There are Islamic reformers out there. Consider the case of expatriate Syrian psychiatrist, Wafa Sultan. She lives in the U.S., is estranged from her family back in Syria, and has participated in a couple of high-profile interviews on al-Jazeera, which got her banned from Arab media. She also got leaned on by CAIR for her reforming work. Until 9/11, that is; after which she told them to fuck off: “Today I’m a completely different person. Let them do what they want.”
She’s also something of a facilitator of Islamic samizdat:
Since then, she has been banned by the Arab media. However, she has managed to penetrate branches within the Muslim and Arab world. Many people enter her website and send her emails, both positive and threatening. In her opinion, any positive message is a good sign.
She believes that her mission – to “breach the walls of the prison of the Islamic world” – is difficult, but that she has succeeded in making a crack. Now it will be easier for others to come after her, she said.
Wafa told of an e-mail from a Moroccan mulla who said that he had bound her internet article into a book and told his 17 year old son that this was his new Quran. She receives e-mails from Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia. She receives mails from Muslim women cheering her on. Sadly, they always use pseudonyms, because they are afraid.
Earlier this week, she received an e-mail from a 23 year old Syrian student who wrote that the government had blocked her website but not her e-mails and asked her to send them via e-mail. “I know that I have a large influence on the Arab world,” she said proudly.
When reminded that producer Theo Van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam for similar reasons, she responded: “I lived in fear for 32 years. 32 years of my life were stolen from me by radical Islam. Let them do what they want. I think they’ll succeed one day. It’s no big deal.”
I’ve got no problem with having our military put lots of holes in lots of jihadists. But if people like Wafa Sultan can get something constructive going in the Muslim mind, then that’ll be a victory too, for them as well as us. To make a friend of an enemy is just as good as killing him.
Her website is http://www.annaqed.com/ .
I’m pretty sure she’s the woman that I saw debating a cleric on Al-Jazeera a year or so ago. The clip was shown at memri.org, I think. By western standards, she humiliated him. Don’t know much about how it would’ve been recieved in the middle-east.
TW: eight59—-I think somebody just audibled at the line of scrimmage.
From the trenches:
We keep hearing from Our Loyal Opposition that Bush doesn’t have an ‘exit strategy’ for the conflicts in the Middle East.
I think the ‘exit strategy’ is the forced reform of Mohammed’s Mess, the Islamic religion. Osama is just a manifestation of that religion, the current tool of our time, the current ‘prophet’. Kill him, there will be more. There may never be an ‘exit’ in our lifetimes, unless we figure out how to pull Islam’s teeth.
Their way: We can pull back into our shell, go on about our lives and accept the occasional attack. We will get used to them. Like a herd of sheep, we can let wolves cull the flock, and as long as we have grass and oil, we can mull about and become more desensitized to terrorism. Maybe the next great Ayatollah or Mullah or Osama will settle for France, Spain, Germany, and the rest of the continent. Once the Islamic Republic controls the entire Middle Eastern Oil Supply, we will do their bidding, until the economy collapses and the thin veneer of civilization we enjoy disappers.
Or, the Old-Fashioned Ämerican Way:
Kick their Asses and Take Names.
She wants to reform Islam, yes, but does she still consider herself a Muslim?
In any case, Wafa Sultan rocks. One of The West’s best friends.
She’s great.
Only 1.29x billion to go.
I’ll tell anyone who is still reading this thread, the future scares me. I hope I’m not too far off topic. Been drinking again.
Because I can see a future in which we have to kill hundreds of thousands of people in order to survive.
I was thinking about the possibility of a war with North Korea the last few days. We could win that quite handily. But we would win at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Could we live with ourselvelves after that kind of slaughter? Can we expect the soldiers who have to do the killing to live with that?
Just so you know, I am not one of those people who thinks we’re wrong. I think the Iraq policy has been a bit soft. I think we should be more agressive w.r.t. N.K. But are we really willing to live with the consequences if we have to exercise the ultimate option? I think we can, but I think we will be damaged by the choice.
G-d, I sound like a Moby. I’m not. I guess I shouldn’t post drunken comments.
On the other hand, my father, who just turned 80, has only told me once about wars. Once! About his life in the navy during WWII. He volunteered at 16. He was stationed on a destroyer. He told me once about picking up pieces of his friends after an attack. One time. And this is a man who I have gone out to drink with since I was 21, and I’m 42. When I go home to visit we still hang out in bars. ANd he has never said anything else about his time in the service with respect to battles.
Why do I mention that? Only to note that seeing people die is very traumatic. And I don’t want us to ask our young people to see that and not have it meaning something. ANd that killing will damage everyone involved.
We had better be damn sure of ourselves.
If it needs doing, we had better do it. ANd we had better be ready to help the young men and women we send to do it. Those people are the heroes and dammit, we have to stand up for them.
Way off topic, I guess. Jameson fueled.
My great fear is that cranky-d’s estimate will turn out to be low – that the west will suffer attacks where hundreds of thousands are killed, and we kill millions to make it stop.
It is all too easy to look at recent history and see numbers of this magnitude – and the tools have gotten better, in the meantime.
TSI said:
“To make a friend of an enemy is just as good as killing him.â€Â
According to Sun Tzu, in the Art Of War 2,500 years ago, it is better. But he acknowledges that it is not always possible. I think Mr. Tzu would also say that criticism of Rummy and W over our current difficulties are equivalent to ragging on Brett Farve for throwing an interception in a game where his team is up 56-10.
Cranky-D wrote:
“Could we live with ourselvelves (sic) after that kind of slaughter? Can we expect the soldiers who have to do the killing to live with that?”
Sure! Why not? We did on June 6, 1944, when 150,000 of our men attacked and 2,500 of them died. We did it again on August 6 and 9, 1945 when none of ours died, but 214,000 of the enemy died. We celebrated with good cause! Two questions: What the hell were they thinking on August 7th and 8th? And, what has changed?
cranky-d:
That is very reminiscent of something in Patrick Swofford’s book, Jarhead:
Wafa Sultan considers herself a secularist and a rationalist as well as a non-practicing muslim. Her courage in the face of a relentless enemy is mind boggling.
The sharpest image I brought from watching that second interview was how utterly ill equipped the islamic scholar was in dealing with Ms. Sultan’s arguments. He was simply forced to bluster and spent several seconds doing a great Jackie Gleason (“hamina-hamina…”) She is saying exactly the things that should be said, not only about radical jihadists but also about the current state of Islam in general.
There are plenty of non-muslims out there who would either wince or howl if we are so bold as to say something like, “Islam, as it is currently configured in the Middle East, is incomaptible with the liberal and sectarian values of Western Civilisation. Jihadists are the extreme result of that incompatibility.” The PC police would be circling that phrase with their shouts of “multiculturalism” or “religion of peace” or “remember the crusades” and completely drown out the statement.
That’s why we have to do both: encourage not only “moderate” muslims and disenchanted muslims but also critics of Islam, regardless of faith, who wish to tell the hard truth about Islam’s present construct.
Bravo and Godspeed to Ms. Sultan and all like her who crave freedom from medieval oppression of individual rights.
One bad apple can spoil a barrel of good’uns, but I despair for how little change one good apple can effect in the midst of a rot-filled barrel.
Still, she is very impressive, and it’s good to know there are some out there.
The beverage or the pornstar?
For cranky-d, that question is irrelevant… (hee)
Or we could lose at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Does this country have the balls to deal with it? Sadly, I don’t know if it does. It tries to fight a politically correct war. War is hell and it can’t be fought PC.
We have no easy choices.
I don’t think about these things lightly. My husband is Infantry – he re-enlisted while deployed. He would be one of those soldiers. He’s the love of my life, and if you don’t think that all of this scares the hell out of me on a deeply personal level, you would be wrong.
I can tell you that the Army is doing all it can now to help the soldiers that need help. But it’s not the Army help I worry about..I worry about everything around it. I worry about those who put politics first. I worry about the politicians who put politics and power before this country and it’s military, and I worry about the protesters who are doing their best to re enact the Viet Nam era, and the media who also play politics and ignore the good.
The damage doesn’t just take place on a battleground. It takes place right here at home as well.
That’s what keep me going. When I’m tired and frustrated and feel the need to shut up and walk away I think about those who are/have put their lives on the line – that keeps me reading and talking and listening..because they fought for us, they deserve to have others stand up for them.
My dad is a WWII vet, also Navy and in the Pacific..he’s never talked about it. My brother in law is a Viet Nam vet..he doesn’t talk about it and to this day he walks out of the room if Jane Fonda or John Kerry are on the TV. My husband talks about the humorous stuff – but his squad has/will spend the night in a cemetary on November 1 to be with a friend.
They fought for you. Are you willing to do what needs to be done for them? Or is who is in the Whitehouse going to affect that?
No easy decisions anywhere, but for some of us it’s only words, for some, onlu politics – for others, not so much..
sorry for the ot incoherent ramble..
If we do try to continue fighting this war PC, the war will return to our shores.
And then Genghis Khan will speak from beyond the grave: “Dude, you Americans are harsh.”
Tink
I have sympathy for your plight and I hope you can find a way to deal with the problems. Just a year ago I took my 80 year old mother to visit the home where she and I lived when my dad joined the navy in 1944. She was a hero because she watched over me and several of my cousins while my aunts when off to work in the munitions factories. Dad was a hero, even though his ship was headed west between Hawaii and Japan when Paul Tibbits flew the Enola Gay over Hiroshima. They both knew about the dead and maimed that had gone before, but they knew what had to be done and they did their best. I was lucky that dad came back and gave me two brothers and a sister after the war.
God bless you. You are a hero too!
I don’t get it.
Cranky-d; nothing like having to explain a joke.
Jameson fueled; beverage or porn star…
that you would have ample access to both, rendering the question irrelevant.
Subtle or just plain obtuse? Or…just not very funny…
G’Day PHack
That’s been my theme. It takes a certain moral outlook to be able to insist on one’s right to self-defense even if it requires a ruthless mass slaughter. Truman had it. I don’t believe that Bush does. I’m not sure that the American people have that kind of moral self-confidence anymore.
errr…MEMRI only showed wafa’s part of the debate. the show was Opposite Directions on al-Jazheera. Dr. Al-Kouli kicked her ass in arabic. She looked like a hysterical screeching fishwife.
The topic of debate was clash of civs. wildly popular with thousands of callins–84% of the callins (muslims) believed that we are engaged currently in the clash of civs.
what, have u guyz passed thru some sort of IQ reduction field or sumpin’? sultan, gabriel, hirsii ali, manji, thats the angry estrogen posse. they’re hostile EXmuslim chicks grinding axes on al-Islam to sell books. they are totally irrelevent to actual muslims.
Well, nishizono; once North Korea successfully collaborates with certain radical Muslim states and they all get kitted out with nuclear-tipped missiles–or nuclear-filled suitcases–the difference between radical and moderate Islam will become apparent to Japan, as well as to us.
I mean, come on! Ayaan Hirsi Ali was an effin’ minister of parliament in the effin’ Netherlands, and she had to stay in hiding for fear of being murdered in the streets by angry Muslims. What’s estrogen got to do with that?
nothong.
that prolly why she living in the states now.
but…if she really wanted to help reform Islam, she should have stayed muslim and worked from within.
basically her impassioned tirades are a revenge thing.
why does she pull 6 figures from AEI? because she is an Islam consultant?
she HATES Islam, and is completely biased against the whole shebang.
she can’t help us. she makes it worse.
mebbe she has her reasons, but telling the AEI that islam is hateful and incapable of reform is dammed bad advice for what they are paying her.