Two paths

[gilliam]

It’s interesting to compare the path that CPT member Tom Fox chose with Wafa Sultan’s. Wafa Sultan is an Arab-American who argued vociferously against Islamic clerics on Al Jazeera, creating an international stir. Accoding to the New York Times summary of events [click on link to read]…

Both Fox and Sultan employed nonviolent methods to achieve their ends. Given the death threats leveled on Hirsi Ali, the Danish caricaturists of Mohammed, Salman Rusdie and others it is arguable that Dr. Sultan by her open opposition to Islamism is showing as much personal courage as anyone in the CPT. Since Dr. Sultan probably has relatives and friends in Syria or the Muslim community in America, she is likely in a more vulnerable situation than a Western Peace Activist who is only in the Middle East temporarily.

To Tom Fox’s question “How do you stand firm against a car-bomber or a kidnapper?” – a question to which he never provided an answer except to say *it was not fighting *-- Wafa Sultan’s answer is that you start by denouncing it. You begin by intellectually opposing the ideology that drives it; that legitimizes it; that portrays it as attractive to children from their cradle. The CPT website, on the other hand, says that denunciation is part of the problem, because it dehumanizes the denounced; hides our Western guilt; and shows a lack of tolerance and respect for Islam.

Read the rest

 

[gilliam]

THE NEW YORK TIMES profiles Wafa Sultan:

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

Of course, that they’re afraid to say it proves her point about barbarism. Bless her for realizing – as so many of our leaders do not – that appeasing the barbarians is a mistake.

And there’s irony, if not novelty, in the headline: “For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats.”.

instapundit.com/archives/029095.php

The video clip of Dr. Wafa Sultan debating the Egyptian religious guru on Al Jazeera, translated and posted by the good folks at MEMRI, has turned Dr. Sultan into something of a celebrity. Here she is getting the star treatement in today’s New York Times profile by John Broder. And here she is in her first English-language interview on Tovia Singer’s Israel National News Radio show. (Thanks to reader Sam Sewell for the tip to the Tovia Singer interview.)

powerlineblog.com/archives/013390.php