Zuhdi Jasser, Founding Member and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), an American Muslim organization advocating for the separation of mosque and state, and Bilal Kaleem, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society of Boston, join moderator James Carroll, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University, recipient of the James Parks Morton Interfaith Award, and Boston Globe columnist, to address the questions facing Islam, the West, and democracy in the 21st century.
Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser is the President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a think tank and activist Muslim organization which provides a platform for an American Muslim movement to separate spiritual Islam from the political. He is also a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and a respected physician currently in private practice specializing in internal medicine and nuclear cardiology. Dr. Jasser has been active in a number of interfaith efforts in Arizona including founding the Children of Abraham, a Jewish-Muslim dialogue group . He also been an advisor on Islamic affairs to the U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands. The Center for Security Policy honored him as a “Defender of the Home Front”; the Phoenix office of the FBI presented him with the 2007 Director’s Community Leadership Award. Dr. Jasser was recently featured in the films, The Third Jihad and Islam vs. Islamists. He is a regular columnist and contributing editor for FamilySecurityMatters.org and Hudson New York. He appears frequently on the Fox News Channel and CNN, and has been published in the National Review, Arizona Republic, Middle East Quarterly, Dallas Morning News, Washington Times, and Beliefnet.
M. Bilal Kaleem is the Executive Director of the Muslim American Society of Boston (MAS Boston). MAS Boston, the largest Muslim organization in New England, operates the newly completed, $16 million Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. Bilal received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. from MIT, and is currently pursuing graduate study in sociology and religion at Boston University with some coursework at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His focus is Muslim civic engagement. He also serves on the board of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO), the Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), and the Center for Jewish Muslim Relations (CJMR). He has also served as a mentor at the Somali Development Center serving youth from Somalia.