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CPTAUSRET
03-12-2006, 10:47
I wonder if she will survive the repercussions.


Terry



Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 15:50:41 +0000
March 11, 2006
The Saturday Profile

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats

By JOHN M. BRODER

LOS ANGELES, March 10 - Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown
Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger
and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera
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 of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr.
Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political
leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran
for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have
descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. 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 her home in a Los Angeles suburb.

Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined
slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest
manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward
thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the
Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said,
"The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with
their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying
and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German
restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a
single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches,
killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results.
The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they
demand that humankind respect them."

Her views caught the ear of the American Jewish Congress, which has invited her
to speak in May at a conference in Israel. "We have been discussing with her the
importance of her message and trying to devise the right venue for her to
address Jewish leaders," said Neil B. Goldstein, executive director of the
organization.

She is probably more welcome in Tel Aviv than she would be in Damascus. Shortly
after the broadcast, clerics in Syria denounced her as an infidel. One said she
had done Islam more damage than the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet
Muhammad, a wire service reported.

DR. SULTAN is "working on a book that - if it is published - it's going to turn
the Islamic world upside down."

"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am
questioning every single teaching of our holy book."

The working title is, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."

Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a
small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her
father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith's
strictures into adulthood.

But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the
University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim
Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President
Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the
university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.

"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' "she said.
"At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our
teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this
present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

She and her husband, who now goes by the Americanized name of David, laid plans
to leave for the United States. Their visas finally came in 1989, and the
Sultans and their two children (they have since had a third) settled in with
friends in Cerritos, Calif., a prosperous bedroom community on the edge of Los
Angeles County.

After a succession of jobs and struggles with language, Dr. Sultan has completed
her American medical licensing, with the exception of a hospital residency
program, which she hopes to do within a year. David operates an
automotive-smog-check station. They bought a home in the Los Angeles area and
put their children through local public schools. All are now American citizens.

BUT even as she settled into a comfortable middle-class American life, Dr.
Sultan's anger burned within. She took to writing, first for herself, then for
an Islamic reform Web site called Annaqed (The Critic), run by a Syrian
expatriate in Phoenix.

An angry essay on that site by Dr. Sultan about the Muslim Brotherhood caught
the attention of Al Jazeera, which invited her to debate an Algerian cleric on
the air last July.

In the debate, she questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people
to commit suicide in the name of God. "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime
of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our
countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from
which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."

Her remarks set off debates around the globe and her name began appearing in
Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she
appeared on Al Jazeera again on Feb. 21, an appearance that was translated and
widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri.

Memri said the clip of her February appearance had been viewed more than a
million times.

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a
clash of civilizations," Dr. Sultan said. "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 no longer practiced Islam. "I am a secular human being," she said.

The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious
studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there
was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against
Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious
condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on
her answering machine and by e-mail.

One message said: "Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see." She received an
e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, "If someone were to kill
you, it would be me."

Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her
directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she
worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did
for her own.

"I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile
journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Canuck
03-12-2006, 11:02
Here's a video of the interview.

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

She got a lot of courage to show up on Al-jazeera like this:lifter

504PIR
03-12-2006, 14:23
Islam needs a whole lot more like here.

504PIR
03-12-2006, 14:24
Islam needs a whole lot more like her.

CPTAUSRET
03-12-2006, 14:25
Islam needs a whole lot more like her.

You can say that again!

Danila
03-12-2006, 19:53
Islam needs a whole lot more like her.
The truth is that they exist, but when they speak up in Muslim nations -- and sometimes even outside the Muslim world -- they are killed. This proud and brave woman's message may be heard by many, but it can never be taught effectively while those who rule the Muslim nations don't allow their children to understand it.

tyrsnbdr
03-12-2006, 22:51
Islam needs a whole lot more like her.


A journey of a 1000 miles starts with 1 step.

HOLLiS
03-13-2006, 10:20
In the 70's I was reading the works of a progessive Muslim writer. The sad fact that people who speak up are classified as apostates. Under Sharia Law it is the duty of every Muslim to kill apostates. I admire her courage, she knows what she is up against. Also her, being a women does not gain here any favors or considerations, it actually adds to the danger that she faces.

If the perpondance of Muslims were like her, we would calling terrorists, terrorists, not Islamic terrorists.

Warrior-Mentor
03-13-2006, 17:11
Well said.

CPTAUSRET
03-13-2006, 17:18
In the 70's I was reading the works of a progessive Muslim writer. The sad fact that people who speak up are classified as apostates. Under Sharia Law it is the duty of every Muslim to kill apostates. I admire her courage, she knows what she is up against. Also her, being a women does not gain here any favors or considerations, it actually adds to the danger that she faces.

If the perpondance of Muslims were like her, we would calling terrorists, terrorists, not Islamic terrorists.


Hollis:

The operative word is "If", and it seems that the preponderance of Muslims have no voice, or they are cowed by the lunatic fanatics in their midst.

Terry