by Wafa Sultan
God, as described in the Koran, possesses the attributes of the men who were the product of that environment. He is highly strung, violent by temperament, lacking in foresight, capricious, fearful of being disobeyed or gainsaid. His fear is reflected in the nature of his commands, and he attacks without mercy. He avenges himself evilly upon those who rebel against him and calls upon people to defend him as if he were unable to defend himself. He promises those who obey him a paradise flowing with rivers and abundant in fruit, and threatens those who revolt against him with a hell where their skin will be flayed off by fire, only to be replaced to be flayed off again. The Koran says: “Those that deny Our revelations We will burn in Hell-fire. No sooner will their skins be consumed than We shall give them other skins” (4:56). I once heard a Muslim sheikh explaining the verse to a listener and continuing on: “When they ask you about the mountains. Say: ‘My Lord will crush them’ “ (20:105). I almost tore my hair with fury as I listened to him expatiating upon God’s ability to destroy and lay waste, so much so that he seemed to be speaking of Saddam Hussein’s devastation of the Kurds and Shias in Iraq.
The Koran does not distinguish between the concepts of “force” and “power.” It confuses the two in an odd manner, and God’s power manifests itself only as an ability to use force. What is the real difference between the two concepts? A person has power when he can do what needs to be done in a peaceable manner appropriate to the circumstances. He will resort to force only when he is powerless. In other words, power represents peace, while force represents violence.
Arabs who lived in the environment that gave birth to Islam were powerless in the face of the challenges presented by this environment, which threatened their lives and their welfare. Because they felt so helpless they felt a need for forcefulness, and created a god who would fulfill this need. When the Arab male lost his power he felt the need for a forceful god. And so he created a forceful god in the image of his need—but this god was not powerful. A powerful god, like a powerful person, rules his throne and his kingdom in love, peace, compassion, and mercy rather than by killing, inflexibility, and internal strife. A powerful god does not fear that his authority or his mission will be undermined by rebellion, nor does he resort to violence to defend that authority. That is the difference between the Muslim God and the real God, if there is any! The God of Islam uses force, but he has no power.
Let’s think about this for a minute: Who is the stronger, Mother Teresa or the ogre at the top of the mountain? Mother Teresa, of course, was the stronger of the two as she was able to accomplish her mission without resorting to force of any kind. But who possesses a greater degree of force, the ogre or Mother Teresa? The ogre, naturally, possesses a greater degree of force for it uses its talons and fangs to devour people. Let us examine the following verse from the Koran: “Prophet, rouse the faithful to arms. If there are twenty steadfast men among you, they shall vanquish two hundred; and if there are a hundred, they shall rout a thousand unbelievers, for they are devoid of understanding” (8:65). When does a God incite his followers to battle? He does that only when he is unable to spread his message by peaceful means. As people internalize their god, they incite others to strife when they lose their power and are unable to accomplish by peaceful methods what has to be done. So force is the only alternative to power! As long as a person has power, he has not need of force. Knowledge, whether religious, scientific, or philosophical, is supposed to arm us with power, not to enable us to use force. Concepts, whether religious or not, can defend themselves, and do not need to be defended by those who believe in them.
As I wrote earlier, among the attributes Islam bestowed upon God are ones such as “The Harmer,” “The Avenger,” “The Compeller,” “The Protector,” and “The Imperious.” To anyone who examines them, these qualities appear to be of a kind bestowed only on someone who has lost his power and resorted to force to accomplish what he has to do. The Syrian writer Nabil Fayyad says: “The more fragile an idea is, the more terrifying its defenders are.” A good concept needs no defenders. The fact that it is necessary guarantees its success and durability. A poor concept cannot defend itself, and finishes up on the garbage heap of history because no one needs it. Ideas, like commodities, compete in the marketplace of history and are subject to the laws of supply and demand. History has proved, in the crush of this competition, that we need only good ideas and that our need for them guarantees their survival and permanence.
A powerless person defends any bad idea that will allow him to exert force, and will risk his life to defend it. You will never be able to persuade such a person of the fragility of his idea unless you help him regain his power. A simple analysis of the reality in which Muslims live suffices to reveal the sterility of Islamic teachings. These teachings have failed to create steadfast, productive, and creative human beings. In the Arab world the clock has stopped, and the calendar is still set at the seventh century C.E. Muslims have lost everything, and have nothing left to identify with except for the teachings to which they cling ever more strongly. The Muslim and the teachings he believes in are chasing each other around a circular track. The teachings pursue him, while he can find nothing to pursue except them. They will lead him to disaster, but his failure will serve only to increase his dependence upon them.
* It’s an Islamic tradition that you enter a room with your right foot except for the bathroom, because it’s considered to be a “dirty place.”
10.
Islam Is a Closed Market
FROM ITS EARLIEST beginnings Islam has forcibly defended its teachings. It resorted to force because it needed power. It used its might to stamp out any ideas that did not fit into its program, and kept its people firmly locked up in prison. It rejected the principle of excellence and the laws of supply and demand. No merchandise but its own was allowed into its marketplace. The Koran and the life, actions, and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad were the sole source of knowledge and the only basis for legislation. Islam imposed these sources by force and allowed no others to compete with them. With time these other sources lost their authority, as they could no longer compete with the concepts of the new era.
When an idea is no longer appropriate to its time, it loses its excellence and becomes fragile. The more fragile it becomes, the more it deprives its adherents of the ability to keep abreast of the times. Muslims became the hostage of their own doctrinal prison whose teachings had made them feel helpless. This sense of helplessness, in turn, made them all the more dependent on these teachings.
The inhabitants of the Arabian Desert were so intimidated by their barren environment that they were incapable of any thought of improving or animating it. The fears that beset Muslims pursue them to this day. People cannot solve their problems by using the same ideas that caused the problems in the first place. Fourteen centuries have not convinced Muslims of the barrenness of their teachings, and they still refuse to hold these teachings responsible for their powerlessness and backwardness. These teachings have done nothing to improve their economic, political, social, or moral circumstances, and they remain hostage to the same reality, even though times and places changed.
On the economic front, these teachings did not emphasize the importance of work. The concept of work in Islam was confined to nomadic migration, raiding, booty, and the struggle for survival. Islam promised its followers rivers, fruit, wines, and milk, but it did not encourage them to sink wells, grow fruit, or raise livestock. Its teachings convinced them that life is ephemeral, and that it is valuable only if used to worship God. It deluded them with visions of the hereafter and the gardens of paradise, and they lived on this delusion, waiting for the life to come. They still do.
The Koran says: “This is the Paradise which the righteous have been promised. There shall flow in it rivers of unpolluted water, and rivers of milk forever fresh; rivers of delectable wine and rivers of clearest honey. They shall eat therein of every fruit and receive forgiveness from their Lord. Is this like the lot
of those who shall abide in Hell forever and drink scalding water which will tear their bowels?” (47:15). Another verse reads: “The life of this world is but a sport and a pastime. Surely better is the life to come for those that fear Allah” (6:32). This means that for Muslims life in this world has no value. They are here only temporarily, and have no responsibilities beyond worshipping God so that they can enjoy paradise in the hereafter.
The call to wage war on God’s behalf constituted the main part of these responsibilities, as the following Koranic verse makes clear: “Let those who would exchange the life of this world for the hereafter, fight for the cause of Allah; whether they die or conquer, We shall richly reward them” (4:74). Muslims could not conceive of responsibility outside the concept of fighting. They still believe that jihad is the only way to guarantee their entry to paradise in the hereafter. When people bear no responsibility for their actions they cannot admit to having been wrong, and, in consequence, can feel no sense of guilt for their wrongdoings.
Islam considered anything that happened to a Muslim outside the boundaries of the responsibility to fight to be fate, over which he could have no control, and accordingly, no responsibility. Islamic teachings gave Muslims the illusion that their fate was foreordained. It convinced them that every detail of their lives was predestined and that they had no power to influence events. The Koran says: “Say: ‘Nothing will befall us except what Allah has ordained’ “ (9:51). And Muhammad said in a hadith: “If something happens to you, do not say: ‘If I had done that, such and such a thing would have happened.’ Say, rather: Allah has ordained it so, and whatever He pleases He does.’ “
This call to submit to whatever fate ordains has helped to foster a dependent attitude and has convinced people that whatever happened in their lives occurred only as part of God’s plan and at his command. This attitude enables Muslims to avoid facing reality and also, to a great extent, helps to deprive them of their ability to feel guilt at the wretchedness of that reality. Muslims have never learned to engage in soul searching or to acknowledge where they might have gone wrong. As far as they are concerned, whatever happens is God’s will and their faith does not either require them to regret their actions or consider them responsible for any consequences that might ensue.
Let me give you one example: Hassan Nasrallah is a Lebanese Shiite Muslim cleric who has broken the law in his own country, challenged the wishes of its government, and formed his followers into a political party. This may all seem quite reasonable to some people, but I don’t believe that there is a person on earth with a grain of sense who can agree with him on the name he has given his party: Hezbollah, which means “the party of God.” The name he has chosen for his party reflects the way he thinks. Whether or not we believe in God is immaterial: The important issue here is that a man is claiming to have a monopoly on God and putting himself together with God in the same party. This man does not respect anyone else’s right to live, and sets no store by human life. He is convinced that he came into this world to wage war in order to spread the religion of Allah, and that he will enjoy an eternity in paradise whether he kills or is killed. He reckons his gain by the extent of his enemies’ losses, but cares nothing for the losses he himself sustains, whether in possessions or human lives.
Nasrallah knew from the outset that he was embarking upon a ruinous war, yet he and his followers led Lebanon to utter disaster in their war against Israel. He emerged from this war with 1,000 people dead, 5,000 wounded, and 1 million displaced, only to announce on the evening of the ceasefire that he had defeated Israel and that he dedicated his victory to Lebanon and the Islamic nation. There you have the Muslim concept of victory.
Nasrallah and his followers managed to kill a hundred Jews, and in his view there is no greater victory than this. The Koran says: “Allah has purchased of the faithful their lives and worldly goods and in return has promised them the Garden. They will fight for His cause, slay and be slain” (9:111) And so it is the Muslim’s objective in war either to kill his enemy or to be killed by him, and he considers himself to have won whichever turns out to be the case. If the Muslim kills his enemy he has won, but if his enemy kills him, the Muslim’s victory is even greater, as this action on his enemy’s part has served only to allow the Muslim to meet his God all the sooner.
Hassan Nasrallah is unable to assume responsibility for what he did, and so cannot feel guilty for what his behavior has brought about. One thousand people dead, 5,000 wounded, and a million left homeless—all these have no importance as compared with the fact that Israel lost a hundred people. This is the philosophy of men who claim to have a monopoly on God and to have formed a party with him. They have dressed God in an army uniform, put a helmet on his head, and pulled him down into the trenches with them so that he will help them wipe out their enemies. Who can compete with such a mentality? Who can fight a man who wishes for his own death more than he wishes for that of others?
When we were young, our elders drummed a saying into us: “We love death as much as our enemy loves life.” A man imbued with a culture of death cannot be a human being, because a person’s humanity is not complete unless he respects human life and takes action to protect it. A Lebanese woman who had lost two daughters, two sisters, her brother, and both her parents in the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying—word for word—”I’m happy now, because they have gone to paradise.” War on terrorism is pointless unless the world works together to replace this life-disdaining culture that incites people to sacrifice their lives with a more humane and reasonable alternative.
The concept of responsibility has no place in the customs of Islam. Fourteen centuries later the Muslim nation is at the bottom of the scale of nations, but Muslim men refuse to recognize their responsibility for this regression, which would cause any reasonable person feelings of guilt.
People feel guilty only when they assume their responsibilities and acknowledge that they have failed to perform them properly. The Muslim male is the product of a culture that does not know how to take responsibility and which does not hold him accountable for his failures. If you were to spend a lifetime in his company you would not see him display any feelings of guilt no matter how badly he has failed. In an attempt to avoid facing his failure the Muslim man plays the game of “killer and victim.” He is the victim, and the whole world is out to get him!
Since the dawn of Islam Muslims have always divided the world into two—themselves and others—and they continue to do so today. They are reasonable, peaceable, and upstanding believers while everyone else is a thoughtless, wicked, and heretical terrorist. They are the victims, and the others are the killers. But although they have accused the entire world of conspiring to wipe them and their religion out, it is the Jews who have been their scapegoat from Islam’s earliest beginnings.
Jew must be one of the words Muslim children hear most frequently before the age of ten. It is also one of the hardest words they hear, as in their imagination it conjures up visions of killing, depravity, lies, and corruption. When two people quarrel, each calls the other a Jew. When one person wishes to express his disdain for another, he will call him a Jew.
When someone wants to describe someone else as ugly, he says he looks like a Jew. We hold the Jews “responsible” for our military failures, our economic backwardness, and our technological dependency. We believe that Jews control the world and that, in consequence, the whole world, dancing to their tune, wants to get rid of us. When I was at primary school the teacher rehearsed us in a play for the national In dependence Day celebrations. He cast me in the role of Golda Meir, who was Israel’s prime minister at the time. The teacher suggested that I speak in a gruff and uncouth voice and wear disfiguring makeup to make me look convincing in the part as he imagined it.
I felt as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt. My childish mind could not take in what was happening. I felt personally humiliated by the teacher’s suggestion, which I found
totally unacceptable. I asked myself: I’m to play Golda Meir? I felt that his request humiliated me in front of my schoolmates, and I could not cope with it at all. The next morning I pretended to be ill, to the point where I actually managed to vomit. My mother let me stay home without really knowing what had happened, and so saved me from a responsibility which seemed to me beyond my capabilities as a small girl of tender age. Even today, when I recall the incident, I feel the same pain I did then, and I ask myself: What kind of morality is this, to cause a child to seethe with resentment, while you, the teacher, are unable to understand the emotional pressure you put on children when you expect them to shoulder responsibilities they are too young to bear or comprehend? The resentment I felt as a child continued to eat away at me, even in my early years in the United States.
During the first week of my life in America my husband and I went on a trip to Hollywood, which, to us, seemed not to be an earthly location at all but somewhere on another planet, which we could not imagine ever visiting. In the course of our trip we went into a shoe shop and I began to try on shoes. My husband looked at the shop assistant’s Middle Eastern features and asked him where he was from.
“I’m an Israeli Jew,” he replied.
I did not wait to consider what he had said. I dropped the shoe I was holding and ran one-shoed out of the shop as if wild animals were after me.
My husband caught up with me with my other shoe, shouting: “What’s wrong, you idiot?”
I replied, trembling: “He’s a Jew, and you want me to stay in his store?”
About two years after my flight to the United States, when my anger had not yet left me, my son’s teacher called me two days before Christmas to tell me, “Wafa, although I’m Jewish by choice I give each of my pupils a small Christmas gift. I know you’re Muslims and I don’t want to upset you in any way—would you have any objection to my giving your son a present, too?”
