View Full Version : Interview on Al-Jazeera
I put this here because I don't know how long the link will remain active. Dr. Wafa has cojones grandes!!:lifter
http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null
Team Sergeant
04-13-2006, 08:57
She needs a job, like President of Iraq........
She may have also signed her death warrant with that interview.
She is dead on........
It's nice to see we are having a positive effect on some.......
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. http://www.nytimes.com/
Dr. Wafa Sultan is in hiding, fearful for her life and the safety of her family, after she lambasted the roots of radical Islam during a debate televised on Al-Jazeera last month.
Dr. Sultan is leading a struggle to create a new reality in the Islamic world, which she believes should be led by none other than the women it has oppressed for so long. Born in Syria and now a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist, Dr. Sultan has taken upon herself the mission of trying to change the way the Islamic world operates.
CPTAUSRET
04-13-2006, 09:10
I put this here because I don't know how long the link will remain active. Dr. Wafa has cojones grandes!!:lifter
http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null
That link won't work for me, justs brings me back to the post.
Team Sergeant
04-13-2006, 09:14
That link won't work for me, justs brings me back to the post.
It works.... give it time.
or just do a google search on the good Doctor you'll find the interview!
CPTAUSRET
04-13-2006, 09:14
I found this.
Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:10 pm Post subject: Muslim who says Violence Destroys Islam,Violent Threats
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A New York Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html?hp&ex=1142139600&en=4fdceb6c0558787e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
A copy of the transcript
Wafa Sultan: 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. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
[...]
Host: I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?
Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.
[...]
Host: Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don't mind...
Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger." When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.
My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the "People of the Book," and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians "those who incur Allah's wrath." Who told you that they are "People of the Book"? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them "those who incur Allah's wrath," or "those who have gone astray," and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?
I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?
Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural...
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran...
Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.
[...]
Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.
[...]
Wafa Sultan: The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. 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. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. 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.
Dr. Wafa certainly has guts, and what she says is appealing, but I worry that the appeal of her message is due to the fact that she is saying what we'd like to hear, not what is necessarily true. The idea that the current conflict is between modernity and medievalism appeals to us in the West because it (1) squares with our deeply ingrained need to believe in the equality of faiths and (2) characterizes us as the laudable moderns and our opponents as lunatic heathen dirt worshipers.
I would certainly feel better if I were able to view the conflict in those terms, but I cannot shake the suspicion that Islam is structurally Medieval. I.e., if you imagine an Islam that permits the separation of church and state, the basic human rights of women, and rejects the use of force and violence in spreading the faith, then you are not imagining Islam at all but some sort of hybrid weed with no roots. Perhaps I am wrong, but that has become my working hypothesis. The fact that most Muslims you encounter are peaceful, reasonable human beings just points out the allure of modernity, but my sneaking suspicion is that these individuals are peaceful because they are slowly abandoning Islam, not transforming it.
Ultimately, I couldn't care less whether Islam is transformed, so long as Islamists leave the rest of humanity alone. Perhaps she has the right talking points.
She's on point.
It's frustrating to see the other "scholar" say that Dr. Wafa's viewpoint shouldn't even be considered because she's a heretic. She is a heretic but that's only because she speaks the truth. If anyone questions why we are fighting the war and what good can come of it she points out some very good points. While those on the left would say everything is better outside of the US....they better not get sick outside of the US.
I would challenge anyone to counter her points with more than just religious rhetoric. She's intelligent, articulate (from the subtitles) and passionate but she has definitely signed her death warrant. We need more like her to educate the Muslim masses who are buying Al-Qaida's brand of crazy.
It seems to me her not being Muslim would pose a significant roadblock in institutionalizing her perspective on goodwill. Unfortunately, it will pose no such roadblock on the way to becoming a mark. Thanks for posting.
Renee
Warrior-Mentor
04-13-2006, 13:53
Can't remember the source, perhaps Einstein IIRC, but
"At first, new ideas are ridiculed...
then violently opposed,
until they are accepted as self-evident."
Wish we had more like her out there.
JM
airbornediver
04-18-2006, 18:24
wow, just wow, that woman has balls.
I thought it was completely awesome the way she was taking on the clerics and such.
that woman might be able to do more in swaying the public over there than the us-backed Al Hurra television news station.
the good dr needs to heard more and more IMO.