A genuine "moderate" Muslim speaks about Cordoba Mosque

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/11/earlyshow/saturday/main6855993.shtml

I have often referred to Radical, Traditional, and Moderate Muslims in the same sentence as though they were essentially the same, for pragmatically I have seen no difference in what they say or do. But there are real Moderate Muslims out there. I do encounter them from time to time. One just this morning appeared on "the Early Show."

This real Moderate Muslim is Dr Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, in Phoenix. Here is what he says about the Cordoba Mosque: "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."

Further down he says, "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."

As to the Leftist and Radical-Islamic charge of "Islamaphobia," "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 is against the Book-burning, and I would like to hear him more on that subject. I'm against it as well, but I don't see how it is "against the Constitution and the First Amendment" as he claims. Nevertheless Jasser sounds like a reasonable fellow with his head screwed on straight. Would that there were some like him over in the Arab nations where they could do some real good -- assuming they weren't assassination by Radicals and Pseudo Moderates as soon as they spoke out; which they almost certainly would be.