 Dr. Wafa Sultan, the controversial critic of radical Islam that Time Magazine called one of the most influential women of 2006, took the Landmark Forum and mentioned it in a 2006 article in The Kurdistan Times, in which she credits the Landmark Forum for helping her remove past fears. The article describes some of her personal experiences, and is reprinted in an English translation at length below. Where are the women of Egypt?! Is there no woman in Egypt who has a shoe? I swear with the dearest that I have that if Sheikh Tantawi had spoken to my daughter like that, even if it cost me my life, I would have thrown my shoe at him, and even if it did not cut off his head, it would have blown his turban away between heaven and earth! Sheikh Tantawi, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, entered a classroom, pretending to be the Voltaire of Muslims at the expense of a child who is barely twelve years old, and shouted at her, ordering her to take off her veil: You look like that and you are veiled; what would you have done if you were beautiful?! Then, and indulging in blowing his empty drums at the expense of her mental and psychological wellbeing, he continued: “I am more knowledgeable than your parents!” Does this insane man realize the scope of the psychological damage he has caused the girl?!
Suffice it what he has done to her burqa, and he came to plant the bullet of his treachery in a dead body, indulging in his distortion! A child will not accept to remove her head scarf unless she is forced to, or if she is convinced that her body is a disgrace and she must hide it, and both cases are sufficient to destroy her emotional and mental energies! Tantawi did not want to leave the girl’s energies intact; he wanted his harsh words that are devoid of any feelings to wipe out the effects, descending the girl to the level of an ugly creature that does not deserve to be looked at by anyone! His insult to her in front of her female colleagues and teacher will leave in her deep subconscious a wound that will be difficult to heal with time, unless scientifically qualified people interfere to treat that wound! Even when specialists can treat it, a scar must be left behind that will cause her pain in her life from time to time…. I have never been a lover or amateur of belly dancing, because in short, I see in shaking the belly and the rear a banal and cheap art that is not worthy of watching. But I am fond of watching dances like Dabke, especially by the Syrians and the Lebanese, and I dream that I will be able one day to join a Dabke ring when I am invited to a wedding or an Arab celebration here in America. I think that my desire to enjoy this art stems from the collective spirit of joy, which prevails over everyone when hands join and the rhythm of the feet intertwine in harmony. It is a collective spirit that is rare to see among Arabs outside the Dabke area! But the problem that stands between me and Dabke is that I have a phobia – a severe fear – of the dance floor, and I avoid passing near the stage.
The roots of the problem go back to the day that I had to leave my table for any reason at any celebration. I was a five-year old child at most, and I was with my family celebrating a wedding of a relative. I think my grandmother wanted to leave the wedding for some reason and she tried to persuade me to leave with them. She came close to the dance floor and picked me from my arm and pulled me as she said: come… stop dancing, everyone is laughing at you! My grandmother killed at that moment my desire to enjoy this art forever…! Last year I was visiting a friend, a Syrian doctor living in Arizona. He invited me to a party hosted by “The Middle East Club” in the state to celebrate the graduation of the children of Arab families from high school. During the celebration, people started dancing the Dabke and things heated up, and my friend and his wife tried to convince me to participate in vain.
During the break, we chatted and I told them the story of my grandmother and my fear of Dabke circles. He smiled and said: I will rescue you and save myself and all my family, and went on to say: Is there an Arab man carrying a trace of a scar from suffering of the past?! I did not understand what he meant by saving me, but when I returned to California several days later, a woman contacted me and presented herself as a representative of the Landmark Education Institute and explained that Dr. such-and-such has paid subscription fees to the Institute and wants me to join one of his lecture series, a three-day stretch from eight in the morning until ten at night, and then explained to me the nature of the lectures and their desired objective, so I accepted the gift and called my friend in gratefulness…. Read the rest at Landmark Education News Blog H/T: J.R.
 Last year in an unprecedented event at CPAC, Geert Wilders met Joe Sixpack, and it was good. This year, Atlas does not disappoint. We are ratcheting it up a few notches. Robert Spencer and I are organizing a joint venture to educate, elucidate and scare the bejeezus outta ya. THIS IS A NOT A CPAC EVENT - THIS IS A GELLER-SPENCER EVENT. Jihad: The Political Third Rail
What they're not telling us about the war on America It's Friday, February 19th from 10 am until Noon. We are still firming our speakers up, but here is a list of the invited: Wafa Sultan [confirmed]
Doctor, author, “A God Who Hates" Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff [confirmed]
Criminal complaint filed for “hate speech” under Austrian law
Human Rights Activist Steve Coughlin [confirmed]
Leading Islamic Specialist at the Pentagon, who was fired by Islamic infiltrators Simon Deng
Former Slave in Sudan, leading human rights activist against jihad Lt. Colonel Allen West [confirmed]
Running for Congress, Future Leadership Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer Invited: Rifqa Bary [invited]
teenage apostate Kurt Westergaard [invited] Danish cartoonist targeted for death by axe-wielding Muslim Marriott Wardman Park Hotel 2660 Woodley Road, NW Washington, District Of Columbia 20008 10 am until Noon
The latest assassination attempt on Kurt Westergaard's life by an axe-wielding Muslim (in his home with his five year old granddaughter present) has thrown an axe a wrench into this ............ Rifqa Bary is a free American. She should be free to speak anywhere she wants. Should she not? Plan to be at CPAC this year, or at least in DC, and set aside Friday, February 19th from 10 am to noon. I need your help getting it off the ground. I will not be charging for attendance, but it costs. No one underwrites me. No one. Not a penny. All of these right wing organizations have donors, big donors, small donors .... and fund raising arms. They are, by their very nature, fund raising machines. Not Atlas. More details at Atlas. With thanks to Atlas
  For her courage in speaking out against the evils of Islamism in her new book.
 A GOD WHO HATES
The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed The Muslim World Speaks Out Against The Evils of Islam
BY: WAFA SULTAN
Reviewed by: FERN SIDMAN
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States, it became abundantly clear to the Western world that there was a new and pernicious nemesis in town.
Radical Islamic suicide bombers had jolted us out of our torpor as we confronted the stark and frightening realization that our cherished democratic values, principles, code of ethics and very lifestyle were in existential danger.
In order to eradicate the visceral feelings of resentment of Muslims that were ruminating in the psyches of Americans and other westerners; the media, along with those in academic and "politically correct" circles initiated a campaign of "re-education".
Extolling the virtues of the religion called Islam, they put forth the notion that Islam is a genuine religion of peace; a religion that places a sacred value on the sanctity of life. We were told that only a few extreme "radical Jihadists" belonging to an obscure organization called Al Qeada were responsible for tainting and maligning the purity of Islam.
Wafa Sultan, an ex-Muslim dissident from Syria, offers a wholly different take on this sophistical premise in her shocking new book, "A God Who Hates" (St. Martin's Press - 2009) as she portrays a searing portrait of Muslim culture. The subtitle of the book describes Sultan as "the courageous woman who inflamed the Muslim world" as she "speaks out against the evils of Islam."
The reader is left with no doubt that Sultan is way more than a doughty and intrepid advocate of the truth, but a woman who is willing to place her life in mortal danger in order to preserve, protect and defend Western civilization as we know it. She raises the narrative to a highly profound level as she essentially reveals that, contrary to popular opinion, it is not a few "radical Jihadists" who are guilty of distorting otherwise warm and fuzzy Islamic precepts, but rather the culprit in engendering this kind of vitriolic hatred and bloodlust is none other than the Koran itself, along with the paradigm of the prophet Muhammad and the "god" known as Allah.
She refers to Islam, as "the ogre" as she explores the psychological roots of a nomadic people who invented this religion in order to assuage their own paralyzing fears and overwhelming feelings of desperation and helplessness.
Wafa Sultan knows from whence she speaks. Having grown up in a devoutly Muslim home in Syria, she recalls her very personal stories of the barbarism of Islam and how it impacted on her and her family. Being born female in a Muslim culture that enforces a male hegemony, Sultan recalls the humiliating degradation imposed on her grandmother, mother and sisters who were virtual slaves to their husbands and their fathers.
Contempt and loathing for women as inherently inferior beings permeates the Muslim world as is evidenced in today's alarming escalation of "honor murders" in which Muslim men brazenly murder their womenfolk for alleged transgressions of Sharia law.
Women's inhumanity to other women is also discussed here as Sultan tells us of the abusive treatment of daughter-in-laws by their own mother-in-laws who punish them in the same way that they themselves were tormented as young brides. Education for girls and women in Islamic society was sorely lacking and discouraged in order to keep them locked in a permanent state of servility. Their treatment of children is also spotlighted as abusive as the Koran mandates that they mete out corporal punishment to their children who do not pray or adhere to the tenets of Islam.
Sultan herself was fortunate in a sense. She was educated as a physician in Syria and her headstrong, independent nature compelled her to extricate herself from the draconian dictates of an oppressive religion. Moreover, as a physician in Syria she takes note of the glaring inequities of medical care as it pertains to gender. Dr. Sultan viewed Muslim men as anathema but as luck would have it, she met an educated man who respected her. After their marriage they made their way to the United States where she now raises her children and practices medicine in the Los Angeles area.
Citing a gamut of Koranic verses and providing concrete historical evidence dating back to the 7th century, Sultan proves that the predicate for Islam is unadulterated fear, violence, hatred of the other, theft and murder. From the genesis of the Islamic movement, the author informs us of Arab nomadic tribes raiding one another in bloodthirsty rampages that left sheer devastation in their wake.
Describing the terror and desolation that the Arab peoples felt so acutely during centuries of desert dwelling, Sultan tells us that the fear of dying in the arid and harsh desert from hunger, thirst, illness and the always imminent attack by another tribe created an anxious and violent nation whose sole objective was daily survival at all costs. Says the author, "Arabs who lived in the environment that gave birth to Islam were powerless in the face of the challenges presented by this environment, which threatened their lives and their welfare.
Because they felt so helpless they felt a need for forcefulness and created a god who would fulfill this need. When the Arab male lost his power he felt the need for a forceful god. And so he created a forceful god in the image of his need - but this god was not powerful."
Thus, the religion of Islam instills a hatred of the infidel, "the other" and anyone who does not subscribe to the tenets of their bellicose belief system. History has recorded that scores of heinous murders of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs were perpetrated by the hands of Allah's followers. Because their god is described in the Koran as "The Harmer:, "The Avenger", "The Compeller" and "The Imperious", it is Sultan's view that the Islamic people have internalized such labels and have sought to emulate the rudimentary character of their deity.
Brutal savagery towards anyone they perceive to be a threat and even against one another is one of the modalities through which Muslims actualized these "godly" traits. She describes the prophet Muhammad as a man bereft of moral authority; a pedophile and a purveyor or violence and falsehood; He gives his tacit approval to his followers to continue on the trajectory of "holiness" by engaging in hostile acts of religious zealotry, without regard for human life.
Offering eclectic insights into Muslim culture, Sultan tells us that because Islam is so riddled with strife, negativism and banal hatred it's language readily reflects this all encompassing disposition. As such, Muslims do not speak in a calm and reasoned manner but rather are vocally strident; resorting to constant shrieking, yelling, bellowing and shouting while engaging in acrimonious, ad hominem attacks against those who they are purportedly conversing with.
And that, of course, segues into a chapter called, "Who is that woman on Al Jazeera?". As a world renowned essayist, Dr. Sultan's opinions were well known through the Arab and Muslim countries. For that reason, the Al Jazeera television network invited her to debate a domineering Islamic cleric on the topic of "the connection between Islamic teachings and terrorism." It was in this venue that Dr. Sultan, having been denied the right to express herself or given enough time to state her case by the male moderator, did so anyway in an erudite and eloquent fashion without raising the volume of her voice; in contrast to her adversary who engaged in ear popping dialogue.
Given the last few seconds of the show to conclude her thoughts, Dr. Sultan was once again interrupted by the clergyman but this time told him in no uncertain terms to "Be quiet! It's my turn!". This kind of rejoinder is considered common parlance to us Westerners who enjoy watching television debates but these few words sent shock waves throughout the Muslim world. "I uttered this sentence without realizing it would open a new chapter in Arab and Muslim history. Never in the history of Islam has a woman clearly and forcefully asked a Muslim man to be quiet because it was her turn to speak", says Dr. Sultan.
Throughout this engrossing and compelling book, Sultan generously heaps praise on her adopted country. She acknowledges her appreciation for the plethora of rights, individual freedoms and liberties that she has enjoyed in the United States for the last 21 years.
She urges America to stand strong in the face of the proliferation of global radical Islam and suggests that it confront the burgeoning threat to our civilization that "the ogre" represents in a pro-active fashion. "I love America as few people do" says Sultan, and "my love for it makes me feel concern for it. I do not want any danger to threaten the safety or beauty of this country that rescued me from my fears and fed me when I was hungry. America, to put it very briefly indeed, is my freedom." 
 To Muslims, and even to some non-Muslim apologists, Islam is the only religion that has given women their due rights, equality and dignity. It can’t be otherwise: How can then Islam, as Muslims claim, be the perfect, the best and the final religion of God? And Muslim women got due equality and rights alongside men despite the fact that (a) Muslim women have no individuality and independence for themselves as Allah has placed them under the charge of men, who may beat them or deal with as the wish, not vice versa [Quran 4:34]; (b) women are worth only half the men [Quran 2:282]; (c) women can inherit only half that of men (i.e. brothers inherit double that of sisters) [Quran 4:11,4:176]; (d) women are same as slaves and camel, according to an authentic sacred tradition of the prophet [Dawud 11:2155]; and many other such gross discriminations and injustices. While these references from Islam’s sacred texts make it clear that Muslim women, far from being equal, are an inferior being to men, the grossest of indignity that Allah has reserved for them is His allowing Muslim men only to marry up to four women at a time [Quran 4:3, 70:29-33, 4:24], meaning that a woman is worth only one quarter that of a man. And that’s not enough, Allah the barbarian par excellence even allowed men, on top of taking four wives, to keep unlimited number of sex-slaves, who can be procured, according to Allah’s sanction [Quran 33:50], by attacking non-Muslim communities and wholesale enslavement of their women. Notably, Prophet Muhammad himself, when became powerful, had captured women of the tribes of Quraiza, Khaybar, Mustaliq and Hawazin etc. after attacking those communities and slaughtering their men. While it would sounding utterly idiotic to seek to find equality between men and women or high dignity to women sanctioned in Islam, it is easy to say that Allah, the man-god, the alter-ego of Muhammad, has rewarded Muslim men richly at the expense of women. For fourteen centuries, Muslim women have suffered under the degrading status and treatment at the hands of men as per sanctions of the Islamic God. But no unjust system, whether sanctioned by a purported God or dictatorial men, can last for ever; the oppressed and wider humanity will rise up and challenge it one day. Many religions have reformed their unjust institutions and doctrines to survive in the modern civilized world, while the tyranny of Hitler or Stalin has been put to rest. Although Allah’s injustice upon women has lasted fourteen centuries, the oppressed Muslim women have started challenging the unjust status quo of Islam. As of latest, a Saudi female journalist, Nadin al-Badir, has added voice to well-known courageous critics, namely Taslima Nasrin, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish et al., against the injustices of Islam. And al-Badir’s challenge is quite unique, unheard of, coming from a Muslim woman: She has taken on the highly trumped-up Muslim claim, that only Islam gives due rights and equality to women, in an article, published in the Egyptian Al-Masri al-Yaum newspaper, by demanding that Muslim women, like men, be allowed to take multiple husbands. Well, indeed, that would reflect true equality between men and women in Islam. And why not! Muslims claim that polygamy is allowed to men only, because they only have the ability to support multiple partners financially. But today, many well-educated Muslim women are becoming confident and pursuing rewarding careers, thus, gaining ability to support multiple sex-partners through legitimate income, unlike Muhammad’s and his companion’s barbarous means of earning livelihood through decoity, raids and wars. I have been told by well-educated Muslims, to support polygamy in Islam, that only men can sexually satisfy multiple sex-partners, not women. While that’s true for certain men, it can well be true of certain women, too. There are prostitutes, predominantly women, all over the world satisfying multiple men on a daily basis.
We come across news of gang-rape all the time, more frequently in Islamic countries and communities, in which multiple men get sexual satisfaction from one single woman within a short time. We don’t here gang-rape of men by women; and one wonders how many men will be able to sustain such assaults by multiple women at a time. The said journalist, for sure, did not earnestly mean to have polyandry for Muslim women, alongside polygamy for Muslim men. Instead, it is obviously an effort to highlight the “unjustness” of Islamic institutions concerning women. What is stunning is the fact that this demand is coming from the pen of a Saudi woman, the community of Muslim women in the world, worst-affected by the cruel institutions of Islam in the most provocative manner. Seeking polyandry for women, not for men, is adultery in Islam, which is punished by stoning to death in Saudi Arabia. If she is living in Saudi Arabia, this column may well bring her death by stoning for questioning an unquestionable divine institution of Islam. This also proves that not all Muslim women, even from Saudi Arabia, are willing to suffer Islam’s gross violation of human rights and equality of women anymore lying low; they are ready, even, to embrace death in order to put an end to Islam’s lasting injustices. And, quite understandably, the article also elicited angry responses from Muslims, particularly clerics. One Egyptian Member of Parliament, according to BBC, has already filed a lawsuit against the newspaper for publishing the provocative article. Surprisingly, however, one cleric has also defended the article, saying that it aimed to highlight the sufferings of women under Islam, not than seeking to promote polyandry among them. Is window of change for Muslim women in the offing? Well it might if voices like al-Badir’s keep joining the growing club of courageous Muslim women, willing to challenge the status quo of Islam’s unjust institutions and doctrines concerning them, some even seeking to put an end to Islam, a scourge of humanity, altogether. Islam Watch 
 There is of course a great deal of talk about reforming Islam these days, and just about anyone from Tariq Ramadan to the Saudi King, to people who actually see what is wrong with Islam and want to reform it, can legitimately claim the title of the reformer of Islam. But that is because the question of what exactly "Reforming Islam" means remains open. To begin with "Reforming Islam" means one thing to Western audiences and another thing entirely to Muslims. To Westerners "Reforming Islam" means bringing it into compliance with civilized norms of conduct. To Muslims it means stripping away the corruption of later eras and returning it to the pure Islam of Mohammed. The most successful reformers of Islam within the Muslim world are not Wafa Sultan, Ali Sina or Irshad Manji... but Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab who created Wahhabism, Hassan al Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood and Osama bin Laden. And while that may seem insane or absurd from a Western perspective, after all three men inspired orgies of mass murder and horrifying brutality-- they did indubitably try to bring Islam closer to its roots. The problem is that Islam's roots are more rotten and darker than its branches. From the Islamic perspective, reforming Islam requires a purer Islam. From the Western perspective, reforming Islam actually requires a less pure Islam that is capable of implementing such foreign to it ideas as tolerance and co-existence. By contrast Muslims believe that whatever problems there are in Islam are the result of human corruption and innovations added to Islam over the centuries. A pure Islam is their final solution for ending the constant corruption in Muslim countries and creating a Caliphate run under Islamic law. The question then comes down to just what is it about Islam that needs reforming. From the Western point of view, Islam's expansiveness, aggression, violence and intolerance are what need reforming. From the Islamist point of view, they are the hallmarks of what a pure Islam should be, intolerant of any intellectual miscegenation and unwilling to accept anything less than absolute dominance in the name of Allah. There is talk that Islam needs its own Martin Luther, but that is exactly what Islam does not need. Islam already had its own Martin Luther in the 18th century and the Salafist bloodshed that was unleashed then still echoes in the suicide bombings today. Nor does that kind of religious reform usher in peace, so much as more war. And Islam certainly does not need to move any closer to its roots when Mohammed's bandits pillaged, looted and raped their way across what is modern day Saudi Arabia in pursuit of anyone who did not believe in Islam, or in the exact same form of Islam as they did. No reform of Islam that leaves in place the absolutism of Islamic law will be at all helpful to the Muslim and non-Muslim world. And it is precisely Islam's claim on temporal power by way of Sharia that is at the root of the Islamic problem. Because there is no such thing as a private Islam, only a collective Islam. The Islam of the Ummah. A Muslim alone either assimilates for a time or goes insane, both of which can be seen from the interrogator's logs of captured Al Queda terrorists. Islam is not a private faith, but a public one. Its piety is in its outward displays of obeisance to Islamic law hide private corruption that is against the law. Because of its claim to temporal power, Islam is in constant conflict with both the Muslim and the non-Muslim world. Its scholars ever present themselves as candidates for revolution, their fatwas key for legitimizing murder or tyranny. Wars, rebellions and brutal crackdowns are all routinely provided with the imprimatur of Islam, with a Fatwa or two to legitimize the notion that a ruler or a rebel or a terrorist is acting in order to impose Islamic law on whoever he happens to be killing at the moment. While devout Muslims insist that corruption in the Muslim world is produced by a lack of Islam-- in fact it is produced by a surplus of Islam. Islamic law, reformed or otherwise, is not the solution to their problems, and polishing the codex down to the naked edge of a blade that Mohammed would supposedly approve of, and then slitting the throats of everyone who disagrees will solve nothing. Religious law is not the solution to human corruption, political transparency and democracy will always work much better than a dozen Imams poring over the Hadiths at checking corruption. More Muslims were murdered in the name of reforming Islam, than were ever killed by American or Israeli warplanes. And each attempt at reforming Islam only perpetuates that mad cycle. As the Saudi promoters of Wahhabism and the Islamist terrorists of Hamas have been declared inadequately pure in turn by Al Queda, so too Al Queda and the Taliban can and will be judged impure by other Muslim reformers still believing that the key to paradise is a bomb belt and a truly pure Islam.To truly reform Islam... Muslim clerics must do the impossible. They must give up power in the name of true purity. As long as Islam is tied to temporal power, it will remain innately corrupt, as will any institution that attempts to exercise power. When Mosque becomes detached from State, then Islam will cease to become a political tool and can actually be purified. But it is precisely because Islam is a useful political tool for claiming temporal power, back to its roots in the desert when Mohammed built an empire by claiming to have received prophecies from an angel, that it can never be reformed and remains intermingled with violence. Only if Muslims were forced to choose between participation in the civilized world and Sharia, could Islam ever truly be reformed.
 But is anyone listening? Pamela Geller reviews Wafa Sultan's superb and essential new book for FrontPage: Wafa Sultan's seminal moment was when she took on an Islamic cleric on Al-Jazeera. The clip went viral on Youtube, and it really was a defining moment in the clash of civilizations. Here was a woman, basically considered "property" in the Muslim world and expected to do what she was told, turning around after she had been interrupted numerous times, and saying in effect, "Quiet, it's my turn." Now comes her new book, A God Who Hates, which will undoubtedly prove to be a key resource in the resistance to jihad and Islamization. In it, the brilliant psychiatrist from Syria, now an American citizen, tells her own story. It is the story of a Muslim woman who grew up in a country where she was indoctrinated in Islamic ideology. So her perspective is very important in terms of establishing the credibility of scholars like Robert Spencer and Dr. Andrew Bostom. But what makes this book great, apart from its breathtaking honesty and truth and the clarity and urgency of its warning, is that it is also a beautiful love letter to America. Wafa speaks powerfully about what America means to her. It manifests itself in little things. She leaves her house at 5 am and makes her way to Starbucks to have her coffee without fearing that someone might see her and accuse her of immoral behavior. To her, America means saying "good morning" to her neighbor and chatting with him for a few moments without being accused of having spent the night with him. America, for this courageous woman, means that her daughter can come home and tell her that she had lunch with her boyfriend without being beaten or accused of having impugned the family honor. It is clear throughout A God Who Hates that Wafa Sultan was always a very independent thinker, even though there were times in her life when she did not immediately allow herself to go to the next step to which her thinking was leading her. She writes lovingly about her husband, who was very supportive of her. He was an open-minded thinker -- initially more so than was Wafa herself.
But she recounts in the book certain momentous events that jarred her thinking, such as in 1979 when Muslims screaming "Allahu akbar" murdered one of her professors, the ophthalmology lecturer Dr. Yusef Al-Yusef, whom she respected and admired. Wafa witnessed the murder - and at that exact moment started to question the nature of the Islamic faith. "But I was afraid," she explained when I interviewed her recently, "to express my feelings. I was afraid to express my thoughts, because under Islamic sharia, a Muslim who dares to leave Islam or dares to convert to any other religion is to be killed. And every Muslim has the right to kill someone who has left Islam without being asked a question.
This is the Islamic law. Once you were born as a Muslim, you're not allowed to leave it. This is simply the Islamic law, and it seems to me it's very hard to convince Americans that this is the way it is." The recent Rifqa Bary apostasy case shows how right Wafa is about that, and how urgent her message is. Rifqa Bary is the teenage girl, a Muslim in Ohio, who left Islam four years ago and converted to Christianity. When her father found out about her conversion, she fled from her home in fear for her life. She said she ran away to Florida because she wanted to get as far away as she could -- because not only her family but the mosque and the community in Ohio is very devout, and as an apostate she is in danger. But now she has been returned to Ohio, in large part because American authorities don't know anything about Islamic apostasy law.... Read it all. Thanks to JihadWatch
 With the release of Wafa Sultan's book, A God Who Hates, the various Saudi front organizations have sprung into action doing their best to smear her reputation.It is of course completely unsurprising that the agents of a kingdom that despises women and treats them like cattle would be furious at criticism of Islam coming from... a woman.Ever since Wafa Sultan first came to the public's attention by defiantly challenging a male cleric and demanding her right to speak, she has been the target of repeated death threats and slander. So it is also completely unsurprising that those same Saudi front groups would then use transparent lies and smears to attack her now. But their smear campaign reveals more about them than it does about Wafa Sultan. First up is the claim that Wafa Sultan lied about ever being a Muslim, because she was an Alawi Muslim. This is a bizarre claim that only fanatical Sunni Wahhabi groups could make with a straight face. To argue that Sultan did not grow up as a Muslim because she grew up as an Alawi Muslim, is akin to a Catholic arguing that a Protestant is not a Christian and vice versa. The other half of this claim is the argument that since she does not currently believe in Islam and the Koran, she is somehow unqualified to talk about what is wrong with Islam. A position that would disqualify every Scientology critic on the planet and every dissident who escapes from an oppressive regime. Wafa Sultan's qualifications to talk about what is wrong with Islam come from growing and living as a Muslim under Islam. As well as her study of what is wrong with Islam from a cultural, religious and psychological standpoint. A corollary to this is the claim that Syria was secular and therefore Wafa Sultan did not grow up living in an Islamic society. While Syria under Assad was more secular than say Saudi Arabia, it was still a Muslim country, in the same way that the similarly Baathist Iraq was Muslim. Aside from small minorities, virtually every Syrian is Muslim and mosque attendance is normative. The state funds mosques and Islamic education is part of the regular curriculum. Islamic norms are thoroughly integrated within the national culture. For a snapshot of that, here's an excerpt from an academic paper on Syria's educational system Islamic education in Syrian schools is traditional, rigid, and Sunni. The Ministry of Education makes no attempt to inculcate notions of tolerance or respect for religious traditions other than Sunni Islam. Christianity is the one exception to this rule. Indeed, all religious groups other than Christians are seen to be enemies of Islam, who must be converted or fought against. The Syrian government teaches school children that over half of the world’s six billion inhabitants will go to hell and must be actively fought by Muslims...
The government is to be an Islamic State without separation of church and state. The student is constantly reminded that the Islamic state is a divine order whose wisdom, justice, and laws are imposed by God. The chapter of the twelfth grade text entitled, “The System of Government in Islam,” concludes with the following sentences:
There's your "secular" Syria right there. That's the "secular" Syria that Wafa Sultan grew up in.
Secondly, there's the claim that Wafa Sultan is a "turncoat" who has deliberately sought fame in order to get rich. As In Focus, a CAIR front magazine writes;
"As for the Sultans’ financial troubles, Halabi told InFocus that ever since Dr. Sultan gained notoriety those troubles are a thing of the past. "She bought a house for herself and bought another for her son," ... When asked about the source of her material well-being, Halabi was unsure.
As to the reasons that may have pushed Sultan to be so outspoken and vocal against Islam in a post-9/11 world, Halabi sympathetically remarked, "Poverty. It drives people to sell their soul."
The "mysterious source" of their material well-being is that Wafa Sultan was able to become a practicing doctor in the United States. Doctors in the United States tend to have not particularly mysterious sources of material well-being. And whatever money she has made from her speaking fees is hardly anything compared to the security costs of regularly dealing with death threats from Muslim.
Thirdly, let's discuss the In Focus magazine hit piece, Wafa Sultan Reformist or opportunist? that is the source of many of the smears aimed at Wafa Sultan.
 Today I attended a Q&A Wafa Sultan as part of a book signing for her new book, and I noticed that the common theme of virtually every question that was asked by the attendees could be summed up as, "What can we do to stop Islam?"
There is of course no simple answer. Communism, the closest parallel to the current threat we face, attacked us at a military, political and cultural level.
Islam attacks us at a military, political, cultural and religious level-- making it a four part threat. And while the Soviet Union did finally collapse, looking at the state of freedom in America and Europe today, at a political environment that has dispensed with democracy in favor of judicial activism and class warfare politics that owe a good deal to the dictatorship of the proletariat-- the question of whether we defeated Communism, or Communism defeated us, remains open.
The Soviet Union proved unable to defeat us militarily, despite dedicating the bulk of its industrial capacity to building weapons, and successfully allying with much of the Third World to create an anti-Western world order in the U.N.
But culturally and politically, Communism did a great deal of damage in the West. More so than most people understand. The American and European of the year 2009 lives in a system whose political premises resemble those of the USSR more than they do his own country of 1909.
And this goes to show us that Communism accomplished far more through subversion and infiltration than nationalism and armed conquest. And the best proof of that is Eastern Europe, which was today is more honestly capitalistic than Western Europe which spent the last half century free of the Soviet boot.
Had Trotsky's way prevailed over that of his less visionary contemporaries, Communism might have triumphed as an international revolutionary movement, rather than failing as a Second World poorly industrialized armed camp.
And that is a scaled down version of the threat that we face with Islam today, backed by oil money from otherwise backward countries, polished by the disingenuous lies of a merchant culture and driven by a fanaticism that even few Communists could aspire to. And we have no better answers to the problem of what to do about a movement that subverts our society from within, than we did back then.
In her talk Wafa Sultan emphasized the importance of being informed about the real nature of Islam. And certainly the first stage of defense against cultural, political and religious threats-- which circulate by way of ideas, is to be informed.
But information itself is very much a subjective thing. It is possible to tell someone that Islam is currently involved in conflicts all over the world, that it is responsible for millions of deaths through acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
You can list all the objective facts about Islam, without in the least shaking his belief that Islam is all right based on episodes he's seen of Little Mosque on the Prairie or because Mohammed, the deli guy in the store under his office, is always friendly when he comes in for a sandwich.
For rational people the objective facts of the case may suffice, for most people they will not. We live in an age where objective reasoning has been destroyed in the First World through a process of careful cultural obliteration.
To tell someone that a million are dead in Darfur is to give him a meaningless statistic that is "awful", but not relatable. By contrast, to chronicle the story of a single orphan does far more than listing the millions dead and raped.
h/t gramfan
The great and heroic ex-Muslim freedom fighter Wafa Sultan, author of the essential book A God Who Hates, spoke in New York this morning. Pamela was there and has video -- parts 2, 3, and 4 are linked here. Watch it all! With thanks to JihadWatch
 Not long ago Robert Spencer and another speaker were attempting to elucidate, for an audience in New York, the ideology of Islam, that ideology that explains, without much trouble, the behavior of many Muslims, and the real attitudes of many more. Someone in the audience caused a stir, and while the security guards ran to deal with it, from an unsecured side door out rushed two people bearing pies that they flung at Spencer (who successfully dodged the pie meant for him) and his associate, Mr. Elan Journo, who was not quite so quick, and was hit. These were pies, and pie-throwing may make us think of the late Soupy Sales, and campus shenanigans that are supposed to be hilarious but somehow never are. But in this case, the pie-throwing was no joke, because what the speakers were speaking about was Islam, and in many countries many death threats have been delivered, and some of those death threats acted upon, in many different places.
A Japanese translator of Salman Rushdie was stabbed to death; a Norwegian translator was attacked but survived. Political figures, such as Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, have been killed.
Cultural gadflies, who dared to deal with Islam as they dealt with Christianity or Judaism or the monarchy or anything else, such as Theo van Gogh, were killed.
Wafa Sultan must live in hiding. Geert Wilders, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Magdi Allam, in Europe, must all travel with a constant escort of armed guards, and Wilders, at least, must frequently move from house to army base to house. Read more here,, With thanks to JihadWatch
 They were just five words, but they swept through the Muslim world like a brush fire nearly four years ago, launching a scorching backlash that endures to this day. “Be quiet. It’s my turn,” the Syrian-born American, Wafa Sultan, said in February 2006 to a Muslim cleric she was debating on Al Jazeera. A woman interrupting a man? In public? In Islamic societies, particular in the Arab world, a Muslim woman could be killed for such behavior, for it challenges the very nature of relations between the sexes. Nor can such a woman, even a highly educated psychiatrist like Sultan, live in safety just by escaping the Middle East. Today, facing death threats, Sultan lives in hiding in the United States. The drive behind Sultan’s outburst, and the years-long anger that fueled it, is chronicled in her controversial new book, A God Who Hates.
In it, she tells her life story of professional success but personal humiliation in an Islamic society, and she describes Islam as an inherently destructive ideology, that keeps its adherents in backwardness and its women and children in slave-like conditions. Her book is not only riveting but important, for it forces attention on an issue of great debate – what is the essential nature of Islam, and how should the West respond to terrorism and the ideologies that drive it? On one side are those who believe that Islam is a moderate, mainstream religion, little different from Judaism and Christianity, one that can live in peace with, and thrive within, modern Western society. Key adherents of this view include Irshad Manji, who lives as an openly gay and feminist Muslim in Canada, lectures and writes widely, runs the Moral Courage Project at New York University and is author of the provocative book, What’s Wrong with Islam Today; M. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician who earned his medical degree on a Navy scholarship and is founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; and Zainab Al-Suwaij, a women’s rights advocate who is co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress. On the other side are those who believe that Islam is inherently aggressive and anti-Western, that it demands anti-Jewish and anti-Christian violence and that it’s not really a religion at all but a political ideology. Along with Sultan, leading subscribers to this view include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali native who fled to the West, served in the Dutch Parliament, now serves as a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, requires round-the-clock protection, and is the author of two heartrending books about her life, The Caged Virgin and Infidel; and Brigitte Gabriel, the Lebanese-American journalist, founder and president of the American Congress for Truth and author of two books that urge the West to confront Islam, Why They Hate and They Must be Stopped. This unresolved debate over Islam shapes the disjointed response of Western governments to attacks on their people and property that seem motivated by religion. Some officials blame Islam, some blame a radical perversion of an otherwise peaceful religion and some studiously avoid any notion that Islam has connections to violence, pointing instead to social pathologies or the personal demons of the perpetrators. It’s a debate that has played out this year over, for instance, the Fort Hood massacre, allegedly perpetrated by a Muslim Army psychiatrist who praised suicide bombings and ranted about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the ongoing saga of Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old Ohio daughter of Muslim immigrants who converted to Christianity and fled her family out of fear that they would have her killed for abandoning Islam; and the recent beheading in Buffalo of a Muslim woman allegedly by her husband, a prominent local Muslim leader from whom she had filed for divorce. This debate over Islam is tough and explosive, and I admit to uncertainty about which way to lean. The Koranic verses, the “hadiths” (sayings) of the Prophet Mohammad, and the “fatwas” (opinions) of Islamic scholars that Sultan and others cite in tying Islam to violence are compelling. So, too, are the Islam-based justifications for death and destruction by terrorists around the world. But, equally compelling are the examples that Manji, Jasser and Al-Suwaij have set in reconciling Islam with modernity, peace and human rights and in confronting the perpetrators of violence in the name of Islam. It is a debate in which the West must engage more openly, however uncomfortable that might be. To put it bluntly, only if we know what we’re facing will we be able to confront it effectively. North Star National
By Gramfan According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Feminism is defined thus: Date: 1895 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests Who can ever forget the iconic cover of "The Female Eunuch", by Germaine Greer? It was everywhere when it was first published in 1970. It was virtually the next best thing that had happened to women since Emmeline Pankhurst and her Suffragettes worked to get women the vote. So we were told. And certainly you cannot deny the benefits and progress that have come from these two women, and the many others who have taken over the baton and changed the lives of millions. Many of today's other famous feminists are living very comfortably on self-earned wealth: fine with me, it's well-deserved. They have turned their politics and activism into income sources by working in journalism and other media. People listen to them. They have power, enormous power. Camille Paglia is but one of many whose opinions are highly respected, and it is easy to see why. Germaine Greer is still going on strongly about all kinds of issues. Gloria Steinem is another member of this esteemed crowd and there are also very many not-so-famous feminists. These feminists are in almost all professions from politics to pianists, parents and yes, prostitutes - the oldest "profession" of them all! Then of course there are the other women in the world who don't occupy this rarified space but who have decided, and yes, it is a decison now, to become home-makers and mothers. Some of them decide to resume successful careers and some chose not to. But I wonder if we all really received so many benefits from all these feminists? Some of us didn't. With all that is good and liberating in human progress there are often side effects and "unintended consequences". Sadly there are goals that have not, and will not be achieved. Certainly many of us get equal work for equal pay nowadays but not all of us. Then there are those who chose to be wives and mothers, who are often scorned, or looked down upon, for their choices. They had jobs, but feminists weren't satisfied; every other woman had to get one too. So they opened fire on homemakers with a savagery that still echoes throughout our culture. A housewife is a "parasite," [Betty] Frieden writes; such women are "less than fully human" insofar as they "have never known a commitment to an idea." And.... Housewives, not men, were the prey in feminism's sights when Kate Millett decreed in 1969 that the family must go. Feminists do not speak for traditional women. Men cannot know this, however, unless we tell them how we feel about them, our children, and our role in the home. Men must understand that our feelings towards them and our children are derided by feminists and have earned us their enmity. Whether or not this understanding garners men's support, traditional women must defend ourselves because the feminist offensive is, most essentially, a breach of solidarity with us, a disavowel of the obligation to honor the Women's Pact [that religious celibates, professional women, and homemakers respect each other] that women in the movement owed to us (Source). Oh yes, this site has more. Feminism today goes on and on, intellectualising and re-defining feminism to the extent where it is almost too difficult to follow, let alone comprehend. Quite frankly I am more interested in the practical day-to-day realities. I take the two definitions at face value and I note it doesn't specify any nationality,political allegiance or religion. 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests It is true a lot of this has happened in the West but rather than have Greer et al espouse "intellectual yada yada" I would rather see these women get militant again and do something to help their long-suffering sisters who live in Islamic countries, and who can but only dream of the lifestyle many of their famous feminist sisters enjoy. All too often I see stories of honour killings, rape, female genital mutilation, subservience, domestic (and other) violence, forced marriage and utter discrimination perpetrated against women in Muslim countries and now also in the West. Some women are getting hymenoplasties and buying repair kits before they marry. Some are being recruited as homicide bombers. One is punished for drinking beer, others face lashings or stonings. An Australian Islamist tries to justify polygamy for everyone. There are women who suffer terribly from acid attacks quite frequently. Women in Gaza are not allowed to ride motorcycles, and Somali women are being scrutinised when wearing a bra! Where's Germaine when you need her, or would this make her happy I wonder? And recently we have the on-going case of Rifka Bary who, as a minor, cannot chose her religion, and could become a victim of honorcide for apostasy. If she is sent back to her parents her fate is unknown. If she is allowed to remain alive the Islamists can deny honorcide even exists. This is happening in the USA now. Yet in spite of these incidents feminists like Naomi Wolfe manage to defend discrimination towards women in Islam and it then takes a compassionate feminist, Phyllis Chesler, who has actually lived in a Muslim country, to sort it out for her! I know many feminists, and women in general, can be fearless fighters. Code Pink, for example, have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan. True, they are an anti-war movement, but perhaps, just perhaps, they could have drawn some attention to the women who live and suffer in the war zones they are so adamantly against. They could have easily added one more mission statement to what is on their website which mentions "social justice". Indeed, any other anti-war group could easily have done the same. I know they do not define themselves as feminists per se, but why not do more? Could they not have met with Malalai Joya and offered some help? Indeed, could not some of our famous feminists, female politicians and celebrities who spend so much time choking on their own venom over Sarah Palin have done the same? Are they afraid? Or are they simply not interested in the women's issues of today because they think it is another culture and therefore they shouldn't interfere. They know it isn't right but they can turn a blind eye to it, even as it happens under their noses, in their own countries. It's a cop-out. The improvement of the condition of women in Islam is, to me, a far loftier goal than getting to wear trousers, getting equal pay, getting an abortion on demand, and having a man treat a woman more like a man! This was definitely an "unintended consequence" for me: trivial as it may seem. I am much heartened by the fact that progress is being made, albeit in small steps. Kuwati women in parliament refuse to wear the veil. An Egyptian Cleric wants to ban burquas and other facial coverings. Honor killing or Honorcide is getting more attention. Lubna Hussein got a lot of media attention over her sentence for wearing trousers. Najwa Bin Laden and her son, Omar, wrote a book about their husband and father, Osama, and seem to be fearless about it. They have provided a fascinating insight into this man. I think the real "feminist"heroines now are the ones who have literally put their lives on the line, not only for women in Islam but for the world in general. Their goals and committment are what is truly deserving of our respect and support. I am referring to women like Dr Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Supna Zaidi, Irshad Manji and women like them. There is another one who would have possibly made it to this list: Neda Soltan. Tragically she cannot, but in spirit she can inspire so much. I feel she deserves a mention among these brave, dedicated and fascinating women. This is my challenge to todays feminists. Use your power again. I am "just a Mom". I do not have your platform and power. This is indeed a most worthy cause to support and fight for. ("Gramfan" has been 'blogging since 2002. She is "just a Mom" of two grown-up sons, and helps her husband of 38 years. She has occasionally written pieces for other 'blogs, and posts comments. She now writes exclusively for Muslims Against Sharia).
 by Andrew Bostom On Tuesday, October 13, 2009, an ominous interim decision was reached in the case of 17 year- old Sri Lankan native, and Christian “apostate” from Islam, Rifqa Bary. Rifqa fled her Ohio community—notably, the radicalized mosque she was compelled to attend, which revealed and condemned her apostasy.
She sought refuge in Orlando, Florida, when Muhammad Bary, Rifqa’s father threatened to murder the young Muslim woman apostate—the consensus draconian punishment for “unrepentant” apostasy from Islam sanctioned by all major schools of Islamic jurisprudence, Sunni and Shiite alike, to this day.
(For irrefragable examples, see these contemporary Sunni rulings by Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt, the Mufti of Lebanon, and IslamonLine [here; here], website of the mainstream, immensely popular Muslim Brotherhood cleric, and Al Jazeera personality Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as well as this Shiite legal opinion published in Kayhan International, an official organ of the Islamic Republic of Iran). Pending determination of her parent’s immigration status—extant public access documentary evidence revealed by investigative journalist par excellence Pamela Geller indicates they are illegal aliens—Florida judge Daniel Dawson has ordered that Rifqa Bary be returned to Ohio under the jurisdiction of an Ohio court. It is a bitter irony that Tuesday, October 13, 2009 also marked the US release of Syrian-born psychiatrist Wafa Sultan’s book “A God Who Hates”—the vigorously argued jeremiad written by our era’s most courageous and insightful secular Muslim woman. Sultan is currently forced to lead a clandestine existence here in America, due to the repeated, ongoing death threats she receives for her own “apostasy,” including those “inspired” by a Yusuf al-Qaradawi appearance on Al-Jazeera television when he proclaimed, “…this woman had the audacity to affront all that is sacred—the entire Islamic nation, its past, its present, and its future. She had the audacity to affront the Prophet, the Koran, and Allah. She even said that Allah prattles in the Koran. She did not omit anything sacred.” More than two decades before Wafa Sultan’s Al-Jazeera television debate with a Muslim cleric ignited an international firestorm, she traced her own transformative “intellectual shock” to reading two books by Saudi writer and freethinker Abdullah al-Qasimi, who fled his native country after being (predictably) condemned to death for “apostasy/blasphemy.” Regarding al-Qasimi’s criticism of Islam, Wafa Sultan observes that he, …attacked Islam…in such a way as to make the closed mind stop and really think. He was an original and creative writer with an excellent command of Arabic. His style was enjoyable to read and easy to understand, and it led his readers almost imperceptibly to the point where they could not help but agree with him, at least privately. The fact that he was from Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam, gave him another kind of authenticity. Read more, and source,,,Andrew Bostom H/T: Atlas
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Dr. Wafa Sultan, the controversial critic of radical Islam that Time Magazine called one of the most influential women of 2006, took the Landmark Forum and mentioned it in a 2006 article in The Kurdistan Times, in which she credits the Landmark Forum for helping her remove past fears. The article describes some of her personal experiences, and is reprinted in an English translation at length below. 
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