COLUMNS

G'day from the Sentinel Team

My goodness - this woman is BRAVE. She receives daily death threats and apparently takes them all in her stride.

Dr Wafa Sultan … An amazing and courageous Arab woman, appeared on Al Jazeera a few months ago and did the unthinkable: She condemned Islam.

She was there to "debate" not one, but two Islamic scholars. One was an Egyptian Professor of religious studies identified as Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli and the other was an unidentified Algerian cleric.

If you haven't already seen this Video it is a MUST WATCH

In this update we include:

• Links to the Video's Source site
• Background information about Dr. Wafa Sultan
• Google News ban on Hate Speech websites
• Links to articles about Dr. Sultan interview as well links to another interview featuring and an Algerian Jihadist
• The Barbara Stock Article about this interview is featured in the Food for Though section of the Link-Zone site.
• For your info we also include some interesting links highlighting the Media's fraudulent use of photos that were sent to us by Saltshakers.

Under His Banner

Bev Holmes-Brown

Click on Video Clip Link:

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null

Also Found here:

http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1050

Please pray for Dr Sultan and for her family's protection. There are very few who would dare to be so bold in the face of the violent hatred that extremists direct towards non-believers.

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 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. 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.

[...]

Wafa Sultan: Yes, that is what I mean.

[...]

Wafa Sultan: The Muslims are the ones who began using this expression. 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 stop this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.

My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the "People of the Book," and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians "those who incur Allah's wrath." Who told you that they are "People of the Book"? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them "those who incur Allah's wrath," or "those who have gone astray," and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?

I am not a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I am a secular human being. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.

Wafa Sultan: These are personal matters that do not concern you.

[...]

Wafa Sultan: Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me. You are free to worship whoever you want, but other people's beliefs are not your concern, whether they believe that the Messiah is God, son of Mary, or that Satan is God, son of Mary. Let people have their beliefs.

[...]

From Wikipedia:

Wafa Sultan (born 1958, Baniyas, Syria) is a secular Syrian-American psychiatrist who lives in Los Angeles, California.

She has become notable since the September 11, 2001 attacks for her participation in Middle East political debates, with Arabic essays that circulated widely and some television appearances on Al-Jazeera and CNN.

On February 21, 2006, she spoke from Los Angeles on Al Jazeera, where she argued with the host and Dr. Ibrahim Al-Khouli about the Samuel Huntington Clash of Civilizations theory, berating Muslims for treating non-Muslims as inferiors and for not recognizing the accomplishments of non-Muslim society, while using its wealth and technology. The video subtitled by MEMRI circulated widely on weblogs and through e-mail.

The New York Times estimated that the video of her appearance was viewed at least one million times as it spread via weblogs and e-mail. Her thesis, described as witnessing "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose", has brought her telephone threats[1], but also praise from reformers. Her comments, especially a pointed criticism that "no Jew has blown himself up in a German restaurant", brought her an invitation to Tel Aviv, Israel by the American Jewish Congress.

Sultan revealed to the Times that she is working on a book to be called The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster, and says she was shocked into secularism by the 1979 atrocities committed by the Muslim Brotherhood against innocent Syrian people, including the machine-gun assassination of her professor in her classroom in front of her eyes at the University of Aleppo where she was a medical student. "They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings

It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

Sultan and her husband David emigrated to the U.S. in 1989, and both are now naturalized citizens. Recently, she sat in on a free-speech discussion at the University of Southern California, organized by the Ayn Rand Institute with Yaron Brook and Daniel Pipes as speakers.

Source Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafa_Sultan

Please Read also - Disclaimer Notes

LA psychologist clashes with Algerian jihadist over Islamic teachings and terrorism
Dhimmi Watch
July 30, 2005

We need more interviewers like Wafa Sultan who aren't afraid to challenge jihadist distortions, obfuscations, and sleights of hand. Instead, the mainstream media is awash with dhimmis on both the left and the right.

NOTE: This is a link to a different transcript of a debate between Wafa Sultan, a psychologist from Los Angeles and Dr. Ahmad Bin Muhammad, an Algerian professor of religious politics.
Al-Jazeera TV aired this debate on July 26, 2005.

http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/007434.php

Originating from: http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=783

We received these links from Saltshakers :

Photo Fraud in Lebanon - Fauxtography

Do you always believe what you see on the news or in the newspaper?

A number of documented cases of staged or false photographs have recently come to light from the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Charles Johnson calls it 'Fauxtography'.

Quiz

If you want to test your knowledge on these photos, take the Quiz at Honest reporting.... on eight of the photos .... Do the test, then click 'Test Your Knowledge' and find out the truth!

http://www.honestreporting.com/quiz/takeQuiz.asp

Article:

'Fauxtography': The media scandal continues Michelle Malkin of World Net daily writes:

"It's the story that the journalistic elite would rather just go away. In the aftermath of Reuters' admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon after bloggers smoked out his crude Photoshop alterations, and all 920 of his Reuters photos were pulled, evidence of far more troubling photo staging and media deception in the Middle East continues to pour in.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs calls it "fauxtography." ....."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51548


Other sites with 'false photos'

If you have already watched the video above, you might recall the photo with 'Minnie Mouse' (nice and clean and new) on a rubble pile in Lebanon?

Well, photos were actually taken of a Hezbollah fighter with several toys in his hands, organising the photo shoot!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681977/posts

Daniel Pipes Comments on the Issue:

As staff at some of the world's most prestigious press organizations effectively take Hezbollah's side in its war with Israel, they inadvertently expose a profound transformation in the logic of warfare.

Find links & more info at: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/3849

Please also Read : - Disclaimer Notes

In searching the web for information about the Dr. Sultan video and I came across an article about Google's decision to ban sites that contain Hate Speech.

Here is a copy of the Google email (and I am trusting the integrity of the host site that this is true ... we have all fallen for hoax emails that are similiar to this so I hope this is genuine), as well as a link to the source page.

I will leave it to you to investigate further but have activated the links so that you can read the articles that are deemed Hate Speech - Bev H-B

Hi Frank,

Thanks for writing. We received numerous reports about hate content on your site, and after reviewing these reports, decided to remove your site from Google News. We do not allow articles and sources expressly promoting hate speech viewpoints in Google News (although referencing hate speech for commentary and analysis is acceptable).

For example, a number of the complaints we looked at on your site were found to be hate content:

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/peck/05102006.htm

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/stock/05082006.htm

http://www.newmediajournal.us/guest/imani/04222006.htm

We hope this helps you understand our position.

Regards,

The Google Team

I will leave you to your own thoughts on this, whilst noting that the articles cited are not christian and that the attitude behind the writing is questionable. They obviously come from a weather-worn view of life. Still, it does make you wonder what other information may be targeted as Hate speech.

Links:

Anti-Google Search Engine Index

http://www.newmediajournal.us/daily_columns/anti-google_search_engine_index.htm

Source link for the above Google Email

http://www.newmediajournal.us/daily_columns/05192006.htm