And on Al-Jazeera TV no less. Muslims around the world need to hear this message and take it to heart:
MEMRI TV – Arab-American Psychologist Wafa Sultan: There Is No Clash of Civilizations but a Clash between the Mentality of the Middle Ages and That of the 21st Century
Following are excerpts from an interview with Arab-American psychologist Wafa Sultan. The interview was aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 21, 2006
Wafa Sultan: 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. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
[...]
Host: I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?
Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.
[...]
Host: Who came up with the concept of a clash of civilizations? Was it not Samuel Huntington? It was not Bin Laden. I would like to discuss this issue, if you don’t mind…
Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: “I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger.” When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.
My colleague has said that he never offends other people’s beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the “People of the Book,” and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians “those who incur Allah’s wrath.” Who told you that they are “People of the Book”? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them “those who incur Allah’s wrath,” or “those who have gone astray,” and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?
I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others’ right to believe in it.
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: Are you a heretic?
Wafa Sultan: You can say whatever you like. I am a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural…
Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli: If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran…
Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.
[...]
Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don’t throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people’s beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.
[...]
Wafa Sultan: The Jews have came from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. 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.
Couldn’t agree more.
Kudos to Jody Wheeler of Naked Writing for the link.
From the interview above…
I thought that part was not necessary. It’s like giving the Muslims the opportunity to say that they’ve ALL been labelled as “ignorants”. And therefore disregard the whole interview as America propaganda.
Or maybe it’s just me….Walking on eggshells wearing white gloves.
Rob, keep it up and you’ll be fined three on-topic posts. You have been warned.
(sternly buttoning my mao-shirt…)
I denounce you for the running-dog Topic Fundamentalist you are !
—
Honestly, i’ve seen more interesting conversations killed by T&G Fundies, too many. They are a serious problem in many forums, unfortunately. In contrast, on technical forums (which are more resource than diversion) off-topic should be avoided. I, like many, enjoy the normal, natural flow of human conversations, not stagnated by such bizarre ideas as shreeked by the T&G Fundies lurking in our midst.
—
In an attempt to appease and calm the now marching T&G Fundies, let me now submit a piece i started last evening, well before they started their recent shreekings:
While i sympathise with Wafa’s sentiments, she (as i mentioned earlier) is a little too resolute and sweeping in her support of Christians and Jews, never mind her condemnation of wider Islam. In fact, she seems more emotionally reactionary to her own oppression than reasoned. The holes in her arguements do not server her cause well. They overshadow her truth.
[] Jews, Christians, Hindus, etc. have all had eras akin to what we’re now seeing in Islam. Some still do. (BJP anyone? Aryan Nation? Khanist?) In fact, it could be argued it’s a common, expected *transformative* process of most ideologies, and a continuous cancer that needs constant address.
[] When this or that ideology is pushed to a philosophical extreme it often causes a fissure in the greater school—and a reformation. Many Islami intellectuals believe this is just what is happening within the umma today, in nascent form.
[] Many of those tenents and practices that Westerners take exception to within Islam are hardly Koranic, and more to do with tribal customs and (slowly dying) elders shreekings for norms to be maintained. (We all have our shreekers)
[] While there certainly do exist verses and even early commentaries that provide justification to these oft considered immoral practices (e.g., honor killings), the same type of shit can be found in the writings of that Jews and Christians hold uniquely sacred. Islam isn’t exactly alone in this regard, which Wafa convienantly (and vigorously) ignores.
If she’s trying to convince the liberal-minded followers of Islam that there needs to be core changes to the umma’s culture, she severely negates this by these numerous and (too) convienant ommissions of history—never mind every day obersvations.
That’s a real shame.
rob@egoz.org
Case in point:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Israel_Church_Attack.html
Question: Does religion more closely resemble a virus or an allergen?
Both viruses and allergens can make you sick, but allergens are not contagious.
Yes, but is religion contagious or do people succumb to an allergen that pervades the environment? Then again, people get better once an allergen is removed from their environment.
Maybe it isn’t an allergen, but a carcinogen.
In my book God-101 I talk about “Memes” (contagions of the mind)
Among some Psychologists and nearly all Sociologists in the last few decades, a new phrase has come into use that describes a “belief system
Since I missed the thread drift when it hit, I’ll bring it back.
Smile!
All the talking about sameness brought that flash to mind and because I have to study Nietzsche’s Last Man for a paper I need to write my mind is also on this particular passage:
Who cares if future generations look back on us with contempt through the glasses of “academically researched disdain?” They have become the last man if they do that. If they must disdain us they must do it frothing at the mouth before I care. If your “prophecy” comes true my grandchildren won’t be able to look at my generation with hate, just a vague unpleasant emotion until they “blink.” I agree with DOF. More tolerance not less expression.
There’s a reason why i referenced the attitude of our grandchildren and other future generations. It’s not because they’ll have a more accurate understanding of the consequences of our contemporary, wasteful culture, nor because they’ll, generally, be a more calm, rational and reasoned species than ourselves. If past generations could, somehow, see how we live today, i would have felt just as obliged to mention their attitudes, too. Alas, when i peered into my nietzsche-esque crystal ball, voices from the past didn’t speak to me, only ahead. ;-]
Maybe the past can, in a way…
I would often see my grandparents exhibiting, what i thought, we extreme, almost maniacal acts of frugality. I’d see them do weird things like washing and saving plastic sandwich bags, saran-wrap, and aluminum foil, and them till they, quite literally, fell-apart. When i would see these habits i immediately chalked it up “This is the infamous Perkins Puritan frugality my mother would often warn me about.”
Then, years later, i had the obligation to live and work with someone in his early 80’s (yes, he was still working, and like some mad ox). After our first evening meal together i, immediately, noticed him washing some plastic wrap and, setting it out to dry. I was wrong about my grandparents. I asked him about this. He replied, as if he had dealt with such questions before, “I’m not shy of a little work if it will save me a lot over time.” (and that wasn’t the last time i heard that from him)
Here’s the point. Things have not always been like they are now, since, say, the late 1950’s to the present. We are the oddity. Indeed, anyone outside this aberrant period (past or future) would hold the same disdain i attributed to our grandchildren.
We are the sick generations.
rob@egoz.org
Religion on the rise = civilization in decline history has taught this to us many times
Need more voices like sister Wafa Sultan to fight these backwards, evils
I have watched this interview in Aljazeeera, tHE SCRIPT THAT YOU SHOWED HERE WAS EDITED TO THE MAX, I urged everyone to watch the full length of this interview and how easily one can see that wafa sultan is an outright liar and have no background in what she is talking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkU8zA4Yxmk&feature=related
Wafa is a puppet in which soon, the hand will remove itself.