Sunday, 12 March 2006 - 6:56 AM CST

Luther's call for reform was made from within the Catholic church. He was a monk. This woman does not claim to be a Muslim, however, so the comparison to Luther is not apt. She declares herself neither Christian, Muslim, or Jew. That Dr. Sultan has been "nursing a deep anger" about Muslims is pretty clear, though, judging from her misrepresentations of Quranic phrases.

She tars all Muslims with a very broad brush. This may be partly due to the way she uses the definite article, which is more Arabic than English. For example, she says, "The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble." She is referring, of course, to the Taliban; not to Muslims in general. But that's the way it comes out. She makes no distinction I've heard between moderates and radicals. It's "the Muslims."

Her comparisons with Jews are quite ridiculous. True, no Jews have blown themselves up in German restaurants. The Allies blew up the German restaurants for them and helped them to set up a country just for Jews on someone else's land after the war. They are now an occupying power whose own restaurants are being blown up by the same oppressed indigenes.

I'm with her on the appeals to eschew violence. But her angry attacks on Islam are wildly broad and so are being used by the Arab-haters and Islamophobic bigots. I'm sure it is comforting to hear such outlandish statements from the mouth of an Arab woman. She's entitled to her opinions, of course. But her criticisms are definitely not a call for reform by a Muslim woman speaking within Islam.

We are probably going to find out that she is an Auntie Felafel who has been a Republican activist for years and has been goaded into making statements just now by people with an agenda.

Sunday, 12 March 2006 - 7:19 AM CST

If you are looking for a Muslim woman who is calling for reform in Islam, Irshad Manji is your huckleberry. She writes from a lesbian-feminist perspective and so, like Dr. Sultan, is quite an angry woman. She wrote, "The Trouble With Islam Today: a Muslim's Call For Reform in Her Faith." She's a journalist and no Auntie Felafel!

Wafa Sultan is an LA psychologist, btw.; not a psychiatrist.

Sunday, 12 March 2006 - 5:25 PM CST

Col. Pat Lang on "The Gate of Ijtihad"

Tuesday, 14 March 2006 - 12:04 AM CST

Rider:

Luther's call for reform was made from within the Catholic church. He was a monk. This woman does not claim to be a Muslim, however, so the comparison to Luther is not apt.

That's inside baseball. What is, effectively, the consequence of Luther's defiance of the Catholic Church? Protestantism. I suppose you could also say that Jesus of Nazareth saw himself as the fulfillment of the messianic promise within Judaism, but that's not where his example led, so it's irrelevant.

[...]

True, no Jews have blown themselves up in German restaurants. The Allies blew up the German restaurants for them and helped them to set up a country just for Jews on someone else's land after the war.

That's a regrettable understanding of the Second World War, don't you think? And when I say regrettable, I mean perverted and contemptible.

They are now an occupying power whose own restaurants are being blown up by the same oppressed indigenes.

Ah! Another person who doesn't understand that victors in war often get to take the property of the vanquished.

Tuesday, 14 March 2006 - 6:11 AM CST

"perverted and contemptible"

There was far more to WW II than that, of course. But on what other basis can you connect Jews and German restaurants in order to compare the two peoples, as she has? Jews are not currently living as an oppressed indigenous people under German military occupation and colonization, which would suggest to most people a reason they have not been blowing up German restaurants. Dr. Sultan apparently has no sense of history. The rest is indisputable fact.

Tuesday, 14 March 2006 - 4:54 PM CST

No, the only "oppress[ion]" the Jews in Israel are living under now is the threat of nuclear destruction at the hands of the Iranians. That is a real and daily possibility.

What's one of the biggest lessons for our own country from the past half-decade or so? That our intelligence apparati know approximately shit about anything. But we all seem to be on the same page now: if the Israelis do not act preemptively to save their national life ---against both the Car Swarm People and the mullahs--- they will be destroyed.

Now, that may not bother you, but it disturbs me greatly.

And I will simply have to abide the recriminations leveled by people like you against the neo-cons and the land-grabbing interest-chargers and the international jew conspiracy when they finally decide to fix the problems facing them.

But at least they would be alive to make their justifications. And I will stand with them to render the same.