Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Wafa Sultan Gives Some Pointers to Bill O'Reilly
I generally like Bill O'Reilly, but sometimes he opines on matters in error, often in legal matters. In this interview with Wafa Sultan, he plays the politically-correct path. I doubt O'Reilly is as ignorant as he comes off in this interview. I suspect he is playing it safe. He sees what is happening to his colleague, Glenn Beck. I guess he doesn't want to be targeted in a similar fashion. I am disappointed, however.
I have attended two events in which Sultan has spoken. Her message is important and should be heard.
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22 comments:
O'Reilly's coming across very well.
Gary Fouse, who generally favors action against brutal dictators, like the Republican leadership in congress, can't stand to see it happening on President Obama's watch.
Wafa Sultan is no doubt speaking honestly from personal experience -- but the culture she speaks of dates back at least to the time of Hammurabi, whose famous code provided that a man who raped a woman would be tied to his victim and thrown into the river to drown. (It is generally assumed that few raped women reported the crime while this law was in effect).
I haven't yet been able to hear Wafa Sultan speak in person but she is impressive. You're right, O'Reilly wasn't his usual self and it makes you wonder about how deep the dhimmitude is getting in show--errrr, I mean news--business.
Wafa Sultan knows very well about what she is talking about, as does Nonie Darwish and Brigett Gabriel. No doubt many others as well.
It is such a dirty secret to the Muslims that these ladies require professional security for personal protection. I don't know about the others but Ms. Gabriel had to change her name to protect her family in her home country.
They all make the same point about the Women's Lib organizations who will burn their bras over all kinds of issues except in defense of their tens of millions of Muslim sisters.
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"Wafa Sultan is no doubt speaking honestly from personal experience".
Kind of hard for me to believe a woman who grew up in Syria has had much exposure with Islamic (Sharia) law.
Also how much of a repressed life can a woman who had the opportunity to earn a PhD in a Syrian university really have had.
Most former-Muslim critics of Islam have very dubious pasts. Examples include Wafa Sultan, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, Ergun Caner, etc.
Miggie, how many countries with an overwhelmingly Muslim culture have you lived in, and for how long?
They MAY know what they are talking about, or may not, or may have an accurate but limited view, however, I am curious how YOU know that they "know very well" what they are talking about. Any personal experience of your own?
Anonymous,
I believe Ms Sultan is a licensed psycologist or councelor-something like that. And just what is the dubious past of Sultan and Darwish? Shoewblat was by own admission involved with Palestinian militants, if I recall. The other person you named I don't know.
BTW- Darwish, Shoeblat and Sultan put their names on what they say and have to live under security because of it. You, on the other hand, are "Anonymous" accusing them of having dubious pasts.
Who is the more credible?
Well, Siarlys, let me think back. I've been in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Gaza. I was in Egypt for the longest time of them all, some years ago, and as I recall it eas like a long weekend. It was too long as nothing worked, including the hotel telephone, where they kept interrupting your call and asking of you were done yet. They had men who were known as "fixers" so that they would fix, usually ineptly, anything that had to be fixed like refrigerators or toilets.
I forgot to mention I was a guest of Arabs in Israel in Arab villages several times and we had long, leisurely conversations. Besides that I met with other Arabs and even Bedoins in Israel. They all treat their women like dirt.
Offhand, I guess that is 4 or 5 more Arab countries that you have been to. You haven't missed anything though, they are all shitholes.
"I believe Ms Sultan is a licensed psycologist or councelor-something like that."
Dr. Sultan does not have a license to practice psychology in the United States. Remember her PhD is from a Syrian university.
Prior to her current career as an anti-Islam speaker she was working as a waitress in a pizza restaurant making less than $1000 a month.
Wafa Sultan now makes thousands per speaking engagement giving lectures in schools, churches, and synagogues. Pretty good loot for a woman who has lived in the US since the 1980's and still is unable to speak English fluently.
Anonymous,
Did you say she has a phd from a Syrian university? Is that a bad thing?
Point still remains; she has put her life under threat for leaving Islam and publicly criticizing it. That compares pretty favorably with you, Anonymous.
Siarlys,
I spent a week in Cairo once, at a UN conference on crime. I liked it. Have been to Turkey two times with DEA. I loved Istanbul, the people, the food and the beer. A couple of stops at the airport in Tehran (during the shah time) and an airport stop in Karachi. I chose not to get off the plane. Smart move.
As you know, many Iranians are not happy with the Islamic revolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bRKGzmCKbc
Siarlys,
I forgot that I also spent a day in Lebanon once. Same story.
Since you require my on the ground experience in Arab countries, I suppose you have extensive personal experience to counter what I have seen. Very, very few women step out of line even verbally or they are beaten, raped, sexually mutilated, or occasionally stoned to death for other religious "transgressions."
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Since when does visiting a few countries give you any idea how people there really live and feel, Miggie? I have lived in Iran for more that a year and got to know people and culture first hand. I have close friends who have family in Afghanistan and Iran. I doubt that the mentality of Iranians has changed in the last thirty years, but women were not beaten, abused, held back any more than in our society, and I resent them being made out to be unintelligent, subservient, downtrodden little idiots, and the men all brutal and unfeeling. I have known many American women who were treated like shit from American men, and allowed them to get away with it. I hate this arrogant attitute shown here. Like no woman ever gets raped by an American and doesn't report it, right?
Miggie, you certainly have more first hand experience with the countries you name, none of which I have visited. It doesn't sound like you were there long enough to know whether Wafa Sultan's expansive statements that Islam REQUIRES that women be treated like dirt are coming from a woman who "knows what she's talking about."
With some notable exceptions, most feudal cultures, and many tribal cultures, treat women like dirt. I refrain from saying "their women" because that phrase in itself frames women as property, not as individuals capable of making their own choices.
The mere fact that a Ph.D is from a Syrian university does not render it invalid. However, I do find this relevant: "Prior to her current career as an anti-Islam speaker she was working as a waitress in a pizza restaurant making less than $1000 a month."
In every era, there are charlatans who make a great deal of money telling people who have money to pay for it whatever it is that they want to hear. She may be no more credible than Benny Hinn, or a number of other profits of God in the U.S.
Miggie, we can go on and on about this subject, and we will never see eye to eye. I could write a lot about how women in the free world are regarded, it's also not perfect. I am glad I grew up in Germany and in the US but not everything there is better. If wearing a veil is bad, so is girls in the West running around half naked, that doesn't get them respect from men. What does that say about them? We circumsize little boys without thinking about their personal choice, and we excuse infidelity even though it adds to the tremendous breakdown of families. It's not legal to have a second wife but how many men cheat on their wives? Black rappers refer to women as bitches or whores and no one stops it.
My girlsfriends in Iran were treated like princesses by their husbands and my Afghani friends in California have three sons who adore their wives.
There was only one who could have cast the first stone because he was guiltless, and he didn't, so let's not always act so superiour, because we are not.
Ingrid, you are infected with the multicultural disease. You seem to believe all cultures are basically the same even though they are different. America is different and far superior to other cultures. The American culture is derived from various races of Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. People of the same race slaughter each other when they come from different cultures. Generals of German ancestry - Pershing and Eisenhower - led the American armies against Germany in both World Wars. A country pervaded by corruption will keep a country poor, even if it has an abundance of rich natural resources. Cultures that put a high value on eduction outperform youngsters from a culture that does not, even when they live at the same economic level.
Women are free to wear what they want here without governmental interference and I presume that women would prefer that freedom over imposed dress restrictions on them.
I can personally testify to you that circumcision does not inhibit the enjoyment of sex. On the other hand, one of the main purposes of a clitoridectomy is to reduce a woman's libido, and "...thereby is further believed to help her resist "illicit" sexual acts."
While infidelity may be harmful for marriages, stoning people to death who commit adultery is more barbaric.
Notwithstanding your personal acquaintances and experience, overall, this society is far superior by any standard than those in the Arab Middle East.
You seem to admire other cultures but you live in America. I assume that is by choice and you are not forced to live here, so you must consider it a better place, all things considered.
People are not clamoring to get into Arab/Muslim countries, they are doing whatever they can, you included, to live in the United States of America.
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Miggie, I couldn't even begin to tell you anything about my life, where and how I live and what I have seen.
You have some valid points coming from your own experience or knowledge. Allow people to have other views because of theirs.
The Third Reich put a high value on education and culture, and the rest is history.
I do have a great love for America for my very own reasons that you wouldn't understand, but I don't admire anything or anyone. I am just constantly amazed.
Miggie, what Ingrid said is that within any culture, there are marked individual variations, not that all cultures are great. Men from cultures that treat women like dirt are capable of adoring their wives. Men in cultures that boast of freedom are capable of treating women like dirt. That's not a one big happy family multi-culturalism, it is recognizing that the real world is a very complex place, which does not conform neatly to tunnel-vision ideologies, yours or Osama's.
Yes, I understand there were some kind hearted Nazis and some Japanese who did not support the attack on Pearl Harbor.
We are talking about entire societies here, not the exceptions within them
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Miggie, the fearsome Vikings have direct descendants with relatively little genetic mixing from other strains. They still live in those manly, militarized kingdoms, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Come to think of it, we didn't exactly move all the Germans out of Germany, resettling them across half the globe, while moving American and Canadian pacifists in. And somehow, Angela Merkel emerged from upbringing in... the German Democratic Republic. "Whole societies" are a dangerous yardstick. It's the one used by the thugs who kill Danish Roman Catholic nuns in Lebanon because they heard that a Danish Lutheran atheist male drew some cartoons of their favorite prophet. Your targets are different, but your premises are darn similar.
Siarlys, how come you are the only one who understands what I am trying to say?
Thanks.
Great minds think alike. Tell Lance I miss him, given that he seems to have given up on debating with Gary, and I'm not allowed to come talk to him at Alexandria... a little matter of lese majeste.
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