March 4, 2006
Clash of Whats?
By David
Warren
Sometimes
I am brought up short by the clarity and courage with which someone
else -- with more to lose than I have -- states a truth. I am
a Catholic Christian, who often dismisses “secular humanists”.
But I’m in awe of people like Canada’s Irshad Manji,
the “Muslim refusenik”, who had the courage in her
book The Trouble with Islam to directly confront the
horrors done in Allah’s name -- in, as she put it, “Pick
a country, any Muslim country.”
Another is
Wafa Sultan, an Arab woman practising psychology, now living in
the States. A self-professed “disbeliever in the supernatural”,
she has posted essays on the Internet in Arabic, including research
into the fate of women under various Islamic regimes. She has
willingly and ably confronted Muslim fanatics on Arab TV, most
recently on Feb. 21st, when she debated Dr Ibrahim Al-Khouli on
Al-Jazeera. A transcript and video clips with English
subtitles were made available this week by the Middle East Media
Research Institute (“Memri”) -- an indispensable institution,
based in Israel, that distributes hard information and accurate
translations of documents from the Arab world. (It is useless
to condemn it as “Zionist” -- everything Memri publishes
is sourced and checkable.)
With great
bravery, Dr Sultan confronts the “tu quoque” (“you
too”) arguments of the apologists for Islamic terror --
refusing to let them change the subject from what they have done,
said, and approved, to misty rhetoric against Zionists, Yankees,
Imperialists, Crusaders. Boldly on Al-Jazeera, last week,
she said what our Western politicians, media flaks, and academic
celebrities won’t say, from cowardice in its many forms.
Excerpt:
“The
clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions,
or a clash of civilizations. ... 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 the other. 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.”
The sparkling
TV host interrupts to ask if Dr Sultan insinuates the clash is,
“between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and
ignorance of the Muslims”. Dr Sultan replies, “Yes,
that is what I mean.”
The host
reminds her that this phrase, “clash of civilizations”,
came from Samuel Huntington, not Osama bin Laden. Dr Sultan reminds
him that Islamic books and curricula, going back to the Koran,
are full of calls for “fighting the infidels”.
When her
opponent, Dr Khouli, claims he never offends people, Dr Sultan
reminds that among other things he calls Westerners “al-Dhimma”
(i.e. the Muslims’ natural slaves), that he routinely compares
them to apes and pigs, that he calls Christians “those who
incur Allah's wrath”, and so forth.
He asks if
she is a heretic. Dr Sultan says, he can call her what he likes.
He continues, “If you are a heretic, there is no point in
rebuking you, since you have blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet,
and the Koran!” She replies, “These are personal matters
that do not concern you. ... Brother, you can believe in stones,
as long as you don't throw them at me.”
And after
the usual banter about Zionism, she notes that since the Holocaust,
the Jews have made the world respect them by their work and knowledge,
not their crying and yelling. “We have not seen a single
Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a
single Jew destroy a church.” Likewise, though professing
Muslims turned ancient Buddha statues into rubble, “We have
not seen a single Buddhist burn down a mosque, kill a Muslim,
or torch an embassy.”
Since the
9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, many thousand other barbaric
acts have been reported, around the world, each one performed
explicitly in the name of Allah. This is fact, not prejudice,
and our refusal to make Islam an issue plays directly into the
fanatics’ hands.
It is not
our business to “define Islam”, as so many Muslims
aver. It is the Muslims’ duty to define it, in such a way
that we will not mistake it for a sword held to our own throats.
For when it is presented as a sword, it becomes our business.
Copyright
2006 Ottawa Citizen
