Born on November 17, 1967 in Dayton, Ohio,[13] Jasser is the son of Syrians who immigrated to the United States in the 1960s, owing to repression in their homeland.[14] His grandfather, Zuhdi Jasser, who owned a vegetable oil company in Syria was a devout Muslim with an admiration of the West. His father, Mohamed Kais Jasser, is a cardiologist who studied medicine at the London University and Syria in the early 1960s, he was an active critic through his newspaper columns, which led to his migration with his pharmacist wife in 1963 from Beirut, Lebanon to the United States.[13][14] Jasser was raised in Appleton, Wisconsin, until the age of 6. The family then moved to Neenah, Wisconsin, where he was raised in the Sunni branch of Islam.[15]