Some stuff I would ask Activists on the Left

Several days ago I read what I considered a really strong article by Wafa Sultan, a self described enlightened and liberated Muslim, a psychiatrist who emigrated to the US from Syria.  The article, The United Nations and Human Rights Abuse, raised issues that I wish Leftist activists would address.

Usually, when such information as Sultan's is offered, the activists attack the messenger, failing to hear, authenticate, or simply acknowledge the messenger or victim of abuse.  Unless it is at the hands of Israel.  Then, even Pallywood can rise to truth!  As recently evidenced here and here.  When it involves antisemitism, endemic in the Arab world, as aptly described by Sultan, there are cries of malicious intent or bigotry.  How better to silence any discussion of substance?

Here, I think, are words to consider:

During my school years, I heard my teachers, family members, neighbors, and the media all bombarding us daily, throughout the Arab world. We, as small kids and young adults, were indoctrinated to share the anti-Semitic vitriol -- to despise and denigrate Jews.

• God condemned the Jews because they falsified the Torah. How did I know it? That is what I was taught.

• Since Jews forged the Bible, they were despised and depicted as pigs and apes. How did I know it? That is what I was taught.

• Jews killed our prophets and were the enemies of Allah. How did I know it? That is what I was taught.

• Therefore, the Jews represent an existential danger to all humanity, so their annihilation, as individuals and as a people, was and would be a legitimate service to God and mankind. How did I know it? That is what I was taught.

Yes, killing Jews was always presented to me and my classmates as a religious obligation. We absorbed this evil propaganda with our food and water, and with our school books, each and every day.

As a trained psychiatrist, I assert that seeds of hatred planted in the mind of a child, lead to immense hatred as the child grows into adulthood. Tragically, this hatred generates dangerous actions and even death.

So I would ask them.  Is what Wafa describes relevant to the issue of peace?  What can they offer of substance.  What benefit comes from attacking the author, in this case a Muslim who speaks from first hand experience to help raise our awareness and provide another perspective?  Why else would this person be motivated to open our eyes?

Sultan, of course, is critical of the UN, with an "abysmal record [...] neglecting Muslim women's rights; ignoring freedoms of faith and conscience; turning a blind eye to the fate of Muslim apostates sentenced to death; failing to address the brutal treatment of Christians and other citizens of Islamic nations, and for ignoring the rights of non-Muslim foreigners living or working in Muslim countries."  Is she just blowing smoke?  Or is there validity to her words?

To the Secretary General, she says:

Mr. Ban Ki-moon, please note that we, enlightened and liberated Muslims take notice. And we are enraged. Just as with Israel, the UN marginalizes enlightened and liberated Muslims, and treats them as pariahs. Elite government leaders, willfully blind Western media, arrogant Middle East studies academics and foolish UN representatives follow suit. All these presumably progressive, freethinking leaders have given their full support to Islamic totalitarian countries and rally behind their dehumanizing objectives at the UN.

I receive countless letters from Arab readers throughout the Middle East, expressing their desperate desire to live as free people with the same human rights we enjoy in the West -- and especially, freedom from Sharia!

One young Arab woman, a student, wrote to me only last month:

"They deprive us of any right to think, and ... remind us each time, how we will burn in hell. They terrorize us, and they do the same with the children. I would like that to stop. I try very hard to change things. I created a little group against sexism. And I hope to be able to defend Arab women one day."

Tell me Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who will defend this young student and her small group fighting Arab sexism and the atrocities committed against Arab women?

One could ask the Leftist activists the very same thing.  And what about the children, indoctrinated as soldiers of war?  The substance of these things, I find, the activists avoid like the plague.  I would love to hear their answers.  Better yet, what do they suggest to do to end these obvious violations of universal human rights affecting millions of victims, which I assume they care for?