Wafa Sultan: "Islam attacks me, and I am merely attacking back"

That's exactly right, and how I see my own work, as a counter
attack against this enemy.
My latest Pigman piece, Wetwork, or 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!'

Ultimately, change has to come from within. Only when there are many more Wafa Sultans will there be victory over Islamofascism.

Careful, Bosch, or you may be summoned by the Ummah for questioning.

Jewel,

Not sure if they'd bother with questioning.

"I support the Palestinian cause."

I admire Ms. Sultan's bravery and hope she continues to be interviewed and broadcast worldwide. Her statement about the Palestiinan cause concerns me though. Does anyone know more about her position on this topic?

One woman vs. thousands of wacky clerics.

Believe it or not, Ms. Sultan is winning................ Since none of the clerics can do anything more than accuse her of heresy.

What is the problem of her saying that she supports the Palestinian cause ? There are definitely illegal settlements in the West Bank and you can't put 100% of the blame on the Palestinians. As a human being, one should feel compassion towards people who are suffering, even though that suffering is caused by religious brainwashed leaders. In the end, it's the people who suffer.

Wafa Sultan should be THE expert consultant on Islam for our increasingly-amoral military. Thats amoral, not immoral. Unfortunately, the finks in charge forget that most Americans are fighting for freedom, not fighting to defend Islam from being accurately depicted as the totalitarian ideology it is. An amoral military hires Saudi-trained chaplains, and has officers kissing Korans and punishing troops for handing out coins or mentioning another religion besides Islam.

http://www.bravenewsworld.blogspot.com

Is Dr. Sultan still in hiding?

"I support the Palestinian cause."

I admire Ms. Sultan's bravery and hope she continues to be interviewed and broadcast worldwide. Her statement about the Palestiinan cause concerns me though. Does anyone know more about her position on this topic?

Posted by: USorThem at June 4, 2008 8:20 AM

Exactly what I asked yesterday on another thread, and received no replies.

My only problem with her new video is near the end she says she supports the Palestinian people. That she can't even step on an ant. She cries for the Palestinian women.

My question is: What's all that about? I thought there weren't any "Palestinian people" or even Palestine - that it's all made up by the Mohammedans. Can someone explain?

Posted by: darcy at June 3, 2008 9:43 AM

Above is what I posted on the "Rejecting Jihad in Egypt?" thread yesterday.

Sultan also went back and forth on what kind of 'conflict' it is, saying once it's political and in the next breath calling it religious. She may be attempting to say that it's both, which it is. It' worth an explanation, nonetheless. Nothing I've read of her leads me to believe she means what we're fearing she does, but she should fully explain it.

I support the Palestinian cause.

How can there be a "Palestinian cause" if there is not even a "Palestinian people"? Ms. Sultan missed a golden opportunity to set the record straight about the myth of the "Palestinian people".

Bosch and US_Infidel - Yes and Yes.

In light of everything else she says, her "I support the Palestinian cause" certainly is curious.

And, can someone explain why there really isn't a "Palestinian people?"

I support the 'Palestinians'(or whatever you want to call those particular Arabs) too. I'd love for them to have the sane non-Islamic democratic and prosperous state in cooperation with Israel that would set an example for the entire Arab world. Children growing up free of hate transparent government, etc etc. Ain't going to happen but I see nothing wrong with her having compassion for people.

She has praised the Jewish people (and indirectly Israel in her 2006 famous Al Jazeera diatribe) with such eloquence, power and grace I should hope you'd give her the benefit of the doubt.

"... should hope you'd give her the benefit of the doubt.

Posted by: poetcomic1 at June 4, 2008 9:52 AM

I love Wafa Sultan. There is nothing wrong with concerned fans wanting her to elucidate on her "I support the Palestinian cause" statement.

"but I see nothing wrong with her having compassion for people." --poetcomic

I think you totally miss the point. Saying "I support the Palestinian cause" means you are against Israel. "Compassion" is not the point, here.

Just from my own observations of her writings and speeches, I believe she supports the peoples right to live in peace and prosperity as much as any other group of people on the planet.

But she comes up short by not taking her chastisement of the Syrians for not mobbing the palace and applying it to the Palestinians. They too should swarm the palace and demand peace and prosperity from their leaders. Leaders that have billions of foreign aid funds stashed away in European banks.

It's good to hear SOME muslims can see the obvious, that islam is an ideological construct. It has to advance it's beliefs by conquest and keep it's adherents by threat of death and "cradle to grave" indoctrination.
To answer some of the other's questions: "palestine", in it's present incarnation, was invented by Yasser Arafat in 1967. Historically, "palestinians" referred to the Jewish residents of that area of the ME. The (new) palestinians have been offered their own homeland twice in the 20th century. Via the Balfour Accords of 1922, "TransJordon" was to be their homeland. And in 1948, via the Jewish Partition, Jordon was offered as the arab homeland. In both instances the arabs rejected these solutions and attempted to forcibly eject the Jews from the ME.
Were Ms Sultan truely concerned with the "palestinian people", she would be in the political forefront to pressure the Hashemite minority to allow the palestinian majority (95%) to govern the palestinian state of Jordon. She betrays her ignorance (epidemic in the arab world) of the historical facts of the (new) palestinians already having a homeland and blaming the Jews for their misfortunes. Their fellow arabs have been keeping the (new) palestinian people hostage to the islamic cause of "once muslim lands, forever muslim lands".

Well, I think any reasonable person would support the Palestianian cause IF the Palestinian cause was simply to live in peace with Israel, and seek prosperity for its people.

But it's not.

Its cause is jihad. Endless. Perpetual. Jihad. Until Israel is gone. And then what? When does a Muslim's duty to wage Jihad is over? When? When all kafirs are dead, enslaved, or paying jizya? What then? Then Muslims turn on Muslims because, really, what is a "True Muslim", anyway? And then it's jihad again. It's a historical fact that within the ideology of Islam there as never been peace. Never.

She's correct in saying this is an ideology that poisons the mind, and turns a man into a monster. She's incorrect if she believes the Palestinians will be anything except a product of their own ideology, and we've seen what they value. They value death. That's all. The few that value something else find a way out of that mess.

Broadcasting on an independent Arab-language channel from Cyprus is the only way, I imagine, that Wafa Sultan can speak to viewers in Syria, Jordan, or Egypt.

And by satellite, of course. (She's effectively banished from al-Jazeera, though.)

I would not expect Wafa Sultan to be perfect in all her personal ideologies and viewpoints.
While she says she supports the 'Palestinian' people, she did not say she supported Hamas or Fatah, or pushing Israel off the map.
I think she is for an end to suffering. That colors her opinion.

Keep in mind, that this is being broadcast throughout the Muslim world. The only way that she can appear human is to support the Palestinian cause whether or not she believes it.

Otherwise, you can imagine some Imam screaming, "Look at this devil-woman. She left Islam and now she does not even feel the pain of our suffering brethren in Palestine!"

Her more important message would be lost if she loses all her likability.

At least this way, some muslims may be able to still relate to her.

Poor Med Student,

Wafa Sultan has constantly said things that can get her killed, and has continued to do so after death threats, I highly doubt she would have sold out the truth as she sees it, most esp. for the reasons you suggested. This woman loves the truth and doesn't give a damn to be liked for it. She's definitely earned the benefit of the doubt regarding her questionable comment, and I think it's important that she clarify exactly what she means.

I support the Palestinian children. I lose sleep over the suffering of Palestinian women.

So Wafa Sultan supports the children who happily learn the lessons of Farfur and the women who beam with pride when their sons blow up innocent women and children?

She's lost me there.

Palestinians support Hamas. They reject peace. Why should anyone support THEM?

In her latest appearance on an Arab television program, Wafa Sultan says many good things, in her inimitable uncompromising fashion. She also mentions, at one point, that she "supports the 'Palestinians.'" Some may wonder -- see above -- what this means, and if she could conceivably have meant that she supports the Lesser Jihad against Israel. The answer should be clear, and comforting, but perhaps needs a little elucidation.

Several months Al-Qaradawi had on Al-Jazeera made a thinly-veiled death threat, a kind of on-air fatwa, against her, because of a previous appearance she had made on the same station, in an appearance when she seemed -- to an Arab audience -- to have made remarks far too solicitous of Israel. And she, and her family, went into hiding.

In that context, and though fearless, she does occasionally -- good god, we all do – without really giving an inch, to utter some words to her intended Arab audience to at least win a hearing. She did not say she supported the “Palestinian” cause. If asked, I am sure she would agree that the “Palestinian people” is a propagandistic construct. She did not say she supports the “legitimate rights etc.” of the “Palestinian people.” What she was recognizing, and perhaps on another occasion will note, is that the local Arabs, called here the “Palestinians” (but not in a tendentious way, rather in the way that she would use the term “Saudis” or “Jordanians”) have been used by the entire world of Muslim Arabs as a political pawn. She needed, she felt, to express that sympathy, and no doubt she is as appalled as any of us at the self-primitivization, the collapse into lies and hysteria and hate, of the Arabs – the “Palestinians” – of Gaza and, to an only slightly-lesser extent, those in what the Jordanians renamed after 1948 as “the West Bank.”

Wafa Sultan knows perfectly well that those local Arabs have a grievance, but it is a grievance that is misaddressed. Their woes have not come from the Israelis, but from the Arabs, including the fabulously rich Arabs of the Gulf who could offer them homes, or at least shower them with money (but would they, at this point, use the money for any purposes other than permanent war-making?), who have been using them, who have refused to give those who, continuing the farce of permanent “Arab – now ‘Palestinian’ – refugee status, one that has become hereditary, encoded in the genomes apparently, just as Allah wanted.

These local Arabs are the descendants both of the handful who lived in that part of the Ottoman Empire that later became the territory assigned by the League of Nations to the Mandate for Palestine (a mandate that had as its sole purpose the creeaton of the “Jewish National Home,” obviously one that would become a state) – in 1850 the total population of the entire area of Eastern Palestine, could not have exceeded 150,000, with exactly one city that contained more than a thousand residents – Jerusalem, with a plurality of its citizens being Jews. And in Jerusalem (and sometimes outside) one would find not only Arabs, but of course those Jews, and many kinds of Christians -- Franciscan monks from Italy, French priest, Anglican clerics missionaries, Russian and Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian Coptic churchmen, German Lutherans, sometimes clergy, or missionaries, or simply people who had come and stayed, in some cases part of a group that serviced the growing tourist trade as Jerusalem and the Holy Land became de rigueur additions to the former Europe-only Grand Tour. And there were smaller groups, too, such as the Samaritans, or groups that had somehow ended up there, moved about by the Ottomans, as Circassians (who still provide the palace guard for the Jordanian royals), and the unclassifiable Bedu who moved across from Egypt into northern Arabia, crossing into that part of the Ottoman Empire that became the territory – essentially, Eastern Palestine -- assigned to the Mandate for Palestine, as other much vaster territories were assigned to other mandates, intended specifically for “the Arab state”(and which in the end merely added to the twenty-two states that currently belong to the Arab League, and where “the Arabs” rule, rule in places over non-Arabs, or non-Mulsims – such as the black Africnas in southern Sudan or Darfur, or the Berbers in Algeria – with the results we all see).

I have no doubt that Wafa Sultan, who locates the permanent problem for those who call themselves “the Arabs.” When Wafa Sultan attacks Islam and what it has done to the Muslims themselves, when she describes A Mind On Islam, it is clear that she would recognize what prompts the war, the endless war, on Israel. When she describes, with passion and sympathy, the “Syrians” it is also clear that she has in mind the “Syrians” as those people who, until recently, had a very large Christian remnant, and who were, even in the first half of the last century, aware of themselves not as “Arabs” but as “Syrians” – much the same phenomenon could be seen in Egypt, the Egypt that Egyptian intellectuals now have such nostalgia for, the Egypt even of Farouk, and before Farouk of Lord Cromer’s administration, and the Yacoubian Building (see the movie), and the existence, and the possibility of knowing, all those Greeks and Jews and Italians and others called “Levantines” who were booted out by Nasser, all of their property seized, and who will never return, but who explain why, once upon a not-too-distant-time, both Cairo and Alexandria were far more tolerant and easygoing and interesting and pleasant places than they are today, or will ever be again. Much the same, by the way, could be said for Iraq, for as the Christians leave, never to return, Iraq – or the elites of Baghdad – are poorer for it, just as some of them, of the most advanced type (say, Mithal al-Alusi, or among the Iraqis who left Iraq long ago, members of the al-Bazzas clan).

And note please the particular sympathy she expresses for those among whom she counts herself -- “the Syrians.” What does Wafa Sultan mean by that? For her it is not strictly a geographic term, the people who live in present-day Syria, ruled by an Alawite despot and his Alawite officer corps. She means, I think, that area – and she might even include Lebanon, though not in order to claim it as part of modern Syria, but simply to establish a connection – to the very north of the Arab world, one that is counterpoised, in her mind and in that of other Syrian reformers, as a place where Islam, seen not so much as a universalist creed but as a poisoned chalice brought by the Arabs – the primitive Arabs, the desert Arabs, not made in the view of some any less primitive or desert just because they have billions and trillions (“Money can buy everything,” my Franco-Armenian informant who had spent years building military cities in Saudi Arabia informed me, “except civilization”). She sees, she remembers, those whom she knew, whom she and her husband left behind in Syria. And she also knows, having lived in America, a great deal more that she may have dimly suspected, but came to realize was true, such as the fact that not only were “the Jews” not monsters, as she had been taught (and Ayaan Hirsi Ali vividly describes being amazed, when she came to Holland, to see Jews as people, when she had been taught to regard them as strange creatures, only quasi-human), but were personally kind to her. And all of this – the product of being born into, and growing up within, a society made monstrous by the effects of Islam, and aware – who could not be, in Syria – that once the place had only churches, and that the Christian element was still significant (Christians are protected by the Alawite rulers, out of self-interest, and not for any moral reasons, with government offices even closed on Christmas and Good Friday). In this respect her allies are not only fellow apostates, all of whom have come, from Iran, from Pakistan, from Bangladesh, from Indonesia, from Turkey, to on their own heroic path to keenly seeing the problem with Islam, but also those who, in the Arab world, and because the ethnic identity, or solidarity, expressed in the concept of ‘Uruba or “Arabness” reinforces, is entangled with, Islam – the “gift of the Arabs” – it will be much harder for the Arabs to distance themselves from, or even to recognize the problems with, Islam – and will no doubt continue to be the province of a very small, enlightened few (those, mostly, who have had Western educations, and, either in Westeern lands or in Arab ones -– and here is where the numbers greatly diminish – have permitted themselves to think, without filial piety, without defensiveness cultural or personal or civilizaitional, about what Islam has done to Muslims, over 1350 years).

No, Wafa Sultan remembers not only the hideous government – which, by the way, is run by Alawites so that the despotism that offends her cannot be said to be strictly Muslim, but merely a desperate collection of rulers who want to be seen as Muslim (this is where their alliance with Shi’a Iran, and a fatwa from an Iranian cleric calling them true Muslims which, so they fondly hope, will give them enough Muslim street cred to survive) – but also the Sunni Muslims who constitute 70% of the Syrian population. She remembers the more easygoing, and tolerant world that existed – a holdover from the days of the French control during the Mandate, at a time when Christians from the West either held power, or were unafraid to assert their civilizational superiority (and Christian Syrians would, like the Maronites, look to France for both protection and as offering a culture to be emulated – for that matter, France played the same role for the secular elites of Iran under the late, and now, we all realize, the much-to-be-lamented Shah). But in Syria, even if the Muslim Brotherhood was crushed, the onward advance of Islam in the stony hearts and desiccated minds of local Muslims continues. In Syria, as in Egypt, the hijabs sprout. The handful among the elites who see the problem – and who think of Egypt, or Syria, as they were in the 1930s, or 1940s, and long for something which they cannot or do not dare quite understand, because that would for most of them recognizing that what made that period so much more attractive was precisely the larger presence of non-Muslims, and their power, and the perceived backwardness of Islam. For if they follow that line of thought bravely, they will end up, not as Muslim “reformers” but rather either as Muslim would-be Ataturks, recognizing the danger of Islam or, if they believe that such Kemalist constraints are not enough, or are not enough to satisfy them personally, will become like Wafa Sultan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Ibn Warraq, and Ali Sina, and Irfan Khawaja, and Azam Kamguian, and all those who have jettisoned Islam altogether, but can live to tell about it only because they now live in, and are protected somewhat by, the West, the Infidel West.

When Wafa Sultan says she “supports the ‘Palestininians’ she means only that she wishes to not be misunderstood by her audience. She does have some human sympathy for those who have been, as the chosen shock troops of the Lesser Jihad against Israel, victimizied in a sense by the Arabs, by Islam, and by – at this point – themselves, and their own terrible collapse into hysteria and non-stop hate and non-stop violence or worsihop of violence. In her appearance, knowing full well she must try, try, try not to win friends, not to pander, but to make sure – and so much of what is part of an Arab conversation with other Arabs takes place ordinarily by obliquity, by indirection, by allusion, especially if what one is really saying is very dangerous to say openly – that her enemies cannot paint her as an unfeeling “monster” or – as a “tool of the Zionists.” She wants to reach a few minds and hearts, to try to open up a window, to see if any air can be let in to the suffocating states and societies suffused with Islam.

That is what was going on when she said, very quickly, and just before her pointed remarks about her reading, just the other day, a Muslim text in which Muhammad explains the sounds coming from a cemetery as being Jews groaning in their graves, as they are tormented – justifiably, in Muhammad’s view -- in the afterlife, and she takes that text not to mean, as many Muslims would, as showing how terrible the Jews are, as even Muhammad, the Perfect Man, recognized, but rather, that it shows that the Jews were present in Arabia, right there in the Hijaz, and in that appeal, which is to the Muslim texts themselves, she undeniably goes to the heart of the charge that the Jews are “foreign colonialists” and pointedly puts them right back into the region, and furthermore, adduces as her evidence, calls as her witness, the very texts of Islam. Who can deny them? Who can say her nay? It starts, in some of her listeners, the beginning of a thought process that , if fearlessly allowed to conintue, will cause them to begin to see things in a new way, and even perhaps to see Islam not outside but inside of history, to de-sacralize the texts, to demystify – and this will be hardest of all—the figure of Muhammad.

When some people say “I support the ‘Palestinians’” we know that this means all kinds of dreadful and unacceptable things. It means, in the mouth of a Jimmy Carter, an inability to sympathize with the most persecuted tribe in human history, the Jews. When it is said by European leftist, raised on a steady diet of what the British or French press has fed them, it can mean that the Israelis have behaved so atrocisouly (they haven’t, of course, but have behaved far more magnanimously – still providing free medical care, for example, for those who have expressed the desire to undo them, to eliminate their state and either destroy them, or reduce them to the status of dhimmis, a status they once endured, as did Christians until the Western powers intervened in the nineteenth century, all over the lands ruled by Arabs and Muslims), it means that he has swallowed the whole post-1967 line about a “national liberation struggle” and a “Palestinian people” whose “legitimate rights” have to be met. And ditto for the World-Council-of-Churches and the individual churches led by the nose, by various “Palestinian” propagandists, such as Naim Ateek and the Sabeel Center, or not led by the nose because the antisemites – who never go away, and who have found, much to their ill-concealed delight, that they can indulge that now somewhat disreputable (oh, you know, the Nazis gave it something of a bad name) pathology of antisemitism can be indulged, to one’s little heart’s content, in the guise of principled standing up for the “Palestinain people” and presenting a view of the conflict, and of Israel’s attempts to defend itself, that is goebbelsesquely grotesque.

Wafa Sultna’s statement was quite different. She knows that the war against Israel is an unassuable Jihad. She knows that the Arabs have attempted to disguise, ever since the 1967 war, the Islamic promptings of that war against Israel, that endless siege. She is merely noting that some of the people, even those who have allowed themselves to become primitives distorted by hatred, are also victims of Islam. They are victims about whom, at this point, one suspects nothing can be done, for they are too far gone in that miasma of hatred, and too dangerous to others – not only Israelis, and not only to Jews, but to Infidels everywhere – and if allowed into our midst will increase the menace to us.

Note that Wafa Sultan bravely and accurately describes the war on Israel as a "religious" conflict. Well, what does that mean? Arab propaganda since the Six-Day War has been devoted to hiding the true nature of the conflict. The entire effort has been to have the Western world forget what the Arabs wrote and said and did, what Azzam Pasha threatened in 1948, and what Ahmed Shukairy said. It has been to make them forget the termsin which the so-called “pan-Arabist” (under the pan-Arabism of both Nasser and Saddam Hussein lay, thinly disguised – but not too-thinly for a generation of analysts, both Arab and non-Arab, to prate on and on about “pan-Arabism” as if it were ever a genuine, distinct, permanent alternative to Islam, when it was merely a disguised subset of Islam, at a time when Muslims lacked the OPEC trillions, and a large-scale presence in the Bilad al-kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, and could only push for a pan-Arab project, with the idea of a pan-Islamic project unimaginable until long after Pakistan (West and East) and Indonesia had their independence and the first and second generation of rulers and elites, who had been raised up under rule by Infidel colonialists, had been at least in part replaced by others, and the same was true for North Africa (in Tunisia, the police-state of Ben Ali, however, following in Bourguiba’s footsteps, has when to Islam -- , Islam – that in the end had to be appealed to, even if domestic enemies were mainly to be found in the mosques, with the Muslim Brotherhood for Nasser and the Shi’a clergy for Saddam Hussein)had to be allowed to have its say and its sway) --and she could of course go on to say that the "religious" conflict cannot come to an end because Islam does not countenance the existence of an Infidel nation-state on land once possessed by Muslims, no matter how tiny that state may be.

On a human level, one understands that those she referred to as "Palestinians" -- a term she nowhere raises to the level of a term implying a separate ethnic identity, requiring a separate state that would serve only to weaken, almost certainly fatally, the single state of the Jews -- have been used, every which way, by the other Arabs and Muslims, for example by often being deliberately prevented from becoming integrated into the societies in which they could so easily be integrated, sharing the same language, religion, and culture. The other day I quoted from Elfan Rees, the Advisor on Refugees to the World Council of Churches, who in 1957 wrote that "the Arab refugee problem is by far the easiest post-war refugee problem to solve." And it was, and it still is, except that the mass of Arabs are willing to take a particular subset of Arabs, and keep them as a weapon to be used, even to make them proud to be so used, while their actual lives are worsened, and they themselves coarsened irremediably in such places as Gaza -- where they have been allowed, by the indifference or callousness of their fellow Arabs, have become morally monstrous, unhinged, and will have somehow to be kept far wat from the entire Western world, for so many of those "Palestinians" -- and we can't figure out exactly which ones are the exceptions -- have so fattened on a steady diet of hysteria and hate, that they have become a danger, in the Western world, not only to Jews (and why should Jews in the West, given the long history of their persecution, have to endure the importation, into Western countries, of such a mortal threat, a threat which, by the way, is not limited to Jews but includes all Infidels, or at least all Infidels who do not accept or parrot the Arab and Muslim line, and who continue to defend Western political and legal institutions).

In the one moment that might, to some, have seemed jarring, when Wafa Sultan expresses human sympathy -- not political support for the cause of "Palestine" which is merely the Lesser Jihad against Israel -- there is an explanation, and since I have met Wafa Sultan, and know a bit more about her, I am not worried that her expression of some sympathy for the damage, imposed by, caused by, not Israel but by the Arab states, including those fabulously rich and undeserving kingdoms whose daggers-and-dishdashas rulers could, with a flick of a wrist holding the right pen to the right check, send billions to improve the physical lot of those "Palestinians" and, by ceasing to use them as a tool of Jihad, possibly reverse their moral degringolade as well.

Who would not, after all, wish those Arabs living in this or that Arab country to drop this permanent, and absurd notion that they are distinct from those among whom they live or, still more absurd, that the status of "Arab" or, as they now say, "Palestinian refugee," is something that can be, unlike any other group of refugees in the history of the world, handed down to one's children and grandchildren. Henry Kissinger may have been a "German refugee" but his son is not. One's parents may have come here as refugees from the Nazis, or from the Communists, or from such monstrous regimes as those of Castro or, latterly, that comical caudillo Chavez, but their children born in America are not "Cuban refugees" or "Venezuelan refugees."

Wafa Sultan knows that. She is not someone who believes, for god's sake, in the "two-state solution" because she understands completely the role of Islam.

And why do you think Wafa Sultan mentions the fact that she had been reading a story about Muhammad discussing the Jews "tormented in their graves" and carefully noted that this was proof that the Jews were in Arabia, they are from the same region -- that is, they are a people who belong and are not foreign to the Middle East, as Arab propgagandists would have it. She, in other words, was reminding her listeners to make sense of that which they already know, which is that the Qur'an and the Hadith are full of stories about Jews, Jews known to Muhammad, who sought them as his own followers, and then turned on them, killed them, when they refused, saw them as sources of booty -- loot and women -- as in the attack on the Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis. She was trying, as she is always trying, to drop in a hint, to provoke further thought, and she has so very little time in which to do it, in order to start making some of her Arab and Muslim listeners bethink themselves.

Don't worry about Wafa Sultan. Her heart is in the right place -- because, you see, her mind is in the right place.

The reverse, by the way, is not always true. Thererare all kinds of so-called self-described "supporters of Israel" who fondly believe that because of their sympathies for Israel, that therefore they know "all about" what is good for Israel, because they understand that the conflict is one "between two peoples" and "if only the legitimate demands of the 'Palestinian' people can be met" -- that two-state or, as the cleverer Arabs now want, a "one-shared-state solution" -- but they don't. You can have all the right impulses -- that "heart in the right place" -- but that doesn't mean your "mind is in the right place."

If you don't know about Islam, and so don't understand the Lesser Jihad against Israel, then you will be putty in the hands of Arab and Muslim propagandists.

Win over minds, and hearts will follow. Wafa Sultan knows this. Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows this. Ibn Warraq knows this.

It is the apostates from Islam who know, as well or better than any Infidel, what the war on Israel is all about. Look carefully at the context of her remarks, and what she said before, and what she said after. Figure out the meaning of those two brief, seemingly surprising phrases.

I have tried, for those briefly discomffitted – and they have a perfect right to be briefly discomfited – to supply a little more of a gloss, a gloss on Wafa Sultan’s intended meaning, and on Wafa Sultan herself.

Let me know if it helps, and if the temporary pain has been permanently relieved.. But don’t call me in the morning. I’m a late riser.

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.

[...]
Wow!This comes from the very tip of the root of the matter. There is no one so deep as Wafa Sultan. Her words cut like a knife.

It's hard to figure out what exactly she meant by "Palestinian case", but I guess it's less negative that it sounds to some of the readers. “Suffering of women” and children in particular. She knows very well the destiny of the Palestinian women (put aside their ideology), which is very close to those in Saudi Arabia (beating, honor killing, full submission to the male "owners") and the future of the Palestinian children, who are the subject to the child abuse, violent indoctrination and a tool for the terrorism activity from their very birth. "The Palestinian case" is clearer in connection to her criticism of Syrian people and their government.
Waffa is a very brave and inspiring woman.

It's hard to figure out what exactly she meant by "Palestinian case", but I guess it's less negative that it sounds to some of the readers. “Suffering of women” and children in particular. She knows very well the destiny of the Palestinian women (put aside their ideology), which is very close to those in Saudi Arabia (beating, honor killing, full submission to the male "owners") and the future of the Palestinian children, who are the subject to the child abuse, violent indoctrination and a tool for the terrorism activity from their very birth. "The Palestinian case" is clearer in connection to her criticism of Syrian people and their government.
Waffa is a very brave and inspiring woman.

Hugh,
I don't get it. Just because there was no country called "Syria" or "Palestine" or "Lebanon" does not mean that those people can distinctly call themselves whatever they want ! The Lebanese people distinguished themselves from their Syrian neighbours (both Sunni and Maronite Lebanese).
As a matter of fact, I wouldn't call the Levantines "arabs" at all. Palestinians are probably closer, genetically, to the Jews who live there than to Arabs(if you are talking about it from an ethnic point of you). Ofcourse, culturally they categorize themselves as Arabs.
Personally, as an Egyptian Copt, I'm not so fond of being categorized as Arab. But the fact is, culturally speaking, this is the language I speak and this is the wretched culture I was brought up in ! And obviously Airport security personnel see me as Arab- no complaints there ! But I think they're focusing on the wrong group of people :)
I'd consider myself Egyptian above anything else. In colloquial Egyptian Arabic, when we say "Arab" we usually refer to people from the Arabian peninsula.
Anyways, the whole area is a big melting pot of different ethnicities and cultures that the only way to categorize people now is on geographical basis.

I certainly don't support the Palestinian leadership neither do I like the blind fascist Arabism created by Nasser. But disregarding the fact that there is no Palestinian refugee problem created, either directly or indirectly by the 1948 war is simply impossible ! I have personally met MANY Palestians (Christians) whose parents have been KICKED OUT of their homes.
And it continues to happen: settlements are still being built !
Like I said, you cannot absolve Israel, completely, of guilt. Please let me know your argument ?
Regards.

I also support Palestinian children, as I support children in all Muslim territory. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the use of children as suicide bombers. I condemn the practice of raising children in a vile, evil religion that teaches them that their only worth is measured in how many unbelievers they can kill, or in how many Muslims they can give birth to.

I also lose sleep over the suffering of Palestinian women, as I do over the suffering of women throughout the House of Submisssion. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the reduction of any human being to the status of property. I condemn the evil practice of teaching girls that they must not be seen without a head-to-toe covering. I condemn the vile practice of forcing teenage girls to marry against their will. I condemn the disgusting practice of punishing rape victims.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I believe that the overwhelming majority of Jihadwatch readers will agree with me on all these points.

does anyone know Wafa Sultan's new web site...I went to the old one and the site was "for sale"...

Hugh,
Your explanation was a huge help and it was moving.

I saw in her words the desire to placate her audience, give them a wink and a nod - in essence, try to have it both ways.
With all we hear about mixed messages in the Arab world - saying one thing to the West and something different in the Arab press, this looked like more of the same.
It still bothers me that she will continue to think of the Palestinians as victims, because that will garner them undeserved sympathy and relieve them of at least some responsibility for their acts.

I love me some Wafa.
"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."

As a linguist, I can't agree more. Arabic itself more than reflect the evil and backasswardness of Muslim society. We're talking about a language in which "sex," "rape," "marriage," and "prostitution" are all the same word. Consent never enters into it, nor does reciprocity or female pleasure, but money is always a factor. Sick sick sick.

Also, I'm pretty sure Wafa's stance on Palestine is similar to that of Nonie Darwish. She believes that they are people, but that their "state" is not a legitimate one. Nonetheless, it's wrong that they are not allowed to leave or become anything other than refugees. The Palestinians are the Middle East's pawns. They use Palestine as a tool to insult America and Israel, even though, when a Palestinian is injured, they are treated in Israeli hospitals, and even though nobody contributes more money to Palestine than AMerica. The leaders in the Middle East blame us for all their problems, particularly those of the Palestinians, meanwhile the insanely rich Wahabis contribute only a token amount if support to their cause an ddo everything they can to deprive their people of the miniscule amount of humanity and dignity they are allowed under Islam.

NAmfank, Wafa defines herself as a "secular person" who doesn't believe in angels, devils, genies, jinns, leprechauns, dragons, fairies, or any other craziness. NEVER CALL HER A MUSLIM. I might cut off your nose.

Who doesn't feel sorry for the poor Palestinians (Muslim and Christian)? If they didn't wage the Jihad the moral high ground would be on their side, not Israeli.

Israelis are perfectly willing to give land for peace. Just look at Gaza. But unfortunately it doesn't work. Israelis are also paying high toll in % of GDP they spend on military. Young men and WOMEN of Israel spend some of their best years in compulsory military service, while they could be doing other more pleasant & productive things.

Wafa is right that the conflict is political and religious. Religious in meaning that Islam is predominantly a political ideology, not a "din". People would be best served if they could prosper, create their families and provide a decent living for themselves and their community.

"As a linguist, I can't agree more. Arabic itself more than reflect the evil and backasswardness of Muslim society. We're talking about a language in which "sex," "rape," "marriage," and "prostitution" are all the same word." --posted by jdamn

Is that right? Good God - what a sick, misogynist language, Arabic.

What "word" is that, pray tell?

Wafa Sultan is a brilliant woman who appears to understand Islam from the inside better than any poster on this site. There should be more, many more, outspoken people like her.

Don't worry about Wafa Sultan. Her heart is in the right place -- because, you see, her mind is in the right place.
...
Win over minds, and hearts will follow. Wafa Sultan knows this. Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows this. Ibn Warraq knows this.
Posted by: Hugh

Thanks Hugh.

The "palestinian" cause is a made up conflict.
http://terrorismawareness.org/what-really-happened/
Israel was cut from the remains of the Ottoman Empire.

"As a linguist, I can't agree more. Arabic itself more than reflect the evil and backasswardness of Muslim society. We're talking about a language in which "sex," "rape," "marriage," and "prostitution" are all the same word." --posted by jdamn

I'm not where you got this information from but it's totally wrong. Sure, the Arabic language posesses many cultural-related aspects that might be considered a deficiency by some but lack of vocabularly is certainly NOT one of them !

The aspects I am talking about is that it's hard to learn, can be ambiguous at times, amongst other things.. But it all depends on how you use it.

Darcy, the word is "nikah." I forgot to add that it arguably means incest too. Granted, the word for temporary marriage is "mut'ah," but regular marriage in Islam is nothing more than institutionalized prostitution, an arrangement revolving around nothing more than money and sex. Granted, Muslims typically can't survive on their own anyway and therefore have to get married, being the children of housewives 99% of the time, which I believe produces nothing but maladjusted children incapable of self-sufficiency, since that's what their mothers necessarily are. Ever notice how many 30-year-old Muslims live in campus housing for children? In all fairness, marriage is institutionalized prostitution in Hinduism too, and Christianity and Judaism have definite overtones which still suggest that women are property, like the father of the bride giving her away like she's a cow or a peach orchard, but I believe that the Judeo-Christian vows demonstrate that marriage is to be a permanent, reciprocal arrangement based on partnership.

As for incest, the Koran says "your women are a tilth unto you. Enter them as you wish." "Women" is explicitly defined elsewhere as one's wives, slaves, daughters, and sisters. The Koran also condemns incest, but since it allows for abrogation and it's not arranged chronologically, who's to say which verse takes precedent? Nevermind that the Pervert married his 6-year-old niece and his daughter-in-law.

That was way off-topic, but I thought I should answer your question, Darcy.

@ Dude, yes, they are all the same word in Arabic. Ever read the Koran? Does it make any distinction whatsoever between sex and rape, or does it refer to it all as rape, even when it involves the sexual assault of a 6-year-old, the outright rape of a clueless, retarded 9-year-old, or "laying with" Safiya, the same day the Pervert killed her father, her brother, and tortured her husband to death? Do you think that consent was given in those cases? Consent is never a factor, and when clearly consent is not given, as in the case of a retarded 9-year-old, where it CAN'T be given, it can be considered nothing but rape, but it's always called "nikah." Do you think any of that was consentual? Of course not! But it's all "sex" to Muslims.

Marriage is nothing more than institutionalized prostitution in Islam. Read the Shariah marriage contract. Money and sex. That's all it's about. There's no "love, honor, and cherish" in Islam. There's a dowry, a monthly upkeep fee for the wife's genitals, and the wife is required to keep her crotch ready and clean, and to drop everything every time her man has a hard-on. That's PROSTITUTION.

And "nikah" does refer to both marriage and sex itself. Check it out: http://www.islamreview.com/articles/nikah.shtml

Abdullah Al Araby knows his stuff.

Oh, Dude, I forgot (again) to add that even divorce is referred to in employer/employee terminology. It's not "I divorce you" 3x, as some apologist translators will tell you. It's "you are repudiated" 3x. Of course it's in the passive, so to remove all personal agency, which is characterisitc of Muslims to alwways act from behind a wall of narcissism and to NEVER take any responsibility for their own actions. But "repudiate" means "to fire," as in "your services are no longer needed here," as in "that vag is getting worn out, so it's time for a new one." It means to cut one off financially. So even in divorce, it's not about the dissolution of a marriage as reasonable, decent, thinking, moral people conceive of it; it's about firing a hoe. Or more accurately, a hoe getting fired in the passive construction.

For those who think that change has to come from within, or that Islam can be reformed, sadly, this is impossible: Why Islam Cannot Reform

My thought when I saw that Wafa said, "I support the Palestinian cause," is that she was AMENDING her previous statements that were supportive of Israel. She's on record gushing about Jews and Israel, so she probably wanted to clarify that that doesn't mean she's against the Palestinian PEOPLE, although I doubt she has any kind words about their evil Muslim leaders.

I do believe that "Palestinian CAUSE" is an unfortunate choice of words, as it implies those LEADERS, rather than just the poor Palestinian people. Of course, there are far too many "Palestinians" who are the seriously damaged goods she talks about as a psychologist. I certainly do NOT support THEM, except to get them into a mental-health treatment center. We need to build massive treatment centers to counter the mosques...

Another plank in the anti-Islam platform?

Check out this scary site:

The Truth About Islam