From the Library: A Battle for the Soul of Islam, by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser

This’ll be short, as I already had to return the book from the library and am going on memory and a few notes.

Remember when I said, “Islam needs a Jewish Enlightenment“?  No?  Well, I invite you go to read this post, from January (pre-Patheos) and tell me what you think.

Dr. Jasser has — well, OK, this book was published back in 2012, so clearly he hadn’t, but it felt like the core of what I was trying to say, he agreed with:  that a renewed Islam able to equip its followers for the 21st century, rather than the 7th century, needs to separate out certain ideas that Jasser, at least, identifies as the core of Islam (others would disagree) — essentially the ecumenical notions of “love God and your neighbor” — and discard that which is unhelpful.  And the discarding is to be done by re-understanding the Quran in the most benefit-of-the-doubt, peaceful, tolerant, equality-promoting manner, regardless of whether it’s in line with scholars from Egypt, or historical chains of belief, or the like.

He grew up in the United States, the son of very modern, middle-class democracy-loving parents who themselves left Syria when their hopes for democracy in that country were dashed, and who passed on their liberal beliefs (that is, pro-democracy and freedom, not liberal in the American political terminology) to him, in small-town Wisconsin.  Upon entering college, he found that the Muslim Student Association group was too hardline and anti-Israel for his taste; aftewards he joined the Navy, as a doctor, and later founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, with the goal of supporting moderate, democracy-loving, patriotic Muslims.

Unfortunately, he seems to be nearly alone in his quest.  His organization is not quite a one-man shop, but doesn’t seem to be particular large, and certainly doesn’t seem to have much influence in the wider community.  And the fact that the media takes CAIR to be the official representatives of Muslims in America, doesn’t help matters, given that CAIR has labelled them as among the worst “promoters of Islamophobia,” on their own website (from 2013) — which certainly seems to mean that Muslims who want to pursue Dr. Jasser’s path will be obliged to strike out on their own rather than working within established communities of Muslims.