EXCLUSIVE -- Leading Muslim Reformist: 'Hope Not Hate Are Orwellian Bigots'

Muslim reformist and former U.S. naval officer Dr. Zuhdi Jasser has slammed the group Hope Not Hate (HNH) for their “Orwellian” tactics and described the group as “bigots”.

The author of A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim slammed HNH boss “Nick Lowles and their Orwellian Hope Not Hate – which is actually Hate Not Hope” on SiriusXM radio today, speaking to Breitbart London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam.

“Their Orwellian approach is actually doing takfir”, he said, the practice of declaring a Muslim to be an apostate, kafir or non-believer. “They’re basically doing the same thing as [Osama] Bin Laden and [Abu Bakr] Baghdadi [the leader] of ISIS… and the Saudi government.”

In December last year, in a report on the “Counter-Jihad movement”, HNH labelled Dr. Jasser an “anti-Muslim extremist”, along with former British government adviser Maajid Nawaz, and the hijab wearing, practising Muslim Raquel Saraswati, who campaigns against regressive forms of Shariah law.

Dr. Jasser suggested that by doing so HNH was working to suppress the “voices of moderate Islam”, explaining: “We get slammed from the radicals who say we’re not Muslims and we’re apostates even though we love our faith.

“And, we get slammed from the left, who is doing the bidding of the Saudis and the Iranian government and others who really don’t want us reformists to have a voice. So, they’re smothering our voices. But the bottom line answer is: They’re the bigots,” he added.

He explained that HNH and similar groups “want to measure Islam by the misogyny, by the Islamic theocracies” rather than “hold it to the same humanitarian, universal human rights that we hold Christianity and Jews and other modern faiths to.”

He said that failing to hold Muslims to the same standards “you hold Jews and other faith accountable to” constitutes a “bigotry of lower expectations”.

Furthermore, by “hold[ing] Islam to 7^th century standards” they “therefore call anyone within the faith that even raises the question of modernisation… an Uncle Tom or a self-hating Muslim,” he said.