Speak the Truth, And Die?

Dr. Wafa Sultan, who hit the blogosphere after her Al-Jazeera interview in late February, has been receiving a lot of phone calls and e-mails of late. Unfortunately, they have been death threats.

In Saturday's NY Times, in the "Saturday Profile" she lets readers know that the price she's paying for speaking out could be the ultimate one.

Lone Pony first introduced me to this woman, with a partial transcript of her February 21st interview. The Memri video she referenced in her post has been downloaded a million times. There must a lot of folks who want to hear a moderate voice speaking on Islam, or the wrong element is downloading it.

What got Al-Jazeera, and others attention was an essay last July on an Islamic reform website, when she questioned Islam. She now disavows the religion, instead preferring to call herself a "secular human". The quote, that caught Al-Jazeera's eye was:

"Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."

After reading the essay, they asked her to do the February interview, and debate with a muslim cleric. In that broadcast she made a couple of statements that haven't gone over well.

The first from her February interview that angered many in the muslim community:

"The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "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."

She concluded, "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."

Many people who have been attacked by Islamic radicals have made the same point, but she speaks from a much better position on the topic than most of us; She watched, in class, at medical school as her professor was gunned down by fundamentalists trying to disrupt the government.

But what really got the ire of the clerics up was her comparison of the world of Islam and the rest of the world.

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations," Dr. Sultan said. "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."

The Egyptian cleric she was debating on Al-Jazeera immediately said she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran. She took that as a fatwa, and apparently so have many others, since that's when the death threats started rolling in.

What is happening with her; and anyone who questions certain elements of the Islamic religion; is no different that what happened during the Inquisition in Spain. For 22 years anyone who questioned the Church was immediately branded a heretic, and paid the price for it.

To end this current inquisition though, will require more than just a few people. The governments, even in "Islamic states", and moderates in the religion have to rise up with a loud voice, and disavow those who make these threats in the name of their religion.

Countries like Jordan, Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain and Oman show that Islam can exist in society without killing all who aren't lockstep with the fringe. However, until other governments, specifically Saudi Arabia and Iran step up to the plate and force the issue it will be hard to see change.

Hopefully moderates in Islam will take a look at what she said, and realize there is a lot of truth in it. When they start a (loud) discussion of how to advance Islam as a religion, and repair it's image, maybe some folks will listen. Al-Jazeera, which Dr. Sultan on the air in February needs to find more moderate voices to feature also. As the largest broadcaster in the Arab world, they can help lead the way.

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