One of the most influential worldwide moderate Muslims, who lived in Southern California, died of heart failure creating an enormous vacuum.
For a Pakistani immigrant who loved America, he took enormous risks and was one of the most published Moderate Muslims in the world. Getting buried on America’s Memorial Day weekend, was appropriate. Located at the Harbor Lawn Mount Olive Memorial Park in Costa Mesa, American flags were flying is a predominantly Jewish graveyard.
Tashbih Sayyed, publisher of Modern Muslim Today, has a world wide following of bright scholarly writers and readers. www.paktoday.com/mwtoday/ . Tashbih raised his two sons as medical doctors and his daughter is a practicing attorney. However, when Tashbih appeared on 48 hours clearly exposing rabid anti American statements made by a Florida Imam, he earned the enmity of Muslims extremists everywhere. Several fatwas were issued against his life.
Author Robert Spencer a world authority on Jihadists had this to say about Sayyed:
Tashbih Sayyed, 1941-2007
With great sorrow, Tashbih Sayyed, a courageous foe of the global jihad, has passed away.
After a long career at Pakistan Television, Tashbih’s differences with the Zia ul-Haq regime in Pakistan (which gave the Islamization of Pakistan its first great boost) led him to come to the United States, where he founded two newspapers, Pakistan Today and Muslim World Today, and wrote eight books, including Mohammad – A Secularist’s View. He appeared in documentaries including Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. He was the President and founder of The Council for Democracy and Tolerance, an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute, and a member of the Jihad Watch Board.
Tashbih was insightful, humorous, and above all, fearless in his opposition to the jihad ideology of Islamic supremacism. Despite numerous threats and a relentless barrage of insults and personal attacks, he kept on trying to awaken the world to the magnitude of the threat we face, never trimming his truth-telling to fit current fashion.
He was a dear friend, and he will be greatly missed.
May his memory be eternal.
The burial, just hours ago, was a traditional Shia ceremony with men carrying the simple pine casket and the women waiting by graveside. Most unusual, was a Palos Verdes Rabbi made special comments over Sayyed’s’ influential life. Several prominent Jewish leaders also spoke, in the presence of a large gathering of Pakistani Muslims and Christian friends. Truly this was a uniting of three major faiths over the fallen Muslim hero, journalist and scholar.