The e-mail and home answering machine of Wafa Sultan (in photo), a Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, have been filled with death threats following her recent interview on Al-Jazeera television, The New York Times reported. Among her provocative comments:
“Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.”
And, “The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality.”
Despite the threats, Sultan said she has no fear. “I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- XXX on Open thread 11/23
- ANTI on Let immigrants run
- Phantom on Let immigrants run
- XXX on Open thread 11/23
- Phantom on Too many exemptions
- Phantom on Too many exemptions
- situveux1 on Too many exemptions
- Pleefer on Let immigrants run
- ANTI on Open thread 11/23
- ANTI on Open thread 11/23
25 Comments
“have walked the first and hardest 10 miles.”
Check your odometer, lady, because it’s busted.
Never buy a used camel.
Someone who understands, and no Ed I’m not talking about you.
Brave lady, and very well said.
She makes very important and powerful points.
A touch of reality. The hood is rancid, putrid and you have suck the air you breath through it.
http://www.salon.com/
There’s a piece of your forward looking Israeli 21 century.
The Mossad should take center stage.
Ed – barbarism on the part of Israel and the US military in Iraq does not lessen her points.
Good thing the Amish don’t have any oi, or they’d get a taste of Israeli forward-looking civilization.
Her whole point is transfer Israel atrocities and attempt to justify them.
Pure propaganda, nothing more.
Freedom is about my choices, not your opinion of them.
The Lady is saying that she knows best, and offers flimsy arguments she has propped-up.
Our “progress” allows us to violate freedom. That’s progress?
She forgot to mention that, right?
Ed – She was overly praising of Jews and Christians – she ignored KACH and its terrorism and the genocide in the Balkans for example. That said, however, she is absolutely correct that Islam’s biggest enemy is the OBL’s who have hi-jacked the religion. Unfortunately, for many in the west who do not know any Muslims the extremist becomes the face if Islam.
It is important for Muslims to make it clear that OBL is no more representative of that religion than Phelps is representative of Christianity.
Good points, Ben
Al-Jazeera television will show the news whether it hurts or helps their opinion. That why Bush’s handlers wanted it bombed.
If someone tried to tell the God’s truth about Israel, they would not be allowed on the American media.
That’s not only sick about what we are becoming, but worse about what we’re doing.
Dr. Sultan is exactly right. She understands that the Middle East is based on 12th century concepts. Islam did amazing things. It preserved a treasury of Greek thought, that the Romans and Catholic Church (not today’s Church, but that of the Middle Ages) sought to destroy. We have a Hindu-Arabic decimal number system, invented by Hindus, and disseminated by Arabs. Try to do multiplication in Roman numerals.
The early Enlightenment Period scholars knew that they were indebted to Muslims. Unfortunately the Crusades, Inquisition, and wars to remove Muslims, and their knowledge, erased Muslims contributions to enlightenment. The Muslims themselves reverted to a more primitive state.
Consider Saddam Hussein’s alleged “crimes against humanity”. Apply the same standards to Abraham Lincoln, and he becomes guilty of some of the most heinous war crimes you can consider.His illlegal imprisonment of 13,000 Americans such as newspaper publishers, congressmen, judges and state legislators for critizing him–and they had no access to their attorneys or families–is minor. How about the killing of more than 100,000 Southerners, who just wanted to be left alone to pursue their lives. Lincoln didn’t care about African Americans. He wanted to expedite a new vision of recruiting wage-slave/consumers to America, and ensure that this new economic model would apply to all newly-admitted states. He didn’t abolish slavery in the pro-Union states that went along with him. The “abolitionists” wanted cheap cotton. The southerners wanted to sell to Europe, thus forcing the yankee textile capitalists to pay more than they wanted to.The South would have eventually given up slavery, because it really wasn’t very efficient.
I believe that African Americans should be given fair restitution for their forefathers’ share of building America.
Let us talk about Native Americans. They were living human lives. Euro-Americans decimated them. Lincoln sent troops to destroy Plains Indians critical resource, bison, then sent soldiers to annihilate not just Indian warriors, but women, children and the elderly, then made the living residua live unnatural lives on reservations in which making a decent living was impossible. So Lincoln is clearly guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. This isn’t even close to being arguable.
Saddam Hussein is a victim of having a medieval ideology in a modern world. The US supported his rise to power. It gave him weapons of mass destruction. Somebody of a sick bent said, “Let’s watch him take out Kurds and Iranians. This is fun.” BEFORE he invaded Kuwait, he sought guidance from the U.S. State Department. He was told, “We don’t have a problem with that.” Nothing like baiting somebody and entrapping him for relying on your statements.
Before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, it tried to emulate the U.S. and Europe in invading Indo-China. Then Japan was informed, “You can’t be like us. You’re slanty-eyed and yellow-skinned.” So petroleum and steel imports were curtailed. The Japanese had pride. They decided to gamble. They lost. They tried to be LIKE America and Europe, but America and Europe didn’t want to be emulated. Interesting.
Plains Indians were smarter than white Kansas settlers. Indians established permanent settlements where they could. It was impossible on the Plains. So they became nomadic, living in tune with the seasons.
Kansas farmers are trying to live in a fixed-settlement mode, which is impossible here, and that’s why their children leave their farms. Under Libertarian ideology, Kansas would now have a population under 250,000, but this did not occur because FDR established artificial subsidies, not to protect farmers entirely, but to slow their evacuation to “manageable” levels.
Wichita’s home-built aviation industry flopped in the Great Depression. It was not rebuilt by natives, but by outsiders, under the FDR administration’s directive to turn destitute farm-refuges into urban factory workers.
Now, there are very few Greats Plains children today, so farm subsidies can be withdrawn, and all farm kids can go to the cities. Wichita will not be one of these cities, because under the new globalization paradigm, aviation jobs will go to China. Wichita’s leaders do not want to create its own industrial or knowledge products to sell products to the outside world and accrue profits.Instead they want to continue to sell labor to the outside world, and generate only wage dollars as the outside-world-to-Wichita dollar-flow mechanism. Wichita’s leaders then want to redistribute these dollars in local-dollar-redistribution enterprises. But the outside world is saying, “Sorry, but we must cut off your dollar inflow.”
Without dollar inflow, you will not have dollars to recirculate.
Create high-level education and research programs, and Wichita might avoid this black future. But Wichitans do not have enough confidence in themselves to do this. Create at least one high-level K-12 channel that would encourage outsiders to come here, believing that their kids can get a 21st century leadership education. Provide such to encourage your most gifted National Merit Finalist children to come back home and invest their talents in the community. Spend some money and invite some outsiders to do research here, which corporations love, and they’ll give you great ideas on how to create a 21st century thriving economy. They will also attract high-paying 21st century corporations to invest themselves here.
Or don’t do these things, just be stupid and lazy, and watch Wichitans sit at the side of the 21st century global economy highway, watching the traffic go by, and become roadkill.
Saddam Hussein is a man out of time. He has a medieval mindset. So he’ll be kangaroo-courted and hung. But amidst a several-hundred-million population of medieval-minded Muslims, he will become a martyr. This will only INCREASE Islamic terrorism. It would be much preferable to give him $10 billion in installment payments and banish him to Switzerland. “You lost, but you’ll live very well, so tell your people to stand down. We’re going to put your lieutenants under our command. They’ll live very well.”
The Romans were shrewd, unlike Alexander the Great. They expanded their empire by maintaining governing hierarchies, instead of killing off all local leaders and inciting chaos. Unfortunately, despite attending Phillips Andover and Yale, President Bush was AWOL in Western Civ classes.
Some children leave the farm to experience life. Something which you couldn’t do years ago, as there was nothing much to experience.
Technology has changed life in dynamic ways, ways in which we still fail to grasp the meaning.
We have remote-control vehicles on Mars.
No, the lady does not have it exactly right. We are murdering Arabs and she is trying to blame their resistance on their religion.
That’s ridiculous.
If they weren’t sitting on oil, she wouldn’t care what century they chose to live in. Check other Arabs not sitting on oil.
Pure propaganda.
Damn heartlander, I dont agree with every detail of your post, but you exhibit a GREAT knowledge of how real economic development should work. Somebody down there needs to hire you NOW!
You are right about knowlege based industry. Dont forget creativity and Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class”.
And you are also correct about “if we keep doing what we are doing, we are gonna get what we got”. Doing something different is harder than doing the same old things harder and faster. Guess which one most communities pick? And what does that lead to?
Road kill.
Great post.
The NYT must think they’re they’re losing to run this desperate “Tabloid Tripe.”
Thanks ksfarmgirl for your kind comments.
I really like reading your posts (this happened long before your last one! : )) You grew up here and deeply understand Kansas and her people.
Thanks to you too heartlander, but I wish the knife of understanding didnt cut me so deep. I guess it only hurts because I love ks so much and cant stand to see her die.
Sitting shiva was never my thing:)
Sorry for the reference ed…. we missed you last night too!
Just finish a book by Irshad Manji, The Trouble with Islam Today. Apparently, too many islamic cleric are confusing Islam with medieval desert tribalism. To them a true muslim has to be arabic, in thoughts, words, and deeds. And too bad if you’re a woman… This racism within is definitely a problem that needs to be dealt with more urgency by muslims worldwide.
ALL religions must be done away with! Religion only holds the human race back from achieving it’s full potential! You fools who cling to your crosses are no better than the suicidal Muslim maniacs. All religion does is fuel the “us versus them” mentality which seeks to dominate the entire world! The goal of a Christian is world domination by spreading his “gospel” throughout the world. Islam is the same with it’s jihad.
My first visit here to this thread. Welcome to you Hegel! First I’ve seen you post, and you are hitting all the threads! Not many of us late nighters. Most post early and through the day. We had a poster like you, hitting all the threads and not afraid to be inflammatory. But I have not seen him lately.
I think banning all religions is a bit extreme. I do agree that to an extent they hold humanity back, but some religious folks do some good.
Heartlander, your post is profound! It is a bitof along read but worth it.
Hearlander, I went back and read your post a couple of times. There’s a lot to absorb there.
I am thinking now about your “Saddam is a man out of time” comment. The rest of the world changed its mindset and he was left behind and now must pay the price.
I think there is a lesson in that for kansas. If we dont progress and move on, the rest of the world doesnt care. It will move on with or without us. The world has sort of fitfully moved out of the industrial age and economies have moved into the information age.
Hell, in ks, we are just barely moving out of the agricultural age, and most of the state just flat missed the industrial age. Instead of playing catch-up and practicing the economic development we should have done in the industrial age, could we just skip that, and jump right into the practices that are appropriate for the information age?
Heartlander is right that this is an information age strategy:”Create high-level education and research programs, and Wichita might avoid this black future.”
The information age is all about the workforce, and not just a workforce that can take orders. Knowledge workers, creativity and a thinking workforce are needed. Otherwise?
Road kill.