Muslim scholar says don't build at Ground Zero, is 'political Islam' and stop lecturing Americans

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9/11/10, "Muslim Scholar: Don't build Islamic Center," CBS News"

"A respected Muslim scholar has a message for those planning to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero in New York: It's a bad idea, and a window on sharply differing thinking among Muslims worldwide on how to best go about promoting Islam - and peace.

• Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, in Phoenix, a former Muslim U.S. Navy Commander, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Friday sharply critical of the planned Islamic center,
  
• urging organizer Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Muslims all over the world to show compassion

and understand the American separation of church and state.

• Jasser says the Islamic Center as conceived is more about making a political statement

• that will seriously divide communities than about bringing them together.

He wrote, "We Muslims should first separate mosque and state before lecturing Americans about church and state."

• He continues, "American freedom of religion is a right, but … it is not right to make one's religion a global political statement with a towering Islamic edifice that casts a shadow over the memorials of Ground Zero. …

Islamists in 'moderate' disguise are still Islamists.

• In their own more subtle ways, the WTC mosque organizers end up serving the same aims (as)

• separatist and supremacist wings
  
• of political Islam."...

"Many of us have built over 2,000 mosques in the United States with very little problem. But, I think what unites us is the freedoms and liberties our Constitution gives us, and

• it's time for Muslims to look less about promoting ourselves, (have)
  
• less of a victimology

and (be) more about feeling the pain of the families of 9/11 and understanding

• what we have to do to repair the house of Islam."

Still, Jasser told anchor Chris Wragge he "absolutely" doesn't think America has become Islama-phobic since 9/11. ..."I think we're getting a crash course on Islam," Jasser observed,

• to separate spiritual Islam of the faith we love from

political Islam that creates the (accused Fort Hood gunman) Nidal Hasans ... and has a continuum from moderate to radical. That's what we have to do to separate them. ...

• This isn't a fight between Islam and Christianity or Islam and the West.

It's a fight within the house of Islam we need to focus on,

• not just focus on victimology." "...

Sub-heading of Dr. Jasser's WSJ op-ed, 9/10, regarding the Ground Zero Imam:

• "He may not appear to the untrained eye to be an Islamist,

• but by making Ground Zero an Islamic rather than an American issue

• he shows his true allegiance."...

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