A Muslim Luther Needed: Current Culture of Death and Destruction Must End
Ventura Star, March 27, 2006

By Terry Paulson, PhD

On February 21st, Al-Jazeera TV aired an interview with Arab-American Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan that has shaken the Arab world. Translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri http://www.memritv.org/, her passionate and courageous statements of condemnation of the Muslim faith has been viewed over a million times online and her comments have now been spread by Arab and Western Media.

Although her father was a devout Muslim and she practiced the Muslim faith in her early years, her life changed in 1979 when, as a medical student in Syria, she saw gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into her university classroom kill her professor as she watched.

Now, Dr. Sultan describes herself as a secularist, "I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it." Though not a believer, she has still bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, martyrs and political leaders who have used their beliefs to hold her people back and unleash death and destruction on others. In the interview, she questioned any religion that prompts young people to commit suicide in the name of God. "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?"

Her blunt description of the culture war brings clarity to the challenge, "The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. .. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete."

Dr. Sultan put the cause for the clash squarely on the shoulders of the Muslim faith: "The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: 'I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger.' When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula."

She praised the Jews to challenge Muslim believers. "The Jews have come from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge."

In her blunt and provocative way, she contrasted Jewish from Muslim believers: "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people. The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Some call her a fresh and timely voice; others view her as a heretic worthy only of death. Though praised by some Arab reformers and many Jewish leaders for saying out loud what many feel but are too frightened to say, she has been labeled an infidel by many Muslim clerics. She has received numerous death threats on her phone and by e-mail.

The Sultans came to the United States in 1989 and are now American citizens living in Southern California with their children. She hopes to complete all her American medical licensing requirements this year. Besides becoming a psychiatrist, she talked of her mission: "Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs." She is working on a book with the working title, The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster. She says she has no fear and believes in her message.

Unfortunately, as a secularist psychiatrist, her attack and suggestions will have little weight unless they embolden the Muslim faithful to raise their own voices. We need a Muslim Luther to kindle a reformation from within. When Luther had had enough of Christian indulgences, he nailed his 95 Theses to the church door and started a revolution in faith. I challenge the Muslim faithful to use this newspaper to let others know that you have had enough of this culture of death! Then post your letters on a few Mosque doors!

Dr. Terry Paulson is a psychologist, speaker and author of The Dinner: The Political Conversation Your Mother Told You Never to Have. Share your comments at his PoliticalTalk Blog or contact him at Terry@TerryPaulson.com.

—May we never forget how truly blessed we are!