A Courageous Muslim

Finally, we have heard from a devout and courageous Muslim. We have not seen this since Anwar Sadat. Wouldn't you know it would be a woman! Wafa Sultan has done what no other Muslim has dared to do, tell the truth, in Arabic, on Al Jazerra. It is clear that the only hope for the Middle East is to somehow make it possible for women to participate in Middle Eastern society, business, and politics. This is an interesting story, concerning a remarkable person.

Psychiatrist gets death threats, and kudos, for her speech on Al-Jazeera TV
By John M. Broder, The New York Times

LOS ANGELES - Three weeks ago, Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to a blunt and provocative interview on Al-Jazeera satellite television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail in-boxes of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, Sultan, 47, bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders whom she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Quran for 14 centuries. She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably to the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

''I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings,'' she said in an interview this week in home in a suburb of Los Angeles. ''Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs.''

On Al-Jazeera, she said: ''The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality.''

She said she was not a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew, but a ''secular human being.''

Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her telephone answering machine and by e-mail. One telephone message said, ''Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see.''

 

You might want to add Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Maryam Namazie, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val, Ibn Warraq (all of them muslims who wrote/signed the open letter "Together facing the new totalitarianism"), or Mustafa Akyol and Zeyno Baran who wrote the "Muslim Manifesto". It's not that there are no such people, they just don't get that much publicity. Certainly not in Islamic countries, but not that much elsewhere either ...

Christian

 

This is exactly what I have been talking about. You have very few muslims like this woman that realize that their religion is controlled by the ultra-vast-majority who want to keep their people and the rest of the world in the 7th Century.

Unfortunately for every one of these people that wish to join civilization, you have MILLIONS trying to take it back. See what is the response of the vast-majority of muslims that disagree with her?

DEATH!!! It's what they know best!

 

They need to get publicity! I have heard precious few rational Muslims on television or radio. This woman has been featured on a dozen prominent newspapers, probably becasue of her Al Jazera interviews and debates. She needs some good body guards, preferably Mormons.

 

Many innocent Muslims tortured yet do not go Al Queda

listen here: http://www.thislife.org/

 

Suha Arafat: Arab Militant in High Heels with an RPG in her handbag... Now, whatever happened to her???

B

 

Monaco would be a good guess

 

By Geroge you may be right Danr, come to think about it and I believe I did hear that Bush did torture Wafa Sultan the Syrian-American psychiatrist to make this speech. You may be on to something at that! :whistle:

 

Listen to the link if you dare. It may challenge your limited world view though and cause cognitive dissonance which can be uncomfortable.

 

This is coming from an individual who hasn't been more than 20 miles outside of his reservation in Arizona in his entire life time.:whistle:

 

Seriously listen to that link

 

Which link? There are two at that location. Do you mean the one about the ghost named Walter who plays pranks on the guests and staff at a Ramada Inn in Fond du Lac Wisconsin? Or the one by the liberal author Jack Hitt?

 

See what happens when you play the role of village idiot? No one pays any attention to what you say or think, because you have always made it into a three ring circus. So you might as well be talking to wind for all the good you are doing. Your efforts are going for naught, and there really isn't any way for you to change this situation. NO one was out to "get you' , you did a real good job of screwing yourself.

So now what are you going to do for an repeat performance?:whistle:

 

****Blip****

 

I listen to Danr. He endeavors to fight the good fight. He reminds me of me when I was younger. I like the direction he is headed.

Some advice to Danr...Find a truce with Dan. He's a big old softy underneath believe it or not.

 

Sorry I did not know that they started charging. It is a report on "This American Life" the NPR program. It will be free in a couple of days and I will repost link. I heard this report on NPR today and it blew my mind. They are torturing innocent Muslims at Gitmo. They let this one English speaking Muslim go and this program interviewed him. Apparently people in Pakistan are turning in innocent people for the reward money and those people are being tortured and this is somewhat common.

 

as for old dan I know where he is coming from. My buddy Jay is like him, an older funny guy on the conservative side. Jay and I go back and forth endlessly it is big fun.

 

Typical post by the village idiot...here we have a great thread about a mulsim that FINALLY calls islam for what it is (even as she is threaten) and he ruined another thread.

What an embarassment to your children. How the hell you are breeding is beyond me. It is people like you that are going to let the muslims run this country and enslave the idiots like you that "reach out" to them. If I were your kid, I would slap you silly...otherwise natural selection will eveuntually do it for us.

 

Midas you lose credibility with posts like those. Can you say A-I-D-A-N

 

I always wondered that if a muslim were to start a forum similiar to this and another muslim questioned islam's true intention...would death threats be directed to the moderator, registerd user and owner of the site?

It just goes to show you that we are lucky to live in a country where I can post my opinions (good or bad) without the fear of being killed by some islamic terrorists. Here you have a woman that wishes to join the 21st Centiry and look how fellow muslims are treating her.

These actions (forget the words folks!) by these muslims just drive my "point" home.