The moral of the story: Don’t accept invitations from Gaddafi. “Food Summit: Gaddafi asks women to convert to Islam,” from AdnKronos International, November 16 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Rome, 16 Nov. (AKI) – Libya’s controversial leader Muammar Gaddafi has created headlines in Italy after inviting 200 women to a party and inviting them to convert to Islam. Gaddafi who is in Rome for the United Nations-sponsored global food summit, held the party at the house of the Libyan ambassador, Hafed Gaddur, on Sunday.
“Convert to Islam. Jesus was sent to the Jews, not for you. Mohammed, on the other hand, was sent for all human beings,” he reportedly said.
Never mind that bit about “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).
“Whoever goes in a different direction than Mohammed is wrong. God’s religion is Islam and whomever follows a different one, in the end, will lose,” said Gaddafi quoted by Italian daily La Stampa.
After arriving an hour late, Gaddafi began distributing gifts to the women, who were reportedly all Italian.
They were also each given a copy of the Islamic holy book the Koran as well as the Libyan leader’s Green Book, which outlines the Libyan leader’s view on political philosophy and democracy.
He then sat next to Libya’s ambassador to Italy Hafed Gaddur and an interpreter with two of his renowned female guards, known as ‘Amazon Guards’.
Gaddafi then began a speech in which he invited the women to convert to Islam, emphasising his support for equal rights but not equal duties.
According to the Libyan leader, women must do only “what their physical condition allows them” and spoke about the role that women played during World War II.
“What their physical condition allows them”: Sojourner Truth would beg to differ: “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?…”
And for that matter, then, what’s the point of his female bodyguards?
Gaddafi criticised the West, saying that women there “have often been used as pieces of furniture, changed whenever it pleases men. And this is an injustice.”
After all, the correct Qur’anic term is “tilth” (2:223).
Gaddafi also invited the women attending the party to travel to the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia…..
…. which requires converting to Islam.