A different face of Islam, By Melissa Radler

"Any plan that helps to create a terror state cannot be termed a peace plan," wrote Tashbih Sayyed in the May 30 edition of Pakistan Today, a moderate Muslim weekly published in southern California.

The Quartet-backed road map, he wrote, "will not only ensure the destruction of Israel, but will also sow the seeds of an eternal terror."

Sayyed, 61, a Muslim immigrant to the US and president of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, has never hesitated to express his views. Born in India and raised in Pakistan, he spent his childhood in one of that country's notorious madrassas, where he learned the religiously sanctioned anti-Semitism of militant Islam.

"As a little boy, I thought all Jews should be killed," he says. As a young man, his virulent tirades against his purported enemy at a local radio school attracted the attention of a Pakistani Jew who quietly funneled him books on Jewish history and Israel, including Exodus by Leon Uris. When Sayyed took a closer look at the Koran, a different Islam was revealed to him: a religion of peace, free of the hatred that he argues has held his people back for centuries.

"I became vengeful, as if somebody had cheated me of my childhood, as if somebody had tried to make me a serpent when I was not a serpent. I blamed the mullahs and the clerics," he says.

Under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Sayyed headed Pakistan Television's current affairs department, where he was given an outlet to rail against Islamic extremism. When the fundamentalist leader Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul Haq took over the country's leadership, Sayyed found himself demoted, threatened with state-sponsored violence, and surrounded by anti-Semitic incitement. He emigrated to the US in 1980.

In California, however, Sayyed faces intimidation of a different kind by the leaders of Muslim organizations, many of them Saudi-financed, who he says use their adopted land's freedoms to spread their message of hate. As evidence of the leaders' success, Sayyed, who calls such groups as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council "the most accomplished fifth column in America," notes that while his call for democracy in the Muslim world resonates with many of those who fled persecution, his backing of the Jewish right to self-determination and his abhorrence of anti-Semitism is met with hostility and allegations that the "Zionists" control his every move.

Sayyed begs to differ. "If I am Zionist-controlled, then the Koran is also Zionist-controlled," he says. "If speaking of American values is Zionism, then I am proud to be Zionist, and if doing what Osama does or Saddam does is Islam, then I am not a Muslim."

How widespread is militant Islam in America?
Most Islamic centers and mosques in the United States are controlled by militant Islamists committed to destroying the very nature of America. The Islamists don't want to destroy America; they only want to destroy the America that is not controlled by a militant version of Islam. They are creating fear in Muslims who live in America by teaching that America is controlled by Jews and Zionists, and they teach that Jews and Zionists are determined to destroy Islam.

So, the majority [of Muslims] in America is influenced by militant Islam. They may not be militant themselves, but they are not 100% free of the influence.

You've written that moderate Muslims constitute a silent majority in this country. How has the community responded to the views expressed in Pakistan Today?
I have great support, but they are very scared. The intimidation that comes from Islamism in America is tremendous. The lives of Muslims living in America are not governed by the constitution of America, by Jeffersonian principles; their lives are governed by a fascist Islamist state that has created itself within the most democratic country in the world.

I would have nothing against Islamists if they had believed in one nation under God when they came to America. But they do not believe in one nation under God. They do not believe in a nation in which non-Islamists are non-dhimmis [second-class citizens, namely Jews and Christians who live under Muslim rule].

Why hasn't this silent majority established more moderate groups?
me tell you a story. There is a gentleman who was supporting my newspaper - every few months he'd advance me $20,000 or so when the newspaper was short of money - until I appeared on 48 Hours and said something against [Sami] Al-Arian. [Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, was arrested in February on charges of financing terrorism, sponsoring suicide bombings in Israel, and using American academic and non-profit groups as fronts for Islamic Jihad.] This gentleman was the first person to call me and say, 'Brother, you have gone too far.' From that day on he never called me, and I never insulted myself by trying to reach him.

In other words, there isn't a silent majority when it comes to anti-Semitism.
No. In order to be politically correct, they say Israel is supporting the settlements, the occupation. But even if you solve all these problems according to their wishes, even if, God forbid, you say you'll go back to Germany or Poland - although Jews didn't come from there originally, and you said this just to make everyone happy - do you think that will solve the problem? It will not.

Hasn't interfaith dialogue yielded results?
There has been interfaith dialogue in America for at least the past 15 years. So why is there still anti-Semitism in the mosques in America? Why can't this dialogue translate into the hearts and minds of the Muslim masses? Those leaders who go and talk to rabbis and priests and say, 'We love, we love, we love,' why can't they come back to their parishioners and say, 'Our interpretations in the past were wrong; here is the right and rational interpretation of our holy book'? It is not being said.

Muslims here live under democratic rule. Hasn't that tempered the more radical views?

I had the same idea; that once people are educated, they will at least start using their analytical faculties. But the pre-Martin Luther era is almost exactly the same as today's Muslim era. Martin Luther opened the floodgates of debate within the community, which was a tradition in Judaism from day one. That's why Jews have survived 5,000 years of persecution, because a society that believes in debate on the inside cannot be killed from the outside.

Will reform come from within the Muslim world, or can others do anything to bring it about?
It cannot come from outside, especially for a society that has looked with suspicion at anything alien. The only way to influence [Islam] is to somehow create an institution that very subtly takes root within Muslim society.

What kind of institution?
If Americans love freedom, empower my kind of voice, and then these voices can grow into challenges. Why is it that every time I look at the White House or a senator's or congressman's office, every time I find an intern or employee who is Muslim, he is always connected to some Islamic center or mosque? What Frank Gaffney said was 100% right. [In February, Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, was accused of bigotry and racism by Republican strategist Grover Norquist after criticizing White House staffers responsible for the administration's Muslim outreach for limiting official invitees to the heads of Islamic groups with links to terrorist organizations.] There are gatekeepers in the White House who are promoting Islamic radicals. So long as you call Islamic centers [for advice] on whom to invite to do American jobs, you will only get Osama bin Laden.

How do you explain the Muslim world's hatred of America, and how can that hatred be lessened?
America has never been able to establish a bridge between itself and the [Muslim] masses. America has very foolishly imposed one corrupt individual, like [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak, Haq or the Saudi kings, who have no credibility with the masses.

If America succeeds in connecting itself, subtly, with the grassroots in those countries, it will succeed in creating goodwill for itself, because America is essentially a good power, and goodness will show itself when it has translated itself into the welfare of the people. Once that is achieved, a mindset will evolve which will in turn herald the death of anti-Semitism, and affluence will provide the challenge to the clerics who feed the poverty-stricken mosques with hatred.

Is US support for the demonstrators in Iran an example of what the US should be doing in the region?
If America keeps going the way it is going, and supports Iranian dissent as Iranian dissent and not American dissent, I think this will be the first example of success.

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