As for Ms Raheel Raza, please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20161005)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20161021). (Lily)
Jihad Watch（https://www.jihadwatch.org/）
Muslim Reform Group Reached Out to 3,000 US Mosques, Got Only 40 Responses
24 February 2017
By Dr.Stephen M.Kirby
In December 2015, a small group of Muslims met in Washington, DC to discuss the reform of Islam. With media fanfare, they named themselves the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM), issued a Declaration for Muslim Reform, and became the new face of “Muslim reformers.”
There was just one fundamental problem: the MRM never had support from the larger Muslim community.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, one of the MRM founders, admitted this on January 30, 2017, when he was interviewed in an article in The Federalist about the MRM’s recent one year anniversary: A Muslim Reformer Speaks Out About His Battle Against Islamism And PC. Jasser was asked about how many mosques the MRM had initially approached for support in 2015 and the nature of the responses from those mosques. Jasser’s answer was eye-opening:
We spent significant resources on this outreach over a period of ten months. We reached out through snail mail, e-mail, and telephone to over 3,000 mosques and over 500 known public American Muslims. We received only 40-plus rather dismissive responses from our outreach, and sadly less than ten of them were positive. In fact, one mosque in South Carolina left us a vicious voice mail threatening our staff if we contacted them again.
So the MRM made over 3,500 contacts within the Muslim community, but received only a little over 40 responses, of which less than ten were positive. So to work with these numbers, let’s say the MRM made 3,500 contacts and received nine positive responses. That means that only .0026 (a touch over one-quarter of one percent) of the Muslim organizations and Muslim individuals the MRM contacted responded in a positive manner. And the MRM had even received a “vicious voicemail” from a mosque as a result of these initial contacts.
The irrelevance of the MRM was further revealed when Jasser was asked about the MRM’s accomplishments during the first year of its existence. Jasser stated:
Our greatest accomplishment to date is our declaration.
The MRM’s declaration is a two page document created at their first meeting, posted on the door of a nearby mosque (and quickly removed), and available on the websites of various Muslim “reform” organizations. As I noted in my first article about the MRM, this declaration is “a document that rejected Muhammad’s Islam in favor of Western, Judeo-Christian values,” and in terms of Islamic doctrine, it is rife with blasphemy.
Jasser also admitted that after a year of the MRM’s existence,
we are disappointed in the relative silence from most Muslim leaders…
Jasser blamed a lack of money for the poor support from the Muslim community:
I can guess why we had shortcomings in outreach. If we had more funding, we could study this more scientifically…No one knows truly how that majority of Muslims feels about Islamist ideologies. National security is in desperate need of helping us study that. …We have not been able to effectively reach out to the majority of Muslims because of resources and the absence of effective platforms.
So for the sake of “national security,” the MRM needs to study the attitudes of Muslims in order to find out why the MRM has been generally rejected by those Muslims. And in order for the MRM to complete this study, they need money. The money has to, by default, come from non-Muslims.
But I would like to save the MRM time and non-Muslims money. Instead of a new study on why the MRM has virtually no Muslim support, I will provide the answer: in terms of Islamic doctrine, the MRM declaration is blasphemous, and the MRM should not be surprised that over 99% of the larger Muslim community does not want to join in with that blasphemy.
It is only attention from the non-Muslim world that will enable the Muslim Reform Movement to remain on life-support, visible but irrelevant.
・Dr. Stephen M. Kirby is the author of four books about Islam. His latest book is Islam’s Militant Prophet: Muhammad and Forced Conversions to Islam.
（https://aifdemocracy.org/declaration-of-the-muslim-reform-movement-signed-by-aifd-december-4-2015/）
Declaration of the Muslim Reform Movement / Signed by AIFD (December 4, 2015)
December 6, 2015/in AIFD Press Releases /by AIFD
MUSLIM REFORM MOVEMENT
(VIDEO: Press Conference of Launch)
PLEASE SUPPORT AND SIGN OUR DECLARATION AT CHANGE.ORG
Preamble
We are Muslims who live in the 21st century. We stand for a respectful, merciful and inclusive interpretation of Islam. We are in a battle for the soul of Islam, and an Islamic renewal must defeat the ideology of Islamism, or politicized Islam, which seeks to create Islamic states, as well as an Islamic caliphate. We seek to reclaim the progressive spirit with which Islam was born in the 7th century to fast forward it into the 21st century. We support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by United Nations member states in 1948.
We reject interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicized Islam. Facing the threat of terrorism, intolerance, and social injustice in the name of Islam, we have reflected on how we can transform our communities based on three principles: peace, human rights and secular governance. We are announcing today the formation of an international initiative: the Muslim Reform Movement.
We have courageous reformers from around the world who have written our Declaration for Muslim Reform, a living document that we will continue to enhance as our journey continues. We invite our fellow Muslims and neighbors to join us.
DECLARATION
A. Peace: National Security, Counterterrorism and Foreign Policy
1. We stand for universal peace, love and compassion. We reject violent jihad. We believe we must target the ideology of violent Islamist extremism, in order to liberate individuals from the scourge of oppression and terrorism both in Muslim-majority societies and the West.
2. We stand for the protection of all people of all faiths and non-faith who seek freedom from dictatorships, theocracies and Islamist extremists.
3. We reject bigotry, oppression and violence against all people based on any prejudice, including ethnicity, gender, language, belief, religion, sexual orientation and gender expression.
B. Human Rights: Women’s Rights and Minority Rights
1. We stand for human rights and justice. We support equal rights and dignity for all people, including minorities. We support the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
2. We reject tribalism, castes, monarchies and patriarchies and consider all people equal with no birth rights other than human rights. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Muslims don’t have an exclusive right to “heaven.”
3. We support equal rights for women, including equal rights to inheritance, witness, work, mobility, personal law, education, and employment. Men and women have equal rights in mosques, boards, leadership and all spheres of society. We reject sexism and misogyny.
C. Secular Governance: Freedom of Speech and Religion
1. We are for secular governance, democracy and liberty. We are against political movements in the name of religion. We separate mosque and state. We are loyal to the nations in which we live. We reject the idea of the Islamic state. There is no need for an Islamic caliphate. We oppose institutionalized sharia. Sharia is manmade.
2. We believe in life, joy, free speech and the beauty all around us. Every individual has the right to publicly express criticism of Islam. Ideas do not have rights. Human beings have rights. We reject blasphemy laws. They are a cover for the restriction of freedom of speech and religion. We affirm every individual’s right to participate equally in ijtihad, or critical thinking, and we seek a revival of ijtihad.
3. We believe in freedom of religion and the right of all people to express and practice their faith, or non-faith, without threat of intimidation, persecution, discrimination or violence. Apostasy is not a crime. Our ummah–our community–is not just Muslims, but all of humanity.
We stand for peace, human rights and secular governance. Please stand with us!
Affirmed this Fourth Day of December, Two-Thousand and Fifteen
By the founding authors who are signatories below
#MuslimReform
Twitter: @TheMuslimReform
Instagram: @TheMuslimReform
Facebook: Muslim Reform Movement
Email: MuslimReformMovement@gmail.com
Website: www.MuslimReformMovement.org
Please sign our declaration at www.change.org
Founding Signatories
Tahir Gora,
Author, Journalist, Activist, Toronto, Canada
Tawfik Hamid
Islamic Thinker and Reformer, Oakton, VA, USA
Usama Hasan
Imam, Quilliam Foundation, London, UK
Arif Humayun
Senior Fellow, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Portland, OR, USA
Farahnaz Ispahani
Author, Former Member of Parliament, Pakistan, Washington, D.C., USA,
M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.
President, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Phoenix, AZ USA
Naser Khader
Member, Danish Parliament, Muslim democracy activist, Copenhagen, Denmark
Courtney Lonergan
Community Outreach Director, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Professional facilitator
Hasan Mahmud
Resident expert in sharia, Muslims Facing Tomorrow, Toronto, Canada
Asra Nomani
Journalist, Author, Morgantown, WV, USA
Raheel Raza
Founder, Muslims Facing Tomorrow, Toronto, Canada
Sohail Raza
Vice President, Coalition of Progressive Canadian Muslim Organizations
Salma Siddiqui
President, Coalition of Progressive Canadian Muslim Organizations, Toronto, Canada
…affirmed at 8 AM this Fourth Day of December, Two-Thousand and Fifteen
（End）
