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Memo to Snyder: Don’t stop the radical reforms now!Wafa Sultan and the nature of Islam
November 16th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Lawrence J. Haas
They were just five words, but they swept through the Muslim world like a brush fire nearly four years ago, launching a scorching backlash that endures to this day. “Be quiet. It’s my turn,” the Syrian-born American, Wafa Sultan, said in February 2006 to a Muslim cleric she was debating on Al Jazeera.
Defying tradition.
A woman interrupting a man? In public? In Islamic societies, particular in the Arab world, a Muslim woman could be killed for such behavior, for it challenges the very nature of relations between the sexes. Nor can such a woman, even a highly educated psychiatrist like Sultan, live in safety just by escaping the Middle East. Today, facing death threats, Sultan lives in hiding in the United States.
The drive behind Sultan’s outburst, and the years-long anger that fueled it, is chronicled in her controversial new book, A God Who Hates. In it, she tells her life story of professional success but personal humiliation in an Islamic society, and she describes Islam as an inherently destructive ideology, that keeps its adherents in backwardness and its women and children in slave-like conditions.
Her book is not only riveting but important, for it forces attention on an issue of great debate – what is the essential nature of Islam, and how should the West respond to terrorism and the ideologies that drive it?
On one side are those who believe that Islam is a moderate, mainstream religion, little different from Judaism and Christianity, one that can live in peace with, and thrive within, modern Western society.
Key adherents of this view include Irshad Manji, who lives as an openly gay and feminist Muslim in Canada, lectures and writes widely, runs the Moral Courage Project at New York University and is author of the provocative book, What’s Wrong with Islam Today; M. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician who earned his medical degree on a Navy scholarship and is founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; and Zainab Al-Suwaij, a women’s rights advocate who is co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress.
On the other side are those who believe that Islam is inherently aggressive and anti-Western, that it demands anti-Jewish and anti-Christian violence and that it’s not really a religion at all but a political ideology.
Along with Sultan, leading subscribers to this view include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali native who fled to the West, served in the Dutch Parliament, now serves as a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, requires round-the-clock protection, and is the author of two heartrending books about her life, The Caged Virgin and Infidel; and Brigitte Gabriel, the Lebanese-American journalist, founder and president of the American Congress for Truth and author of two books that urge the West to confront Islam, Why They Hate and They Must be Stopped.
This unresolved debate over Islam shapes the disjointed response of Western governments to attacks on their people and property that seem motivated by religion. Some officials blame Islam, some blame a radical perversion of an otherwise peaceful religion and some studiously avoid any notion that Islam has connections to violence, pointing instead to social pathologies or the personal demons of the perpetrators.
It’s a debate that has played out this year over, for instance, the Fort Hood massacre, allegedly perpetrated by a Muslim Army psychiatrist who praised suicide bombings and ranted about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the ongoing saga of Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old Ohio daughter of Muslim immigrants who converted to Christianity and fled her family out of fear that they would have her killed for abandoning Islam; and the recent beheading in Buffalo of a Muslim woman allegedly by her husband, a prominent local Muslim leader from whom she had filed for divorce.
This debate over Islam is tough and explosive, and I admit to uncertainty about which way to lean.
The Koranic verses, the “hadiths” (sayings) of the Prophet Mohammad, and the “fatwas” (opinions) of Islamic scholars that Sultan and others cite in tying Islam to violence are compelling. So, too, are the Islam-based justifications for death and destruction by terrorists around the world.
But, equally compelling are the examples that Manji, Jasser and Al-Suwaij have set in reconciling Islam with modernity, peace and human rights and in confronting the perpetrators of violence in the name of Islam.
It is a debate in which the West must engage more openly, however uncomfortable that might be. To put it bluntly, only if we know what we’re facing will we be able to confront it effectively.
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In a diverse society where no one religion is to be enthroned as the state religion, such violence and repression of women is not to be endured.
For Muslims living in the West to expect to be able to enforce their cultural mores with the sword is unacceptable.
“But, equally compelling are the examples that Manji, Jasser and Al-Suwaij have set in reconciling Islam with modernity, peace and human rights and in confronting the perpetrators of violence in the name of Islam.”
Why do you project these Non-Muslim women speak for Islam? Do you expect Atheists to talk of merits of Christianity??
Ahmad,
Who are you to decide who is a Muslim and who is not? you have no such authority. Also, what makes you bestow the mantle of who speaks for Islam and who doesn’t? Who speaks for you? Qaradawi?
the government should round all muslims up and send them back to the middle east. they do not assimilate into any culture, they simply multiply and take over the country.
Join http://www.actforamerica.org NOW!
We will stop the U.S. from suffering the same fate as Europe– now known as Eurabia– with huge increase in riots, rapes, polygamy, honor killings, genital mutilation, anti-semitism, replacement of traditional courts with Muslim courts, Sharia finance, etc!!!!!!!!
[...] From Wafa Sultan and the nature of Islam: [...]
[...] From Wafa Sultan and the nature of Islam: [...]
Islam is a religion, which has its completely and explicitly described set of rules, which do not need support from one or the other. it is becoming a trend that anyone who is against islam can write about it, does not matter whether or not he/she understands the concepts of islam completely.
people have personal likings and dislikings about their native culture and they have their own stories of life, for which they attack islam, and they are read and welcomed just because they came up with a few things that can prove that islam is a threat to humanity.
Before writing about the subject of Islam one must be well-learnt about the rule and regulations of Islam and shud be well aware of islamic history. before writing on Newton’s theories one is supposed to earn degrees in science but for writing about a big religion one shud have only one characterstic and that is, being anti-islam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is not it strange????
I am sorry to say, but Islam is EVIL at its core. I have studied this religion for a long time and have stayed in Saudia Arabia and Yemen and other Arab countries with my father for many years in a hotel compound for foreigners for Oil Workers, outside the wall of my compound was a hell for women and girls.
I am absoultely dumb-founded when people call this religion a religion of peace. This very name “the religion of Peace” was a concept given by the muslim brotherhood so it seems appleasing to the western world. How very stupid we are, only time will tell…..
islam is a dead end religion, infact is a political movement not a religion at all.
ISLAM the religion of Abraham, Jesus, Moses and Muhammad is soon going to take over the world by our Weapon of Mass Dick struction (WMD). We will Bonk our way to demographic dominance while your society is riddled with single parent families, alcoholics Gays,Lesbians,Aids and Abortions.
Screw al-qaida and saddam hussain (not literally) both created by the CIA/Mossad.
Google the following:
MUHAMMAD IN THE BIBLE
JESUS IN THE QURAN
John sounds like an angry extremist — just the stuff that mohameddans want among their ranks. Hate filled zombies.
Regarding those who (like Wafa Sultan) recognize Islam as an evil political system, they base this on an objective understanding of what the books foundational to Islam actually say.
One of the things these books say, it is “ok, to lie and deceive in the name of Allah.” The other ladies listed her, as “more moderate” in the views, are — no doubt — playing exactly that game.
Do not be deceived here.. Islam is EVIL, pure and simple. Its demonic, and Satan laught at those in the West mired in relativism as he arranges for them to killed in mass.
Mr. Haas writes: “the examples that Manji, Jasser and Al-Suwaij have set in reconciling Islam with modernity, peace and human rights..” This is actually not the case. All three are outcasts in the world of Islam. They maintain their Moslem identity while proclaiming an idiosyncratic version of Islam that is in conflict with the Koran, the Hadith and Sharia — without openly rejecting any passages from the those sacred sources. That is NOT an alternative Islam. It is rejection of Islam, and it is seen as that by all religious Moslems and their religious authorities. To reject any part of the Koran is considered apostasy. The best these “reformers” can do is to just ignore those many passages in the Koran and Hadith and Sharia which call for war against non-Moslems and suppression of women.
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How many have had their computers crash because of viruses or Trojans loaded when we accidentally arrive at the ‘wrong’ web site or have had our teenagers do the same thing? How much pornography is available on the Internet? Are these questions that may be addressed by the FCC or Henry Waxman? Absolutely not! There are web sites that broadcast conservative, libertarian or Republican thoughts that need to be eradicated. The fact that people want to hear Rush Limbaugh a great deal more than that idiot Chris Matthews only indicates they’ve been brainwashed . . . but in the wrong way. Henry Waxman to the rescue! Matthews, Maddow et. al. need to be heard! We’ll whisper if need be. We’ll seek others with open minds and we’ll find each other. Neither Henry Waxman nor any other liberal will stop us.
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November 2007: In an interview with political interviewer David Frost taken on November 2, 2007, the Pakistani politician and Pakistan Peoples Party leader Benazir Bhutto claimed that bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. During her answer to a question pertaining to the identities of those who had previously attempted her own assassination, Bhutto named Sheikh as a possible suspect while referring to him as “the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.” Despite the weight of such a statement, neither Bhutto nor Frost attempted to clarify it during the remainder of the interview.[139] Omar Chatriwala, a journalist for Al Jazeera English, claims that he chose not to pursue the story at the time because he believes Bhutto misspoke, meaning to say Sheikh murdered Daniel Pearl and not Osama Bin Laden.[140] The BBC drew criticism when it rebroadcast the Frost/Bhutto interview on its website, but edited out Bhutto’s statement regarding Osama Bin Laden. Later the BBC apologized and replaced the edited version with the complete interview.[141] In October 2007, Bhutto stated in an interview that she would cooperate with the American military in targeting Osama bin Laden.[142]
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