(CBS)  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.





Special Section: Sept. 11 Remembered





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."





On "The Early Show on Saturday Morning," Jasser regarded the
rallies being planned at Ground Zero, for and against the center, and
said he thinks, "Today is especially a day, as we remember and reflect
upon 9/11 and looking over that pit of devastation there and feeling
that, today, we look through that lens as Americans, not as a Muslim,
not as of any faith. I don't look through this lens of trying to repair
my - trying to promote Islam. It's about fighting the forces that caused
this, and I think, if we're able to unite under that, that's why 71
percent of Americans are against (the Islamic center).





"It's not because they don't want mosques there, there [are] even
other mosques closer. 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, "and we Muslims
have to do more work 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. And there's some confusion, there,
understandably, because it's not a binary equation of good
Muslim-non-violent, bad Muslim-violent There's a continuum that's
confusing. But that is some part of the educational process, part of the
war of ideas we have to fight within. 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."





Jasser blasted the would-be Quran (Koran)-burner, the Rev. Terry
Jones, saying, Book-burning has never been anything that's been followed
by anything good in history. Book burning is something that is clearly
against the Constitution and the First Amendment, and shows a complete
disrespect. And he's a speck of humanity of just 30 congregants and
doesn't represent America, but yet feeds into the Islamist narrative
overseas, across the world, that America is against Islam, America is
against Muslims. So, he used it to have his 15 minutes of fame, and it
fed interest that narrative."  

Quoted:
We got a dead pool going on this guy yet?

Quoted:


Read the second sentence in the last paragraph carefully.



Oh, and dupe.

Quoted:
We got a dead pool going on this guy yet?

Quoted:
When non Muslims say what Jasser says, we're bigots.
When he says it, it's harder to use that term...
Next time someone thinks you're bigoted regarding the issues surrounding Islam, give them this link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/11/earlyshow/saturday/main6855993.shtml