Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, warned that Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) are “normalizing” Islamism in American politics and culture, offering his remarks in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Marlow invited Jasser’s comments on a Friday report of a video depicting Muslim children wearing Palestinian attire and singing jihadist songs and shared on the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia’s (MAS Philly) Facebook page.
“People see these clips and they think it’s just an aberration or a one-off,” said Jasser. “Even the bizarre Philadelphia Enquirer had the temerity to have a reporter report after this was going viral that the heads of the school said this was an oversight and it wasn’t properly vetted. The only thing that wasn’t properly vetted was that some parent posted that.”
Jasser continued, “The bottom line is that the Muslim American Society has 35 chapters, [and] among those chapters they run a number of charter and private schools. It is, according to the Chicago Tribune — no vast right-wing conspiracy — the Chicago Tribunehad a large three-part series in 2004 with an undercover Muslim reporter in one of their schools in Chicago that showed that they are clearly the mirror image — or they are — the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.”
Jasser added, “There was a school called TIZA in Minnesota that was shut down a few years ago — by the way, not too far from Ilhan Omar’s district — and that school was shut down by the ACLU suing them because they were using tax money to force kids into prayer and doing fundamentalist Salafi-Jihadi-type ideology. This was also a little bit under the national radar. That school has now shut down. A lot of their leaders have reopened institutions under other names in the area. It shows you that this is an endemic deep problem.”
Democrats and the broader left, said Jasser, politically exploit Muslims with narratives of victimization. These left-wing analytical frameworks prevent leftists from accurately addressing problems — cultural, political, religious, social, or otherwise — within Muslim communities and groups, he determined.
“We’re missing the story because nobody wants to connect non-violent Islamism to violent Islamism,” stated Jasser. “This video got people’s attention because you had kids talking about chopping off heads. But all the other things in that video about the supremacy of Islamic rule, the antagonism against the Jews and other things, that’s ignored because it’s perceived as non-violent, but it is the gateway drug into radical Islamism.”
Jasser went on, “These ideas [and] these movements, I believe, are increasing. They’re actually getting much more brazen as folks like Convgressomwan Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are normalizing their relationships with Hezbollah supporters, with Hamas supporters and others. that seems to now have open access into various congressional offices. I think the amount of it hasn’t changed much, but it’s becoming much more prime time, if you will, because they feel unchecked. They basically are given sort of the reign of the left, the most radical in Congress seem to be leading the left’s platform.”
“Our community has a deep radicalization problem. It has a theocracy problem,” concluded Jasser.
Jasser rejected left-wing “identity politics” as “un-American” and contrary to the ethos of e pluribus unum.
“As our Founding Fathers fought for freedom, religious freedom, liberty, against theocracy, the American Dream is a positive ethos. We can only defeat our enemies if we know what we’re for. The left … all their presidential candidates, from Antifa to MoveOn, they don’t really know what they’re for other than confiscating our money through taxes, and socialism, and also confiscating our rights.”
Jasser added, “At the end of the day, this is the reason I’m a conservative. Our movement understands what we’re for. We know we’re for less government interference. We’re for national security. We’re for equality and freedom for all, and we’re for religious freedom.”
“Until they lose I don’t know how many elections [will] they figure out that them selling hate as a message — whether they’re against it or not, that’s still the message they’re selling — is not going to work,” declared Jasser.