Taroudante - On January 8, Tunisian cleric Abdelfattah Mourou delivered a sermon criticizing fellow Muslim-Americans in a New Jersey mosque. Mourou who serves as vice president of the Tunisian Parliament and co-founded the Islamist Ennahdha Party, said Muslims in the US are becoming unproductive.

Taroudante – On January 8, Tunisian cleric Abdelfattah Mourou delivered a sermon criticizing fellow Muslim-Americans in a New Jersey mosque.

Mourou who serves as vice president of the Tunisian Parliament and co-founded the Islamist Ennahdha Party, said Muslims in the US are becoming unproductive.

“30 percent of Muslims can’t read or write,” Mourou said, Morocco World News was not able to confirm these figures.

The cleric claimed that Muslims “are a nation that does not read or write,” asking the worshipers if there was a single person who read “even one book” in the past year.

Mourou said that Muslims cannot take pride in “any single university for producing minds and leaders that can move the world forward.”

While he criticized Muslims in the US for their “lack of industriousness”, he praised the US for its “productivity and acceptance of different religions, including Islam.”

“For centuries Islam provided knowledge and lore to humanity,” he said, “where is your knowledge and lore today, oh Muslims?”

Mousou said for seven centuries Islam “produced scholars of physics,chemistry, medicine, mathematics, and optics”.

During the early Islamic Caliphates, such as the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), Muslims were influential in their contributions to chemistry, anatomy, physics, even literature and philosophy.

“Much has changed since Islam was at the forefront of math and science,” the cleric said.

The imam said he would like to see American-Muslims changing their role in the US landscape from “passive” to “producing minds in the world that move forward.”

“Make yourself full citizens of this country, whose law does not prevent you from being full citizens,” he said.

This country respects you and your faith. Practice your faith but exercise your full citizenship as well,” he added.

Edited by Iliana Hagenah

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