Islamic Terror strikes Wafa Sultan

Wafa Sultan, a brave woman, who very sincerely tries to speak what she sees as the truth about Islam, has had to go into hiding. A woman who has become famous for her accounts of life under Islam, of the terror she felt growing up in Syria, and of the freedom she has come to love in the United States, has had to return again to the night of terror.

According to Brigitte Gabriel's website ACT For America!

We posted on courageous Dr. Wafa Sultan's second al-Jazeera interview that included a debate with Egyptian Islamist, Tal'at Rheim on the republication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Subsequent to the March 4th Al-Jazeera interview, Egyptian Islamist Sheik al-Qaradawi issued a Fatwa against her. Sultan and her family have gone into hiding.

Our ally , Bob Spencer of Jihad Watch has called Sultan " a national and international treasure". Having met Dr. Sultan, we agree.

Yesterday, we received email s from Joyce and Persia expressing concerns about the lack of 24/7 personal security protection for Dr. Sultan. Note that in Holland, Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders received 24/7 security from his government with the release of his important film, "Fitna". Her safety is the equivalent of what the British government did for author Salman Rushdie when the Ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran issued a Fatwa calling for his death with the publication of his book, 'The Satanic Verses". Our government should consider doing the same for Dr. Sultan, an American citizen who is the subject of a death threat from an Islamist Cleric, Sheik al-Qarawadi.

She asked us to help her by submitting a letter to the Embassy of Qatar. Qatar hosts the 24/7 Arab language satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera....

If this is what can happen to citizens of free countries for speaking their minds, we need to start doing more than asking our governments to protect our citizens from Fatwas. The US should proclaim a policy of seeking the death, by any means, of anyone who proclaims a fatwa against its citizens, when the reasonable expectation is that the fatwa is a call for someone to kill the condemned.

We have a moral obligation to seek to maximize reciprocity in human affairs, and when we are faced with people who simply refuse the minimum of human reciprocity to others, simply for what they say (as if some cleric's words are of a fundamentally different order than Wafa's, or your's) then we have to begin again by pursuing the most minimal forms of reciprocity which entail insuring that those who turn to violence can expect the same in return. When people are deep in the resentful delusions of their supremacist ideologies, it may be that the only way to remind them of their primary human obligation (an obligation that comes from the origins of human culture, from a time long before any religion on earth today) to engage in reciprocal exchange with others, is with a violent tit for tat.

It's not pretty to have to say it, but sometimes tit for tat is the only realistic form of justice, and the only possible teaching method. And we must have the courage not to go silent in face of the threats received by those who speak their minds.

We have posted these videos before. Have another look at the wonderful Wafa Sultan as she insists that Islamists like Qaradawi learn the most basic lessons of reciprocity that they have forgotten thanks to their hateful ideology. But as you can see in the video, there are (surely not atypical) Islamic leaders and journalists who cannot accept a woman as their equal. While Wafa gets the best of them verbally, they turn to condescending hate. That is the world in which hundreds of millions of women live in violent (physically and psychologically) oppression. (And we have just returned from debating comfortable, middle-class Canadians who would somehow blame, at the most fundamental level, such oppression on American imperialism and America's support for certain oil rich Islamic regimes: no doubt Wafa Sultan would have some choice words to send to those with such delusions that the limit to reciprocity in the Arab world is somehow caused by the freest nation on earth.

Interesting Stories at Ironic Surrealism II: Thought crimes everywhere!

Gay Art: Jesus & Muhammad:

An Islamic group based in the UK has issued a death fatwa against a playwright whose London stage production depicts Jesus Christ as a homosexual.

Terrence McNally was sentenced to death by the Shari’ah Court of the UK as his play, Corpus Christi, opened in London on Thursday night.

…The religious edict was signed by Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, judge of the Shari’ah Court of the UK.

…The sheik added: “We do not believe in political assassination, but obviously he would face capital punishment.

“He will be arrested and there will be capital punishment.”

He said that under Islamic law, Mr McNally could only escape the fatwa by becoming a Muslim. If he simply repented he would still be killed - but his family would be cared for by the Islamic state.

And:

Woman artist gets death threats over gay Muslim photos

THE Dutch were debating the limits of freedom of expression last week after an artist who photographed gay men wearing masks of the prophet Muhammad was forced into hiding and her work removed from a museum exhibit.

Speaking on the telephone from an unspecified location in the Netherlands last week, the artist, an Iranian exile who goes by the pseudonym of Sooreh Hera, said she had been threatened with “execution”. She accused the director of the municipal museum in The Hague of cowardice for caving in to Muslim extremists.

Her story is a reminder of the tensions that have put the Netherlands and other European countries on the front line, sending dozens of people threatened by extremists into hiding since 2004, when a Dutch film-maker was murdered on the street and his collaborator driven into exile.

This leaves Hera, 34, in no doubt that she is in real danger. “They said to me, ‘We’re going to burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth’,” she said, referring to menacing e-mails.

“They say, ‘Now you are locked in your home and you cannot go out any more’.”

She said that by photographing gay Iranian exiles in masks of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Ali, his son-in-law, she had wanted to expose a “hypocritical” attitude towards homosexuality in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct.

…Wim van Krimpen, director of the museum, initially praised Hera’s collection of photographs as “exceptional”. Last month, however, he announced that the masked men could not be included in the forthcoming exhibition because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive”.

Islamism fears kill Dutch display

“They condemn homosexuality but in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia it is common for married men to maintain relations with other men,” says Hera. “Works of art can be provocative. It is not an artist’s job just to paint flowers. Art should shine a light on social issues.”

The photographs were part of an extensive collection of images by Hera of mostly Dutch gay men. Another part of her exhibit was a video featuring hard rock music and images of Iranian clerics interspersed with pictures of naked men.

Ironic Surrealism II also carries this story:

New Mexico, January 30, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The case of a Christian photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex “commitment ceremony”, was heard before the New Mexico Human Rights Division on Monday.

A same-sex couple asked Elaine Huguenin, co-owner with her husband of Elane Photography, to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that the two women wanted to hold. Huguenin declined because her Christian beliefs are in conflict with the message communicated by the ceremony.

The same-sex couple filed a complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Division, which is now trying Elane Photography under state anti discrimination laws for sexual orientation discrimination.

Isn't it time we grew up and stopped trying to legislate thought crimes?

Powered by ScribeFire.