An American Muslim reformist is calling for clear boundaries to be set between places of worship and the state in a bid to tackle radical Islamist ideology.
“Radicalization is a long process,” Jasser said. “The beginning process is a separatism where groups, leaders, imams start to tell our communities that this country is against them, that they’re victims.
“They become basically estranged. Then that separatism consciously turns into a sense of trying to find redemption ... and they develop a cause that they want to die for, which is jihad.
Jasser said that while some radicals remain non-violent, others become violent and “not only wear the jersey but want to get on the field and begin to kill others through joining groups like al-Qaeda, ISIS and others.”
A committed American patriot, Jasser revealed that his Syrian refugee parents always taught him to be proud of the United States.
“We see all these jihadis wanting to die for jihad. My family taught me that the only thing I’d ever want to die for is the United States, the constitution, and a people that provided us the freedom to choose whichever pathway of faith, of personal freedom, and business that we wanted to and not be forced by the theocracy or by government,” he said.
Jasser is encouraging his fellow Muslims to help prevent radicalisation by standing-up and opposing the Islamist establishment, which claims to speak on behalf of all those of Muslim faith.
Part of the problem, Jasser said, is that these establishments have created a monolithic interpretation of Islam that is dominating mosques even in the West.
Jasser has met many Muslims who have a high moral standard and even reject some of the theocracy but unfortunately, they have remained silent while those with a radical interpretation of Islam have moved into positions of authority.
“They have not developed publishing houses, they have not developed a sense of courage, if you will, to stand up against,” he said. “They are sort of like the silent Germans in Germany that did not adopt Nazism but did very little to fight the establishment of the regime.”
In his view, Jasser said the first step to minimizing the threat of radical Islam is to separate mosques from state administration—that is “the belief that we as Muslims reject any Islamic state identity or Islamic flags, and reject the Sharia state.”
This is because “a radical Muslim is somebody who believes that not only does he have a faith but it’s enforced coercively through whatever means necessary to others,” Jasser said. “Through the exploitation of government law through the institutionalisation of Sharia ... ultimately it is not a choice not live in freedom but rather to establish an Islamic state or a caliphate, which is a combination of Islamic states.”
The antidote to this is to “develop a new Sharia,” he said, “a new Islamic interpretation of law that’s in the 21st Century.
“That new school of thought is going to have to be done by imams that are schooled in Sharia but that can’t happen overnight.”
Jasser said that just as Muslims had taken on Bid'ahs or inventions, like science and new computer technology, he believes the Islamic world can also take on new political science to reform Sharia law.
“The question is not what Muhammad did in the 7th century but what would he do today if he were alive today, and I believe he would reject any armed jihad and he would reject Islamic militaries and Islamic states,” he said.
“Just as the American revolution ... understood in the bible, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s,’ we in Islam need to begin to marginalize our clerical leadership into just the mosques and into the universities, and begin to take back our public square,” Jasser said.