During Saturday’s broadcast of “The Big Show” on ABC Radio’s Washington, D.C. affiliate WMAL, American Muslim activist and media contributor Dr. Zuhdi Jasser blasted the lack of leadership from President Obama, Washington and the West since the Arab Spring.
“What we’re seeing now I would basically look upon as Cold War 2.0 with an Islamic flavor,” said Jasser, the founding president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. “We have let them define who we are. We have let their media define that America is the enemy and everything is to blame on the West and that has allowed them to avoid fixing their own condition.”
“And yet, when they do try to fix their own condition, like the Syrians and the Egyptians and the Tunisians have, we have gone and helped the wrong people — the [Muslim] Brotherhood, the Islamists.”
Jasser, the author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith,” criticized President Obama for recognizing the Muslim Brotherhood during a 2009 speech in Cairo as “legitimate.” Most Muslims, Jasser insisted, do not recognize the brotherhood as legitimate political leaders, but as theocrats.
“One of the biggest reasons we do not have credibility in the Middle East is they see us as allying with their enemies, with the dictators and with the theocrats. We have not been allying with the people on the ground,” said Jasser.
He also said President Barack Obama missed an important opportunity to address the Muslim Brotherhood’s dishonesty.
“The brotherhood was saying one thing in Arabic, cheering on the crowds; and on their English website, saying how they condemned it. And I would love to have seen President Obama call them on that. He didn’t.”
Jasser also characterized the anti-Islam video allegedly responsible for the violent Middle East uprisings as a “complete distraction.” Egyptian state-run media, he said, deliberately broadcast the trailer in an attempt to “consolidate their base by using a common theme: demonizing the West.”
“The Middle East has been torn between two fascisms: one of secular fascism of Mubarak, Gaddafi and the Assad’s of the world, and the other is theocratic fascism of radical Islam,” said Jasser. “This relationship between two heads of the same snake we are now seeing continue.”
