free to interpret religions any way that is convenient for people who have never taken as much as one college course in the subject and habitually see the world in terms of city desk issues, economic determinism, and horse race politics. And, of course, many journalists seem to think that the epitome of their profession consists of ceaseless nit-picking and asking "gotcha" questions. About religion they are completely out of their depth. Which is one reason why they also habitually minimize the importance of religion in society. They just don't "get it." You can give Jasser credit for trying, however. He is "big" on ecumenical spirituality and is a member of the board of the Arizona Interfaith Movement. He also is a founder of _The Children of Abraham_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Abraham) , an organization active in metropolitan Phoenix that sponsors Jewish-Muslim dialogue. As a guess, Jews outnumber Muslims in this group 2: 1 or 3: 1. Regardless, at least parts of Jasser's philosophy deserve commendation. His official biography -available on the Web- tells us that what he is all about, as are the groups he is associated with, is promotion of "Muslim voices for liberty and freedom through the separation of mosque and state..." On this subject Jasser has a great deal to say. His objective is to oppose what he regards as the actual cause of Muslim terrorism, which is political Islam. "Islamism" as Jasser defines it is different than Reza Aslan's usage, it is: a "belief in the supremacy of the Islamic state." That is, to borrow a characterization from Ibn Warraq, it is Islamic imperialism. This is connected to the issue of Shariah law, which Islamists want to supercede the US Constitution. In their view Shariah is superior to any "man made" system of government. Indeed, Jasser has been highly critical of Muslim terrorists, doing so in the name of Islam which, so he says, is intrinsically anti-terrorist. Hence a number of new and modern Muslim groups that Jasser is involved with these days, including the Muslim Liberty Project and the Muslim Reform Movement. The MRM is a coalition of Muslim leaders from the United States, Canada, and Europe. This is not a large scale organization, however, nor are any of the others. The MRM has 15 members even though several times that many may be affiliated to some degree. What is important is that Jasser represents various Muslims "who believe in universal human rights." Not only this, but in his opinion America offers Muslims the best opportunity of any nation for practice of 'real' Islam. Furthermore, Jasser's criticisms of other Muslims, indeed, the great majority of Muslims, has sometimes been severe. He is appalled at violent terrorist attacks and likewise unhappy at the tepid response to Muslim aggression during the Obama years. As the Wikipedia article about Jasser notes: "He believes the U.S. needs a “coordinated existential strategy” to combat the ideology, and that this has been dangerously lacking, with the result that the number of home-grown terrorists is increasing. He has expressed the opinion that the _2009 Christmas Day attempted _ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253) airplane bombing, the _2009 Fort Hood shooting_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting) , and the _2010 _ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Times_Square_car_bombing_attempt) Times Square car bombing attempt have not prodded the United States into the appropriate action, but rather have resulted in _politically correct_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness) denial by U.S. government authorities, and inaction by most American Muslims." Going further still, "Jasser is an outspoken supporter of Israel and believes that Muslim organizations and leaders need to be held to a litmus test to see whether they recognize Israel as a state. He specifically condemns groups such as _Hamas_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas) and _Al Qaeda_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda) and governments such as the Saudi and Syrian dictatorships." Jasser also strongly opposed the so-called Park51 Project, the now defunct plan to build an Islamic community center and mosque at Ground Zero. Not only would that project have been funded with approximately $ 100 million in 'dirty money' from Islamists in the Mid East, but it clearly was an affront to millions of Americans who had good reason to blame Muslims for 9/11 since, of course, the 19 hijackers that day were all Muslims, acting on behalf of Islam. . That Obama defended the right of other Muslims to build that mosque next to the shattered twin towers site, was a colossal mistake as Jasser saw it. Barack Hussein showed remarkable insensitivity to the feelings of Americans who were direct victims of the attack, and insensitivity toward everyone else who had, by then, taken stock of Islam, many who had taken the time to actually study Muhammad's religion, and concluded that the blame for the catastrophe was Islam. In Jasser's view that view is incorrect, but under the circumstances it was understandable and the feelings of many Americans should not have been dismissed so cavalierly. And, as Jasser added: “Ground Zero is purely about being American. It can never be about being Muslim.” What is wrong about any of this? Actually, quite a lot. Yet, many people are impressed by Jasser's opinions since he expresses a common set of sentiments found among Bushies on the Right and centrists in the Democratic Party -and found among large numbers of journalists. But there really is much that is ridiculously wrong.
Jasser admits that his knowledge of the Koran is limited, and he has never studied Shariah in any depth, but he is convinced that now is the time for a revival of Ijtahid, a long gone tradition of interpreting the Koran more-or-less independently, with the objective of 'bringing it up to date.' The further objective is to make Islam compatible with the "modern world and subject to logic and reason.” Which sounds good but happens to be meaningless. The problem is the Koran itself, which cannot -in ANY system of Muslim orthodoxy- be criticized, revised, or in interpreted in any way except literally. To repeat the point because it never seems to sink in, the Koran is regarded by Muslim true-believers not only as a set of sayings revealed by God, but as God-on-Earth, manifest through his words. You can't change anything in it any more than you can revise the story of Christ to say that he was baptized by Herod Agrippa or that his disciples were Zoroastrians. Revision of the Koran is unthinkable for Muslims and any attempt to do so would be regarded as blasphemy, deserving death. In effect the Koran, any copy of the book, has the status of a Christian relic as found in Catholic tradition, say a piece of the true cross. Personally I do not think that any such fragment of the cross survives, but to make a point. Suppose, as was believed in the era of Constantine, the true cross had been found intact, all of it existed. No-one could possibly break it apart without doing irreparable damage, without ruining its special character, without compromising the sacred on Earth. This is how Muslims look at the Koran. . It is not like the Bible, which Christians feel free to interpret in a number of ways according to conscience or scholarship or historical insights. As Ibn Warraq has said, to use the word in its common sense, all sincere Muslims -if they want to be regarded as actual Muslims by the umma, the community of Muslims- must interpret the Koran literally, no deviation from surface meaning permitted in anything; all Muslims are "fundamentalists." . This being the case, all "reform" efforts are doomed to failure even before they begin. As the history of Islam demonstrates with utmost clarity. . The two best known attempts to devise a reformed Islam in which the Koran could be interpreted in some other way besides literally, came crashing down as soon as the political regimes that had supported them came to an end. This is in reference to the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt in the 10th century AD and Akhbar's regime in India in the 16th century. . When the Fatimids were overthrown those people who had followed their heterodox teachings were severely persecuted and driven into exile; all that survives today, albeit with various changes over the years, is the Druze minority of the Levant. . Akhbar's rather "liberal" system was abandoned within a year or so of his death and his followers persecuted or forced to recant. What survives now as a sort of second order effect is the Sikh religion even though much about Sikhism is independent of anything Akhbar ever said or did. In any case, this is pretty much the whole story of past Muslim reform movements. Whom does Jasser think he is kidding? Reform of Islam is little different than chasing after a chimera. Not that any of these comments are said with hauteur. Until approximately 1990 my own view of the matter was not much different than Jasser's. But after studying the relevant history and especially after reading Warraq's 1995 Why I Am Not a Muslim with its analysis of the structural character of Islam, I realized that my position was totally untenable. I abandoned that view and moved on. Jasser needs to do likewise; there isn't any viable alternative. Hence my disagreements with people like Robert Spencer, who maintains that it would be a good thing for a Muslim reform movement to arise. That will never happen, and, besides, Islam is so inferior in every way to all of its competitors that it is useless to try. Doing so would be like trying to 'reform' Nazism. The effort is unjustifiable no matter how you look at it. Muslims would be far better off if they become any other religion on Earth, whatever they think is best for them. Or, like Warraq, they would be better off if they chose not to have a religion. You may agree that religion is a superior choice, but which one? Could be anything and completely a matter of individual preference. Another option would be to return to the "faith of their fathers," that is, of their ancestors from the era before Islam. All of today's Muslim countries once were something else, after all. Turkiye was Christian Pakistan was Hindu Iran was Zoroastrian Syria was Christian the states of the Caucasus were partly or mostly Jewish Egyptians were predominantly worshippers of the Goddess Isis Iraqi religion was Assyrian in character and featured devotion to Ishtar Indonesia was partly Hindu and partly Buddhist the states of North Africa were Christian Lebanon was predominantly Christian -with a Druze minority. The Palestinians, before Islam, mostly were Christians; ...among them was a large minority of Jews, and the Palestinian ...gene pool demonstrates that many Palestinians today ...have Jewish background. Saudi Arabia was a combination of Jewish, Christian, and Pagan the states of Central Asia were a combination ...of Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and Christian religion. the Uighur province of China was Manichaean Somalia was some combination of Christian and Pagan the Gulf States and Socotra were a combination of Christian, ...Zoroastrian, and Hindu Malaysia was Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist Jordan was a combination of Christian and traditional religions North Africa below the Sahara was primarily indigenous ...but with an admixture of Egyptian religion and groups of Christians Sudan was Christian Albania was Christian Bosnia was Christian Bangla Desh was Buddhist and Hindu Afghanistan was largely Buddhist Any of these choices would be better than Islam. Far better. Not perfect, no religion can be perfect, but better in every way. At any rate, Jasser is well aware of the failings of Islam. His mistake is in not understanding that these shortcomings are structural to Muslim religion. Quite possibly he cannot see the facts for what they are because of how American he is, he served as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy, and apparently knew many Christians during his youth, in the process arriving at the view that Islam must be just like Christian faith under the surface -or should be just like Christianity. But that isn't reality. Which maybe he would know if he took the time to become well informed about world religions, but he does not seem to have done more along these lines than a perfunctory investigation, if that much. In any case, all of this does seem to explain his willingness to openly criticize Islam. The reaction from 'orthodox' Muslims has been predictable and uncompromising. As far as the vast majority of Muslims are concerned Jasser is an apostate -which means that, while they can't say so in the United States without dire consequences- they think Jasser should be put to death. Regardless, the list of Muslim organizations Jasser has condemned is impressive and includes: the _Council on American-Islamic Relations_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_American-Islamic_Relations) (CAIR), the _Islamic Society of North America_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Society_of_North_America) , the North American Imams Federation, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, _Islamic Circle of North America_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Circle_of_North_America) , the _Muslim American Society_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_American_Society) , _Muslim Public Affairs Council_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Public_Affairs_Council) , the _Muslim Students’ Association_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muslim_Students’_Association&action=edit&redlink=1) , the _Islamic Circle of North America_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Circle_of_North_America) , and the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America. Jasser has said that "Clearly, the majority of the mosques in the United States are led by imams who are Islamists." He is aware that many of the sermons in these mosques openly condemn the authority of the US Government and make much about how they -Muslims- are "victimized" in unspecified ways. To try and make sure that hard-line imams don't get ideas, Jasser also has made it clear that he opposes any use of Shariah Law in America. Jasser has been especially critical of CAIR, a group he regards as a fake civil rights organization which uses the cover of the limited services it provides ordinary Muslims to mask a very different agenda based on pro-Muslim Brotherhood sentiments and help for terrorist groups. Which, of course, was also the position of the Federal Government before Obama and which seems likely will be its position again in the near future. On March 10, 2011, Jasser appeared as a witness at the first in a series of hearings conducted by the _United States House _ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_Homeland_Security) Committee on Homeland Security on “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and the Community's Response," the so-called Pete King hearings. This event was almost a joke even though some of the experts who testified -speaking of local law enforcement officers and the like- provided useful information, but the Congressman refused to call any of the most important "headline" critics of Islam, not even Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a very soft spoken woman with impeccable credentials including time as a member of the Dutch parliament before she immigrated to America. Ayaan had been invited but was then "disinvited" because Democrats on the committee objected even to mild criticism of Islam and Pete King, basically, has no balls. But he did call upon Zuhdi Jasser who, essentially, said little that was noteworthy even if he did offer carefully parsed criticisms of Islam. That was about as 'exciting' as the hearings got. . Jasser's very qualified criticisms of Islam -he always follows up with praises for Muslim religion- are all that the political establishments of either major political party can bring themselves to listen to. Islam is not something many (hardly any) politicians have researched, the whole area of religion is an embarrassment to them, and they would prefer that it would just go away and leave them to their bean counting. Which is unfair to some members of Congress, including some very smart Senators, but to make a point... Jasser has a résumé that indicates just how highly he is thought of among the cognoscenti. Examples of credits: Feature stories about him in The New York Post, National Review, The Washington Times, _Mother Jones_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones_(magazine)) , and a book to his credit entitled A Battle for the Soul of Islam. He has been a guest on various television programs at Fox News, the BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, CBS, and MSNBC. He has his own radio show, The Blaze, and has been interviewed at stations from coast to coast. He also is a frequent lecturer at various universities, religious institutions, and government agencies. He has contributed to four film documentaries including the Clarion Fund production, The Third Jihad, a 2010 movie produced by newt Gingrich, America at Risk, and, most interesting, the PBS movie, Islam v Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center. PBS withdrew the film after a spate of protests from Muslim organizations. Even some of the most vocal critics of Islam have expressed approval of Jasser's work, no less than Daniel Pipes as an example. That Pipes' opinion is cherished is borne out by the fact that he has been castigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an Islamophobic bigot, a kudo that is worth pure gold in circles that mean the most to me and others who share my low opinion of Islam. The SPLC has zero credibility and is a de facto Cultural Marxist organization. Critics of Jasser range from CAIR, which as called him a “sock puppet for Islam haters," to The Nation, Media Matters, and American Thinker. Nonie Darwish's article in the April 29, 2017, edition of American Thinker, "Can Islam ever be reformed ?" discussed a tactic used by Jasser to try and discredit his critics, the ploy that "Americans who speak and write against the evils of Islamic jihad and sharia are just as bad as jihadists." Which is absurd but also which is sometimes picked up on by the news media to defend its "Islam means peace" narrative. As if Andrew Bostom, Diana West, Robert Spencer, et. al., have killed as many people -in excess of 30,000 as of this writing- as actual Jihadists. The actual figure for critics of Islam is "0." What is the use? No matter how many facts you bring to the attention of the media or the major party establishments everything is ignored and critics de facto censored. That is, yes, the critics somehow manage to find ways to communicate, mostly through blogs, but this does not begin to have the reach or influence of television or the major newspapers. And meanwhile people like Nonie Darwish and Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer must live with death threats year in and year out as if that is the new normal to be expected by anyone with the temerity to tell others that Islam is intrinsically violent and a religion of intimidation. As for Jasser, he is part of the problem of "false hope Muslim reformers are giving to the Americans regarding Islam." As Darwish concluded, "I do not believe that Islam is reformable." Which Jasser should know, probably does know, but is in a state of denial about. "Jasser discovered that all he has was approval from Western media, but total rejection by the Islamic community." His answer to the problem was to start attacking critics of Islam as if in doing so he could work his way back into the good graces of the Muslim community. That strategy shows no signs of working. Robert Spencer, Writing at Jihad Watch for March 14, 2017, discussed the same issue. As Spencer noted, "Muslim reformers have had little to no influence on the Islamic community in the U.S. or around the world since 9/11, and [aren't] likely to do so, given the nature of Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence..." Which is to say that, at something like a 95% level, despite all of his friends in the press and TV news, Jasser has been a failure in his efforts to reach the mosques. Actual Muslims, with almost no exceptions, totally ignore him. Isn't it strange that "every last ruler of 56 Muslim countries has Islam wrong? Jasser doesn’t explain how this odd situation came about." This is not how Sarah Posner saw things in her article in the March 8, 2011 issue of The Nation. She wrote about the Peter King hearings that year, complaining about the horrible, tragic, unconscionable, mean and nasty slap on the wrist that Mr King had in mind for those sweet and innocent powder-puff Muslims. Posner, who can't be bothered reading any critical literature about Islam doesn't need to do any such thing. She just "knows" -don't ask me how- that Islam is just like Quakerism, peaceful in essence, civilized from top to bottom, not the least a problem to anybody except busy-bodies who pick on Muslims for no reason except pique. Of which Zuhdi Jasser is Exhibit A. Posner did offer criticisms of the Newt Gingrich film that featured Jasser and maybe she had a point; it is possible to say unflattering things about Islam without dragging Barack Obama into the picture. After all, Obama didn't write the Koran, Muhammad did. But from that observation it is a big step, indeed, to say that ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America, is the equivalent of the Boy Scouts except that its members speak Arabic. But didn't the Union for Reform Judaism endorse ISNA for all of its "good works"? It may be that ISNA welcomed the imprimatur of this Reform Jewish organization but there's just one problem: It isn't Jewish. And it espouses values that are close to 180 degrees the opposite of those espoused by the Islamic Society. The URJ is pro-homosexual, pro-transgender, pro-feminist, pro-secular, and most of its members never attend synagogues and for all practical purposes are Atheists. The URJ is simply an ethnic interest organization with, at most, a passing interest in religion. The Muslims who belong to ISNA, including a number of imams, are strict Muslims for whom homosexuality, transgender anything, feminism, et. al., are not only verboten, but are crimes according to Shariah law. Fortunately for the secular -"we don't give a damn about religion"- political Left, which Sarah Posner represents to the best of her ability, it isn't necessary to actually be informed about religion, any religion, all that is needed is to identify an "oppressed group" that might be useful to the Democratic Party every two years in November. Beyond that all you have to do is make up stuff to suit your propaganda needs of the moment. And what Sarah Posner needed when she wrote was a target to criticize ahead of Pete King's hearings so that they could be discredited, or anyway, cast into doubt. Jasser served Posner's purposes quite nicely. He is a Muslim who criticizes Islam, he is a Republican, therefore, anyone who takes the hearings seriously is functionally retarded. And don't forget to vote Democratic in 2012. This is pretty much the range of comments about Zuhdi Jasser available on the Web. It is hard to find someone with better intentions than Zuhdi Jasser. It is also hard to find someone who is more wrong about Islam. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
