This post was first posted March 1st, 2006. I linked to a youtube video of mine which has garnered 324,306 views and 9,075 comments. Many of them threatening death upon Wafa. Today youtube notified me that the video was removed due to Al Jazeera complaining a copyright violation so the video is now up on my server and I figured it is still a relevant post.
Amazing video of a very courageous women, Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan, who was debating a Islamist Cleric on Al Jazeera TV on February 21st, 2006. The translation was done by Memri.
Some of my favorite lines:
The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them
Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies
We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant
The Jews have came 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.
And
“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.
Even better:
Imam: Are you a heretic?
Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural…
Imam: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran…
Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you. Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don’t throw them at me.”
Last July she took on Algerian Islamist Ahmad bin Muhammad over Islamic Teachings and Terrorism: (via Jihad Watch)
Wafa Sultan:
[…]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. He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources ? I am referring to scientific sources ? to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist and killed his humanity. It was not (the terrorist) who distorted the religious teachings and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim.
When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse: “They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off,” regardless of this verse’s interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed or its time ? you have made the first step towards creating a great terrorist…
In response, Dr. bin Muhammad plays the deflection game, or tu quoque, as Hugh Fitzgerald has labeled it:
Bin Muhammad: The guest from America asked how a young man could blow up a bus. If only she had asked how a president could blow up a peaceful nation in Iraq. How does a president help the arch-killer of occupied Palestine? Why doesn’t she ask from where Hitler was brought up ? Hitler, who murdered 50 million innocent people. Why doesn’t she ask where the people who dropped two atom bombs on Japan were educated? Who killed three million innocent Vietnamese? Who annihilated the Indians? Who maintained imperialism to this day? Who waged the Spanish civil war, which exacted a toll of 600,000 in 36 months? Why don’t we ask these questions? Who has over 15,000 nuclear warheads ? Muslims or the non-Muslims? The Muslims or the Americans? The Muslims or the Europeans? We want an answer. Where was Bush educated ? if education is really what makes a person a criminal?…
But Wafa Sultan, unlike so many others, is not about to let him get away with it:
Wafa Sultan: Murder is terrorism regardless of time or place, but when it is committed as a decree from Allah, this is another matter…
The Crusader wars about which the professor is talking ? these wars came after the Islamic religious teachings, and as a response to these teachings. This is the law of action and reaction. The Islamic religious teachings have incited to the rejection of the other, to the denial of the other, and to the killing of the other. Have they not incited to the killing of Jews and Christians? If we had heard that a tribe in a distant corner of China has a holy book and religious teachings calling to kill Muslims ? would the Muslims stand idly by in the face of such teachings?
The Crusader wars came after these Islamic religious teachings. When these Islamic teachings were delivered, America did not exist on the face of the earth, nor was Israel in Palestine…
Why doesn’t he talk about the Muslim conquests that preceded all the wars he is talking about? Why doesn’t he mention that when Tariq bin Ziyyad entered Andalusia with his armies, he said to his people: “The sea is behind you, and the enemy is in front”? How can you storm a peaceful country, and consider all its peaceful inhabitants to be your enemies, merely because you have the right to spread your religion? Should the religion be spread by the sword and through fighting?…
There need to be MANY more of these type of Muslims. Until more Wafa Sultan’s stand up and take on these fanatics this war will continue.
See author page