Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman Kramp and honourable committee members. My name is Zuhdi Jasser. I am president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix. Thank you for the opportunity to lend our perspective to your committee as you consider diverse points of view both from inside and outside Muslim communities, and also regarding especially the merits and concerns of Canadians to this very important counterterrorism legislation, Bill C-51.
While our nations may have had varied trajectories on our homeland security post-9/11, it is imperative that we learn from one another so that we may learn from each other's successes and failures.
Let me first begin by expressing my heartfelt prayers and sympathies for the family of the fallen hero Corporal Cirillo and your Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers who heroically stopped the savage attacks on Parliament Hill by the Islamist terrorist Michael Zehaf-Bibeau on October 22nd, as well as the victims of the ramming terror attack which killed Officer Patrice Vincent and injured another in Quebec.
As a former U.S. navy lieutenant commander, a dedicated American citizen, a devout Muslim, and a Syrian American with deep roots in Syria and its revolution—I'm the son of Syrian political refugees from the 1960s—I've taken every opportunity and ounce of time, as you've seen from other witnesses like Raheel Raza, Salim Mansur, and others since 9/11, to work towards the changes and the reforms that we need to see enacted for our communities both from within and outside Muslim communities to protect our nation from the scourge of Islamist terrorism.
One of the gravest errors we can make in the west is to compartmentalize efforts at home from those abroad, or even abroad between nations, as we ignore common themes and common challenges assuming only that battles fall conveniently along countries' borders. I've testified to Congress before on Muslim radicalization here in the U.S. in 2011 and 2013, and also on counterterrorism in 2012. I've testified a number of times on religious liberty issues regarding the Arab awakening in Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
Our organization—just to let you know about it—is a think tank, an activist American Muslim organization dedicated to the mission that we believe the protection of liberty and freedom and the future of Islam will come through the separation of mosque and state. Terrorism is simply a tactic or a symptom of an underlying more pervasive ideology of which the militancy and violence are only one means by which they can achieve their goals of a form of an Islamic state. We believe that the underlying root cause is that Islamic state, Islamo-patriotism, or Islamism—a supremacist ideology held by those who seek the advancement of political Islam over all other forms of governance.
No. The repugnancy of the ideology of Islamism should not be made illegal, nor can it be defeated by being made illegal, but having said that, the single end point of militants' radical Islamism, among many end points of Islamism, cannot be defeated or cornered by your security apparatuses unless you understand the greater ideology of Islamism and you begin to focus on it and give your officers the ability to see Islamism and its attendant Islamo-patriotism and ideology as the core threat source across the world, despite its far-reaching and less relevant ethnic nuances. Ultimately that commonality is what makes movements like Boko Haram and the Nigerian Islamic supremacist movement ally with caliphists of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, as we just saw a few weeks ago.
As we saw with Zehaf-Bibeau's recent pre-terror video that was released, he was driven by that similar Islamo-patriotism that both demonizes Canada, Canadians, and the west, and also blames us all for the ills of Muslim communities. We need our security operations to be able to broaden their net from those who they know will commit an act of violence or terror to those like Zehaf-Bibeau, or Vincent's killer, or Nidal Hasan in Fort Hood here in 2009, who for much longer we likely could have known that they may commit, and that's such an important distinction. For then your security apparatus will have the ability to disrupt threats, which is oddly prohibited now, and also block speech which openly and clearly advocates violence and acts of terror against all citizens, which should never be protected speech, nor be protected groups, for our liberty is not a suicide pact.
As an American Muslim I'm reminded of Nidal Hasan who, long before ISIS was on the radar, plotted in 2009 his attacks emanating from the same stream of Islamist jihadi suprematism, which led him to assassinate 13 of our fellow soldiers and injure over 30. The relevance here between Bibeau and Hasan is that they were both Islamo-patriots, traitors to our nations who swore allegiance to the global Islamic cause.
For Hasan, it was Imam al-Awlaki and his caliphism. For Bibeau it was ISIS and its caliphism. These are not two different unrelated cases since one was ISIS and the other was al Qaeda. Six years later, multiple reports later, sadly, we are still tiptoeing around naming the ideology that drove them both and drove so many other radicals across the world.
It is unfathomable that, 14 years post-9/11, our nations cannot line up experts on Islamist ideology, state craft of Islamists, legalism of their sharia of our enemies, or my sharia, which I believe is the faith that I love. But there's a difference between the sharia of the Islamic State and our personal pietistic sharia. We need to have experts about that, who can talk about it. So far, political correctness has prevented that.
Once you understand these elements—the process of radicalization or what I call “Islamo-patriotization” and jihadization toward groups like ISIS—you'll be better able to legislate good police and homeland security work. The seminal work on this was published by the NYPD here in America, called “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat”.
With political correctness and the pressure of Islamist groups in America bent on suppressing the real reform that we reformists are trying to do, that report is on its way to being removed from the website. I'd ask you to download it before they do. It's been up there since 2007. It is because the analysts at the NYPD intelligence division committed the crime of educating their forces on this association, granted not the rule but the association between militant Islamism, jihadism, Salafism, and those imams who are spiritual sanctioners, like Imam al-Awlaki, and various other so-called benign Islamic faith practices that are exploited by Islamist movements.
While certainly not all Muslims are Islamists, all radical Islamists are Muslims. Ultimately they travel down very common benchmarks of radicalization, which only we Muslims can address but to which our security and intelligence apparatuses should not and cannot be blind.
I believe the only rational reason that various Muslim groups and other legal groups may, on behalf of our community, voice concern about a very appropriate criminalization of the advocacy and promotion of terrorism offences in general, as Bill C-51 states, is that it will eventually obligate them to take a position on the ideologies that fuel and feed militant Islamism, or specifically stake out a position on Islamism itself.
If the militancy is not criminalized, they will continue to claim ignorance of the fuel and ultimately not be put under the antiseptic of sunlight. There are many fronts in this battle, and ultimately, I believe this is a very western battle, between theocracy and liberalism. But we need the tools to confront that. It should not be about if they will commit, but if they may commit. With speech advocating terror, just because it doesn't advocate for a specific person to be attacked, or a group, does not mean that's speech that should be protected.
Ultimately, if it's advocating violence, it should be stopped. I can tell you from where I sit, ultimately, that these tools will be very helpful in shining this antiseptic of sunlight on it. You don't have to make all this type of speech illegal, not the violent part, just especially the Islamist part. Actually, if you make it illegal, it will drive it underground. But the violent speech that advocates violence and terror should be exposed and rooted out.
I think if Muslims are going to do that and be held accountable, our faith community ultimately needs to be engaged in that. Reformists should have a seat at the table.
I think ultimately explicit calls for terrorism or violence or the endorsement and promotion of groups and individuals on the terror list should not be protected speech. One example I want to give you is that a website, ummah.com, said just last month that Muslims like Canadian Tarek Fatah and American Zuhdi Jasser are 100,000 times more dangerous to the Muslim community than infidels or kuffar in the west.
The implications here are obvious. Now, I'm not saying that speech should be made illegal, but certainly I hope your security forces are looking at websites like ummah.com as organizations with individuals who may commit acts of terror. Right now, we can't do that.
The people who you would protect first with Bill C-51 would be Muslims, our faith community, that is in fear and silence because of radicals that suppress reform and suppress dissidence.
I want to end with some final thoughts. One is that the mantra of violent extremism needs to end. I think Canada is a little ahead of us on that. Second, the lone-wolf theory is nonsense. These are not lone wolves any more than the Ebola virus in Dallas was lone wolf, with the Liberia source of the Ebola virus. Broader approaches against terror advocacy and with destruction are very important. We need to take the side of reformers within the Muslim community against political Islam and ally with groups and platforms that allow us to have that debate.
I look forward to our conversation. Thank you.