About

Zuhdi Jasser is the President and Founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). A devout Muslim, Dr. Jasser founded AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States as an effort to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, and the separation of mosque and state. Dr. Jasser is a first generation American Muslim whose parents fled the oppressive Assad regime of Syria in the mid-1960’s for American freedom. He is a leading moderate American Muslim who believes that America presents the best and freest landscape to practice his faith.

The democratic idea that every citizen, blind to race, faith, and creed, has equal access to government is a cure for the pathology of extremist Islam. The freedoms offered by a democratic society can be a laboratory for Muslim reform, allowing for open interpretation and debate, and thus the evolution of philosophies. Dr. Jasser considers the Muslim world currently trapped in a binary choice between Arab secular dictatorship and militant political Islam. However, he argues that there is a third option: universal liberty. Islam must be reinterpreted in modernity, which is only possible in an environment where people are free to debate and discuss it without fear of dangerous consequences. The intolerance of radical Islam is a threat to everyone, East and West, and Dr. Jasser argues, "it is incumbent on us to defeat it for our children."