Muslims need to launch an internal “12-step program” to halt the growth of radical Islamic extremism, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and president of the American Islamic Forum of Democracy (AIFD), told Newsmax TV.
Jasser – reacting to the deadly London attack in which a man plowed an SUV into pedestrians and stabbed a police officer to death at Britain’s Parliament, which the Islamic State claims credit for – told host Bill Tucker on Thursday’s “America Talks Live":
“This is going to be a long war, it’s generational, but I have to tell you we haven’t even started it. To hear [British Prime Minister] Theresa May say that [the suspect] had history of violent extremism. It wasn’t just his violence, it was his Islamism, his theocratic mindset.
“Every time we get one of these, not ‘lone wolves’ but ‘known wolves,’ we’re ignoring the fact that there’s an underbelly of a non-violent ideology that is a conveyer toward their radicalization.
“I as a Muslim recognize we have a major problem, we have a cancer within, we need to start treating it. We haven’t even diagnosed it yet, let alone get to the treatment. I think we need a 12-step program, and we’re still stuck in the first step, which is denial.”
His mention of a “12-step program” was a reference to famed Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program in which people suffering from alcohol abuse and addiction follow a set of recovery steps to achieve sobriety and steer clear of booze.
Jasser told Tucker that Muslim reformists “fighting the establishment within our faith and the establishment is in denial.”
“I hope at some point we finally start to figure out that in order to start to treat the disease we have to recognize Sharia supremacy, Sharia law as it exists in these organizations . . . as the root cause of the reason these individuals want to attack our parliaments, our governments, our military facilities,” he said.
“Most of these Islamic states, even the so-called allies of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, countries that are Islamic republics, might be with us in the battle against al-Qaida, ISIS and other Islamic theocratic movements . . . but their countries are caldrons of ideologies that are radicalizing Muslims all over the planet.
“We in the free world need to recognize that the only solution to Muslim theocracy is Muslims that believe in the secular nation state, national patriotism based in American, British state loyalty. That’s the only anecdote to radical theocratic political Islam.”
Jasser noted the London suspect, 52-year-old Khalid Masood, who was shot dead by police after killing three, was a resident of the West Midlands and had been born in the United Kingdom.
May said Thursday that Masood was “some years ago” investigated by MI5 in relation to “concerns about violent extremism.”
“They’re radicalized [in the West] by an ideology that is anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-Western, and until we get Muslims that are for freedom and liberty to lead this fight, it’s going to be continued to be a whack-a-mole program,” Jasser said.
Jasser is the author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith,” published by Threshold Editions. His AIFD group advocates the preservation of the founding principles of the U.S. Constitution, liberty, and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.