Events Detail

The Ideological Struggle of European Muslims:
Which Islam and Which Muslims?

featuring

Naser Khader
Member of the Danish Parliament

Yunis Qandil
Jordanian-French Lecturer on Political Islam

Zuhdi Jasser
Chairman, American Islamic Forum for Democracy

moderated by

Zeyno Baran
Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

Thursday, April 26, 2007
3:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.

There is no denying the conflict that exists within Islam. Even in the liberal democracies of Europe, moderates and radicals are waging an ideological war for the right to lead and represent the rapidly growing Muslim communities on the continent. This panel will bring together three prominent European Muslim intellectuals to discuss their views on the current tensions within the Islamic world, focusing on the Western states in which Muslims are not in the majority. The panelists will also address the policies that democratic governments should pursue in order to foster more moderate interpretations of Islam.

Naser Khader is a member of the Danish Parliament for the Danish Social Liberal Party and is one of the country's most popular politicians. A leading proponent of peaceful co-existence between democracy and Islam, he established a new movement, Moderate Muslims (now known as Democratic Muslims), in response to the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005.

Yunis Qandil is a lecturer on political Islam, Middle Eastern politics, and Muslim minorities in the West. He is currently pursuing his doctoral dissertation, investigating the ideological and historical paradigms that underpin the fundamentalists’ call for a “re-Islamization” of all realms of life.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, is a practicing internist and the chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) based in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2002, Dr. Jasser noted the increasing American attention to Islam and Muslims and their role in the national and international war against Islamism. As a result of what he felt to be a paucity of Muslim scholarship demonstrating the synergy of American democracy and its founding principles with the religion of Islam, he set out to form the organization. Born in 1967, he served as a physician in the US Navy for 11 years, with postings including Medical Department Head aboard a vessel participating in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, and Attending Physician at the US Capitol.

This on-the-record meeting will take place at Hudson Institute, which is located at 1015 15th St, NW, 6th Floor, Washington, DC. For more information and RSVPs, please email Onur Sazak at onur@hudson.org or call (202) 974-6445. Please RSVP by Tuesday, April 24. Those who do not RSVP will not be admitted.