A moderate Muslim made a stop at The Heritage Foundation's headquarters in Washington, DC, last week to discuss how a faithful Muslim can be an American patriot.
With violence erupting from Asia to Africa, and the nation reeling from the news of the slain American ambassador to Libya, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser recently gave a timely lecture at The Heritage Foundation on his book A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot's Fight to Save His Faith.
"All the crises and chaos that we see in the Middle East, and I think inside the narrative of many American Muslims that came to America is the liberty narrative -- the concept of freedom," he declared. "And I think that looked at correctly through the right lens, that can be part of the solution in the next generation for the Middle East."
Dr. Jasser, the president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, says the voices of moderate Muslims are overshadowed by radical Islamic extremists.
"It's drowned out by two extremes: one that doesn't want to deal with the problem in his denial, the other that feels that no Muslim could be trusted and is a possible terrorist," he sums up. "So, somewhere between … is 95 percent of America that's in fear and looking for hope."
Jasser presents to non-Muslims an understanding of the difference between Islam and Islamism, or political Islam, and how violence and extremism run counter to Islam's true teachings. Until the threat of Islamism in all its forms is acknowledged, he argues that the majority of Americans will only recognize the most obvious: terrorism.