T. Belman. Jasser is very knowledgeable and very well spoken. He has dedicated his life to reforming Islam, so far with little success. I met him in Washington 12 years ago and have followed him to some degree since. His proposition is that Islam must be reformed from within by the moderate Muslims of whom he is one. I recommended at the time and still believe that what is needed is an organization like CAIR made up of reformers and funded by moderate MuslIms with help from the US government. The US government should cancel CAIR and look to Jasser’s movement to represent Muslims at all government functions. As we know, J=Street was started to steal the thunder of AIPAC and it has done just that. Bottom line is that we need an alternate CAIR and CAIR must be cancelled.
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Actually, a Muslim religious federation of genuinely moderate mosques, which calls itself the Supreme Muslim Council, has existed for years, although the USG has consistently ignored it. The Supreme Muslim Council had warned the U.S. government for years about the danger of Islamist terrorism prior to the 9/11 attack, and had even offered to share intelligence about it with the USG, but was ignored. THe SMC has denounced CAIR, Hamas and all Islamist-terrorist groups for years. It calls on the Islamic and Arab states to normalize relations with Israel. It was the only Islamic organization that sent a representative to speak at the Holocaust Remembrance conference at the United Nations a few years ago.
Mr. Jasser’s organization is also an excellent beginning, and he deserves U.S. and Israeli government regognition and support. However, the Supreme Muslim Council has the advantage of having a number of fully qualified imams and mosque preachers who head functioning mosques. This gives it a degree of legitimacy in the minds of Muslim believers that Mr. Jasser’s group still lacks, because he has so fat not been able to attract any imams to his organization (as far as I know).