Friday, June 27, 2008

PARSING IRAN AND NORTH KOREA



THERE IS THE SHUFFLING around of our political classes and then there is the straight talk of Brigitte Gabriel. If you have never heard heard speak to the issue of terrorism (and that is all she speaks to in public), you should give this video a watch.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

BIG BROTHER'S ISLAMIC SHUFFLE

From Robert Spencer:

“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.”
—Islamic spokesman, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu

That sounds like the statement of a victor in a war, dictating terms to the vanquished. And it may well be: free speech is under attack in Canada—the prosecution of Macleans Magazine and author Mark Steyn—and in the United States as well by Islamic governments and groups whose goal is to end free speech when it is aimed at exposing the truth about Islamic terrorism and its roots.

Their goal is positively Orwellian. Replace “Big Brother” with the “Organization of the Islamic Conference” and you have the world the OIC wants to impose on us all.

Apparently Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, believes that his powerful, multinational Islamic organization has already won the battle over free speech. Last week he boasted that “the OIC has become an indispensable player at the international level, in many domains.” Notably, he said, the OIC, which comprises 57 Muslim governments in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America, has been actively “defending the image of Islam, and combating the phenomenon of Islamophobia.”

The OIC, said Ihsanoglu, has placed the issue of Islamophobia “at the top of our priorities and preoccupations, while conducting a large-scale worldwide effort to confront it.”

They’ve already accomplished a great deal. “We have been able to achieve convincing progress,” observed Ihsanoglu, at “the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and the UN General Assembly.”

That is true: Associated Press reported Thursday that “Muslim countries have won a battle to prevent Islam from being criticized during debates by the UN Human Rights Council.” Council President Doru-Romulus Costea explained: “This council is not prepared to discuss religious matters in depth, consequently we should not do it.” AP noted that “while Costea’s ban applies to all religions, it was prompted by Muslim countries complaining about references to Islam.” And Ihsanoglu said: “The United Nations General Assembly adopted similar resolutions against the defamation of Islam.”

Now they’re setting their sights on the United States. “We have established an OIC Group in Washington D.C.,” Ihsanoglu explained, “with the aim of playing a more active role in engaging American policy makers.” This will involve agitating for laws restricting free speech: “And in confronting the Danish cartoons and the Dutch film ‘Fitna,’” (which showed Muslims acting on violent passages in the Qur’an), Ihsanoglu continued, “we sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” Ihsanoglu says it’s already working: “As we speak, the official West and its public opinion are all now well-aware of the sensitivities of these issues. They have also started to look seriously into the question of freedom of expression from the perspective of its inherent responsibility, which should not be overlooked.”

In other words, “irresponsible” speech—which is defined as speech he disagrees with—should be banned.

This is simple to comprehend. I can't say that I'm surprised. Merely a lowly blogger, I felt the push toward this awful direction heating up about 3 years ago. When I first voiced my concerns over this matter of freedom of speech, friends and family rolled eyes. Interestingly, few of them are rolling their eyes now, but they are still not willing to take any risks or to buck political correctness except over dinner in a hushed whisper even after a few drinks.

Ihsanoglu is right that such a “message” has found a receptive audience, even in the West. A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey published in mid-June found that while 88% of Americans support the right to free speech (only 88%?), only 53% oppose banning “hate speech.” Significantly, however, only 11% support bans on “hate speech” when they’re reminded that “hate speech” is in the eye of the beholder, and that the government would be deciding what constitutes hate speech and what doesn’t. That is, the government, or the OIC making the government dance to its tune.

“Hate speech” is also a tool to prevent the dissemination of what have more of a claim to be called “inconvenient truths” than anything Al Gore has ever been involved with. Mark Steyn is on trial in Canada right now for telling the truth. The renowned Canadian journalist and politician Peter Worthington commented acidly about the Steyn proceedings: “Truth is no defence before a Human Rights tribunal. Steyn’s accuracy is not at issue, just his opinions. Under hate legislation, opinions are punishable if they offend a particular group. If you think about it, this is an abomination.”

Indeed it is—and Steyn is not the only victim. The contentious exchange at the UN Human Rights Council that led to the prohibition of criticism of Islam involved a presentation by David G. Littman of the Association for World Education of information about female genital mutilation, the stoning of adulteresses, and honor killings in Islamic countries. The first victims of the ban on such talk at the Human Rights Council will be those who suffer from such barbarities—and will now have no one who is allowed to speak for them without dissembling about the causes and extent of the problem.

It is telling that when Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and the OIC think of “defending the image of Islam,” they don’t mean working in Muslim communities to combat the influence of the jihad ideology or Islamic supremacism among Muslims worldwide. They don’t have in mind developing any large scale initiatives to combat Osama bin Laden’s version of Islam, and to teach Muslims how to resist the jihadist appeal. The organization hasn’t ever acknowledged the obvious fact that it could end “Islamophobia” right away by rejecting Islam’s doctrines of violence, supremacism and conquest and moving strongly against those Muslims who are acting upon those doctrines.

Instead, they have made themselves the enemies of honest men like Mark Steyn who have called attention to this supremacist agenda. They will be working with American policymakers to restrict free speech—that is, honest discussion of the elements of Islam that the jihadists use to justify their actions and gain recruits.

Can honest discussion really be outlawed? You bet it can. As long as free people do nothing to stop it from happening. As the OIC presses American politicians to use anti-discrimination and hate speech laws to “stem this illegal trend,” we need to stand up now with Mark Steyn and all the others who are on the front lines of this battle, and tell them that what they’re doing to Steyn in Canada must never happen here. We must tell our elected officials to stop this outrage, resist OIC lobbying, and reaffirm in no uncertain terms our commitment to free speech—particularly now, when so much depends on our being able to speak with honesty about the nature of the jihadist threat, and so many powerful entities want to make sure we do not do so.

So much depends on this—possibly even including our survival as a free people.

In other news explaining how the Jews and Christians must “feel themselves subdued,” Ibn Kathir quotes a saying of Muhammad: “Do not initiate the Salam [greeting of peace] to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley.” He then goes on to outline the notorious Pact of Umar, an agreement made, according to Islamic tradition, between the caliph Umar, who ruled the Muslims from 634 to 644, and a Christian community.

This Pact is worth close examination, because it became the foundation for Islamic law regarding the treatment of the dhimmis. With remarkably little variation, throughout Islamic history whenever Islamic law was strictly enforced, this is generally how non-Muslims were treated. Working from the full text as Ibn Kathir has it, these are the conditions the Christians accept in return for “safety for ourselves, children, property and followers of our religion” – conditions that, according to Ibn Kathir, “ensured their continued humiliation, degradation and disgrace.”

The Christians will not:

1. Build “a monastery, church, or a sanctuary for a monk”;
2. “Restore any place of worship that needs restoration”;
3. Use such places “for the purpose of enmity against Muslims”;
4. “Allow a spy against Muslims into our churches and homes or hide deceit [or betrayal] against Muslims”;
5. Imitate the Muslims’ “clothing, caps, turbans, sandals, hairstyles, speech, nicknames and title names”;
6. “Ride on saddles, hang swords on the shoulders, collect weapons of any kind or carry these weapons”;
7. “Encrypt our stamps in Arabic”
8. “Sell liquor” – Christians in Iraq in the last few years ran afoul of Muslims reasserting this rule;
9. “Teach our children the Qur’an”;
10. “Publicize practices of Shirk” – that is, associating partners with Allah, such as regarding Jesus as Son of God. In other words, Christian and other non-Muslim religious practice will be private, if not downright furtive;
11. Build “crosses on the outside of our churches and demonstrating them and our books in public in Muslim fairways and markets” – again, Christian worship must not be public, where Muslims can see it and become annoyed;
12. “Sound the bells in our churches, except discreetly, or raise our voices while reciting our holy books inside our churches in the presence of Muslims, nor raise our voices [with prayer] at our funerals, or light torches in funeral processions in the fairways of Muslims, or their markets”;
13. “Bury our dead next to Muslim dead”;
14. “Buy servants who were captured by Muslims”;
15. “Invite anyone to Shirk” – that is, proselytize, although the Christians also agree not to:
16. “Prevent any of our fellows from embracing Islam, if they choose to do so.” Thus the Christians can be the objects of proselytizing, but must not engage in it themselves;
17. “Beat any Muslim.”

Meanwhile, the Christians will:

1. Allow Muslims to rest “in our churches whether they come by day or night”;
2. “Open the doors [of our houses of worship] for the wayfarer and passerby”;
3. Provide board and food for “those Muslims who come as guests” for three days;
4. “Respect Muslims, move from the places we sit in if they choose to sit in them” – shades of Jim Crow;
5. “Have the front of our hair cut, wear our customary clothes wherever we are, wear belts around our waist” – these are so that a Muslim recognizes a non-Muslim as such and doesn’t make the mistake of greeting him with As-salaamu aleikum, “Peace be upon you,” which is the Muslim greeting for a fellow Muslim;
6. “Be guides for Muslims and refrain from breaching their privacy in their homes.”

The Christians swore: “If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our Dhimmah (promise of protection) is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion.”

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Monday, June 23, 2008

ISLAM ONLY BEFRIENDS ITSELF

IN JUST A FEW DAYS, Professor Hans Kung’s lecture on “Challenges to Islam, Christianity and Judaism” will be broadcast on Sky Arts. Kung is a leading Catholic theologian and the author of Islam: Past, Present and Future. He is President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic. He is also a touted professor of Ecumenical Theology at the University of Tubingen. He knows almost as much about God as St. Francis of Assisi and twice as much about structural steel as Bill Maher and Rosie O’Donnell combined and in his own field is just as controversial about the doctrine of Papal Infallibility and celibacy.

Thus strikes, like a bolt of lightning returning to the scene of its last evidence, the opening paragraph in which Denis Schulz introduces this formidable but enemy-appeasing lecturer. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we, who dare point out these same rather self-evident distinctions between these two earlier Abrahamic cults that give the lie to the shameful treachery of Islam in a world that refuses to acknowledge them, are exasperated as the supposedly great learned ones betray us. One can only hope that the expected awakening from this nightmare of disinformation comes before it is too late. Read it all...

Hans Kung is 80 years old. He’s been around a while. He says Islam is stuck in The Middle Ages. Could that be? Maybe mired would be a better word. How about frozen in time? If he means the 10th Century he could be crediting Islam with a 400-year advance that didn’t take place, an Islamic Transubstantiation from the Pleistocene Age to Richard the Lion-Hear without expunging the dinosaurs and jinni that ceaselessly prowled the Prophet’s mind searching for victims to feed his monumental ego and never-ending hatred of those who disagreed with him even as Salman Rushdie’s houris were coming to cart him away.

The challenge for Christianity and Judaism is how to survive the 21st Century; for Islam it is how to come to grips with an ongoing insanity. Christianity had the Protestant Reformation and Judaism had its own reform movement albeit on a smaller scale. Islam boasted the Andalusian Caliphate, a never-ending source of pride for all Muslims, a 10th Century beacon of enlightenment that pierced the haze of ignorance and superstition that befogged the rest of Europe.

Literature! Science! Technology! A Thousand and One Nights! Freedoms that had never been thought of! Everything but Disneyland! And this was 700 years before Jefferson and Adams! Seven hundred years before that silly Declaration of Independence! Surely, the millennium had been achieved!

Anyway that is the story the Imams and the Muslim professors and their dhimmi running dogs preach at the Cairo University and at Berkeley and Columbia and Oxford and at a thousand lesser schools of learning while students ill-equipped to determine fact from fiction sit and listen as if in the presence of Plato and Aristotle. But what is the truth? Was it the first casualty in the war of religions? There is much evidence that it was—enough to warrant a revision.

According to a legal opinion offered by Ibn Abdun in 1100 AD—from the greatest civilization that never was—the Andalusian Caliphate appears to be more of a mirage than Shangri-La or Duffy's Tavern. “No Jew or Christian,” said the opinion, “may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual, on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to (greet) them with the (expression) ‘Peace be upon you’ In effect, Satan has gained possession of them, and caused them to forget God’s warning…a distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace.”

This is the so-called dignity contemporary Islamic supremists and their western apologists insist was Islam's golden rule of mutual prosperity, the so-called era of peace! But these people were Jews and Christians—People of the Book! Yes, they were Jews and Christians but no one was to take them for friends! Could this have been the catalyst for the Inquisition which followed?

Other legal opinions forbade the selling of scientific books to non-Muslims because the non-Muslims—again Jews and Christians—would translate them into their own languages and take credit for them. The origins of these scientific books are debatable. Some of them predated Islam. In the 400 years since Mohammed had emerged from the desert Muslim invaders had looted and destroyed Christian and Jewish libraries. But day-to-day life in the Andalusian Caliphate was more than legal opinions. Jews were frequently massacred and Christians were regularly deported to Morocco. On that, the record appears to be clear.

The difference between what Nathan Bedford Forrest did at Fort Pillow and what Reinhard Heydrich did in Bohemia-Moravia and what went on in the Caliphate is minimal. Yet college professors throughout Europe and America accept the Wahhabi version and hanker for the days of Ibn Abdun when peace and tolerance were the order of the day.

“In the face of the deadly threat to all humankind,” says Kung, “instead of building new dams of hatred, revenge and enmity, we should tear down the walls of prejudice stone by stone and thus build bridges of dialogue, bridges particularly towards Islam.”

Yes, heaven forbid, anyone should have the temerity to ask Islam to build bridges towards democracy, human rights and religious freedom. What an embarrassment that would be! It might anger them—make them strike out! Neville Chamberlain built bridges toward Nazi Germany and it would have worked had it not been for the warmongers at home and a handful of obstreperous politicians in Poland.

James Buchanan built bridges towards the antebellum South and was much revered by Jefferson Davis and Wade Hampton. And then old Abe Lincoln came along and ruined Old Buck’s good work by opposing the extension of slavery into the Territories. He believed in gradual emancipation—in Colonization—and would not disturb the South’s ‘Peculiar Institution’ in the States where it already existed. But he would not establish it elsewhere.

Jeff Davis insisted upon the right of every Southerner to carry his ‘property’ into the territories held in common by all the states even as Islam insists on its right to extend its version of slavery into the dar al-Harb—a slavery more encompassing than that of Dixieland because it was chosen for them by Allah and where women are told to ‘stifle’ and can be beaten for ‘disobeying’ their husbands and where male chauvinism reigns uncontested.

There were more free blacks in the antebellum south in 1860 than there are free women in Islam in 2007. In 1899, after having viewed Islam up close, Winston Churchill wrote the following:

“The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men…No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Kung stresses what the three Abrahamic religions have in common—charity, respect for life, injunctions against murder. Most Muslims, he insists, do not hold extremist views. But what of the Qur’an—certainly more Muslims have read the Qur’an and believe what it says than Germans read Mein Kampf. What do the Muslim scriptures say?

Qur’an 2:191 “And kill them wherever you find and catch them. Drive the out from where they have driven you out for Al-Fitnah (polytheism, disbelief, oppression) is worse than slaughter.”

Tabari: IX:69 “Killing disbelievers is a small matter to us.”

Qur’an 33:26 “Allah made the Jews leave their homes by terrorizing them so that you killed some and made many captives. And He made you inherit their lands, their homes, and their wealth. He gave you a country you had not traversed before.” (Could that be Israel?)

These are not injunctions against murder. These are extremist views. There has been no rush by moderate Muslims to renounce these verses. They are no more willing to oppose Jihadism than the average German was to oppose Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s and less willing than many southerners had been to condemn slavery in the 1850s.

The Jihadists are relying on people like Kung and Robert Edgar to run interference for them, to mesmerize the dhimmis with endless proposals for Interfaith Dialogues while work on the new Caliphate continues apace. Kung sees little difference between the beheadings, car bombings and suicide attacks of the Jihadists and the air strikes, tank patrols and the 10,000 dead civilians in Iraq that he attributes to the United States. Little does he care or even understand that the vast majority of civilian casualties in Iraq are the result of the actions of al-Qaeda and the Shiite and Sunni militias.

Saddam Hussein killed more civilians—Kurds and Shiites—in an average year than are dying today in Iraq. More civilians are killed each year by Muslim terrorists than in the entire 350-year history of the institution that succeeded the Andalusian Caliphate in Spain—the ‘dreaded’ Inquisition!

Kung’s lecture will be aired on June 23.

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Thursday, June 05, 2008

SIGNS OF DENMARK WEAKENING

THE JUNE 2 SUICIDE BOMBING outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad, which killed six people, has caused a bout of soul-searching in the land of Kierkegaard and Hamlet. More than ever, Danes are asking what price their country can afford to pay for its increasingly entrenched reputation as a forthright critic of Islam.

It all began with the celebrated 2005 publication of 12 political cartoons cartoons under the rubric "Muhammad's face" in the daily Jyllands-Posten. The images were meant as a bold assertion of free speech, but were seen by many Muslims as blaspheming Muhammad. The cartoons' republication throughout the West barely dimmed the focus of Muslim ire on the small Scandinavian country, magnified by its military presence in Afghanistan and, until last year, in Iraq.

Since then the fallout has come in fits and starts. There were deadly protests at Danish embassies abroad, boycotts and counter-boycotts; earlier this year Denmark expelled two Tunisian nationals for death threats against one of the cartoonists. In recent weeks the anti-immigrant and often openly anti-Muslim Danish People's Party, headed by Pia Kjaersgaard, has spearheaded a campaign against Muslim headscarves. The government, which needs the DPP's support to form a majority in parliament, was maneuvered into a ban on judges wearing religious symbols—a solution to a virtually non-existent problem.

Now that the ultimate terror weapon—a suicide bomber—has been deployed against a Danish target, the DPP is sounding the trumpets and calling for special troops to defend Denmark's diplomatic missions; its foreign policy spokesman, Soren Espersen, compared the country's exposure to that of the U.S. and Israel. But others aren't so sure that Denmark ought to be engaged in a battle this big. "We have moved from being a small insignificant and neutral country without any military importance to being considered an extremely active participant in a more militant western world," says Islam expert Jorgen Baek Simonsen of the University of Copenhagen.

What was in 2005 a general Danish consensus to stand firm is crumbling as the stakes rise. Margrethe Vestager, leader of the opposition Social Liberal Party, said Denmark should look towards "dialogue rather than conflict." Referring to "the government's xenophobic agenda," Holger K. Nielsen of the Socialist People's Party said, "Things have gotten out of control. We must discuss whether we have to constantly get involved in places where we are most hated."

If the Danes' spirited defense of free speech in 2005 was a matter of principle, they now face a sobering balancing act: how to back off without seeming to back down. "The government knows that we are driving on the edge and will have to slow down," says Hans Mouritzen of the Danish Institute of International Studies. "They will deny it in public, but you will see a government beginning to conduct a less activist foreign policy." If so, the Islamabad bombing will have marked a key moment in the ongoing calibration over how loudly any small country can afford to roar.

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JERUSALEM NEVER MENTIONED IN KORAN

RIPPED FROM JIHAD WATCH, this is exciting news for al of us who know the truth about the so-called Palestinian people and the Muslim grip on Israel:

Anti-dhimmitude on...Al-Jazeera. "Israeli on Arab TV: J'lem Was Ours When Moslems Worshipped Idols," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, June 5 (thanks to Seth):

Bar Ilan University political scientist Dr. Mordechai Kedar told a Moslem show host on the Arabic-language Al Jazeera television network, "Jews were in Jerusalem while your ancestors were drinking wine and blowing to idols." In a heated debate with the narrator, he added, "We don't need your permission to build" in the capital of Israel, Jerusalem.

The encounter occurred earlier this week, when Jews around the world celebrated Jerusalem Unification Day. Dr. Kedar has frequently appeared on the widely viewed Qatar-based network but this time encountered a sharp attack from the show's host, Jimal Rian.

"Building in Jerusalem is another nail in the coffin in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority," narrator Jimal Rian asserted. Dr. Kedar answered in fluent Arabic, "This was our capital 3,000 years ago, and we were here when your forefathers were drinking wine, burying girls alive and worshipping pre-Muslim idols. This is our city and it will be our city forever."

His reference to Muslims drinking wine, which is forbidden in Islam, infuriated the host. Rian wagged his finger in the air and said excitedly, "If you want to talk about history, you cannot erase Jerusalem from the Koran, and don’t attack the Muslim religion if we want to continue talking."

Dr. Kedar replied, "Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran. Jerusalem is a Jewish city."

The Al Jazeera host responded by quoting a verse from the Koran in which he thought Jerusalem was mentioned by name, but stopped in the middle upon realizing that it only refers to "the farthest place."

That would be Qur'an 17:1. "The farthest place" (al-aqsa) is identified in Islamic tradition with Jerusalem, but there is no mention of Jerusalem by name in that verse or in any other Qur'anic verse.

Dr. Kedar: "Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran even once. You can't rewrite the Koran on air on Al Jazeera."
He's right. It isn't.

Rian changed the subject to "settlements" and asked Dr. Kedar why Israel is building 1,000 new apartments and deciding to build thousands more while there are rumors that "Jerusalem will include all of the West Bank [Judea and Samaria]. The Bar Ilan researcher replied. "My friend, Israel is not counting the number of apartments that Qatar is building on the Qatar Peninsula so why are you doing so in Jerusalem? Jerusalem is our city forever and is not an issue for you, for Al Jazeera or for anyone else. Period. Jerusalem belongs only to Jews.

Replying to Rian's question if Dr. Behar's assessment is the basis for talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA), he declared, "My friend, I invite you to Jerusalem so you can see with your own eyes that it has become a flourishing city after it was in ruins under Arab rule until 1967. We rebuilt the city and opened it to Christians, Moslems and Jews equally, unlike under Muslim rule" that prohibited other religions....

Indeed.

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Wednesday, June 04, 2008

ARAB-AMERICAN WAFA SULTAN BLASTS ISLAM



THE IRREPRESSIBLE AND FABULOUS Wafa Sultan continues to say some very harsh things about Muhammad and Islam, as she debates certain vitriolic Muslims on Arab TV. Her assertions are strikingly accurate in terms of Islamic history and theology—not that truth has ever mattered to the girded-loin jihad apologists, Muslim and non-Muslim, in the West, or to those who, even at the highest levels, are given to wishful thinking and fantasy-based policymaking instead of sober analysis.

If CAIR is so inclined, although we suspect this would be more likely if she had said this in English in some high-profile forum, her words would end up on the organization's "Incitement Watch." But the real incitement came from Al-Qaradawi, as she points out. Yet that salient fact will never show up on any CAIR "Incitement Watch." Now, why is that?

Thanks to Robert Spencer. The following paragraphs are excerpts from an interview with practicing Arab-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan, which aired on Al-Hayat TV on May 29, 2008.

Wafa Sultan: When I examined the Koran, the hadith, and the Islamic books under a microscope, I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible—impossible!—for any human being to read the biography of Muhammad and believe in it, and yet emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person.

Do you remember the way that [the Prophet Muhammad] killed ‘Asmaa bint Marwan? His followers tore her body apart limb from limb, while she was breastfeeding her child. When they returned to him shouting “Allah Akbar,” he said: “No two goats will lock horns over her.” As you know, goals lock horns over the most inconsequential thing. For Muhammad, however, the killing of a woman while breastfeeding was too trivial a reason for goats “to lock horns over.” Is this a prophet of God?

It makes me very sad that Al-Jazeera TV allows an insane and terroristic creature like Al-Qaradhawi to use it as a medium for the spreading of his poisons, his terroristic fatwas, and his babbling. The words he used against me incited many young Muslims—who have been brainwashed and blindfolded, and who have been programmed to hate—to rain curses and threats upon me, right after the show in which he discussed my appearance on Al-Jazeera.

When Islam considers women to be deficient in reason, and I refute this assertion—in that case Islam attacks me, and I am merely attacking back. When Islam calls to kill whoever does not believe in it, and I refute this, in that case Islam attacks me, and I am merely attacking back. I do not attack Islam. I criticize it, but unfortunately, we, the victims of Islamic upbringing, view any criticism as an attack.

I always focus on the language—the language of Islam. The language of Islam is a negative, dead language, replete with violence, anger, hatred, and racism. Man is the product of language, the outcome of the negative and positive language to which he is exposed in this lifetime. If his life is dominated by negative language, he will emerge as a negative, reckless, and non-productive person, who rejects everything. On the other hand, if positive language dominates his life, he will emerge as a positive, happy, and productive person. This is why the negative language of Islam has failed. It has failed to produce people with a spontaneous and positive outlook. It has produced negative people. If we take a look at Islamic societies, we see what that negative man did.

I do not view Islam as a religion—according to my notion of religion. Islam is a political doctrine, which imposes itself by force. Any doctrine whatsoever that calls to kill those who do not believe in it is not a religion. It is a totalitarian doctrine that imposes itself by force. When I read, for example, the verse: “The adulterer and the adulteress—flog each of them with a hundred stripes, and do not let compassion for them move you”—I do not discern any spirituality in this verse. Whena certain faith manages to can strip its believers of their last grain of compassion, it strips them of their spirituality as well.

Jesus Christ is the symbol of peace. He did not carry a sword, chop off heads, or accuse anybody of heresy. The problem in Islam is that if we were to act similarly to the Christians of the Middle Ages, and we were to model our lives after the life, actions, and words of Muhammad, we would find ourselves in an even bigger mess than the one we are in, and we would end up like Osama Bin Laden and his ilk. Read about the life of Muhammad. What do you find there? Nothing but his raids and his wives, in addition to his hadiths, some of which make you shudder. I shudder when I hear the hadith: “A woman’s paradise is under her husband’s foot.”

The Islamic teachings have become dreadful in the skulls of the Muslims. I see no alternative but to open up these skulls, and to clean the life-threatening cancerous cells in these brains.

When the Syrian people swarmed the Danish embassy and burned it down, it burned my heart too. Why? The Syrian people are dying of hunger. The Syrians, despite their [ancient] civilization, chase after their daily bread. Why don’t they swarm the palace of their president, who has 40 billion dollars in European bank accounts, and burn down the palace, along with its occupant? They swarmed the Danish embassy, giving the West the wrong image of the moral and civilized Syrian people. Therefore, I describe their conduct as barbaric and backward.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a religious conflict. I support the Palestinian cause. I support the Palestinian children. I lose sleep over the suffering of Palestinian women. I cannot even step on an ant, so how could I possibly be against them? This is inconceivable. This is a political conflict, and they should ask their leaders about what they have done to resolve the problem. But the problem is rooted in religion. A week or two ago, I read a short story in an Islamic book, according to which Muhammad was walking with some of his followers when they heard a commotion. They asked him: “What is this, Messenger of Allah?” He said: “These are the Jews being tormented in the grave.” Regardless of the conflicts Muhammad had with the Jews back then, this statement indicates that the graves of their ancestors were in Saudi Arabia, correct?

Interviewer: Yes.

Wafa Sultan: They are people of this region, as is evident from the Islamic books and the Koran itself. The problem with the Muslims is that they do not distinguish between their prophet and their own noses. When you criticize Muhammad, his actions, and his life, it is as if you chopped off their noses.

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