But is anyone listening? Pamela Geller reviews Wafa Sultan's superb and essential new book for FrontPage:
Wafa Sultan's seminal moment was when she took on an Islamic cleric on Al-Jazeera. The clip went viral on Youtube, and it really was a defining moment in the clash of civilizations. Here was a woman, basically considered "property" in the Muslim world and expected to do what she was told, turning around after she had been interrupted numerous times, and saying in effect, "Quiet, it's my turn."Now comes her new book, A God Who Hates, which will undoubtedly prove to be a key resource in the resistance to jihad and Islamization. In it, the brilliant psychiatrist from Syria, now an American citizen, tells her own story.
It is the story of a Muslim woman who grew up in a country where she was indoctrinated in Islamic ideology. So her perspective is very important in terms of establishing the credibility of scholars like Robert Spencer.... But what makes this book great, apart from its breathtaking honesty and truth and the clarity and urgency of its warning, is that it is also a beautiful love letter to America.
Wafa speaks powerfully about what America means to her. It manifests itself in little things. She leaves her house at 5 am and makes her way to Starbucks to have her coffee without fearing that someone might see her and accuse her of immoral behavior. To her, America means saying "good morning" to her neighbor and chatting with him for a few moments without being accused of having spent the night with him. America, for this courageous woman, means that her daughter can come home and tell her that she had lunch with her boyfriend without being beaten or accused of having impugned the family honor.
It is clear throughout A God Who Hates that Wafa Sultan was always a very independent thinker, even though there were times in her life when she did not immediately allow herself to go to the next step to which her thinking was leading her. She writes lovingly about her husband, who was very supportive of her. He was an open-minded thinker -- initially more so than was Wafa herself. But she recounts in the book certain momentous events that jarred her thinking, such as in 1979 when Muslims screaming "Allahu akbar" murdered one of her professors, the ophthalmology lecturer Dr. Yusef Al-Yusef, whom she respected and admired. Wafa witnessed the murder - and at that exact moment started to question the nature of the Islamic faith.
"But I was afraid," she explained when I interviewed her recently, "to express my feelings. I was afraid to express my thoughts, because under Islamic sharia, a Muslim who dares to leave Islam or dares to convert to any other religion is to be killed. And every Muslim has the right to kill someone who has left Islam without being asked a question. This is the Islamic law. Once you were born as a Muslim, you're not allowed to leave it. This is simply the Islamic law, and it seems to me it's very hard to convince Americans that this is the way it is."
The recent Rifqa Bary apostasy case shows how right Wafa is about that, and how urgent her message is. Rifqa Bary is the teenage girl, a Muslim in Ohio, who left Islam four years ago and converted to Christianity. When her father found out about her conversion, she fled from her home in fear for her life. She said she ran away to Florida because she wanted to get as far away as she could -- because not only her family but the mosque and the community in Ohio is very devout, and as an apostate she is in danger. But now she has been returned to Ohio, in large part because American authorities don't know anything about Islamic apostasy law....
I ordered her book from amazon back in October, when it came out. It's brilliant. I ordered 2 copies - the 2nd one is a Christmas present for a friend.
I still prefer her original title, however - "When God is a Monster." Oh, yeah, that's good, and that's "allah," (Mohamet). A Monster.
Hey Hussein, our "president" - you've read this? No? I didn't think so.
She's brilliant and courageous, an inspiration. And we can hear the chorus spooling up from CAIR, the looney left and their ilk, with the usual Islamiphobebigotracistfascist drek at the ready. That any western thinkers in free societies would swallow it, despite clear and logical work such as Wafa's and Robert's, makes me pessimistic at times. Ultimately, the truth wins. But at what cost?
"But what makes this book great, apart from its breathtaking honesty and truth and the clarity and urgency of its warning, is that it is also a beautiful love letter to America."
Wafa's heartwarming love and appreciation for America is sooo inspiring ...and it also serves to remind me of the freedoms I oftentimes take for granted. Freedoms that are precious and worth fighting for!
At a recent post discussing the book "The Good Soldiers" at:
http://staringattheview.blogspot.com/2009/11/good-soldiers-david-finkel.html
I noted the following in relation to Wafa Sultan:
In 2006, Wafa Sultan was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World following her appearance on Al Jazeerah TV in which she challenged an Islamic scholar. In 2009 her very important book, A God Who Hates, was bypassed by the same media. Why did she go from the poster child "bad girl of Islam" to being ignored in only three years? The reason is she crossed the line that American academics, political officials, and media personnel are unwilling or afraid to cross. She came to the same conclusion that I reached after two years in Iraq and serious study of the original texts of Islam, the Quran, the Hadith, and the Sira (Muhammad's biography). During those two years I moved from believing the problem was Islamic terrorism to Islamic extremism to political Islam to...well, just Islam.
Chances are Ralph Kauzlarich has never heard of Wafa Sultan and won't read "A God Who Hates." And he'll probably never find the answer to another question he pondered in The Good Soldiers:
"Sometimes Kauzlarich would wonder exactly what the Iraqis hated about the American soldiers. What were they doing, other than trying to secure some Iraqi neighborhoods? What made people want to kill them for handing out candy and soccer balls, and delivering tankers of drinking water to them, and building a sewer system for them, and fixing their gas stations, and never being aggressive except for rounding up the killers among them?"
I have not yet purchased her book but I will. She's a smart and brave woman, that much I know. And she's seen Islam from the inside. She knows it in a way that those who were not brought up Muslim (fortunate though they be) never fully can, especially emotionally rather than intellectually. It must be hard to break away from this ulimtate of cults because it so controls the mind and holds out such a terrible penalty for leaving it. What a true evil Islam is and it continues to fool so many, both within the cult and without. This must change or mankind will pay a price that will make all that has happened so far seem minor by comparison.
A bit off topic, but I have never had a clear explanation of why Obama is not considered an apostate as his father was a muslim and therefore he was born a muslim. Can anyone explain (other than perhaps he is not considered an apostate as he is in fact a muslim)? Thanks.
Captain America wrote:
A bit off topic, but I have never had a clear explanation of why Obama is not considered an apostate as his father was a muslim and therefore he was born a muslim. Can anyone explain (other than perhaps he is not considered an apostate as he is in fact a muslim)? Thanks.
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I've never heard an entirely satisfying explanation, either. Most Muslims consider the child of a Muslim father to Muslim, pure and simple–and if he at any point leaves Islam, he is to be considered an apostate.
*Some* Muslims do consider a child of a Muslim who left Islam before adulthood to be just an Infidel, rather than an apostate—but it is by no means clear that this happened with Obama.
His Indonesian step-father was also Muslim, and, while not particularly devout, did take young Barack to the Mosque on occasion; and he was registered as a Muslim student, and did receive training in Koranic school.
Even though his mother married *two* Muslim men, she never converted. Obama's grandparents raised him after he left Indonesia—I have never heard that they were particularly religious.
At some point he did become a Christian—of sorts. This was not until he was a full adult, however—a "community organizer" in Chicago. From his own writings, he says he joined Jeremiah Wright's church to get closer to the community, not out of any sort of religious convictions.
So—I'm not sure. Perhaps he is considered too useful at this point for most Muslims to make a big thing out his apostasy. That, of course, might change.
Your idol, Wafa Sultan said, “I will change 1.3 billion Muslims…they have to realize they have only two choices: to change or to be crushed." Another thing she said:
"As an Arab woman who suffered for three decades living under Islamic Sharia, it is clear to me that Islam’s political ideology and Sharia must be fought relentlessly by Western civilization to prevent its application in a free society."
What she failed to mention is that the "Sharia Rule" she was living under was Syrian, which has been secular for the past thirty years and had nothing to do with Sharia. Also, as a terribly oppressed woman under Sharia rule, she has completed her degree in medicine in the University of Aleppo.
I wonder also...is Obama a Muslim? Or what? And why is he so elusive about these things????
I also wonder about his authentic, original birth certificate...did he ever produce it?
What would have happened if Bush had somehow eluded the question of the birth certificate...or was vague on the issue of religion...of which religion was he a member?