Defending the Lack of Faith

If I ever create Categories on this blog, this post will go right alongside my recent post on the Brooklyn imam, Sheik Reda Shata.

It's a scary and breathtaking story of one woman's courage and determination when confronting her cultural history and the demons of her personal experience with violence in the name of Islam.

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats

By John Broder
Published March 11, 2006

LOS ANGELES, March 10 — Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

The whole story is not that long. I highly recommend taking the less than 10 minutes to read it all.

And a tip of the hat to Lois, another of my favorite posters on the Atheists-World yahoo group.