No Clash of Civilizations but a Clash between... Middle Ages and 21st Century

MEMRI TV (Middle East Media Research Institute ^ | 2/21/06 | Wafa Sultan

[Albion Wilde]

Wafa Sultan:The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations.... 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. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete... [snip]

Host: I understand from your words that what is happening today is a clash between the culture of the West, and the backwardness and ignorance of the Muslims?

Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

That's why I curse the Islamists, not all muslims. The Islamists can do the unmentionable things with pigs, while for the rest of the muslim population, it's "live and let live."

[Albion Wilde]

I think this woman is great.

She tells it like it is! Couldn't believe the fire in her eyes and her vehemence. It's like she wants to take a baseball bat to their thick walls of denial.

[Fred Nerks]

The Life of Muhammad: (snip)

For a very long time, for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why the followers of this killer-cult, even today, want to see every Jew on the planet dead. Then it hit me. After I read that book. You folk are the Living Witness of their foul misdeeds since Muhammad and his gang of plundering, murderous cutthroats first killed and stole everything you had, including the words of your wise men. And what does a criminal do, if he can?

Remove all the witnesses from the face of the earth, of course.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1008496/posts

[freema]

Yes, let's hope the next video isn't a beheading...I believe she lives in California!

[Fred Nerks]

"Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists."

JEWISH NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS

At least 170 Jews and persons of half-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize,1 accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2005, and constituting 37% of all US recipients2 during the same period. In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Medicine, and Physics, the corresponding world and US percentages are 26% and 39%, respectively. (Jews currently make up approximately 0.25% of the world's population and 2% of the US population.)

http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html

[az_jdhayworth_fan]

i wonder too. at least about a person who condemns ALL for the EXCESSES & RADICAL acts of the FEW!



Sorry, I have to go with sandbar on not exonerating the silent followers of Islam who do not beligerently denounce the EXCESSES & RADICAL ACTS of the MANY! Also, my point about their dwelling on the hereafter was about how the obsession with it here on earth is way beyond being "mindful" of it, it's at the point of justifying horrific behavior..(Allah has called for it or says it's right to behead, subjugate, dismember, enslave, pick your verb)..or if not justifying such extremist behavior, at least reducing its malevolence to something tolerable.

[Joan Kerrey]

I don't condemn her at all. She is free to believe what she wants but when one says "devout follower" one must believe all of the Koran and ALL the traditions of the Prophet. The word devout means to me the worship of a so called religion of terror and fascism. One can not be a devout follower of the Prophet and not support terror and fascism. One can be Muslim without being a fascist if they simply go along with the tide and pick and choose what they really believe in and hide their limited faith from their neighbors as most of the Christian world seems to do. The prophet's Islam is doom and death to non believers and there is no way to spin otherwise and be intellectually honest.

[Fred Nerks]

There are a mere 12 Million Jews in the entire world yet they have received 169 Nobel Prizes. The Muslims number 1.4 Billion (with a very big "B")... or 117 times the number of Jews! Based upon this 117:1 Muslim-to-Jewish ratio, one might expect the Muslims to have 22,260 Nobel Laureates.
They have SEVEN! and one of them [Arafat] is a murderer (Allahu Akbar, indeed!)
Unless the Swedes and Norwegians start awarding Nobel Prizes for plane hijackings, pizza shop bombings, civilian bus attacks, Jihad suicides/homicides, drive-by shootings, throat-slittings, embassy attacks and other such acts of barbarisms, the embarrassing low level of contribution to the welfare of Civilization and Mankind by the [Arab] Muslim world will continue. The Jewish People, meanwhile, will continue being the Lights Unto All Nations

http://www.masada2000.org/nobel.html

[Dumb_Ox]

America was founded on "E Pluribus Unum" -- "Out of Many, One" -- and this is an example of the best of that philosophy.

American unity, when it exists at all, is transient and fickle. Praising national unity in itself shouldn't preclude questions about the unity of the nation under God, questions secularist and nationalist ideologies would have us ignore.

If the Islamic equivalent of John Shelby Spong becomes the ideal for Islamic enlightenment, we'll find ourselves to be apostles of atheism in the Arab world. Here at home we'll be inundated with even more anti-"American Taliban" verbiage and secularist ethnic-cleansing law proposals.

[GladesGuru]

" One having died an imperfect death 1000 years ago, does not alter reality."

If your analogy is correct, then the Islam we are now at war with must qualify as the oldest and most dangerous zombie yet recorded.

I suspect that closer analysis will show Islam to be all too "alive". Perhaps you might consider euthanizing that analogy?

;-)

[Albion Wilde]

I have taken pains on this thread to point out that while she claims to be a secularist, she upholds the classic idea of American religious liberty. No political body can ask for more, given a population comprised of many religions. Religious liberty gives persons the chance to choose God and choose their sect rather than have it imposed on them like the Muslims. This is an enormous blessing to "those who can hear the truth"; without freedom to choose, we could not truly honor the true God, who reads hearts, and wants freely offered souls who surrender to him willingly after hearing his word. What good would this gift be to him if we had no choice?

What this speaker has presented is a strongly anti-terrorist political statement that is inclusive of God-fearing persons. She is far, far to the right of American-born secularists, certainly including many secular Jews and apostatic Christians such as Episcopal and Quaker appeasement-mongering nutjobs.

This text has so much to offer aside from her claim of secular humanism, for those who can read without knee-jerking. This nation was founded on practical political compromise, without which we would never have gained our present strength not only to protect our freedoms, but to have helped others around the world to gain theirs.

Show me the place where any of us can live without some form of compromise in this fallen world. Point us towards an actual Christian theocracy that is safe from Muslim overthrow so we can move there. In the meantime, kindly cut us a little intellectual tolerance, the better to fight the ideological war on terror.

[SunkenCiv]

Well said.

[stand watie]

you're SMARTER than several persons here on the forum, who "look down their noses" at ALL Muslims.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

SORRY, but i think that makes you sound like a BIGOT. being ANY sort of a bigot makes one PITIFUL, imVho.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

and you would be WRONG, about my younger daughter and about Islam.

PITY that you don't know that.

free dixie,sw

[az_jdhayworth_fan]

I bet there were a lot of BIGOTS who criticized NAZI pacifists, aiders and abettors, for not standing up to denounce Hitler, too.

Another question is, what would the pacifist Islamist Muslims do if they were told that they must conquer and enslave all planetary non-believers? (Sort of what's happening now, but let's say it's ratcheted up a few orders of magnitude) Assume for a moment that they had the power to do this because of sheer numbers, money, etc. Would these pacifists help or hinder their leaders? What are they doing right now by embracing Islam and being silent about repeated calls for Jihad to forcibly convert the world to be under one God, Allah?

[stand watie]

first, "Jihad" doesn't TRADITIONALLY mean what the Islamist "idiot fringe" thinks/says it does.

"Jihad" ONLY means "struggle". (fwiw, i blame the "main-SLIME media" for you NOT knowing this. that is NOT the only thing the "media" has lied about!)

second, i believe that the "rank & file" Muslims would do NOTHING that "the lunatic fringe" tells them to do, any more than the average person would follow the dictates/demands of the NITWITS of any other religion.

get the message. it's NOT about "world domination", "forcibly convert the world" or any other of the LUNATIC wailings of the NUT-BALL fringe.

btw, do you know what we "army types" say "Assume" means????

free dixie,sw

[Ditto]

It's nothing of the kind. It's an extremist zeitgeist running counter to the equally radical secularist void generated by a materialist Western world. Indeed, one could argue that radical Islam has sprung forth specifically to fill that void. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. Radical Islam is not a recent phenomena as you imply. It is not something that is a reaction to the "Playboy Philosophy", Madonna or any of the other globalized Western perversions and excesses of the last 40 or so years.

Radical Islam is as old as Islam itself and even it's current Whabi leadership dates back two centuries. It is not Western morality that is causing them to strike at us, but Western technology which has given the means to "reach-out" and touch us. They would have done the same to the 17th Century Puritans if they had the means.

[fanfan]

placemark

[steve-b]

Radical Islam is not a recent phenomena as you imply. It is not something that is a reaction to the "Playboy Philosophy", Madonna or any of the other globalized Western perversions and excesses of the last 40 or so years. Radical Islam is as old as Islam itself and even it's current Wahabi leadership dates back two centuries.

You nailed it.

Frankly, I have as little patience with the "we brought this on ourselves for our decadence" apologias for terrorism as I do with the worst DUmmie drivel on the subject.