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Dr. Wafa Sultan Speaks Oct. 29

Levi Ben Avraham — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:26:34 +0000

The David Horowitz Freedom Center Invites You To A
Wednesday Morning Club
luncheon with

Dr. Wafa Sultan

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Location:
Four Seasons

300 S. Doheny Dr.

Los Angeles, CA 90048

11:30 a.m. – Reception
12:00 p.m. – Lunch and program

1:30 p.m. – Book Signing

A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam:

From the front page of The New York Times to YouTube, Dr. Wafa Sultan has become a force radical Islam has to reckon with. For the first time, she tells her story and what she learned, first-hand, about radical Islam in A God Who Hates, a passionate memoir by an outspoken Arabic woman that is also a cautionary tale for the West. She grew up in Syria in a culture ruled by a god who hates women. "How can such a culture be anything but barbarous?", Sultan asks. "It can't", she concludes "because any culture that hates its women can't love anything else." She believes that the god who hates is waging a battle between modernity and barbarism, not a battle between religions. She also knows that it's a battle radical Islam will lose. Condemned by some and praised by others for speaking out, Sultan wants everyone to understand the danger posed by A God Who Hates.

Wafa Sultan is a Syrian-born American psychiatrist included on Time Magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2006. She created a firestorm on Al-Jazeera as the first Arab Muslim woman on that network who demanded to be heard.

Registration: $75.00

Contact Stephanie Knudson at (818) 849-3470 x209
or e-mail stephanie@horowitzfreedomcenter.org

The Nazi In Bellevue

Levi Ben Avraham — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:50:54 +0000

Mike Carter writes:

Peter Egner talked freely to his friends about his service as a conscript in the German army during World War II, and even showed them the jagged scar on his hip — the wound that Egner said ended his military service.

"He was a [WWII] veteran, like I was a veteran," said Russell Wilson, 81, his longtime neighbor in West Linn, Ore.

But federal Nazi hunters say the 86-year-old Egner, of Bellevue, has lived a lie all these years, and Tuesday moved to revoke his U.S. citizenship, claiming he was a member of a Nazi death squad responsible for the murders of more than 17,000 Serbian Jews and others as the German Wehrmacht marched east on the Soviet Union.

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle alleges that Egner was not a conscript, but instead served as a guard and interpreter with the notorious Nazi-run Security Police and Security Service (SPSS) in Belgrade, Serbia (then Yugoslavia) from 1941 through the fall of 1943, when he was wounded. During that time, the complaint stated, his unit participated in the roundup and systematic killings of tens of thousands of Serbian Jews, Gypsies and political dissidents.

Reached Tuesday by The Associated Press by telephone at the Silver Glen retirement cooperative in Bellevue, Egner confirmed his identity but said he was unaware of the complaint. Asked about his alleged service with the Nazis, he said: "I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm sorry. Bye."

Robert Gibbs, a Seattle immigration attorney representing Egner, acknowledged that his client served in the SPSS but said he has denied being involved in atrocities.

Islamic Anti-Semitism

Levi Ben Avraham — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:16:41 +0000

From the New Republic:

The Editor:

Avi Beker's article focusing on that aspect of Muslim theology that denigrates Judaism — as if it were the major cause of friction today — ignores the long history of relatively peaceful and respectful relationships between Islam and Judaism, and downplays the relationship between contemporary Muslim appeals to ancient denigration of the Jews, and contemporary struggles with the State of Israel.

He cites one oral tradition quoting Muhammad denigrating the Jews without citing others praising them, and acts as if hostility to the State of Israel is rooted in ancient anti-Jewish teachings — rather than assessing the possibility that hostility to the State of Israel calls forth references to those ancient texts.

One would never know, from his article, that there had been the period in Andalusia in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims freely and peacefully learned from each other. Nor would one know that the multireligious conference to which he refers that is about to happen in Madrid is happening there precisely because the King of Saudi Arabia specifically referred to that Andalusian history as the reason to meet in Spain. (I happen to know because I have been invited to the conference, and the king's invitation mentions that history of peaceful and glorious dialogue among the Revealed Religions.)

It is far more likely, given the history, that the political and territorial conflict between Muslim communities and the modern State of Israel has revived old denigrations of Judaism, than the other way around. To the extent theological assertions have become important to the conflict, Jewish as well as Muslim theology must face this question. So long as dominant Jewish theology asserts that only the Jewish people, descendants of Abraham through Isaac, is entitled to the Promised Land, it also undermines the possibility of a theological as well as political rapprochement between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, and between Islam and Judaism.

At the theological level, both peoples need to affirm that God promised the Land to two different peoples, the descendants of Abraham through Hagar and Ishmael as well as through Sarah and Isaac; at the political level, both peoples need to affirm that in international law — what both traditions might recognize as our generation's attempt to carry out the Covenant among God, the Children of Noah (all humanity) and all living-breathing life-forms on earth — – Israel and Palestine are each entitled to sovereignty and peace.

Shalom, salaam, peace –

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Rabbi Arthur Waskow is the director of The Shalom Center and the author of Godwrestling – Round 2 and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on US public policy.

Avi Beker responds:

To the Editor:

Arthur Waskow tries in his letter to dismiss what is regarded today by leading scholars as the worst manifestation of anti-Semitism since the Nazis. In sharp contrast to Waskow's claim, the problem is not restricted to "one oral tradition," but, as pointed out by Abraham Geiger in 1833 (long before the Arab-Israeli conflict) and many other contemporary scholars, the Koran is replete with anti-Semitic verses, most notoriously, the ones equating Jews with "pigs and monkeys." Even little children, when interviewed on Saudi TV, know that the anti-Jewish stereotypes are not a matter of oral tradition but, in their words, were delivered by Allah "in the Koran." The fact that there existed a relatively tolerant oasis in the Muslim world (a fact that itself is up for debate) in one location and at one time in history in no way disproves Islam's broader record of demonizing Jews.

It is therefore not encouraging that Waskow goes to Madrid under the banner of a moral equivalency arguing that both Jews and Muslims "face the same problem." While he can differ in his political views from policies of the current or previous Israeli government, he cannot ignore the major difference between the status of Muslims in Israel, who enjoy political, civil, and religious rights, and a country like Saudi Arabia, which remains the only state in the world to ban all non-Islamic religious practices on its soil, not to mention the severe lack of political and civil rights.