Who is Wafa Sultan?
Check out this video:
http://switch5.castup.net/...
And this transcript:
http://www.memritv.org/...
This is mostly just one side of a debate between Wafa Sultan, a Syrian born American psychologist, and Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli, a Muslim cleric, on Feb. 21 on Al Jazeera. The edited version I saw has little of Ibrahim Al-Khouli and the moderator. I came across the video on the net.
Wafa Sultan is a powerhouse. In this interview her main point is that Islamic extremism merits condemnation until it ceases its threats to the world. She says if Muslims want to be respected, they must earn the respect by benefiting humankind. I get mixed feelings seeing this video, and would like to know more about her. However, so far my internet searches just discover the video of this interview, the transcript, and commentary on it.
Sultan declares herself a secular person, and says it is fine for conservative Muslims to believe whatever they want until it involves threatening behavior to others. She seems genuine, courageous and sincere, and a powerful speaker. Even non-Arab-speakers like me get a powerful impression of this, just listening to her and reading subtitles.
Sometimes she seems extreme in another direction - talking as if the United States is blameless in the conflict between it and the Islamic world. In one sense, that paints an unfair picture, too easy on the Bush team. But I consider the context in which she is saying it - on Al Jazeera, generally for communication with the Arabic-speaking world. She wants to get her important points across and I doubt it is her intent to curry favor with anyone. It is easy to imagine our country's religious fanatics and other rightwingers misusing her words. However, I think she talks the way she does because she is making space for a bigger understanding, and because she is addressing people who have been propagandized by the Arab-speaking world's fanatics. We, who have to try to cut through Fox News programming of the public, are not likely going to rage on about her subject matter, because our people already know about it. They just don't understand the extent to which the two societies mirror each other..
Wafa Suiltan seems to do a great job of capturing the injustices and hypocrisies of the Islamic extremist world, and portraying the USA in the most favorable light - the way we would like to be, more than how we actually are. I think she is supplying missing information and perspective and refraining from aiming for cheap points.
She is looking for bigger game - like tolerance of, and respect for, jews by arabs; like, resistance against the hypocritical hyperventilating violence-inciting rhetoric of the bin Ladens of the world; like, women's rights in Arab countries. Her kind words about jews were so admiring they make me, a jew, want to live up to them - and make me wonder, has she ever expressed her condemnation of such violent and corrupt jewish policy makers as Elliott Abrams, Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman. I am guessing she is not blind to that, but I do not know. Similarly, she makes the west out to be a paradise for secular life and thinking. Considering that religious extremists in our country are responsible for inciting and perpetrating violence, and the tremendous and pernicious influence they have on our government and in the undermining of our Constitution, that is simply false. Yet, things are relative. Clearly, there is a much bigger space for secular thought and discourse in USA generally, and women have a tremendous amount more freedom here.
The Muslim cleric tries to condemn her as a "heretic" but she is so clearly the impassioned one, the one speaking truth, in a poetic and inspired way. He seems clearly a well-funded fraud. He makes grand poobah sort of gestures in his attacks on her, and she is chillingly rational, while fiery hot in her condemnation of the hatred these extremists spread.
I can't find anything else about her on the net, other than this interview, the description of her as a Syrian-born psychologist living in Los Angeles .
Did anybody else catch this? Does anybody out there know more about Wafa Sultan?