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- Abul Ala Maududi
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Caliphate of Córdoba
The Caliphate of Córdoba (Arabic: خلافة قرطبة; trans. Khilāfat Qurṭuba) ruled the Iberian peninsula (Al-Andalus) and part of North Africa, from the islamic Qurtuba (Córdoba) city, from 929 to 1031. This period was characterized by remarkable success in trade and culture; many of the masterpieces of Islamic Iberia were constructed in this period, including the famous Great Mosque of Córdoba. In January 929, Abd-ar-Rahman III proclaimed himself Caliph (Arabic: خليفة) of Qurtuba in place of his original title Emir of Córdoba (Arabic: أمير قرطبة 'Amīr Qurṭuba). Abd-ar-Rahman III was a member of the Umayyad dynasty; the same dynasty who held the titles of Emir of Córdoba since 756. The rule of the Caliphate is known as the heyday of Muslim presence in the Iberian peninsula. The Caliphate was practically disintegrated due to civil war (fitna) between descendants of the last legitimate Caliph Hisham II and the successors of his prime minister (hayib) Al-Mansur. The shell of the Caliphate existed until 1031 when, after years of infighting, it fractured into a number of independent Taifa kingdoms. Despite these fractures, the Islamic civilisation in Iberia, one of the most culturally florid periods of European civilisation, continued until 1492 when its last bastion, the Alhambra in Granada, was formally surrendered to the Christians.
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Charles Taze Russell
Charles Taze Russell (February 16, 1852 – October 31, 1916), or Pastor Russell, was a prominent early 20th century Christian restorationist minister from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and founder of what is now known as the Bible Student movement, from which Jehovah's Witnesses and numerous independent Bible Student groups emerged after his death.
Beginning in July, 1879 he began publishing a monthly religious journal, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence. The journal is now published by Jehovah's Witnesses on a semi-monthly basis under the name, The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom. In 1881 he co-founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society and in 1884 the corporation was officially registered, with Russell as president. Russell wrote many articles, books, tracts, pamphlets and sermons, totaling approximately 50,000 printed pages. From 1886 to 1904, he published a six-volume Bible study series originally entitled Millennial Dawn, later renamed Studies in the Scriptures, nearly 20 million copies of which were printed and distributed around the world in several languages during his lifetime. (A seventh volume was commissioned by his successor as society president, Joseph Rutherford, and published in 1917.) The Watch Tower Society officially states that it ceased publication of Russell's writings in 1927, though his books continue to be published by several independent groups.
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Istanbul
Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul) is the largest city in Turkey, forming the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With a population of 13.4 million, the city is at the center of the second-largest urban area in Europe after Moscow, and among the world's largest cities by population within city limits. Istanbul's vast area of 5,343 square kilometers (2,063 sq mi) is coterminous with Istanbul Province, of which the city is considered capital. Straddling the Bosphorus—one of the world's busiest waterways—in northwestern Turkey, between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, Istanbul is a transcontinental city, with one third of its population living in Asia but its commercial and historical center in Europe.
Founded around 660 BC as Byzantium on the Seraglio Point, the city now known as Istanbul developed to become one of the most significant cities in history. For nearly sixteen centuries following its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 AD, it served as the capital of four empires — the late classical Roman Empire (330–395), the Eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire (395–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922). It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times, before the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453 and transformed it into an Islamic stronghold from which the last caliphate ruled. Although the Republic of Turkey established its capital elsewhere, in Ankara, remnants of Istanbul's previous central role still remain highly visible across the city, with palaces and imperial mosques lining its hills.
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Jerusalem
Jerusalem (
/dʒəˈruːsələm/; Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushaláyim ; Arabic: القُدس al-Quds and/or أورشليم Ûrshalîm) is the capital of Israel, though not internationally recognized as such, and one of the oldest cities in the world. It is located in the Judean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge of the Dead Sea. If the area and population of East Jerusalem is included, it is Israel's largest city in both population and area, with a population of 801,000 residents over an area of 125.1 km2 (48.3 sq mi). Jerusalem is also a holy city to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond its boundaries.
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Leicester
Coordinates: 52°38′03″N 1°08′19″W / 52.63422°N 1.13852°W / 52.63422; -1.13852
Leicester (/lɛstər/ LESS-tər pronunciation (help·info)) is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest. In 2010, the population of the Leicester unitary authority was estimated at 306,600, the second highest in the region, whilst 441,213 people lived in the wider Leicester Urban Area in 2006, making Leicester the tenth most populous settlement in the United Kingdom and the UK's fourteenth largest urban area. It is the largest city in the East Midlands yet has the second largest urban area in the region behind Nottingham Urban Area. Eurostat's Larger Urban Zone listed the population of the area at 772,400 people as of 2004.
Ancient Roman pavements and baths remain in Leicester from its early settlement as Ratae Corieltauvorum, a Roman military outpost in a region inhabited by the Celtic Corieltauvi tribe. Following the demise of Roman society the early medieval Ratae Corieltauvorum is shrouded in obscurity, but when the settlement was captured by the Danes it became one of five fortified towns important to the Danelaw. The name "Leicester" is thought to derive from the words castra of the "Ligore", meaning camp of the dwellers on the (river) Legro. Leicester appears in the Domesday Book as "Ledecestre". Leicester continued to grow throughout the Early Modern period as a market town, although it was the Industrial Revolution that facilitated a process of rapid unplanned urbanisation in the area.
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Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia (
i/ˌsaʊdi əˈreɪbi.ə/ or i/ˌsɔːdiː əˈreɪbi.ə/; Arabic: السعودية as-Su‘ūdīyah[citation needed] or incorrectly as-Sa‘ūdīyah, officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Arabic: المملكة العربية السعودية al-Mamlakah al-‘Arabīyah as-Su‘ūdīyah Arabic pronunciation (help·info)), is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab world, after Algeria. It is bordered by Jordan, and Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south. The Red Sea lies to its west, and the Persian Gulf lies to the east. Saudi Arabia has an area of approximately 2,250,000 km2 (870,000 sq mi), and it has an estimated population of 27 million, of which 9 million are registered foreign expatriates and an estimated 2 million are illegal immigrants. Saudi nationals comprise an estimated 16 million people.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded by Abdul-Aziz bin Saud (known for most of his career as Ibn Saud) in 1932, although the conquests which eventually led to the creation of the Kingdom began in 1902 when he captured Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud, referred to in Arabic as the Al Saud. The Saudi Arabian government, which has been an absolute monarchy since its inception, refers to its system of government as being Islamic, though this is contested by many due to its strong basis in Salafism, a minority school of thought in Islam. The kingdom is sometimes called "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca), and Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam.
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Sudan
Sudan (i/suːˈdæn/ or /suːˈdɑːn/;Arabic: السودان, as-Sūdān), officially the Republic of the Sudan (Arabic: جمهورية السودان, Jumhūrīyat as-Sūdān), sometimes called North Sudan, is an Arab state in North Africa (sometimes also considered to be part of the Middle East). It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, and Libya to the northwest. The population of Sudan is a combination of indigenous inhabitants of Nile Valley, and descendants of migrants from the Arabian Peninsula. Due to the process of Arabisation common throughout the rest of the Arab World, today Arab culture predominates in Sudan. The majority of the population of Sudan adheres to Islam. The Nile divides the country between east and west sides.
The people of Sudan have a long history extending from antiquity which is intertwined with the history of Egypt. Sudan suffered seventeen years of civil war during the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–1972) followed by ethnic, religious and economic conflicts between the Muslim Arab northern Sudanese and the mostly animist and Christian Nilotes of Southern Sudan. This led to the Second Sudanese Civil War in 1983. Because of continuing political and military struggles, Sudan was seized in a bloodless coup d'état by colonel Omar al-Bashir in 1989, who thereafter proclaimed himself President of Sudan. The civil war ended with the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement which granted autonomy to what was then the southern region of the country. Following a referendum held in January 2011, South Sudan seceded on 9 July 2011 with the consent of Sudan's President al-Bashir.
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Syria
Syria (/ˈsɪriə/ (
listen) SIRR-ee-ə; Arabic: سورية Sūriyya or سوريا Sūryā; Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܐ; Kurdish: Sûrî), officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية السورية al-Jumhūriyyah al-‘Arabīyah as-Sūriyyah Arabic pronunciation (help·info)), is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest.
In English, the name Syria was formerly synonymous with the Levant, known in Arabic as Sham, while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the third millennium BC. In the Islamic era, its capital city, Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
The population of Syria is 74% Sunni, 12% Alawi, 10% Christian, and 3% Druze. Combined, 87% of the Syrian population is Muslim, while the other 10% is Christian, which includes mainly Arab Christians but also Assyrians and Armenians. Major ethnic minorities in Syria include Kurds (9%), Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmens and Circassians. The majority of the population is Arab (90%).
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Turkey
Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea is to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between East Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. The vast majority of the population are Muslims. The country's official language is Turkish, whereas Kurdish and Zazaki languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas, who constitute 18% of the population.
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Abul Ala Maududi
Abul A’la Maududi [Abū 'l-Aʿlā Mawdūdī] (Urdu: ابو الاعلىٰ مودودی – alternative spellings of last name Maudoodi, Mawdudi, and Modudi) ((1903-09-25)September 25, 1903 – September 22, 1979(1979-09-22)) was a Pakistani journalist, theologian, Muslim revivalist leader and political philosopher, and a controversial 20th century Islamist thinker. He was also a political figure in Pakistan and was the first recipient of King Faisal International Award for his services 1979. He was also the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamic revivalist party.
Maududi was born in Aurangabad, India, then part of the princely state enclave of Hyderabad, until it was annexed by India in 1948. He was born to Maulana Ahmad Hasan, a lawyer by profession. He was the youngest of his three brothers. His father was the descendant of the Chishti line of saints; in fact his last name was derived from the first member of the Chishti Silsilah i.e. Khawajah Syed Qutb ul-Din Maudood Chishti (d. 527 AH)
At an early age, Maududi was given home education, he "received religious nurture at the hands of his father and from a variety of teachers employed by him." He soon moved on to formal education, however, and completed his secondary education from Madrasah Furqaniyah. For his undergraduate studies he joined Darul Uloom, Hyderabad (India). His undergraduate studies, however, were disrupted by the illness and death of his father, and he completed his studies outside of the regular educational institutions. His instruction included very little of the subject matter of a modern school, such as European languages, like English. He reportedly translated Qasim Amin's The New Woman into Urdu at the age of 14 and about 3,500 pages from Asfar, a work of mystical Persian thinker Mulla Sadra.
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Ahmed Deedat
Ahmed Hoosen Deedat (Arabic: احمد حسين ديدات; 1 July 1918 – 8 August 2005) was a South African writer and public speaker of Indian descent. He was best known as a Muslim missionary who held numerous inter-religious public debates with evangelical Christians, as well as video lectures, most of which centred around Islam, Christianity and the Bible. He also established the IPCI, an international Islamic missionary organisation, and wrote several booklets on Islam and Christianity which were widely distributed by the organisation. He was awarded the prestigious King Faisal International Prize in 1986 for his 50 years of missionary work. One focus of his work was providing Muslims with theological tools for defending themselves against active proselytising by Christian missionaries.[citation needed] He used English to get his message across to Muslims and non-Muslims in the western world.
Ahmed Deedat was born in the town of Tadkeshwar, Surat, Bombay Presidency, British India in 1918. His father had emigrated to South Africa shortly after the birth of Ahmed Deedat. At the age of 9, Deedat left India to join his father in what is now known as Kwazulu-Natal. His mother died only a few months after his departure. Arriving in South Africa, Deedat applied himself with diligence to his studies, overcoming the language barrier and excelling in school, even getting promoted until he completed standard 6. However, due to financial circumstances, he had to quit school and start working by the time he was the age of 16.
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Andrew Rippin
Andrew Lawrence Rippin (born 16 May 1950 in London, England) is a Canadian scholar of Islam.
Rippin is Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of many works on the Qur'an and its interpretation, as well as the widely respected Muslims - Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, now in its third edition (2005). In 2006, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
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Annie Laurie Gaylor
Annie Laurie Gaylor (born in Tomah, Wisconsin on 2 November 1955) is co-founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and, with her husband Dan Barker, is the current co-president. She is also editor of the organization's newspaper, Freethought Today, which is published ten times per year. She is a self-described feminist and liberal. She is the author of several books, including Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So, Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children, and Women Without Superstition: "No Gods — No Masters." She is a 1980 graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Journalism.
Gaylor and her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, and the late John Sontarck, founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation in a meeting around the Gaylors' dining room table in 1978. She met Barker at The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1984. They began dating six months later and married in 1987. They have a daughter, Sabrina Delata.
Gaylor co-hosts a one hour weekly radio show with Barker. Freethought Radio was launched on October 6, 2007, on Air America.
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Arab people
Arab people, also known as Arabs (Arabic: عرب, ʿarab), are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing an important part of Arab identity.
The word "Arab" has had several different, but overlapping, meanings over the centuries (and sometimes even today). In addition to including all Arabized people of the world (with language tending to be the acid test), it has also at times been used exclusively for bedouin (Arab nomads [although a related word, "`a-RAB," with the Arabic letter "alif" in the second syllable, once was sometimes used when this specific meaning was intended] and their now almost entirely settled descendants). It is sometimes used that way colloquially even today in some places. Townspeople once were sometimes called "sons of the Arabs." As in the case of other ethnicities or nations, people identify themselves (or are identified by others) as "Arabs" to varying degrees. This may not be one's primary identity (it tends to compete with country, religion, sect, etc.), and whether it is emphasized may depend upon one's audience.
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Magan Ali ( pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; Arabic: أيان حرسي علي / ALA-LC: Ayān Ḥirsī ‘Alī; 13 November 1969) is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer and politician who is known for her views critical of Islam, practices of circumcision and female genital cutting. Her screenplay for Theo van Gogh's movie Submission led to death threats, resulting in the director's murder. The daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse, she is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA Foundation.
When she was eight, Hirsi Ali's family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the centre of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006.
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Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand ( /ˈaɪn ˈrænd/; born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982) was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.
Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two initially unsuccessful early novels, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed all forms of collectivism and statism, instead supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she believed was the only social system that protected individual rights. She promoted romantic realism in art. She was sharply critical of the philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her besides Aristotle.
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Bahira
Bahira (Classical Syriac: ܒܚܝܪܐ), or "Sergius the Monk" to the Latin West, was a Syriac or BahraniNestorian (or Arian) monk who, according to tradition, foretold to the adolescent Muhammad his future prophetic career.
The story of Muhammad's encounter with Bahira is found in the works of the early Muslim historians Ibn Hisham, Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi, and Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, whose versions differ in some details. When Muhammad was either nine or twelve years old, he met Bahira in the town of Bosra in Syria during his travel with a Meccan caravan, accompanying his uncle Abu Talib ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib. When the caravan was passing by his cell, the monk invited the merchants to a feast. They accepted the invitation, leaving the boy to guard the camel. Bahira, however, insisted that everyone in the caravan should come to him. Then a miraculous occurrence indicated to the monk that Muhammad was to become a prophet.
It was a miraculous movement of a cloud that kept shadowing Muhammad regardless of the time of the day. The monk revealed his visions of Muhammad's future to the boy's uncle (Abu Talib), warning him to preserve the child from the Jews (in Ibn Sa'd's version) or from the Byzantines (in al-Tabari's version). Both Ibn Sa'd and al-Tabari write that Bahira found the announcement of the coming of Muhammad in the original, unadulterated gospels, which he possessed; the standard Islamic view is that Christians corrupted the gospels, in part by erasing any references to Muhammad.
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Bede
Bede ( /ˈbiːd/ BEED; Old English: Bǣda or Bēda; 672/673 – 26 May 735), also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede (Latin: Bēda Venerābilis), was an English monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow (see Monkwearmouth-Jarrow), both in the Kingdom of Northumbria. Bede's monastery had access to a superb library which included works by Eusebius and Orosius among many others.
He is well known as an author and scholar, and his most famous work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People) gained him the title "The Father of English History". In 1899, Bede was made a Doctor of the Church by Leo XIII, a position of theological significance; he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation (Anselm of Canterbury, also a Doctor of the Church, was originally from Italy). Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, and his work with the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers contributed significantly to English Christianity, making the writings much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons.
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Bernard Lewis
Bernard Lewis, FBA (born May 31, 1916) is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West, and is especially famous in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.
Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History.
Lewis is a widely read expert on the Middle East, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading scholars of that region. His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the George W. Bush administration. In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that, over a 60-year career, he has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East." Lewis is known for his Armenian genocide denial. He is also famous for his public debates with the late Edward Said concerning the latter's book Orientalism (1978), which criticized Lewis.
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense. He was born in Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain.
Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 20th century. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his friend Ludwig Wittgenstein, and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy." His work has had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, computer science (see type theory and type system), and philosophy, especially philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
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Bill Maher
William "Bill" Maher, Jr. ( /ˈmɑːr/; born January 20, 1956) is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author, and actor. Before his current role as the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher hosted a similar late-night talk show called Politically Incorrect originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC.
Maher is known for his political satire and sociopolitical commentary, which targets a wide swath of topics including religion, politics, bureaucracies of many kinds, political correctness, the mass media, greed among people and persons in positions of high political and social power, and the lack of intellectual curiosity in the electorate. He supports the legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage, and serves on the board of PETA. He is also a critic of religion and is an advisory board member of Project Reason, a foundation to promote scientific knowledge and secular values within society. In 2005, Maher ranked at number 38 on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time. Bill Maher received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star on September 14, 2010.
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Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan ( /ˈseɪɡɪn/; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Ukrainian Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine; his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, "the mother she never knew." Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1951.
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Category Theologians
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Cathy Young
Cathy Young (Ekaterina Jung; Russian: Екатерина Юнг; born February 10, 1963) is a Russian American journalist and writer whose books and articles, as well as columns which appear in the libertarian monthly Reason, and also weekly in The Boston Globe, primarily espouse equality feminism and libertarianism.
Born in Moscow, the capital of what was then the Soviet Union, Ekaterina was 17 when her family's emigration application was granted in 1980, enabling them to start a new life in the United States. By 1988, having Anglicized her name and graduated from Rutgers University, where, in addition to writing a column for the student newspaper, The Daily Targum, and working as a student writer for The Detroit News, she completed her autobiography, Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood, published in 1989. Continuing her association with The Detroit News, Cathy Young was a regular columnist for the newspaper from 1993 to 2000, while also working as a freelance journalist, with her writing appearing in a variety of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, National Review, Salon.com, and Reason. In her second book, Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, published in 1999, she argues for a "philosophy" which may be called "feminism or something else". Her association with The Boston Globe and Reason began in 2000 and 2001, respectively, as a weekly editorial page columnist for The Globe and a monthly columnist for Reason, where she is also a contributing editor.
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Charles Taze Russell
Charles Taze Russell (February 16, 1852 – October 31, 1916), or Pastor Russell, was a prominent early 20th century Christian restorationist minister from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and founder of what is now known as the Bible Student movement, from which Jehovah's Witnesses and numerous independent Bible Student groups emerged after his death.
Beginning in July, 1879 he began publishing a monthly religious journal, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence. The journal is now published by Jehovah's Witnesses on a semi-monthly basis under the name, The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom. In 1881 he co-founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society and in 1884 the corporation was officially registered, with Russell as president. Russell wrote many articles, books, tracts, pamphlets and sermons, totaling approximately 50,000 printed pages. From 1886 to 1904, he published a six-volume Bible study series originally entitled Millennial Dawn, later renamed Studies in the Scriptures, nearly 20 million copies of which were printed and distributed around the world in several languages during his lifetime. (A seventh volume was commissioned by his successor as society president, Joseph Rutherford, and published in 1917.) The Watch Tower Society officially states that it ceased publication of Russell's writings in 1927, though his books continue to be published by several independent groups.
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Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.
Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.
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Dan Barker
Dan Barker (born June 25, 1949) is a prominent American atheist activist who served as a Christian preacher and musician for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984.
Barker received a degree in Religion from Azusa Pacific University and was ordained to the ministry by the Standard Community Church, California, in 1978. He served as associate pastor at a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) church, an Assembly of God, and an independent Charismatic church. To this day, he receives royalties from his popular children's Christian musicals, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (1977), and "His Fleece Was White as Snow" (1978), both published by Manna Music and performed in many countries. In 1984 he announced to his friends that he was an atheist.
A successful musician, Barker has composed over 200 songs that have been published or recorded. He is the current co-president with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an American Freethought organization that promotes the separation of church and state. Barker is co-host of Freethought Radio, a Madison, Wisconsin based radio program for atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers that has included interviews with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Julia Sweeney, and Michael Newdow. His foundation published his book Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist, and he has written numerous articles for Freethought Today, an American freethought newspaper.
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Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and a University Professor at Tufts University. Dennett is a firm atheist and secularist, a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, as well as an outspoken supporter of the Brights movement. Dennett is referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen of New Atheism," along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Dennett spent part of his childhood in Lebanon, where, during World War II, his father was a covert counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services posing as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Beirut. When he was five, his mother took him back to Massachusetts after his father died in an unexplained plane crash. His sister is the investigative journalist Charlotte Dennett.
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David Hume
David Hume (7 May [O.S. 26 April] 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and scepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." A prominent figure in the sceptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. Thus he divides perceptions between strong and lively "impressions" or direct sensations and fainter "ideas", which are copied from impressions. He developed the position that mental behaviour is governed by "custom"; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the "constant conjunction" of causes and effects. Without direct impressions of a metaphysical "self", he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
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Deepa Kumar
Deepa Kumar (Hindi: दीपा कुमार; born 1968) is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at the Rutgers University (New Jersey). She is the author of the book Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike.
Outside the Box (ISBN 0-252-03172-5, University of Illinois Press) looks at the need for a critical analysis of how labor struggles are presented and packaged by the corporate media—and how this bias can be counteracted—by examining the most successful national strike in recent years by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters against the United Parcel Service. Ron Carey the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has praised the book calling it "A brilliant analysis of the UPS strike, its treatment in the media, and how the Teamsters were able to win public support. It offers valuable lessons, and is a must read for everyone in the labor movement" while the Journal of Communication has been quoted as saying "Not only a significant contribution to the field but also a practical guide to how organized labor can intervene and enact social change in a still severely compromised public arena."
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Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie.
Diderot also contributed to literature, notably with Jacques le fataliste et son maître (Jacques the Fatalist and his Master), which emulated Laurence Sterne in challenging conventions regarding novels and their structure and content, while also examining philosophical ideas about free will. Diderot is also known as the author of the dialogue, Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew), upon which many articles and sermons about consumer desire have been based. His articles included many topics of the Enlightenment.
Denis Diderot was born in Langres and began his formal education at the jesuitic Collège Louis-leGrand in Langres. In 1732 he earned a master of arts degree in philosophy. Then he entered at the Collège d’Harcourt in Paris. He abandoned the idea of entering the clergy and decided instead to study law. His study of law was short-lived however and in 1734 Diderot decided to become a writer. Because of his refusal to enter one of the learned professions, he was disowned by his father, and for the next ten years he lived a bohemian existence.
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Denis the Carthusian
Denis the Carthusian (1402–1471), also known as Denys van Leeuwen or Denis Ryckel, was a Roman Catholic theologian and mystic.
Denis was born in 1402 in that part of the Belgian province of Limburg which was formerly comprised in the county of Hesbaye. His birthplace was Rijkel, a small village a few miles from Sint-Truiden, whence ancient writers have often surnamed him 'Ryckel' or 'à Ryckel'. He first attended school at Sint-Truiden. In 1415 he went to another school at Zwolle (Overijssel), which was then of great repute and attracted many students from various parts of Germany. He there entered upon the study of philosophy and became acquainted with the principles and practice of religious life, which the rector, John Cele, himself taught. Shortly after the rector's death (1417) Denis returned home. By the age of 18 he had decided to become a monk. He applied to the Carthusian monastery at Roermond only to be told he could not be admitted until he reached the minimum age of 20. The Prior at Roermond urged him to enter the University of Cologne to study philosophy and theology for the next two years. Having earned his Master of Arts degree, he entered the Carthusian monastery at Roermond (Dutch Limburg) in 1424.
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Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd (Arabic pronunciation: [wædiːʕ sæʕiːd] Arabic: إدوارد وديع سعيد, Idwārd Wadīʿ Saʿīd; 1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. Said was a Palestinian born in Jerusalem (then in the British Mandate of Palestine) and held an American passport. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism.Robert Fisk described him as the Palestinians' "most powerful political voice."
Said was an influentialcultural critic and author, known best for his book Orientalism (1978). The book presented his influential ideas on Orientalism, the Western study of Eastern cultures. Said contended that Orientalist scholarship was and continues to be inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, making much of the work inherently politicized, servile to power, and therefore suspect. Grounding much of this thesis in his intimate knowledge of colonial literature such as the fiction of Conrad, and in the post-structuralist theory of Foucault, Derrida and others, Said's Orientalism and following works proved influential in literary theory and criticism, and continue to influence several other fields in the humanities. Orientalism affected Middle Eastern studies in particular, transforming the way practitioners of the discipline describe and examine the Middle East. Said came to discuss and vigorously debate the issue of Orientalism with scholars in the fields of history and area studies, many of whom disagreed with his thesis, including most famously Bernard Lewis.
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Ehsan Jami
Ehsan Jami (born April 20, 1985) is a Dutch politician of Iranian origin. From March 7, 2006 until November 6, 2007 he was member of the city council of Leidschendam-Voorburg on behalf of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA). From that date until 2010 he continued to be a member of the city council as independent member 'fraction Jami' . In 2007 he was one of the two founders of the former Central Committee for Ex-Muslims.
Ehsan Jami was born on April 20, 1985 in Mashhad, Iran and was raised there. His father is a doctor. His mother converted, later in her life, to Christianity. As son of a doctor, Jami enjoyed substantial privileges in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In an interview, Jami stated: "My grandparents were Muslim, but my father was non-religious." Yet in a different interview, he described his father as Muslim. Political engagement by Jami's father forced the family to leave the country. Together with his parents and his older sister, the then nine year old Jami arrived in the Netherlands in 1994, later obtaining Dutch nationality.
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Epicurus
Epicurus (Ancient Greek: Ἐπίκουρος, Epikouros, "ally, comrade"; 341 BCE – 270 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy derives from later followers and commentators.
For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche ( /ˈniːtʃə/;German pronunciation: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈniːtsʃə]; October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a German philosopher, poet, cultural critic and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism.
Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism, nihilism and postmodernism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, the Übermensch, the eternal recurrence, the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy, perspectivism and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation", which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent and radical those views might be.
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Gabriel
In Abrahamic religions, Gabriel (Hebrew: גַּבְרִיאֵל, Modern Gavri'el Tiberian Gaḇrîʼēl, God is my strength; Arabic: جبريل, Jibrīl or جبرائيل Jibrāʾīl) is an angel who typically serves as a messenger to humans from God.
He first appears in the Book of Daniel, delivering explanations of Daniel's visions. In the Gospel of Luke Gabriel foretold the births of both John the Baptist and of Jesus. Christians of the Catholic traditions refer to him as Gabriel the Archangel.
Gabriel is referred to as "he" in the Bible, and in Daniel 9:21 he is explicitly called "The man Gabriel". Some moderns, especially New Age exponents, portray Gabriel as female or androgynous.
In Latter-day Saint theology, Gabriel is believed to have lived a mortal life as the prophet Noah. The two are regarded as the same individual; Noah being his mortal name and Gabriel being his heavenly name.
Gabriel is mentioned in the Book of Daniel, in the Hebrew Bible where he is sent as a messenger of YHWH (see God in Judaism) to Daniel during the Jewish captivity in Babylon. He is later mentioned in the Talmud.
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Gary Miller
Gary Gene Miller (born October 16, 1948) is the U.S. Representative for California's 42nd congressional district, and previously the 41st, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Miller was born in Huntsville, Arkansas, attended Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, California, and served briefly in the United States Army in 1967.
He is a businessman who founded several companies bearing his name, including G. Miller Development, G. Miller Masonry, and G. Miller Framing. At the age of 20, he began his first company, which built single-family and custom homes. His business expanded to the development of planned communities. Miller remains active in real estate through his development company.
Miller was appointed to the Diamond Bar, California Municipal Advisory Council in 1988. In 1989, he was elected to the city's first council that helped incorporate the city. He served as mayor in 1992.
In 1990, he decided to run for a seat in the California Senate. Incumbent Republican State Senator Bill Campbell of California's 31st State Senate district decided to resign. In the February 1990 special election (open primary), Miller ranked fourth, or last, among Republicans in the field, getting just 16% of the vote.
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George Pell
George Pell AC (born 8 June 1941) is an Australian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the eighth and current Archbishop of Sydney, serving since 2001. He previously served as auxiliary bishop (1987–96) and archbishop (1996–2001) of the Archdiocese of Melbourne. He was created a cardinal in 2003.
Pell was born in Ballarat, Victoria, to George Arthur and Margaret Lillian (née Burke) Pell. His father, a non-practising Anglican whose ancestors were from Leicestershire in England, was a heavyweight boxing champion; his mother was a devout Catholic of Irish descent.[page needed] During World War II, his father served in the Australian Defence Force.[page needed] His sister, Margaret, became a violinist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. As a child, he underwent 24 operations to remove an abscess in his throat.[page needed]
Pell received his early education at Loreto Convent and at St. Patrick's College, both in his native Ballarat. One of his classmates at St Patrick's was Paul Bongiorno.[page needed] At St Patrick's, Pell played as a ruckman on the first XVIII from 1956 to 1959. He even signed to play with the Richmond Football Club. However, his ambitions later turned to the priesthood. Speaking of his decision to become a priest, Pell once said, "To put it crudely, I feared and suspected and eventually became convinced that God wanted me to do His work, and I was never able to successfully escape that conviction."[page needed]
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Gilles Kepel
Gilles Kepel (born 30 June 1955) is a French political scientist, specialist of the Islam and contemporary Arab world. He is Professor at Sciences Po Paris, formerly known as Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Paris and member of the Institut Universitaire de France.
He graduated in Arabic and philosophy, with two doctorates in sociology and political sciences. He also taught at New York University in 1994, and at Columbia University in 1995. He chaired the Philippe Roman chair in History and International Relations at the London School of Economics in 2009-2010.
Gilles Kepel is the author of several books, since the publication of "The Prophet and the Pharao/ Islamist movements in Sadat's Egypt", in 1984, his books are translated all over the world. He contributes regularly to Le Monde, the New-York Times, La Repubblica, El Pais, and several Arab medias.
Gilles Kepel is a member of the High Council of the Arab World Institute and Academic Director of the Kuwait Program at IEP.
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Great Spirit
The Great Spirit, also called Wakan Tanka among the Sioux, the Creator or the Great Maker in English, and Gitchi Manitou in Algonquian, is a conception of a supreme being prevalent among some Native American and First Nations cultures. According to Lakotah activist Russell Means a better translation of Wakan Tanka is the Great Mystery.
The Great Spirit or Great Mystery is generally believed to be personal, close to the people, and immanent in the fabric of the material world. Lakotah prayers refer to Him as Grandfather; however, not all Nations assign gender, or only one gender, to the Great Mystery. Chief Dan Evehema, a spiritual leader of the Hopi Nation, described the Great Spirit as follows:
"Old Man" is how the Great Mystery is "known" by the Blackfoot people. Old Man personally created all things and personally instructed the Blackfoot people on how to attain spiritual wisdom in daily life: Old Man is not an anthropomorphic and anthropopathic god like Jesus, nor a panentheistic deity as in Brahmanism out of which the whole fabric of existence is derived. Rather, Old Man is simply acknowledged to exist in the sense of the Aristotelian "prime mover" ("prime mover" idiom provided for the benefit of European audiences) and the traditional teachings are attributed to "him" as a source. There are specific tales regarding Old Man doing this or that or saying this or that but rather than being enshrined in a ritualistic, symbolic, or codified religion, these teachings are more used to guide individuals and communities on a moment-by-moment basis. It is not a set of laws or code of living as much as a cultural lifestyle which focuses on the daily needs of the individual and the nation rather than any "universal" speculation. [op cit.]
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Ibn Hisham
Abu Muhammad 'Abd al-Malik bin Hisham (Arabic: أبو محمد عبدالمالك بن هشام), or Ibn Hisham (died 833) edited the biography of Muhammad written by Ibn Ishaq. Ibn Ishaq's work is lost and is now only known in the recensions of Ibn Hisham and al-Tabari. Ibn Hisham grew up in Basra, Iraq, but moved afterwards to Egypt, where he gained a name as a grammarian and student of language and history. His family was of Himyarite origin, though some narrators trace him to Mu'afir ibn Ya'far, while others say he is a Dhuhli.
List of Islamic scholars
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Ibn Ishaq
Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār (according to some sources, ibn Khabbār, or Kūmān, or Kūtān,Arabic: محمد بن إسحاق بن يسار بن خيار, or simply ibn Isḥaq ابن إسحاق, meaning "the son of Isaac") (died 767, or 761) was an Arab Muslim historian and hagiographer. Under the aegis of the 'Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur, Ibn Ishaq collected oral traditions that formed the basis of the most important biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
Born in Medina, ibn Isḥaq was the grandson of a Christian man, Yasār, who had been captured in one of Khalid ibn al-Walid's campaigns and taken to Medina as a slave. His grandfather became the slave of Qays ibn Makhrama ibn al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy and, having accepted Islam, was manumitted and became his mawlā, thus acquiring the nisbat al-Muṭṭalibī. Yasār's three sons, Mūsā, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and Isḥāq, were all known as transmitters of akhbār, who collected and recounted tales of the past. Isḥāq married the daughter of another mawlā and from this marriage ibn Isḥāq was born.
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Ibn Kammuna
Sa'd ibn Mansur (Izz Al-dawla) Ibn Kammuna (died 1284) was a 13th Century Jewish physician (ophthalmologist), philosopher and critic of Islam who lived under the rule of the Mongols in Baghdad.
As a prolific scholar he played an important role in the diffusion of new thought in the Middle East. Much of his legacy, contained in the form of commentaries, correspondence, and treatise still survives today and makes up part of the historical remnants of his time.
Ibn Kammuna's commentary on Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi's Talwihat, the core text of Illuminationist philosophy is deemed as one of the most thorough examination of that branch of thought.
His comparative treatise on the three monotheistic religions Christianity, Judaism and Islam, titled Examination of the Three Faiths challenged the legitimacy of Islam where he reasoned that incompatibility of sharia with the principles of justice undercuts Muhammad's claims of being a perfect man and stated that people convert to Islam from ulterior motives.
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Ibn Warraq
Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an author most famous for his criticism of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS) and a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. Warraq's commentary on Islam is considered by some to be overly polemical and revisionist, while others praise it as well-researched.
Warraq gathered world notice through his historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which question mainstream conceptions of the period. The pen name "Ibn Warraq" (Arabic: ابن وراق, most literally "son of a papermaker") is used due to his concerns for his personal safety; Warraq stated, "I had fear to become the second Salman Rushdie." It is a name that has been adopted by dissident authors throughout the history of Islam. The name refers to 9th century skeptical scholar Muhammad al Warraq. Warraq adopted the pseudonym in 1995 when he completed his first book, entitled "Why I Am Not a Muslim".
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Irshad Manji
Irshad Manji (Arabic: إرشاد مانجي ‘Irshād Mānjī, Gujarati: ઇરશાદ માનજી Irshād Mānji; born 1968) is a Canadian author, journalist and an advocate of a "reform and progressive" interpretation of Islam. Manji is director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, which aims to teach young leaders to "challenge political correctness, intellectual conformity and self-censorship." She is also founder and president of Project Ijtihad, a charitable organization promoting a "tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent" in Islam, among a "network of reform-minded Muslims and non-Muslim allies."
Manji is a well-known critic of traditional mainstream Islam and was described by The New York Times as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare".
Manji’s most recent book, Allah, Liberty and Love was released in June 2011 in the US, Canada and other countries. On Manji's website, the book is described: "Allah, Liberty and Love shows all of us how to reconcile faith and freedom in a world seething with repressive dogmas. Manji’s key teaching is "moral courage," the willingness to speak up when everyone else wants to shut you up. This book is the ultimate guide to becoming a gutsy global citizen."
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Ishmael
Ishmael (Hebrew: יִשְׁמָעֵאל, Modern Yishma'el Tiberian Yišmāʻēl ISO 259-3 Yišmaˁel; Greek: Ισμαήλ Ismaēl; Latin: Ismael; Arabic: إسماعيل ʾIsmāʿīl) is a figure in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an, and was Abraham's first son according to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ishmael was born of Abraham's marriage to Sarah's handmaiden Hagar (Genesis 16:3). According to the Genesis account, he died at the age of 137 (Genesis 25:17).
Cognates of Hebrew Yishma'el existed in various ancient Semitic cultures, including early Babylonian and Minæan. It is translated literally as "God has hearkened", suggesting that "a child so named was regarded as the fulfillment of a divine promise".
This is the account of Ishmael from Genesis Chapters 16, 17, 21, 25
In Genesis 16, the birth of Ishmael was planned by the Patriarch Abraham’s first wife, who at that time was known as Sarai. She and her husband Abram (Abraham), sought a way to have children in order to fulfill the Abrahamic covenant that was established in Genesis 15. Since Sarai had yet to bear Abram a child, her idea was to offer her Egyptian handmaiden Hagar to Abram, so that they could have a child by her. Abram consented to a marital arrangement taking Hagar as his second wife when he was in his late 85th year of age. Customs of that time dictated that, although Hagar was the birth mother, any child conceived would belong to Sarai and Abram (Sarah and Abraham).
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James Randi
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928) is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Randi began his career as a magician named The Amazing Randi, but after retiring at age 60, he began investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively calls "woo-woo".
Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi rejects that title owing to its perceived bias, instead describing himself as an "investigator". He has written about the paranormal, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and was occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!. The JREF sponsors The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge offering a prize of US$1,000,000 to eligible applicants who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties.
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John Esposito
John Louis Esposito (born 19 May 1940, Brooklyn, New York City) is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. He is also the director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.
Esposito was raised a Roman Catholic in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City, and spent a decade in a Catholic monastery. After taking his first degree he worked as a management consultant and high-school teacher.[citation needed] He then studied and received a masters in theology at St. John's University. He earned a PhD at Temple University, Pennsylvania in 1974, studying Islam and held postdoctoral appointments at Harvard and Oxford. He is well known as a promoter of strong ties between Muslims and Christians and has challenged the Vatican to make greater efforts to encourage such ties [citation needed]
For nearly twenty years after completing his PhD, Esposito had taught religious studies (including Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam) at the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit college in Massachusetts. At Holy Cross, Esposito held the Loyola Professor of Middle East Studies position, was the chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and the director of college's Center for International Studies. At Georgetown University, Esposito holds the position of University Professor and teaches as both Professor of Religion and International Affairs and Professor of Islamic Studies. Esposito also works as a Senior Scientist at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, where he co-authored Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, which was published in March 2008.
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John of Damascus
Saint John of Damascus (Greek: Ἰωάννης ὁ Δαμασκηνός Iōannēs ho Damaskēnos; Latin: Iohannes Damascenus; also known as John Damascene, Χρυσορρόας/Chrysorrhoas, "streaming with gold"—i.e., "the golden speaker") (c. 645 or 676 – 4 December 749; Arabic: يوحنا الدمشقي Yuḥannā Al Demashqi) was a Syrian monk and priest. Born and raised in Damascus, he died at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem.
A polymath whose fields of interest and contribution included law, theology, philosophy, and music, he is said by some sources to have served as a Chief Administrator to the Muslim caliph of Damascus before his ordination. He wrote works expounding the Christian faith, and composed hymns which are still used liturgically in Eastern Christian practice throughout the world. He is considered "the last of the Fathers" of the Eastern Orthodox church and is best known for his strong defense of icons. The Catholic Church regards him as a Doctor of the Church, often referred to as the Doctor of the Assumption due to his writings on the Assumption of Mary.
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Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong FRSL (born 14 November 1944), is a British author and commentator who is the author of twelve books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic nun, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical faith. Armstrong first rose to prominence in 1993 with her book, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, an international best seller that is now required reading in many theology courses. Her work focuses on commonalities of the major religions, such as the importance, in many, of compassion or "The Golden Rule".
Armstrong received the $100,000 TED Prize in February 2008. She used that occasion to call for the creation of a Charter for Compassion, which was unveiled the following year.
Armstrong was born at Wildmoor, Worcestershire, into a family of Irish extraction who, after her birth, moved to Bromsgrove and later to Birmingham. In 1962, while still in her teens, she became a nun in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, a teaching order, in which she remained for seven years. Once she had advanced from postulant and novice to professed nun, she enrolled in St Anne's College, Oxford, to study English. Armstrong left her order in 1969 while still a student at Oxford. After graduating with a Congratulatory First, she embarked on a DPhil on the poet Tennyson. According to Armstrong, she wrote her dissertation on a topic that had been approved by the university committee. Nevertheless it was failed by her external examiner on the grounds that the topic had been unsuitable. Armstrong did not formally protest this verdict, nor did she embark upon a new topic but instead abandoned hope of an academic career. She reports that this period in her life was marked by ill-health stemming from her life-long but, at that time, still undiagnosed temporal epilepsy.
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Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867–1894); some of his works were co-written with his friend and fellow German revolutionary socialist, Friedrich Engels.
Born into a wealthy middle class family in Trier, formerly in Prussian Rhineland now called Rhineland-Palatinate, Marx studied at both the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, where he became interested in the philosophical ideas of the Young Hegelians. In 1836, he became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, marrying her in 1843. After his studies, he wrote for a radical newspaper in Cologne, and began to work out his theory of dialectical materialism. Moving to Paris in 1843, he began writing for other radical newspapers. He met Engels in Paris, and the two men worked together on a series of books. Exiled to Brussels, he became a leading figure of the Communist League, before moving back to Cologne, where he founded his own newspaper. In 1849 he was exiled again and moved to London together with his wife and children. In London, where the family was reduced to poverty, Marx continued writing and formulating his theories about the nature of society and how he believed it could be improved, and also campaigned for socialism—he became a significant figure in the International Workingmen's Association.
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Keysar Trad
Keysar Trad is a spokesperson for a section of the Australian Muslim community.
Trad was born in Lebanon and came to Australia at the age of thirteen under the Australian government's family reunion program. He met and married his wife, Hanifeh, when he was in his early twenties. They live in south-west Sydney and have nine children.
After a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1987, Trad decided to become a much stricter Muslim, rather than to follow the more liberal form of Islam that he observed around him in Lebanon and Australia. Trad began to take an active role at the Lakemba Mosque in Sydney shortly thereafter.
Trad is well known for his former role as an interpreter and spokesperson for Sheik Taj El-Din Hilaly.
He is also an author, having released several books.
After leaving the Lebanese Muslim Association, Trad founded his own organisation, the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia Inc (IFAA).
Trad has become a highly controversial figure in Australia due to many of his activities, comments and views on matters relating to Islam:
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Ludwig Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (July 28, 1804, Landshut, Lower Bavaria – September 13, 1872) was a German philosopher and anthropologist. He was the fourth son of the eminent jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, brother of mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feuerbach and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach. An associate of Left Hegelian circles, Feuerbach was politically liberal, an atheist and a materialist. Many of his philosophical writings offered a critical analysis of Christianity. His thought was influential in the development of dialectical materialism, where he is often recognized as a bridge between Hegel and Marx.
Feuerbach matriculated in the University of Heidelberg with the intention of pursuing a career in the church.[citation needed] Through the influence of Prof. Karl Daub he was led to an interest in the then predominant philosophy of Hegel and, in spite of his father's opposition, enrolled in the University of Berlin in order to study under the master himself. After 22 years, the Hegelian influence began to slacken. Feuerbach became associated with a group known as the Young Hegelians, alternately known as the Left Hegelians, who synthesized a radical offshoot of Hegelian philosophy, interpreting Hegel's dialectic march of spirit through history to mean that existing Western culture and institutional forms—and, in particular, Christianity—would be superseded. "Theology," he wrote to a friend, "I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted theologian shrinks back; and with nature man, man in his entire quality." These words are a key to Feuerbach's development. He completed his education at Erlangen, at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg with the study of natural science.
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Maimonides
Mosheh ben Maimon משה בן מימון, called Moses Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn (Arabic: موسى بن ميمون), or RaMBaM (רמב"ם – Hebrew acronym for "Rabbi Mosheh Ben Maimon"), was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the most prolific and followed Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages. He was born in Córdoba, Almoravid Empire (present-day Spain) on Passover Eve, 1135, and died in Egypt (or Tiberias) on 20th Tevet, December 12, 1204. He was a rabbi, physician and philosopher in Morocco and Egypt.
Although his writings on Jewish law and ethics were met with acclaim and gratitude from most Jews even as far off as Spain, Iraq and Yemen, and he rose to be the revered head of the Jewish community in Egypt, there were also vociferous critics of some of his rulings and other writings particularly in Spain. Nevertheless, he was posthumously acknowledged to be one of the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history, his copious work a cornerstone of Jewish scholarship. His fourteen-volume Mishneh Torah still carries canonical authority as a codification of Talmudic law. In the Yeshiva world he is known as "haNesher haGadol" (the great eagle) in recognition of his outstanding status as a bona fide exponent of the Oral Torah.
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Malise Ruthven
Malise Ruthven (born 1942) is an Anglo-Irish academic and writer.
Born in Dublin in 1942, he earned an MA in English Literature at Cambridge University, before working as a scriptwriter with the BBC Arabic and World Service, and a consultant on Middle Eastern affairs. He earned his Ph.D in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University. Having pursued a career as a writer, journalist and teacher, he focuses his work on religion, fundamentalism, and especially Islamic affairs.
As a writer, he wrote:
Ruthven contributed an afterword to the most recent edition of Albert Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples, bringing that work up to date following Hourani's death. Dr Ruthven is internationally recognized for his work on Muslim thought and theology, fundamentalism, Mormonism, the social impact of religion and migration and the nexus between contemporary politics and belief.[citation needed]
Malise Ruthven's book reviews have appeared in The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, Prospect Magazine and The New York Review of Books (NYR). His blog for the NYR, Revolution by Latrine, won an award from the Overseas Press Club of America in April 2011.
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Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."
Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.
He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
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Max Stirner
Johann Kaspar Schmidt (October 25, 1806 – June 26, 1856), better known as Max Stirner was a German philosopher who was one of the forerunners in nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism, and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which translates literally as The Unique One and his Property). This work was first published in 1844 in Leipzig, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.
Stirner was born in Bayreuth, Bavaria. What little is known of his life is mostly due to the Scottish born German writer John Henry Mackay, who wrote a biography of Stirner (Max Stirner - sein Leben und sein Werk), published in German in 1898 (enlarged 1910, 1914), and translated into English in 2005.
Stirner was the only child of Albert Christian Heinrich Schmidt (1769–1807) and Sophia Elenora Reinlein (1778–1839). His father died of tuberculosis on the April 19, 1807 at the age of 37. In 1809 his mother remarried to Heinrich Ballerstedt, a pharmacist, and settled in West Prussian Kulm (now Chełmno, Poland).
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Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermer, PhD (born September 8, 1954 in Glendale, California, USA) is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members. Shermer also engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he promulgates the need for scientific skepticism.
Shermer is also the producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family (now ABC Family) television series Exploring the Unknown. Since April 2001, he has been a monthly columnist for Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. Shermer states he was once a fundamentalist Christian, but converted from a belief in God during his graduate studies, and has described himself as an agnostic,nontheist,atheist and advocate for humanist philosophy as well as the science of morality. He has expressed reservations about such labels, however, as he sees them being used in the service of "pigeonholing", and prefers to simply be called a skeptic.
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Michel Onfray
Michel Onfray (born January 1, 1959 in Argentan, Orne, France) is a contemporary French philosopher who adheres to hedonism, atheism and anarchism. He is a highly prolific author on philosophy with more than 50 written books.
He has gained notoriety for writing such works as Physiologie de Georges Palante, portrait d'un nietzchéen de gauche, Politique du rebelle: traité de résistance et d'insoumission, Traité d'athéologie: Physique de la métaphysique (translated into English as Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, La puissance d'exister and La Sculpture de soi for which he won the annual Prix Médicis in 1993.
His philosophy is mainly influenced by such thinkers as Nietzsche, Epicurus, the cynic and cyrenaic schools, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, and individualist anarchism.
Born to a family of Norman farmers, he graduated with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He taught this subject to senior students at a technical high school in Caen between 1983 and 2002, before establishing what he and his supporters call the Université populaire de Caen, proclaiming its foundation on a free-of-charge basis and on the manifesto written by Onfray in 2004 (La communauté philosophique).
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Muhammad
Muhammad (c. 26 April 570 – 8 June 632; also transliterated as Mohammad, Mohammed, or Muhammed; Arabic: محمد), full name: Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib (Arabic: محمد بن عبدالله بن عبد المطلب ) was a leader from Mecca who unified the tribes of Arabia into a single religious polity under Islam. He is believed by Muslims and Bahá'ís to be a messenger and prophet of God. Muslims believe that Islam was not his own invention but was revealed by God, and most consider him to be the last prophet of God Muslims thus consider him the restorer of an uncorrupted original monotheistic faith (islām) of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets.
Born in 570 CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, he was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was first married by age 25. Being in the habit of periodically retreating to a cave in the surrounding mountains for several nights of meditation and prayer, he later reported that it was there, at age 40, that he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" to Him (lit. islām) is the only way (dīn) acceptable to God, and that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets.
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Muhammad al Warraq
Abu Issa Muhammad ibn Harun al-Warraq (Arabic: أبو عيسى محمد ابن هارون الوراق) was a ninth century skeptical scholar and critic of Islam. He was a mentor and friend of scholar Ibn al-Rawandi in whose work The Book of the Emerald he appears. Some Muslim sources have described him as being a Muslim and others a Manichaean.[citation needed]
Al-Warraq was skeptical of the existence of Allah because "He who orders his slave to do things that he knows him to be incapable of doing, then punishes him, is a fool." Warraq also doubted claims portraying Muhammad as a prophet:
That Muhammad could predict certain events does not prove that he was a prophet: he may have been able to guess successfully, but this does not mean that he had real knowledge of the future. And certainly the fact that he was able to recount events from the past does not prove that he was a prophet, because he could have read about those events in the Bible and, if he was illiterate, he could still have had the Bible read to him.
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Nicholas of Cusa
Nicholas of Kues (1401 – August 11, 1464), also referred to as Nicolaus Cusanus and Nicholas of Cusa, was a cardinal of the Catholic Church from Germany (Holy Roman Empire), a philosopher, theologian, jurist, mathematician, and an astronomer. He is widely considered one of the great geniuses and polymaths of the 15th century. He is today recognized for significant spiritual, scientific and political contributions in European history, notable examples of which include his mystical or spiritual writings on 'learned ignorance' (and mathematical ideas expressed in related essays), as well as his participation in power struggles between Rome and the German states of the Holy Roman Empire.
Nicholas of Cusa or Kues (Latinized as "Cusa") was the second of four children of Johan Krebs (or Cryfftz) and Katherina Roemer. His father was "a prosperous boat owner and ferryman." He entered the University of Heidelberg in 1416 as "a cleric of the diocese of Trier" studying the liberal arts. He then received his doctorate in Canon law from the University of Padua in 1423. Afterwards, he entered the University of Cologne in 1425 as "a doctor of canon law" which it appears he both taught and practiced there. Following this brief period in Cologne, he became secretary to Otto of Ziegenhain, the Archbishop of Trier, and represented him in Rome in 1427. After the death of Otto, during the period when the archbishopric of Trier was contested by opposing parties, he attended the Council of Basel (1431–49), representing Ulrich von Manderscheid, one of the claimants.
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Olelbis
Olelbis (meaning "he who is above") is the creator deity in Wintun mythology. The antagonist of Olelbis is Sedit.
According to the mythology of the Wintum tribe, Olelbis desired that the members of the human race should live together as brothers and sisters; that there should be no birth and no death, that life should be agreeable and easy, and the purpose of life should be to rejoining Olelbis in heaven and live with him for all eternity. To satisfy the hunger of the human body, Olelbis created a species of nut which has no shell and falls off the tree when it is ripe (this species of nut or fruit is still a staple item of the Wintum’s diet). Olelbis ordered two brothers to build a paved road from earth to heaven to facilitate the tribe’s reunion with their Creator. But Sedit appeared on the scene and persuaded one of the brothers that it would be better to engage in sexual intercourse and procreate the human species. The one persuaded by Sedit argued the other into agreement, so both defected from Olelbis and joined together to destroy the road they were building to heaven. Sedit, horrified when he finds he has brought death to the human race and must die himself, tries to escape his fate. He makes himself a mechanism of boughs and leaves (a plane), by means of which he hopes to fly to heaven. But he crashes and is killed. Olelbis looks down from the heights of heaven and says, "See. The first death! From henceforth (all) men shall die."
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Pascal Bruckner
Pascal Bruckner (born 15 December 1948 in Paris) is a French writer.
After studies at the university Paris I and Paris VII Diderot, and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Bruckner became maître de conférences at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, and collaborator at the Nouvel Observateur.
Bruckner began writing in the vein of the so-called "nouveaux philosophes" and counts among their best known French proponents. He published Parias (Parias), Lunes de Fiel (adapted to film by Roman Polanski) and Les voleurs de beauté (The beauty stealers) (Prix Renaudot in 1997). Among essays, La tentation de l'innocence (Temptation of innocence) (Prix Médicis in 1995) and, famously, Le Sanglot de l'Homme blanc (The Tears of the White Man), an attack on narcissistic and destructive policies intended to benefit the Third World, and more recently "La tyrannie de la pénitence" (2006), an essay on the West's endless self-criticism, translated as "The Tyranny of Guilt" (2010).
From 1992 to 1999, he was an active supporter of the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovar causes against Serbian aggression. He supported the 1999 NATO bombings of Serbian forces led by Milosevic. In 2003, he supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein by the US forces but later criticized the mistakes of the American army and the use of torture in Abu Graib and Guantanamo.
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Pat Condell
Patrick "Pat" Condell (born 1949 or 1950), is an Irish-born English writer, political commentator, comedian and atheist internet personality. He performed alternative comedy shows during the 1980s and 1990s in the United Kingdom, and won a Time Out Comedy Award in 1991. He was also a regular panellist on BBC Radio 1's "Loose Talk".
From early 2007, he began posting short monologues denouncing religion to a number of video sharing websites, consequently receiving numerous death threats. His videos have been featured on many websites, including YouTube and LiveLeak. They have also been published to DVD, and also as a book of video transcripts. As of February 2012[update], Pat Condell's YouTube channel has over 169,000 subscribers and 38 million views.
In a video titled "Vote small, think big", uploaded a fortnight before the 2010 UK general elections, and on his website, Pat Condell expressed support for the UK Independence Party. He is an atheist activist, a strong proponent of free speech and critic of religion.
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Patricia Crone
Patricia Crone, Ph.D., (born 1945,Denmark) is a scholar, author, Orientalist, and historian of early Islamic history working at the Institute for Advanced Study. She established herself as a major challenger to the established narrative of the early history of Islam.
Patricia Crone completed her undergraduate and graduate work at the University of London, receiving a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 1973 under Bernard Lewis.[citation needed] For the next three years, she served as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of London’s Warburg Institute. In 1977, she became a University Lecturer in Islamic history and a Fellow of Jesus College at Oxford University. Dr. Crone became Assistant University Lecturer in Islamic studies and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University in 1990, and has held several positions at Cambridge since then.[citation needed] She served as University Lecturer in Islamic studies from 1992-94, and Reader in Islamic history from 1994 until her appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where she became Andrew W. Mellon professor in 1997. Since 2002, she has been a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Social Evolution & History.[citation needed]
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Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI (Latin: Benedictus PP. XVI; Italian: Benedetto XVI; German: Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger on 16 April 1927) is the 265th Pope, a position in which he serves dual roles as Sovereign of the Vatican City State and leader of the Catholic Church. As pope he is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter. Benedict XVI was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave, celebrated his Papal Inauguration Mass on 24 April 2005, and took possession of his cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, on 7 May 2005. A native of Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI has both German and Vatican citizenship.
After a long career as an academic, serving as a professor of theology at various German universities—the last being the University of Regensburg—he was appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising and cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1977. In 1981, he settled in Rome when he became Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important dicasteries of the Roman Curia. From 2002 until his election as Pope, he was also Dean of the College of Cardinals, and as such the primus inter pares among the cardinals. Prior to becoming Pope, he was "a major figure on the Vatican stage for a quarter of a century" as "one of the most respected, influential and controversial members of the College of Cardinals"; he had an influence "second to none when it came to setting church priorities and directions" as one of Pope John Paul II's closest confidants.
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PZ Myers
Paul Zachary "PZ" Myers (born March 9, 1957) is an American scientist and biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) and the author of the Pharyngula science blog, hosted on both the Science Blogs and Freethought Blogs blog networks. He is currently an associate professor of biology at UMM, works with zebrafish in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), and also cultivates an interest in cephalopods. He has published numerous research papers in Nature and other notable scientific journals.
He is a public critic of intelligent design (ID) and of the creationist movement in general and is an activist in the American creation–evolution controversy. He is widely regarded as a confrontationalist.
In 2006, the journal Nature listed his blog, Pharyngula, as the top-ranked blog written by a scientist. Additionally, PZ Myers was the recipient of the Humanist of the Year award in 2009, and the International Humanist Award in 2011.
Asteroid 153298 Paulmyers is named in his honor.
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Rashidun
The Rightly Guided Caliphs or The Righteous Caliphs (الخلفاء الراشدون al-Khulafā’u r-Rāshidūn) is a term used in Sunni Islam to refer to the first four Caliphs who established the Rashidun Caliphate. The concept of "Rightly Guided Caliphs" originated with the Abbasid Dynasty. It is a reference to the Sunni tradition, "Hold firmly to my example (sunnah) and that of the Rightly Guided Caliphs" (Ibn Majah, Abu Dawood).
The first four Caliphs who ruled after the death of Muhammad are often quoted as the Khulafah Rashidun.
The Rashidun were either elected by a council (see The election of Uthman and Islamic democracy) or chosen based on the wishes of their predecessor. In the order of succession, the rashidun were:
Hasan ibn Ali was appointed as Caliph in 661 following the death of Ali and is also regarded as a righteous ruler by Sunni Muslims, although he was recognized by only half of the Islamic state and his rule was challenged and eventually ended by the Governor of Syria, Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan.
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Rashidun Caliphate
The Rashidun Caliphate (Arabic: الخلافة الراشدية al-khilāfat ar-Rāshidīyah), (c. 632-661) comprising the first four caliphs in Islam's history, was founded after Muhammad's death in 632 (Year 10 A.H. in the Islamic calendar). At its height, the Caliphate extended from the Arabian Peninsula, to the Levant, Caucasus and North Africa in the west, to the Iranian highlands and Central Asia in the east. At its greatest extent it was one of the largest empires in history. It is also known as the Patriarchal Caliphate.
After Muhammad's death in 632, the Medinan Ansar debated which of them should succeed him in running the affairs of the Muslims while Muhammad's household was busy with his burial. Umar (a Quraish) and Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah pledged their loyalty to Abu Bakr, with the Ansar and the Quraish soon following suit. Abu Bakr thus became the first Khalifa Rasul Allah (Successor of the Messenger of God), and embarked on campaigns to propagate Islam. First, though, he would have to subdue the Arabian tribes which had gone back on their oaths of allegiance to Islam and the Islamic community. As a Khalifa or Caliph he was not a monarch and never claimed such a title nor did his three successors do so.
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Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.
Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982 he introduced an influential concept into evolutionary biology, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.
Dawkins is an atheist, a vice president of the British Humanist Association, and a supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—"a fixed false belief." As of January 2010 the English-language version has sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages.
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Richard Tapper
Richard Lionel Tapper is a professor emeritus of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. He is an anthropologist specializing in the nomadic peoples of Iran.
Tapper received his master's degree from Cambridge and his doctorate from London (1972).
He was a founding member of the Afghan Refugee Information Network. (Tapper, 2008)
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Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (Arabic: صلاح الدين يوسف بن أيوب, Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, Kurdish: سهلاحهدین ئهیوبی, Selah'edînê Eyubî) (ca. 1138 – March 4, 1193), better known in the Western world as Saladin, was a KurdishMuslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant. At the height of his power, his sultanate included Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Hejaz, Yemen, and parts of North Africa.
Under his personal leadership, his forces defeated the Crusaders at the Battle of Hattin, leading the way to his re-capture of Palestine, which had been seized from the Fatimid Egyptians by the Crusaders 88 years earlier. Though the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem would continue to exist for a period, its defeat at Hattin marked a turning point in its conflict with the Muslims and Arabs. As such, Saladin is a prominent figure in Kurdish, Arab, and Muslim culture. Saladin was a strict adherent of Sunni Islam. His noble and chivalrous behavior was noted by Christian chroniclers, especially in the accounts of the Siege of Kerak, and despite being the nemesis of the Crusaders, he won the respect of many of them, including Richard the Lionheart; rather than becoming a hated figure in Europe, he became a celebrated example of the principles of chivalry.
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Saracen
Saracen is an historical term for a certain group of people but the meaning changed during its history. In the early centuries AD in Greek and Latin it referred to a people who lived in desert areas in and near the Roman province of Arabia, and who were specifically distinguished from Arabs. In Europe during the Early Middle Ages, the term began to be used to describe Arab tribes. By the 12th century, "Saracen" had become synonymous with "Muslim" in Medieval Latin literature. This expansion of the meaning had begun centuries earlier among the Byzantine Greeks, as evidenced in Byzantine Greek documents from the era of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate.
Ptolemy's Geography from the second century CE describes Sarakene as a region in the northern Sinai peninsula. Ptolemy also mentions a people called the Sarakenoi living in north-western Arabia (near neighbor to the Sinai).Eusebius of Caesarea references Saracens in his Ecclesiastical history, in which he narrates an account wherein Dionysus, Bishop of Alexandria mentions Saracens in a letter while describing the Roman emperor Decius' persecution: "Many were, in the Arabian mountain, enslaved by the barbarous sarkenoi." The Historia Augusta also refers to an attack by Saraceni on Pescennius Niger's army in Egypt in 193 CE but provides little information on who they might have been.
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Sarah
Sarah or Sara ( /ˈsɛərə/;Hebrew: שָׂרָה, Modern Sara Tiberian Śārā ISO 259-3 Śarra; Latin: Sara; Arabic: سارة) was the wife of Abraham and the mother of Isaac as described in the Hebrew Bible and the Quran. Her name was originally Sarai. According to Genesis 17:15 God changed her name to Sarah as part of a covenant after Hagar bore Abraham his first son, Ishmael.
The Hebrew name Sarah indicates a woman of high rank and is translated as "princess".
Sarah was the wife of Abraham, as well as being his half-sister, the daughter of his father Terah (Genesis 20:12). The Talmud identifies Sarai with Iscah, daughter of Abraham's deceased brother Haran (Genesis 11:29), so that Sarah turns out to be the niece of Abraham and the sister of Lot and Milcah. She was also the mother-in-law of Rebecca, her successor. She was considered beautiful to the point that Abraham feared that when they were near more powerful rulers she would be taken away and given to another man. Twice he purposefully identified her as being only his sister so that he would be "treated well" for her sake. It is apparent that she remained attractive into her later years. Despite her great beauty, she was barren for an unknown reason. She was originally called "Sarai" which is translated "my princess." Later she was called "Sarah" i.e., princess." In Biblical times, the changing of one's name was significant and used to symbolize the binding of a covenant. In this case, God promised to put an end to her barrenness and give her a child (Isaac).
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Scottish people
The Scottish people (Scots Gaelic: Albannaich), or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse. Later the Normans also had some influence.
In modern use, "Scottish people" or "Scots" is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, family ancestral or genetic origins are from within Scotland. The Latin word Scotti originally applied to a particular, 5th century, Goidelic tribe that inhabited Ireland. Though sometimes considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also been used for the Scottish people, though this usage is current primarily outside Scotland.
There are people of Scottish descent in many countries other than Scotland. Emigration, influenced by factors such as the Highland and Lowland Clearances, Scottish participation in the British Empire, and latterly industrial decline and unemployment, resulted in Scottish people being found throughout the world. Large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. There is a Scottish presence at a particularly high rate in Canada, which has the second largest population of descended Scots ancestry, after the United States. They took with them their Scottish languages and culture.
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Sigismund Koelle
Sigismund Wilhelm Kölle (14 July 1820, Cleebronn- 18 February 1902, London) was a German missionary, and pioneer scholar of African languages.
After training in a missionary house in Basle, he transferred in 1845 to the Church Missionary Society based in London. From 1847 he was in Sierra Leone.
There he collected a large sample of linguistic material, some of it from freed slaves. His major work Polyglotta Africana from 1854 began the serious study by European scholars of a large range of African languages
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Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (German pronunciation: [ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt]), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud's family and ancestry were Jewish. Freud always considered himself a Jew even though he rejected Judaism and had a critical view of religion. Freud's parents were poor, but ensured his education. Freud was an outstanding pupil in high school, and graduated the Matura with honors in 1873. Interested in philosophy as a student, Freud later turned away from it and became a neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, Aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy.
Freud went on to develop theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and established the field of verbal psychotherapy by creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Though psychoanalysis has declined as a therapeutic practice, it has helped inspire the development of many other forms of psychotherapy, some diverging from Freud's original ideas and approach. Freud postulated the existence of libido (an energy with which mental process and structures are invested), developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so), discovered the transference (the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings based on their experience of earlier figures in their lives) and established its central role in the analytic process, and proposed that dreams help to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awake the dreamer. He was also a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the interpretation and critique of culture.
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Socrates
Socrates ( /ˈsɒkrətiːz/; Greek: Σωκράτης, Ancient Greek pronunciation: [sɔːkrátɛːs], Sōkrátēs; c. 469 BC – 399 BC) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.
Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who also lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. It is Plato's Socrates that also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains strong in providing a foundation for much western philosophy that followed.
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Taryenyawagon
Taryenyawagon (Onondaga Taiñhiawa'geh) or "Holder of the Heavens" is the creator deity in Iroquois mythology.
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Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (January 29, 1737 (NS February 9, 1737) – June 8, 1809) was an English-American author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination."
Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine immigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–83), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”
Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not speaking French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy. In December of 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of The Age of Reason (1793–94), his book that advocates deism, promotes reason and freethinking, and argues against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income.
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Toby Lester
Toby Lester (born 2 November 1964) is an American journalist, scholar and author. He has received considerable attention recently after writing two non-fictional works on the role of maps in the discovery of America and on Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of the Vitruvian Man.
The son of James Lester and Valerie Browne Lester and the brother of Alison Lester, all of whom are writers, Toby Lester studied English and French at the University of Virginia, graduating in 1987. He has worked as a refugee affairs officer for the United Nations, has helped with programmes in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and has undertaken Peace Corps work in Yemen. From 1995 to 2005, he worked for the American magazine The Atlantic in various capacities, including managing editor, and has contributed to several other journals. Topics of interest have included the reconstruction of ancient Greek music, the Qur'an and alphabets in Azerbaijan. Lester lives near Boston with his wife and three daughters.
Lester has written two widely reviewed works of non-fiction. The Fourth Part of the World (2009) investigates the role of the 15th century map compiled by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in the early years of exploration to the New World. He also looks at its place in the history of map-making from the days of the second-century Greek-Egyptian geographer Ptolemy and his treatise on geography.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is a military historian, columnist, political essayist and former classics professor, a scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and other media outlets. He was for many years a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007, the Claremont Institute's Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner, and the $250,000 Bradley prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2008.
Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm near Fresno, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism.
Hanson, who is of Swedish descent, grew up on a family farm at Selma, in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His mother was a lawyer and judge, his father an educator and college administrator. Hanson's father and uncle played college football at the College of the Pacific under Amos Alonzo Stagg. Along with his older brother Nils and fraternal twin Alfred, Hanson attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. Hanson received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1975 and his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University in 1980. He is a Protestant Christian.
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Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃.swa ma.ʁi aʁ.wɛ]; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by the pen name Voltaire (pronounced: [vɔl.tɛːʁ]), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, free trade and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poetry, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws with harsh penalties for those who broke them. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.
Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, Richard Price, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Émilie du Châtelet) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.
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William Muir
Sir William Muir, KCSI (27 April 1819 – 11 July 1905) was a Scottish Orientalist and colonial administrator.
He was born at Glasgow and educated at Kilmarnock Academy, at Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, and at Haileybury College. In 1837 he entered the Bengal Civil Service. Muir served as secretary to the governor of the North-West Provinces, and as a member of the Agra revenue board, and during the Mutiny he was in charge of the intelligence department there. In 1865 he was made foreign secretary to the Indian Government. In 1867 Muir was knighted (K.C.S.I.), and in 1868 he became lieutenant-governor of the North Western Provinces.
Having been criticized for the poor relief effort during the Orissa famine of 1866, the British began began to discuss famine policy, and in 1868 Muir issued an order stating that:
In 1874 Muir was appointed financial member of the Viceroy's Council, and retired in 1876, when he became a member of the Council of India in London.James Thomason served as Muir's mentor with respect to Imperial administration; Muir later wrote an influential biography of Thomason.
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Yohanan Friedmann
Yohanan Friedmann (born 1936) is an Israeli scholar of Islamic studies.
Friedmann was born in Zákamenné, Czechoslovakia and immigrated to Israel with his parents in 1949. He attended high school at the Reali School in Haifa (1945-1950). In 1956 he began his undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Arabic Language and Literature, receiving his BA in 1959. In 1962 he finished a master's degree in Arabic literature; his thesis was on the Arab poet Al-Ma'arri. After this, Friedman went to McGill University in Montreal to study for his doctorate. He learned Urdu and focused on the history of Islam in India. His dissertation on Muslim religious thinker Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi was approved in 1966. In the same year, Friedman joined the Hebrew University and was appointed lecturer in Islamic studies.
He is now Max Schloessinger Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and, since 1999, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He held several offices with the University: Chair of the Institute of Asian Studies and African Studies from 1975-1978; Chair of the Graduate School from 1980-1983; Dean of Humanities from 1985-1988; Chair of the Department of Arabic language and literature from 2002-2004. In 2003 he was the Sternberg Distinguished Lecturer. In 2007 he has been elected Chair of the Humanities Division of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
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Some Rare Internal Criticism of Islamic World (1/2)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:53
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
www.shoebat.com Some rare footage provided by MEMRI TV where Islam is criticized within their own society.
http://wn.com/Some_Rare_Internal_Criticism_of_Islamic_World_1_2
www.shoebat.com Some rare footage provided by MEMRI TV where Islam is criticized within their own society.
Some Rare Internal Criticism of Islamic World (2/2)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:32
- Updated: 08 Jan 2013
www.shoebat.com Some rare footage provided by MEMRI TV where Islam is criticized within their own society.
http://wn.com/Some_Rare_Internal_Criticism_of_Islamic_World_2_2
www.shoebat.com Some rare footage provided by MEMRI TV where Islam is criticized within their own society.
- published: 09 Sep 2011
- views: 2954
- author: shoebatFoundation
Wafa Sultan Offers More Criticism of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:34
- Updated: 07 Jan 2013
Wafa Sultan speaks in an interview broadcast from Cyprus-based al-Hayat TV. She criticizes accentuations of the negative in Islamic culture in the Arab world and what she perceives to be their roots. She offers a few words for Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, the conservative cleric who lambasted her for her March debate appearance on al-Jazeera. Wafa further criticizes other aspects of Islam that she believes to be wrong. A MEMRI.org video. www.memritv.org
http://wn.com/Wafa_Sultan_Offers_More_Criticism_of_Islam
Wafa Sultan speaks in an interview broadcast from Cyprus-based al-Hayat TV. She criticizes accentuations of the negative in Islamic culture in the Arab world and what she perceives to be their roots. She offers a few words for Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, the conservative cleric who lambasted her for her March debate appearance on al-Jazeera. Wafa further criticizes other aspects of Islam that she believes to be wrong. A MEMRI.org video. www.memritv.org
- published: 02 Jun 2008
- views: 77505
- author: amplifier515
Islam in Europe Ends Free Speech - Criminalizing Criticism of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:38
- Updated: 09 Jan 2013
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Freedom of speech around the world has been a hallmark of Christian civilization, but today there is less and less freedom to criticize Islam. In Denmark, a 15-year-old Danish boy faces prison time for distributing leaflets warning that the country could someday become a Muslim nation and that he thinks that is a bad thing. A Danish prosecutor called the leaflets "hate speech." Yet, across the water in Sweden, it was not hate speech when a leading national newspaper printed an article a few weeks ago claiming that Israeli soldiers harvest and sell organs from dead Palestinians. Some say that claim amounts to the anti-Semitic Jewish blood libel, that Jews commit human sacrifice on non-Jews. The Swedish government, which defended the newspaper, said it was free speech. Welcome to Europe, where many say the difference between free speech and hate speech is dictated by left-wing political correctness and fear of Islam. "Free speech is coming under increasing pressure by the day," Lars Hedegaard, head of the International Free Press Society, told CBN News. It does not matter if the criticism is factual. For instance, Islam teaches that when Mohammed was 52, he consummated his marriage to a 9-year-old girl. But when Austrian politician Susanne Winter said that, in today's world, Mohammed would be considered a child molester, she was convicted of hate speech. Dutch Parliament member Geert Wilders is awaiting trial on the charge of "inciting hatred and ...
http://wn.com/Islam_in_Europe_Ends_Free_Speech_Criminalizing_Criticism_of_Islam
COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Freedom of speech around the world has been a hallmark of Christian civilization, but today there is less and less freedom to criticize Islam. In Denmark, a 15-year-old Danish boy faces prison time for distributing leaflets warning that the country could someday become a Muslim nation and that he thinks that is a bad thing. A Danish prosecutor called the leaflets "hate speech." Yet, across the water in Sweden, it was not hate speech when a leading national newspaper printed an article a few weeks ago claiming that Israeli soldiers harvest and sell organs from dead Palestinians. Some say that claim amounts to the anti-Semitic Jewish blood libel, that Jews commit human sacrifice on non-Jews. The Swedish government, which defended the newspaper, said it was free speech. Welcome to Europe, where many say the difference between free speech and hate speech is dictated by left-wing political correctness and fear of Islam. "Free speech is coming under increasing pressure by the day," Lars Hedegaard, head of the International Free Press Society, told CBN News. It does not matter if the criticism is factual. For instance, Islam teaches that when Mohammed was 52, he consummated his marriage to a 9-year-old girl. But when Austrian politician Susanne Winter said that, in today's world, Mohammed would be considered a child molester, she was convicted of hate speech. Dutch Parliament member Geert Wilders is awaiting trial on the charge of "inciting hatred and ...
- published: 18 Sep 2009
- views: 25369
- author: 1001Phoenix
Hate Law Jihad: Criminalizing Islam's Critics
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:26
- Updated: 30 Sep 2012
Visit www.HateLawsExposed.org
http://wn.com/Hate_Law_Jihad_Criminalizing_Islam's_Critics
Hypocritical Christian Critics of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:26
- Updated: 06 Jan 2013
This was pissing me off... (Apologies for the shitty audio)
http://wn.com/Hypocritical_Christian_Critics_of_Islam
This was pissing me off... (Apologies for the shitty audio)
- published: 30 Oct 2011
- views: 2927
- author: Klingschor
Criminalizing Criticism of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:15
- Updated: 03 Jan 2013
CBN News Friday, November 14, 2008 International Islamic organization attempts to criminalize criticism of Islam at the UN This is a key element of the Stealth Jihad: the attempt to silence those who speak about the ideological underpinnings of jihad terrorism. Most Americans probably aren't aware that there are serious discussions at the UN about criminalizing discussion of the motives and goals of Islamic jihadists, and even fewer probably realize what the implications of this are for the United States and the First Amendment in the coming years. "The OIC & the UN: Islamophobia and 'defamation of religion,'" by Elizabeth Kendal for the WEA, November 15 (thanks to Paul): Durban I -- the UN's first World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance -- which was held in Durban, South Africa, in early September 2001 ended with a walkout over its virulent anti-Semitism. Yet sadly it now seems clear that the Durban Review Conference (or Durban II), which will be held in Geneva in April 2009, is shaping up to be even worse. As a prelude to Durban II, a Second Preparatory Session of the 20-state Preparatory Committee -- of which Libya has been elected chair with Cuba, Pakistan and Iran as vice-chairs -- was held in Geneva from 6 to 17 October 2008. The resulting "Draft Outcome Document for the Durban Review Conference 2009" is now available on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) website at LINK 1. It is clear from the draft ...
http://wn.com/Criminalizing_Criticism_of_Islam
CBN News Friday, November 14, 2008 International Islamic organization attempts to criminalize criticism of Islam at the UN This is a key element of the Stealth Jihad: the attempt to silence those who speak about the ideological underpinnings of jihad terrorism. Most Americans probably aren't aware that there are serious discussions at the UN about criminalizing discussion of the motives and goals of Islamic jihadists, and even fewer probably realize what the implications of this are for the United States and the First Amendment in the coming years. "The OIC & the UN: Islamophobia and 'defamation of religion,'" by Elizabeth Kendal for the WEA, November 15 (thanks to Paul): Durban I -- the UN's first World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance -- which was held in Durban, South Africa, in early September 2001 ended with a walkout over its virulent anti-Semitism. Yet sadly it now seems clear that the Durban Review Conference (or Durban II), which will be held in Geneva in April 2009, is shaping up to be even worse. As a prelude to Durban II, a Second Preparatory Session of the 20-state Preparatory Committee -- of which Libya has been elected chair with Cuba, Pakistan and Iran as vice-chairs -- was held in Geneva from 6 to 17 October 2008. The resulting "Draft Outcome Document for the Durban Review Conference 2009" is now available on the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) website at LINK 1. It is clear from the draft ...
- published: 20 Jul 2009
- views: 9036
- author: 1001Phoenix
Obama Moving To Criminalize Criticism of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:43
- Updated: 06 Jan 2013
Video produced by www.westernjournalism.com
http://wn.com/Obama_Moving_To_Criminalize_Criticism_of_Islam
Debate: Protecting European Critics of Islam (1 of 4)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:50
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 1 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
http://wn.com/Debate_Protecting_European_Critics_of_Islam_1_of_4
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 1 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
- published: 23 May 2009
- views: 5235
- author: ThanxALott
Debate: Protecting European Critics of Islam (2 of 4)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:08
- Updated: 22 Oct 2012
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 2 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
http://wn.com/Debate_Protecting_European_Critics_of_Islam_2_of_4
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 2 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
- published: 23 May 2009
- views: 4171
- author: ThanxALott
Debate: Protecting European Critics of Islam (3 of 4)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:31
- Updated: 22 Oct 2012
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 3 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
http://wn.com/Debate_Protecting_European_Critics_of_Islam_3_of_4
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 3 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
- published: 23 May 2009
- views: 2614
- author: ThanxALott
Arshad Basheer Madani (MUST WATCH)- ANSWERING CRITICS OF ISLAM **AMAZING MEMORY** MASHALLAH
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:26
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
askmadani@gmail.com www.arshadmadani.net www.youtube.com/ASKMADANISHOW www.youtube.com/BESTOFARSHADMADANI
http://wn.com/Arshad_Basheer_Madani_MUST_WATCH_ANSWERING_CRITICS_OF_ISLAM_**AMAZING_MEMORY**_MASHALLAH
askmadani@gmail.com www.arshadmadani.net www.youtube.com/ASKMADANISHOW www.youtube.com/BESTOFARSHADMADANI
- published: 13 Jan 2011
- views: 3292
- author: BESTOFARSHADMADANI
Debate: Protecting European Critics of Islam (4 of 4)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:01
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 4 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
http://wn.com/Debate_Protecting_European_Critics_of_Islam_4_of_4
ORIGINAL UPLOAD DATE: 02-23-08 (read explanation in playlist description). Part 4 of 4 - Should European governments be obligated to protect Islam's critics from the never-ending threats of violence and death? Participants in this discussion: FRANCE 24s Andrea Sanke, Irshad Manji, Amel Boubekeur, Abed Ayoub and Robert Spencer (JihadWatch.org). - - - - - - -
- published: 23 May 2009
- views: 2212
- author: ThanxALott
Australia: Christian Pastors Taken to Court to Silence Criticism of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:50
- Updated: 02 Jan 2013
Two pastors had held a seminar in 2003 comparing Islam and the Koran, with Christianity and the Bible. Muslims filed a complaint against them, and the pastors were found guilty of vilifying Islam. They were ordered to apologize. Both pastors refused, saying they had the right to freely express their views about Islam. That decision has now been set aside and the pastors will get a new trial. Tags: Australia Melbourne Islam Christianity Jesus Islamic Christian convert revert apostate apostasy muslim persecution oppression martyrdom fastest growing religion jizyah human rights terror terrorism cair muslim brotherhood islamization islamification relativism multiculturalism free speech UN UN Durban geert wilders human rights hate crime civil stealth Robert spencer
http://wn.com/Australia_Christian_Pastors_Taken_to_Court_to_Silence_Criticism_of_Islam
Two pastors had held a seminar in 2003 comparing Islam and the Koran, with Christianity and the Bible. Muslims filed a complaint against them, and the pastors were found guilty of vilifying Islam. They were ordered to apologize. Both pastors refused, saying they had the right to freely express their views about Islam. That decision has now been set aside and the pastors will get a new trial. Tags: Australia Melbourne Islam Christianity Jesus Islamic Christian convert revert apostate apostasy muslim persecution oppression martyrdom fastest growing religion jizyah human rights terror terrorism cair muslim brotherhood islamization islamification relativism multiculturalism free speech UN UN Durban geert wilders human rights hate crime civil stealth Robert spencer
- published: 12 Jun 2009
- views: 14007
- author: 1001Phoenix
'Muslim Rage': Ayaan Hirsi Ali Talks About How Muslims React To Criticism of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:48
- Updated: 05 Jan 2013
His Majesty King Abdullah: Why Jews Cannot Claim a Historic Right To Palestine: www.politicalarticles.net
http://wn.com/'Muslim_Rage'_Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali_Talks_About_How_Muslims_React_To_Criticism_of_Islam
His Majesty King Abdullah: Why Jews Cannot Claim a Historic Right To Palestine: www.politicalarticles.net
- published: 18 Sep 2012
- views: 2772
- author: politicalarticles
Muhammad, part 2: The Quote, and other nonsense
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:05
- Updated: 27 Dec 2012
I am very disappointed that I actually have to explain this to people. (Note: This video contains the n-word. Yes, that one. Please exercise discretion.) Video transcript: emptv.com The music is www.musopen.com Shout out to my new fans Keith and Lisa in Seattle! Follow me: twitter.com facebook.com myspace.com
http://wn.com/Muhammad,_part_2_The_Quote,_and_other_nonsense
I am very disappointed that I actually have to explain this to people. (Note: This video contains the n-word. Yes, that one. Please exercise discretion.) Video transcript: emptv.com The music is www.musopen.com Shout out to my new fans Keith and Lisa in Seattle! Follow me: twitter.com facebook.com myspace.com
- published: 03 Jun 2010
- views: 28747
- author: ZJemptv
Women in Islam:Criticism & Facts,Salvation Q&A; MM Akbar (6/7
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:53
- Updated: 25 Dec 2011
Women in Islam: Criticism and Facts, Q & A Session (Malayalam) by MM Akbar On Salvation (2008) -An International Exhibition on Islam Giving clearance of major misconceptions about woman in Islam : Women in Islam, rights and position of woman, Tholaq: Divorce ,Hijab and Olympics, Politics and power, Misconception in Hadith about woman. Attacks on Muslims/Islam using media / literature.
http://wn.com/Women_in_IslamCriticism_Facts,Salvation_Q&A;_MM_Akbar_6_7
Women in Islam: Criticism and Facts, Q & A Session (Malayalam) by MM Akbar On Salvation (2008) -An International Exhibition on Islam Giving clearance of major misconceptions about woman in Islam : Women in Islam, rights and position of woman, Tholaq: Divorce ,Hijab and Olympics, Politics and power, Misconception in Hadith about woman. Attacks on Muslims/Islam using media / literature.
- published: 02 Jul 2008
- views: 7162
- author: noufalnow
Women in Islam:Criticism & Facts,Salvation Q&A; MM Akbar (4/7
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:53
- Updated: 27 Aug 2010
Women in Islam: Criticism and Facts, Q & A Session (Malayalam) by MM Akbar On Salvation (2008) -An International Exhibition on Islam Giving clearance of major misconceptions about woman in Islam : Women in Islam, rights and position of woman, Tholaq: Divorce ,Hijab and Olympics, Politics and power, Misconception in Hadith about woman. Attacks on Muslims/Islam using media / literature.
http://wn.com/Women_in_IslamCriticism_Facts,Salvation_Q&A;_MM_Akbar_4_7
Women in Islam: Criticism and Facts, Q & A Session (Malayalam) by MM Akbar On Salvation (2008) -An International Exhibition on Islam Giving clearance of major misconceptions about woman in Islam : Women in Islam, rights and position of woman, Tholaq: Divorce ,Hijab and Olympics, Politics and power, Misconception in Hadith about woman. Attacks on Muslims/Islam using media / literature.
- published: 02 Jul 2008
- views: 5524
- author: noufalnow
UN "Human Rights" Council: Silencing critics of Muslim antisemitism
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:23
- Updated: 11 Aug 2012
[March 6, 2009]
http://wn.com/UN_Human_Rights_Council_Silencing_critics_of_Muslim_antisemitism
The Problem with Criticising Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:31
- Updated: 09 Jan 2013
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com BLOG: klingschor.blogspot.com TWITTER twitter.com --- Royalty-free Music used: www.youtube.com --- The Problem with Criticising Islam, the Problem with Criticizing Islam, Criticising, Criticizing, Criticism, Islam, Muslims, Muslim, Apologist, Muslim Apologist,...
http://wn.com/The_Problem_with_Criticising_Islam
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com BLOG: klingschor.blogspot.com TWITTER twitter.com --- Royalty-free Music used: www.youtube.com --- The Problem with Criticising Islam, the Problem with Criticizing Islam, Criticising, Criticizing, Criticism, Islam, Muslims, Muslim, Apologist, Muslim Apologist,...
- published: 02 Dec 2012
- views: 14209
- author: Klingschor
Libel Lawfare: Silencing Criticism of Radical Islam (1)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 27:18
- Updated: 01 Jan 2013
Introduction: Brooke Goldstein. Panel 1: Islamist Lawfare in the United States. Alan Dershowitz, Frank Gaffney and James Taranto. Tuesday, May 19th, 2009. Washington, DC.
http://wn.com/Libel_Lawfare_Silencing_Criticism_of_Radical_Islam_1
Introduction: Brooke Goldstein. Panel 1: Islamist Lawfare in the United States. Alan Dershowitz, Frank Gaffney and James Taranto. Tuesday, May 19th, 2009. Washington, DC.
- published: 29 May 2009
- views: 2941
- author: securefreedom
Libel Lawfare: Silencing Criticism of Radical Islam (4)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 45:53
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
Panel 2, including David Rivkin, Alan Mendoza, Douglas Murray, David Harris, Elizabeth Samson and Barak Seener.
http://wn.com/Libel_Lawfare_Silencing_Criticism_of_Radical_Islam_4
Panel 2, including David Rivkin, Alan Mendoza, Douglas Murray, David Harris, Elizabeth Samson and Barak Seener.
- published: 30 Jun 2009
- views: 2915
- author: securefreedom
ISLAM Wafa Sultan Offers More Criticism of Islam
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:35
- Updated: 20 Nov 2012
http://wn.com/ISLAM_Wafa_Sultan_Offers_More_Criticism_of_Islam
photo: AP / Menahem Kahana
08 Jan 2013
Enjoying a wide opinion poll lead before a January 22 election, Benjamin Netanyahu has been lecturing the international community - vocal in its criticism of settlement expansion on occupied territory and his hints of military action against Iran - about what it should really be worried about ... "The danger to the world is not from the university in Ariel or Israeli construction in the neighbourhoods of Jerusalem....(size: 3.8Kb)
photo: AP / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
08 Jan 2013
A US research team has conducted an analysis of data collected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, and “determined that about 17 percent of stars in our galaxy harbor a roughly Earth-size exoplanet in a close orbit.”. That translates to a minimum of 17 billion planets as there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way....(size: 1.7Kb)
photo: AP / Channi Anand
09 Jan 2013
JAMMU, India (Reuters) - India slammed arch-rival Pakistan on Wednesday over a fire fight in the disputed territory of Kashmir in which two of its soldiers were killed, and said the mutilation of one of the bodies was "inhuman" ... Antony waits to speak at a plenary session of the 11th International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) Asia Security Summit ... Pakistan contests that and demands implementation of a 1948 U.N....(size: 2.6Kb)
photo: AP / Richard Drew
09 Jan 2013
Officials say at least two of the passengers were in a critical condition, one with confirmed head injuries. ... Images showed a corner of the ferry ripped open. ... A corner of the ferry appeared to have been ripped open by the impact. Passenger Ellen Foran said people tumbled on top of each other, hysterical and crying.. "All of a sudden, the boat felt like it smashed into a wall," Richard Correra told WCBS-TV.....(size: 4.5Kb)
photo: US Army / Sgt. Christopher Bonebrake
07 Jan 2013
Johnson absolute powers to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression," Congress could have also included "all necessary vanities." The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which greatly escalated a foreign imperial war in Vietnam, added fuel to the bonfires of vanity ... The policy of "any vanity necessary" is also immoral and destructive....(size: 5.2Kb)
CBC
11 Dec 2012
Justin Trudeau is brushing off criticism about his upcoming keynote speech at an Islamic convention, saying he's proud to be participating in the event ... The critics have raised concerns about radical views and the alleged affiliation of other speakers at the event later this month ... A spokeswoman for the convention said the criticism is an example of broader fear-mongering about Muslims....(size: 2.1Kb)
New Straits/Business Times
24 Nov 2012
Liow said imposing Islamic ruling on gender segregation on non-Muslims was not acceptable for the Malaysian multi-ethnic and religious society....(size: 1.0Kb)
The Australian
01 Oct 2012
IMMIGRATION Minister Chris Bowen will not block the visit of Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, claiming Australia is robust enough to withstand his strong anti-Islamist views just weeks after rioters caused chaos in the Sydney CBD ... "To read his writings is to be struck by their ignorance and their wrong-headed views of other people's beliefs," Mr Bowen says ... Login to read the rest of this article ... 1 of 5....(size: 7.2Kb)
WorldNetDaily
28 Sep 2012
A jihadi writer who has praised the murderer of a Dutch filmmaker is offering a suggestion to cut down on the criticism of Islam around the globe ... “The writer praised Dutch-Moroccan Muslim Muhammad Bouyeri, who killed Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh in 2004 over the latter’s production of ‘Submission,’ a film criticizing Islam’s treatment of women....(size: 7.4Kb)
The Examiner
20 Sep 2012
According to Mohammad Qatanani, Imam of one of the largest mosques in New Jersey, free speech that is critical of Islam poses a national security threat and "should be investigated by the Department of Homeland Security," The Blaze reported Thursday ... embassies, Qatanani said that Homeland Security needs to prevent artists from producing works that are critical of Islam or the prophet Mohammed....(size: 9.4Kb)
Newstrack India
13 Sep 2012
New Delhi, Sep 13 (IANS) Against the backdrop of growing anti-US violence, India is considering a request to ban a controversial film made in the US, fearing it could trigger protests in the country ... and it had been forwarded to the chief of the nation's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-in) for action ... Islam Nagar ... State Bank Of Hyderabad ....(size: 2.6Kb)
The Examiner
13 Sep 2012
It happens in politics and history in America from time to time that the First Amendment guarantee of "freedom of speech" is taken to mean that all speakers are absolved of all responsibility for their speech ... However much the law of the United States does or does not absolve speakers of resonsibility, the law of others countries, very civilized countries, in no way absolves evident irresponsibility....(size: 6.2Kb)
Yahoo Daily News
13 Sep 2012
The transcript was released several hours after Obama had a Rose garden statement to condemn criticism of Islam ... embassy in Cairo tried to head off a planned Islamist protest by describing Americans’ criticism of Islam as an “abuse” of the nation’s First Amendment ... The morning before his about-face, Obama had used a Rose Garden event to restate his opposition to criticism of Islam....(size: 27.1Kb)
Yahoo Daily News
10 May 2012
... German publishing house Axel Springer in recognition of her "courage and commitment to freedom as a women's rights campaigner and critic of Islam."....(size: 0.8Kb)
Newstrack India
31 Mar 2012
In a startling revelation, 876 pages of training material used for training Federal Bureau of Investigation's agents has been found to be critical and offensive of Islam. Out of 160,000 pages of training material, analyzed by the FBI six-month long review, 876 offensive or inaccurate pages that had been used in 392 presentations were found critical of Islam....(size: 2.2Kb)
Zeenews
31 Mar 2012
In a startling revelation, 876 pages of training material used for training Federal Bureau of Investigation’s agents has been found to be critical and offensive of Islam. Out of 160,000 pages of training material, analyzed by the FBI six-month long review, 876 offensive or inaccurate pages that had been used in 392 presentations were found critical of Islam....(size: 2.6Kb)
Belfast Telegraph
31 Mar 2012
An FBI review of agent training material critical of Islam uncovered 876 offensive or inaccurate pages that had been used in 392 presentations, including a PowerPoint slide that said the bureau can sometimes bend or suspend the law. The bureau has not released the material, but Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois described a few pages of it ......(size: 2.7Kb)
Huffington Post
19 Mar 2012
However, this organization has an agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam, which threatens to strangle dissent and reform ... These were aimed at making criticism of Islam an international crime ... The resolution, which combated discrimination and incitement to violence against individuals based on religion, was still compatible with the OIC's aim to criminalize criticism of Islam....(size: 8.2Kb)
For criticism of political Islam, see Criticism of Islamism. For fear of or prejudice against Islam, rather than criticism, see Islamophobia.
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| Part of a series on |
| Criticism of Islam |
|---|
Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early written criticism came from Christians, prior to the ninth century, many of whom viewed Islam as a radical Christian heresy.[1] Later there appeared criticism from the Muslim world itself, and also from Jewish writers and from ecclesiastical Christians.[2][3][4]
Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of Muhammad, the last prophet of Islam, both in his public and personal life.[4][5] Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, are also discussed by critics.[6] Other criticisms focus on the question of human rights in modern Islamic nations, and the treatment of women in Islamic law and practice.[7][8] In wake of the recent multiculturalism trend, Islam's influence on the ability of Muslim immigrants in the West to assimilate has been criticized.[9]
Contents |
History[link]
Early Islam[link]
The earliest surviving written criticisms of Islam are to be found in the writings of Christians, who came under the early dominion of the Islamic Caliphate. One such Christian was John of Damascus (c. 676–749 AD), who was familiar with Islam and Arabic. The second chapter of his book, The Fount of Wisdom, titled "Concerning Heresies", presents a series of discussions between Christians and Muslims. John claimed an Arian monk (whom he did not know was Bahira) influenced Muhammad and viewed the Islamic doctrines as nothing more than a hodgepodge culled from the Bible.[10]
Writing on Islam's claim of Abrahamic ancestry, John explained that the Arabs were called "Saracens" because they were "empty of Sarah". They were called "Hagarenes" because they were "the descendants of the slave-girl Hagar".[11] In the opinion of John V. Tolan, a Professor of Medieval History, John's biography of Muhammad is "based on deliberate distortions of Muslim traditions", but Tolan does not elaborate his statement.[12]
Notable early critics of Islam included:
- Muhammad al Warraq, a 9th-century scholar and critic of Islam.[13]
- Ibn al-Rawandi was an atheist, who repudiated Islam and revealed religion in general.[13]
Medieval Islamic world[link]
In the early centuries of the Islamic Caliphate, the Islamic law allowed citizens to freely express their views, including criticism of Islam and religious authorities, without fear of persecution.[14][15][16] As such, there have been several notable Muslim critics and skeptics of Islam that arose from within the Islamic world itself. In tenth and eleventh-century Syria there lived a blind poet called Al-Ma'arri. He became well known for a poetry that was affected by a "pervasive pessimism." He labeled religions in general as "noxious weeds" and said that Islam does not have a monopoly on truth. He had particular contempt for the ulema, writing that:
They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the religious traditions or interpreted them!
Another early critic was the Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi in the 10th century. He criticized Islam and all revealed religions in general in several treatises.[18] Despite his views, he remained a celebrated physician across the Islamic world.[19] In 1280, the Jewish philosopher, Ibn Kammuna, criticized Islam in his book Examination of the Three Faiths. He reasoned that the Sharia was incompatible with the principles of justice, and that this undercut the notion of Muhammad being the perfect man: "there is no proof that Muhammad attained perfection and the ability to perfect others as claimed."[20][21] The philosopher thus claimed that people converted to Islam from ulterior motives:
That is why, to this day we never see anyone converting to Islam unless in terror, or in quest of power, or to avoid heavy taxation, or to escape humiliation, or if taken prisoner, or because of infatuation with a Muslim woman, or for some similar reason. Nor do we see a respected, wealthy, and pious non-Muslim well versed in both his faith and that of Islam, going over to the Islamic faith without some of the aforementioned or similar motives.—[3]
According to Bernard Lewis, just as it is natural for a Muslim to assume that the converts to his religion are attracted by its truth, it is equally natural for the convert's former coreligionists to look for baser motives and Ibn Kammuna's list seems to cover most of such nonreligious motives.[22]
Maimonides, one of the foremost 12th century rabbinical arbiters and philosophers, sees the relation of Islam to Judaism as primarily theoretical. Maimonides has no quarrel with the strict monotheism of Islam, but finds fault with the practical politics of Muslim regimes. He also considered Islamic ethics and politics to be inferior to their Jewish counterparts. Maimonides criticised what he perceived as the lack of virtue in the way Muslims rule their societies and relate to one another.[23] In his Epistle to Yemenite Jewry, he refers to Mohammad, as "hameshuga" – "that madman".[24]
Medieval Christianity[link]
Main article: Medieval Christian views on Muhammad
- In Dante's Inferno, Muhammad is portrayed as split in half, with his guts hanging out, representing his status as a heresiarch (one who broke from the Church).
- Some medieval ecclesiastical writers portrayed Muhammad as possessed by Satan, a "precursor of the Antichrist" or the Antichrist himself.[4]
- Denis the Carthusian wrote two treatises to refute Islam at the request of Nicholas of Cusa, Contra perfidiam Mahometi, et contra multa dicta Sarracenorum libri quattuor and Dialogus disputationis inter Christianum et Sarracenum de lege Christi et contra perfidiam Mahometi.[25]
- The Tultusceptru de libro domni Metobii, an Andalusian manuscript with unknown dating, shows how Muhammad (called Ozim, from Hashim) was tricked by Satan into adulterating an originally pure divine revelation. The story argues God was concerned about the spiritual fate of the Arabs and wanted to correct their derivation from the faith. He then sends an angel to the monk Osius who orders him to preach to the Arabs. Osius however is in ill-health and orders a young monk, Ozim, to carry out the angel's orders instead. Ozim sets out to follow his orders, but gets stopped by an evil angel on the way. The ignorant Ozim believes him to be the same angel that spoke to Osius before. The evil angel modifies and corrupts the original message given to Ozim by Osius, and renames Ozim Muhammad. From this followed the erroneous teachings of Islam, according to the tultusceptrum.[26]
- According to many Christians, the coming of Muhammad was foretold in the Holy Bible. According to the monk Bede this is in Genesis 16:12, which describes Ishmael as "a wild man" whose "hand will be against every man". Bede says about Muhammad: "Now how great is his hand against all and all hands against him; as they impose his authority upon the whole length of Africa and hold both the greater part of Asia and some of Europe, hating and opposing all."[27]
- In 1391 a dialogue was believed to have occurred between Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and a Persian scholar in which the Emperor stated:
Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached. God is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death.[citation needed]—Dialogue 7 of Twenty-six Dialogues with a Persian
Enlightenment Europe[link]
In Of the Standard of Taste, an essay by David Hume, the Quran is described as an "absurd performance" of a "pretended prophet" who lacked "a just sentiment of morals." Attending to the narration, Hume says, "we shall soon find, that [Muhammad] bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers."[28]
Nineteenth century[link]
The Victorian orientalist scholar Sir William Muir criticised Islam for what he perceived to be an inflexible nature, which he held responsible for stifling progress and impeding social advancement in Muslims countries. The following sentences are taken from the Rede Lecture he delivered at Cambridge in 1881:
Some, indeed, dream of an Islam in the future, rationalised and regenerate. All this has been tried already, and has miserably failed. The Koran has so encrusted the religion in a hard unyielding casement of ordinances and social laws, that if the shell be broken the life is gone. A rationalistic Islam would be Islam no longer. The contrast between our own faith and Islam is most remarkable. There are in our Scriptures living germs of truth, which accord with civil and religious liberty, and will expand with advancing civilisation. In Islam it is just the reverse. The Koran has no such teaching as with us has abolished polygamy, slavery, and arbitrary divorce, and has elevated woman to her proper place. As a Reformer, Mahomet did advance his people to a certain point, but as a Prophet he left them fixed immovably at that point for all time to come. The tree is of artificial planting. Instead of containing within itself the germ of growth and adaptation to the various requirements of time and clime and circumstance, expanding with the genial sunshine and rain from heaven, it remains the same forced and stunted thing as when first planted some twelve centuries ago."[29]
Modern Christianity[link]
Main article: Regensburg lecture
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI quoted an unfavorable remark about Islam made at the end of the 14th century by Manuel II Palaiologos, the Byzantine emperor.[30][31]
Truthfulness of Islam and Islamic scriptures[link]
Reliability[link]
Reliability of the Quran[link]
See also: Historicity of Muhammad and History of the Quran
Muslims believe the Quran to be the perfect word of God, and as such it cannot contain any errors or contradictions, and must be perfectly compatible with science. Muslims believe it to be so perfect that readers must conclude it is of divine, rather than human, origin.
Critics argue that:
- the Quran contains verses which are difficult to understand or contradictory.[32]
- the Quran contains incorrect cosmological explanations.[33]
- Some accounts of the history of Islam say there were two verses of the Quran that were allegedly added by Muhammad when he was tricked by Satan (in an incident known as the "Story of the Cranes", later referred to as the "Satanic Verses"). These verses were then retracted at angel Gabriel's behest.[34][35]
Hadith[link]
Main article: Criticism of Hadith
Hadith are Muslim traditions relating to the Sunnah (words and deeds) of Muhammad. They are drawn from the writings of scholars writing between 844 and 874 CE, more than 200 years after the death of Mohammed in 632 CE.[36] In general, for Muslims the Hadith are second only to the Quran in importance,[37] although some scholars put more emphasis on the perpetual adherence of Muslim nation to the traditions to give them credibility, and not solely on Hadith.[38] Most of the knowledge about the life of Muhammad comes from the Hadith, many of which were biographies of Mohammed. Many Islamic practices (such as the Five Pillars of Islam) are drawn from the Hadith.
However, there is criticism of the historical reliability of Hadith.
Within Islam, different schools and sects have different opinions on the proper selection and use of Hadith. The four schools of Sunni Islam all consider Hadith second only to the Quran, although they differ on how much freedom of interpretation should be allowed to legal scholars.[39] Shi'i scholars disagree with Sunni scholars as to which Hadith should be considered reliable. The Shi'as accept the Sunnah of Ali and the Imams as authoritative in addition to the Sunnah of Muhammad, and as a consequence they maintain their own, different, collections of Hadith.[40]
Scholars not ascribing to the traditionalist view of either Sunni or Shia Islam, notably Quran alone Muslims, point to the prevalence of authoritative Hadith which they aver contradict the Quran as placing the Hadith, in practice, as supplanting the Quran as an authority. This contrasts with the traditionalist view that the Hadith are always secondary to the Quran and that Hadiths contradicting the Quran are void. One illustrative contention between the different sects concerns the punishment for adultery. According to the Sunnah, the correct punishment is death by stoning. This punishment is absent in the Quran, as the Quran mentions two separate punishments for adultery as 100 lashes ([Quran 24:2-3]), or immurement in the home ([Quran 4:15-15]). Traditionalists claim there is no contradiction because the latter punishment is applied to fornication, and interpret the Quran as authorising Muhammad to ascribe additional laws of equal authority though absent in the Quran itself, such as stoning. Non-traditionalists may aver that as two punishments for adultery are already detailed in the Quran, the Quran claims itself as complete without mentioning the Hadith as a source of authority, the Hadith and Hadith-scholars at times give Hadith higher authority than the Quran.[41]
Lack of secondary evidence[link]
See also: Historiography of early Islam
The traditional view of Islam has also been criticised for the lack of supporting evidence consistent with that view, such as the lack of archaeological evidence, and discrepancies with non-Muslim literary sources.[42]
Morality[link]
Muhammad[link]
Main article: Criticism of Muhammad
Muhammed is considered as one of the prophets in Islam, its founder and a model for followers. Critics such as Sigismund Koelle and former Muslim Ibn Warraq see some of Mohammed's actions as immoral.[4][5]
Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf wrote a poetic eulogy commemorating the slain Quraish notables; later, he had traveled to Mecca and provoked the Quraish to fight the Prophet. He also wrote erotic poetry about Muslim women, which offended the Muslims there.[43] This poetry influenced so many[44] that this too was considered directly against the Constitution of Medina which states, loyalty gives protection against treachery and this document will not (be employed to) protect one who is unjust or commits a crime. Other sources also state that he was plotting to assassinate Muhammad.[45] Muhammad called upon his followers to kill Ka'b. Muhammad ibn Maslama offered his services, collecting four others. By pretending to have turned against Muhammad, Muhammad ibn Maslama and the others enticed Ka'b out of his fortress on a moonlit night,[43] and killed him in spite of his vigorous resistance.[46] The Jews were terrified at his assassination, and as the historian Ibn Ishaq put it "...there was not a Jew who did not fear for his life".[47]
Morality of the Quran[link]
See also: Criticism of the Quran
Muslims believe that the Quran is the literal word of God as recited to Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. Criticism of the Quran generally consists of questioning traditional claims about the Quran's composition and content.
It is a central tenet of Islam that the Quran is perfect, so criticism of the Quran is considered criticism of Islam.
- Critics stated that the Quran[Quran 4:34] allows Muslim men to discipline their wives by striking them.[48] (There is however confusion amongst translations of Quran with the original Arabic term "wadribuhunna" being translated as "to go away from them",[49] "beat",[50] "strike lightly" and "separate".[51]
- Sam Harris claims that violence is implicit in the Quranic text, and that Islam itself, not just Islamism, promotes terrorism.[52]
- Some critics argue that the Quran is incompatible with other religious scriptures, attacks and advocates hate against people of other religions.[6][53][54][55]
[edit] Slavery[56]
Main article: Islamic views on slavery
Apostasy[link]
Main article: Apostasy in Islam
Islamic law[link]
Bernard Lewis summarizes:
The penalty for apostasy in Islamic law is death. Islam is conceived as a polity, not just as a religious community. It follows therefore that apostasy is treason. It is a withdrawal, a denial of allegiance as well as of religious belief and loyalty. Any sustained and principled opposition to the existing regime or order almost inevitably involves such a withdrawal.—[57]
The four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, as well as Shi'a scholars, agree on the difference of punishment between male and female. A sane adult male apostate may be executed. A female apostate may be put to death, according to the majority view, or imprisoned until she repents, according to others.[58]
The Quran threatens apostates with punishment in the next world only, the historian W. Heffening states, the traditions however contain the element of death penalty. Muslim scholar Shafi'i interprets verse [Quran 2:217] as adducing the main evidence for the death penalty in Quran.[59] The historian Wael Hallaq states the later addition of death penalty "reflects a later reality and does not stand in accord with the deeds of the Prophet." He further states that "nothing in the law governing apostate and apostasy derives from the letter of the holy text."[60]
William Montgomery Watt, in response to a question about Western views of the Islamic Law as being cruel, states that "In Islamic teaching, such penalties may have been suitable for the age in which Muhammad lived. However, as societies have since progressed and become more peaceful and ordered, they are not suitable any longer."[61]
Some contemporary Islamic jurists from both the Sunni and Shi'a denominations together with Quran only Muslims have argued or issued fatwas that state that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances.[62][63][64][65][66] For example, Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri argues that no Quranic verse prescribes an earthly penalty for apostasy and adds that it is not improbable that the punishment was prescribed by Muhammad at early Islam due to political conspiracies against Islam and Muslims and not only because of changing the belief or expressing it. Montazeri defines different types of apostasy. He does not hold that a reversion of belief because of investigation and research is punishable by death but prescribes capital punishment for a desertion of Islam out of malice and enmity towards the Muslim.[67]
According to Yohanan Friedmann, an Israeli Islamic Studies scholar, a Muslim may stress tolerant elements of Islam (by for instance adopting the broadest interpretation of Quran 2:256 ("No compulsion is there in religion...") or the humanist approach attributed to Ibrahim al-Nakha'i), without necessarily denying the existence of other ideas in the Medieval Islamic tradition but rather discussing them in their historical context (by for example arguing that "civilizations comparable with the Islamic one, such as the Sassanids and the Byzantines, also punished apostasy with death. Similarly neither Judaism nor Christianity treated apostasy and apostates with any particular kindness").[68] Friedmann continues:
The real predicament facing modern Muslims with liberal convictions is not the existence of stern laws against apostasy in medieval Muslim books of law, but rather the fact that accusations of apostasy and demands to punish it are heard time and again from radical elements in the contemporary Islamic world.—[68]
Human rights conventions[link]
Some widely held interpretations of Islam are inconsistent with Human Rights conventions that recognize the right to change religion.[69][70]
In particular article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[71] states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
To implement this, Article 18 (2) of the ICCPR states:
No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion of his choice.
The right for Muslims to change their religion is not afforded by the Iranian Shari'ah law, which specifically forbids it.[69][70][72]
Muslim countries such as Sudan and Saudi Arabia, have the death penalty for apostasy from Islam.[73]
These countries have criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries.
In 1990, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation published a separate Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam compliant with Shari'ah.[74] Although granting many of the rights in the UN declaration, it does not grant Muslims the right to convert to other religions, and restricts freedom of speech to those expressions of it that are not in contravention of the Islamic law.
Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami,[75] wrote a book called Human Rights in Islam,[76] in which he argues that respect for human rights has always been enshrined in Sharia law (indeed that the roots of these rights are to be found in Islamic doctrine)[77] and criticizes Western notions that there is an inherent contradiction between the two.[78] Western scholars have, for the most part, rejected Maududi's analysis.[79][80][81]
Homosexuals[link]
Main article: LGBT topics and Islam
Critics such as lesbian activist Irshad Manji,[82] former Muslims Ehsan Jami and the Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have criticized Islam's attitudes towards homosexuals. Most international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, condemn Islamic laws that make homosexual relations between consenting adults a crime. Since 1994 the United Nations Human Rights Committee has also ruled that such laws violated the right to privacy guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
In May 2008, the sexual rights lobby group Lambda Istanbul (based in Istanbul, Turkey) was banned by court order for violating a constitutional provision on the protection of the family and an article banning bodies with objectives that violate law and morality.[83] Then this decision taken to the Court of Cassation and the ban lifted.[84]
The ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq has noted that the Quran's condemnation of homosexuality has frequently been ignored in practice, and that Islamic countries were much more tolerant of homosexuality than Christian ones until fairly recently.[85]
Islam's influence on the ability of Muslim immigrants in the West to assimilate[link]
See also: Multiculturalism and Islam
The immigration of Muslims to Europe has increased in recent decades[clarification needed], and frictions have developed between these new neighbours. Conservative Muslim social attitudes on modern issues have caused controversy in Europe and elsewhere[citation needed], and scholars argue about how much these attitudes are a result of Islamic beliefs.[citation needed] Some critics[who?] consider Islam to be incompatible with secular Western society;[86] their criticism has been partly influenced by a stance against multiculturalism advocated by recent philosophers, closely linked to the heritage of New Philosophers. Statements by proponents like Pascal Bruckner,[87] have kindled international debate.[citation needed] They hold multiculturalism to be an invention of an "enlightened" elite who deny the benefits of democratic rights to non-Westerners by chaining them to their roots. They claim this allows Islam free rein to propagate abuses such as the mistreatment of women and homosexuals, and in some countries slavery. They also claim that multiculturalism allows a degree of religious freedom[88] that exceeds what is needed for personal religious freedom[89] and is conducive to the creation of organizations aimed at undermining European secular or Christian values.[90] This tendency to focus criticism of Islam on politics and the non-European identity of its traditions triggered a new debate on Islamophobia.[citation needed]
Comparison with Communism and Fascist ideologies[link]
In 2004, speaking to the Acton Institute on the problems of "secular democracy", Cardinal George Pell drew a parallel between Islam and Communism: "Islam may provide in the 21st century, the attraction that communism provided in the 20th, both for those that are alienated and embittered on the one hand and for those who seek order or justice on the other."[91] Pell also agrees in another speech that its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited.[92] An Australian Islamist spokesman, Keysar Trad, responded to the criticism: "Communism is a godless system, a system that in fact persecutes faith".[93]
Writers such as Stephen Suleyman Schwartz[94] and Christopher Hitchens,[95] describe Islamist attributes similar to Fascism. Malise Ruthven, a Scottish writer and historian who focuses his work on religion and Islamic affairs, opposes redefining Islamism as `Islamofascism`, but also finds the resemblances between the two ideologies "compelling".[96]
Responses to criticism[link]
John Esposito has written many introductory texts on Islam and the Islamic world. For example, he has addressed issues like the rise of militant Islam, the veiling of women, and democracy.[97][98] Esposito emphatically argues against what he calls the "pan-Islamic myth". He thinks that "too often coverage of Islam and the Muslim world assumes the existence of a monolithic Islam in which all Muslims are the same." To him, such a view is naive and unjustifiably obscures important divisions and differences in the Muslim world.[99]
William Montgomery Watt who in his book Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman addresses Muhammad’s alleged moral failings. He claims that "Of all the world's great men none has been so much maligned as Muhammad." Watt argues on a basis of moral relativism that Muhammad should be judged by the standards of his own time and country rather than "by those of the most enlightened opinion in the West today."[100]
Karen Armstrong, tracing what she believes to be the West's long history of hostility toward Islam, finds in Muhammad’s teachings a theology of peace and tolerance. Armstrong holds that the "holy war" urged by the Quran alludes to each Muslim's duty to fight for a just, decent society.[101]
Edward Said, in his essay Islam Through Western Eyes, stated that the general basis of Orientalist thought forms a study structure in which Islam is placed in an inferior position as an object of study. He claims the existence of a very considerable bias in Orientalist writings as a consequence of the scholars' cultural make-up. He claims Islam has been looked at with a particular hostility and fear due to many obvious religious, psychological and political reasons, all deriving from a sense "that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity."[102]
Cathy Young of Reason Magazine notes that "criticism of the religion is enmeshed with cultural and ethnic hostility" often painting the Muslim world as monolithic. While stating that the terms "Islamophobia" and "anti-Muslim bigotry" are often used in response to legitimate criticism of fundamentalist Islam and problems within Muslim culture, she claimed "the real thing does exist, and it frequently takes the cover of anti-jihadism."[103]
Deepa Kumar, the author of Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization, and the UPS Strike, in her article titled 'Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics' says "The history of Islam is no more violent than the history of any of the other major religions of the world. Perhaps my critics haven't heard of the Crusades -- the religious wars fought by European Christians from the 11th to the 13th centuries" referring to the brutality of the crusades and then contrasting them to forbidding of acts of vengeance and violence by the Sultan of Egypt Saladin, after he successfully retook Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Speaking on the Danish Muhammad cartoon controversy she says "The Danish cartoon of the prophet Mohammed with a bomb on his head is nothing if not the visual depiction of the racist diatribe that Islam is inherently violent. To those who can't understand why this argument is racist, let me be clear: when you take the actions of a few people and generalize it to an entire group -- all Muslims, all Arabs -- that's racism. When a whole group of people are discriminated against and demonized because of their religion or regional origin, that's racism." And "...Arabs and Muslims are being scapegoated and demonized to justify a war that is ruining the lives of millions."[104]
See also[link]
Notes[link]
- ^ De Haeresibus by John of Damascus. See Migne. Patrologia Graeca, vol. 94, 1864, cols 763-73. An English translation by the Reverend John W Voorhis appeared in THE MOSLEM WORLD for October 1954, pp. 392-398.
- ^ a b Warraq, Ibn (2003). Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out. Prometheus Books. p. 67. ISBN 1-59102-068-9.
- ^ a b Ibn Kammuna, Examination of the Three Faiths, trans. Moshe Perlmann (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), pp. 148–49
- ^ a b c d Mohammed and Mohammedanism, by Gabriel Oussani, Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 16, 2006.
- ^ a b Ibn Warraq, The Quest for Historical Muhammad (Amherst, Mass.:Prometheus, 2000), 103.
- ^ a b Bible in Mohammedian Literature., by Kaufmann Kohler Duncan B. McDonald, Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 22, 2006.
- ^ http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2005&country=6825. See also Timothy Garton Ash (2006-10-05). "Islam in Europe". The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19371.
- ^ Timothy Garton Ash (2006-10-05). "Islam in Europe". The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19371.
- ^ Tariq Modood (2006-04-06). Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-415-35515-5.
- ^ Critique of Islam St. John of Damascus
- ^ John McManners, The Oxford History of Christianity, Oxford University Press, p. 185
- ^ John Victor Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, Columbia University Press, p. 139: "Like earlier hostile biographies of Muhammad (John of Damascus, the Risâlat al-Kindî., Theophanes, or the Historia de Mahometh pseudopropheta) the four twelfth-century texts are based on deliberate distortions of Muslim traditions."
- ^ a b Doubt: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson by Jennifer Michael Hecht, HarperOne, 2004 pg 224
- ^ Boisard, Marcel A. (July 1980). "On the Probable Influence of Islam on Western Public and International Law". International Journal of Middle East Studies 11 (4): 429–50
- ^ Nahjul Balaagha letter 53
- ^ Ronald Bontekoe, Mariėtta Tigranovna Stepaniants (1997). Justice and Democracy. University of Hawaii Press. p. 251. ISBN 0-8248-1926-8
- ^ Moosa, Ebrahim (2005). Ghazālī and the Poetics of Imagination. UNC Press. p. 9. ISBN 0-8078-2952-8.
- ^ Jennifer Michael Hecht, "Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson", pg. 227-230
- ^ Richard Tapper & Keith Stanley McLachlan (2003). Technology, tradition and survival: aspects of material culture in the Middle East and Central Asia. Routledge. p. 38. ISBN 0-7146-4927-9
- ^ Ibn Warraq. Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 3. Prometheus Books, 1995. ISBN 0-87975-984-4
- ^ Norman A. Stillman. The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book p. 261. Jewish Publication Society, 1979 ISBN 0-8276-0198-0
- ^ Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam, p.95
- ^ The Mind of Maimonides, by David Novak. Retrieved April 29, 2006.
- ^ Hartman, David; Halkin, Abraham S. (1993). Epistles of Maimonides: crisis and leadership. Jewish Publication Society. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8276-0430-8.
- ^ both in vol. 36 of the Tournai edition, pp. 231-442 and 443-500.
- ^ J. Tolan, Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam (1996) p. 100-101
- ^ J. Tolan, Saracens; Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002) p. 75
- ^ "Of the Standard of Taste by David Hume". http://www.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r15.html.
- ^ Asia. 2d ed., rev. and corrected. Published 1909 by E. Stanford in London. Page 458
- ^ BBC Article. In quotes: Muslim reaction to Pope last accessed 17 September 17, 2006
- ^ BBC News Article:Pope sorry for offending Muslims, last accessed 17 September 17, 2006
- ^ Lester, Toby (1999) "What is the Koran?" Atlantic Monthly
- ^ Cosmology and the Koran: A Response to Muslim Fundamentalists by Richard Carrier
- ^ Watt, W. Montgomery (1961). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press. p. 61. ISBN 0-19-881078-4.
- ^ "The Life of Muhammad", Ibn Ishaq, A. Guillaume (translator), 2002, p.166 ISBN 0-19-636033-1
- ^ An Atheist's Guide to Mohammedanism by Frank Zindler
- ^ Ernst, Carl (2002). Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 80. ISBN 0-8078-2837-8.
- ^ Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, Mizan, Chapter: Sources of Islam, Al-Mawrid Institute
- ^ Goddard, Hugh; Helen K. Bond (Ed.), Seth Daniel Kunin (Ed.), Francesca Aran Murphy (Ed.) (2003). Religious Studies and Theology: An Introduction. New York University Press. p. 204. ISBN 0-8147-9914-0.
- ^ Esposito, John (1998). Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press. p. 85. ISBN 0-19-511234-2.
- ^ http://www.quran.org/library/books/19a.txt
- ^ What do we actually know about Mohammed? by Patricia Crone
- ^ a b William Montgomery Watt. "Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf". In P.J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Encyclopaedia of Islam Online. Brill Academic Publishers. ISSN 1573-3912.
- ^ Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th edition (Macmillan Press, 1970), p. 90.
- ^ Uri Rubin, The Assassination of Kaʿb b. al-Ashraf, Oriens, Vol. 32. (1990), pp. 65-71.
- ^ Ibn Hisham (1955). Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya. vol. 2. Cairo. pp. 51–57.. English translation from Stillman (1979), p. 125–126.
- ^ Ibn Hisham (1955). English translation from Stillman (1979), p. 127.
- ^ Kathir, Ibn, "Tafsir of Ibn Kathir", Al-Firdous Ltd., London, 2000, 50–53 - Ibn Kathir states "dharbun ghayru nubrah" strike/admonish lightly
- ^ Laleh Bakhtiar, The Sublime Quran, 2007 translation
- ^ "The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary", Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Amana Corporation, Brentwood, MD, 1989. ISBN 0-915957-03-5, passage was quoted from commentary on 4:34 - Abdullah Yusuf Ali in his Quranic commentary also states that: "In case of family jars four steps are mentioned, to be taken in that order. (1) Perhaps verbal advice or admonition may be sufficient; (2) if not, sex relations may be suspended; (3) if this is not sufficient, some slight physical correction may be administered; but Imam Shafi'i considers this inadvisable, though permissible, and all authorities are unanimous in deprecating any sort of cruelty, even of the nagging kind, as mentioned in the next clause; (4) if all this fails, a family council is recommended in 4:35 below." Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary (commentary on 4:34), Amana Corporation, Brentwood, MD, 1989. ISBN 0-915957-03-5.
- ^ Ammar, Nawal H. (May 2007). "Wife Battery in Islam: A Comprehensive Understanding of Interpretations". Violence Against Women 13 (5): 519–523
- ^ "Suicide bombing, in the Muslim world at least, is an explicitly religious phenomenon that is inextricable from notions of martyrdom and jihad, predictable on their basis, and sanctified by their logic. It is no more secular an activity than prayer is."Harris, Sam (2004). The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.. p. 251. ISBN 0-393-03515-8.
- ^ Gerber (1986), pp. 78–79
- ^ "Anti-Semitism". Encyclopedia Judaica
- ^ Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance (pdf), Freedom House, May 2006, pp.24-25.
- ^ [1] Slavery in Islam (bbc.co.uk)
- ^ Lewis, Bernard (1998-01-21). "Islamic Revolution". The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4557.
- ^ "Murtadd". Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2003.
- ^ W. Heffening, in Encyclopedia of Islam
- ^ Encyclopedia of the Quran, Apostasy
- ^ Interview: William Montgomery Watt, by Bashir Maan & Alastair McIntosh
- ^ Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri: "Not Every Conversion is Apostasy", by Mahdi Jami, In Persian, BBC Persian, February 2, 2005. Retrieved April 25, 2006.
- ^ What Islam says on religious freedom, by Magdi Abdelhadi, BBC Arab affairs analyst, 27 March 2006. Retrieved April 25, 2006.
- ^ S. A. Rahman in "Punishment of Apostasy in Islam", Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore, 1972, pp. 10-13
- ^ The punishment of apostasy in Islam, View of Dr. Ahmad Shafaat on apostasy.
- ^ Religious Tolerance.org, Apostasy (Irtdidad) In Islam, by B.A. Robinson, Religious Tolerance.org, April 7, 2006. Retrieved April 16, 2006.
- ^ Ayatollah Montazeri: "Not Every Conversion is Apostasy", by Mahdi Jami, In Persian, BBC Persian, February 2, 2005. Retrieved April 25, 2006.
- ^ a b Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam, Cambridge University Press, p.5
- ^ a b In 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. Littman, David. "Universal Human Rights and 'Human Rights in Islam'". Midstream, February/March 1999
- ^ a b "As a matter of law, on the basis of its obligations as a state party to the ICCPR, Iran is obliged to uphold the right of individuals to practice the religion of their choice and to change religions, including converting from Islam. The prosecution of converts from Islam on the basis of religious edicts that identify apostasy as an offense punishable by death is clearly at variance with this obligation.": Human Rights Watch report on Iran [2]
- ^ UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- ^ Sharia as traditionally understood runs counter to the ideas expressed in Article 18:Religious freedom under Islam: By Henrik Ertner Rasmussen, General Secretary, Danish European Mission
- ^ Apostacy, "Leaving Islam" – The Peace FAQ
- ^ The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, Adopted and Issued at the Nineteenth Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers in Cairo, Religion and Law Research Consortium, August 5, 1990. Retrieved April 16, 2006.
- ^ "Jamaat-e-Islami". GlobalSecurity.org. 2005-04-27. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/pakistan/ji.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
- ^ Maududi, Abul A'la (1976). Human Rights in Islam. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation. ISBN 0-9503954-9-8.
- ^ Maududi, Human Rights in Islam, p. 10. "Islam has laid down some universal fundamental rights for humanity as a whole ... ."
- ^ Maududi, Human Right in Islam, p. 13. "The people of the West have the habit of attributing every good thing to themselves and trying to prove that it is because of them that the world got this blessing ... ."
- ^ Bielefeldt, Heiner (February 2000). ""Western" versus "Islamic" Human Rights Conceptions?: A Critique of Cultural Essentialism in the Discussion on Human Rights". Political Theory 28 (1): 90–121. DOI:10.1177/0090591700028001005. JSTOR 192285.
- ^ Bielefeldt (2000), p. 104.
- ^ Carle, Robert (2005). "Revealing and Concealing: Islamist Discourse on Human Rights". Human Rights Review 6 (3): 122–37. DOI:10.1007/BF02862219. "Both Tabandeh and Mawdudi proceed to develop a synthesis between human rights and traditional shari‘a that conceals the conflicts and tensions between the two (p. 124)."
- ^ Irshad Manji's call for an Islamic reformation
- ^ 'Turkish court slaps ban on homosexual group', Hürriyet daily newspaper, Turkey
- ^ 'The case has ended: Not to be closed!', KAOS GL, Turkey
- ^ Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not A Muslim, pages 340-344, Prometheus, New York, 1995
- ^ Tariq Modood (2006-04-06). Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach (1st ed.). Routledge. pp. 3, 29, 46. ISBN 978-0-415-35515-5.
- ^ Pascal Bruckner - Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists? [3] appeared originally in German in the online magazine Perlentaucher on January 24, 2007.
- ^ Pascal Bruckner - A reply to Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash: "At the heart of the issue is the fact that in certain countries Islam is becoming Europe's second religion. As such, its adherents are entitled to freedom of religion, to decent locations and to all of our respect. On the condition, that is, that they themselves respect the rules of our republican, secular culture, and that they do not demand a status of extraterritoriality that is denied other religions, or claim special rights and prerogatives"
- ^ Pascal Bruckner - A reply to Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash "It's so true that many English, Dutch and German politicians, shocked by the excesses that the wearing of the Islamic veil has given way to, now envisage similar legislation curbing religious symbols in public space. The separation of the spiritual and corporeal domains must be strictly maintained, and belief must confine itself to the private realm."
- ^ Nazir-Ali, Michael (6 January 2008). "Extremism flourished as UK lost Christianity". London: The Sunday Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/06/nislam206.xml.
- ^ George Pell (2004-10-12). "Is there only secular democracy? Imagining other possibilities for the third millennium". Archived from the original on 2006-02-08. http://web.archive.org/web/20060208065454/http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/20041012_1658.shtml. Retrieved 2006-05-08.
- ^ George Pell (2006-02-04). "Islam and Western Democracies". Archived from the original on June 5, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20060605154745/http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/200627_681.shtml. Retrieved 2006-05-05.
- ^ Toni Hassan (2004-11-12). "Islam is the new communism: Pell". http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1242560.htm. Retrieved 2006-05-08.
- ^ Schwartz, Stephen. "What Is 'Islamofascism'?". TCS Daily. http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=081606C. Retrieved 2006-09-14.
- ^ Hitchens, Christopher: Defending Islamofascism: It's a valid term. Here's why, Slate, 2007-10-22
- ^ A Fury For God, Malise Ruthven, Granta, 2002, p.207-8
- ^ Esposito, John L. (2002). What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515713-3.
- ^ Esposito, John L. (2003). Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516886-0.
- ^ Esposito, John L. (1999). The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?. Oxford University Press. pp. 225–228. ISBN 0-19-513076-6.
- ^ Watt, W. Montgomery (1961). Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford University Press. p. 229. ISBN 0-19-881078-4. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/watt.html. Retrieved 2010-05-27.
- ^ Armstrong, Karen (1993). Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. HarperSanFrancisco. p. 165. ISBN 0-06-250886-5.
- ^ The Nation - 'Islam Through Western Eyes'
- ^ The Jihad Against Muslims: When does criticism of Islam devolve into bigotry?
- ^ Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics by Deepa Kumar, Monthly Review, April 2006[dead link]
References[link]
- Cohen, Mark R. (1995). Under Crescent and Cross. Princeton University Press; Reissue edition. ISBN 978-0-691-01082-3.
- Lockman, Zachary (2004). Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-62937-9.
- Rippin, Andrew (2001). Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (2nd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-21781-1.
- Westerlund, David (2003). "Ahmed Deedat's Theology of Religion: Apologetics through Polemics". Journal of Religion in Africa 33 (3). >
External links[link]
- Sultan.org - Islamic portal dealing with many criticism points of Islam.
Further reading[link]
- The miracle and challenge of the Quran
- The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion by Robert Spencer
- The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades) by Robert Spencer
- Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum - (THE SEALED NECTAR) Memoirs of the Noble Prophet by Saifur Rahman al-Mubarakpuri.
- Onward Muslim Soldiers by Robert Spencer
- The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew G. Bostom
- Who Wrote the Quran?
- Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Ye'or
- Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or
- The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, And the Coming Apocalypse by Paul L. Williams
- The Amazing Quran by Gary Miller
- An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism by Victor Davis Hanson
- Arabs and Israel - Conflict or Conciliation? by Sheikh Ahmed Hoosen Deedat
- Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel
- The War for Muslim Minds by Gilles Kepel
- J. Tolan, Saracens; Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002)
- Esposito, John L. (1995). The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-510298-3.
- Halliday, Fred (2003). Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics of the Middle East. I.B. Tauris, New York. ISBN 1-86064-868-1.
- Esposito, John L. (2003). Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-516886-0.
- Geisler, Norman L. (2002). Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross. Baker Books. ISBN 0-8010-6430-9.
- Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995)
- —, Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out
- The Institute for the Study of Civil Society report - The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism
- Zwemer Islam, a Challenge to Faith (New York, 1907)
- Shoja-e-din Shafa, Rebirth (1995) (Persian Title: تولدى ديگر)
- Shoja-e-din Shafa, After 1400 Years (2000) (Persian Title: پس از 1400 سال)
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This is a list of criticism and critique-based articles on the English Wikipedia. This article aims to list all the Wikipedia articles whose purpose is to state the criticism and/or critique surrounding an entity. Titles that redirect to a section of an article have been excluded. Criticisms and critiques are the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes. It can also be the critical assessment of a literary or artistic work.
Contents |
Religion[link]
Religion, a very controversial and contentious issue, naturally sparks a lot of criticism.
Christianity[link]
Islam[link]
Other[link]
Government, political philosophies and political issues[link]
Forms of government and political philosophies[link]
Other issues[link]
- Criticism of capitalism
- Critique of the Kantian philosophy
- Criticism of multiculturalism
- Criticism of postmodernism
- Criticisms of econometrics
- Criticisms of the labour theory of value
- Criticisms of neoclassical economics
- Criticism of marriage
- Criticism of debt
- Criticism of fast food
- Criticisms of welfare
- Criticism of advertising
- Criticism of fair trade
- Critique of technology
- Critique of ideology
- Criticism of fractional reserve banking
America-specific[link]
- Criticism of the War on Terror
- Criticism of the 9/11 Commission
- Criticism of government response to Hurricane Katrina
- Criticism of American foreign policy
- Criticism of the Federal Reserve
- Criticism of the Food and Drug Administration
- Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Criticism of college and university rankings (North America)
- Criticism of the Pledge of Allegiance
- Criticism of the Space Shuttle program
Products, Companies, Organizations and Corporations[link]
Computer/Internet-related[link]
Shopping centres[link]
Other[link]
- Criticism of the BBC
- Criticism of the World Trade Organization
- Criticism of The Walt Disney Company
- Criticism of ESPN
- Criticisms of BSkyB
- Criticism of Bell Canada
- Criticism of Family Guy
- Controversy and criticism of Big Brother (UK)
- Controversy and criticism of The X Factor
- Criticism of Second Life
- Criticism of Ultima Online
- Criticism of Coca-Cola
- Criticism of sport utility vehicles
Math and Science[link]
Miscellaneous[link]
- Criticism of the Israeli government
- Criticism of Esperanto
- Criticism of Wikipedia
- Criticism of the United Nations
- Criticism of the European Union
- Criticism of Holocaust denial
- Criticism of Western culture
- Criticism of Monarchy
- Criticisms of communist party rule
- Criticism of the National Health Service
- Criticism of Greenpeace
- Criticism of Amnesty International
- Criticism of Human Rights Watch
- Criticism of Akira Kurosawa
- Criticisms of Salvador Allende
- Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
- Criticism of the Kyoto Protocol
- Criticism of the FRA law
- Criticism of Tamil Brahmins
- Criticism of Osama bin Laden
See also[link]
http://wn.com/List_of_criticism_and_critique_articles
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_criticism_and_critique_articles
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Wafa Sultan | |
|---|---|
 Wafa Sultan in May 2012 |
|
| Born | Baniyas, Syria |
| Residence | Los Angeles, California |
| Nationality | Syrian |
| Ethnicity | Arab |
| Citizenship | United States of America |
| Education | Medicine (psychiatry) |
| Alma mater | University of Aleppo |
| Occupation | Psychiatrist |
| Known for | Criticism of Islam |
| Title | Doctor |
| Religion | None |
Wafa Sultan (Arabic: وفاء سلطان; born June 14, 1958, Baniyas, Syria) is a medical doctor who trained as a psychiatrist in Syria, and an American author and critic of Muslim society and Islam.[1]
Contents |
Life and career[link]
Sultan was born into a large traditional Alawite Muslim[1][2] family in Baniyas, Syria.[3][4][5]
Although Sultan wanted to be a writer, and would have preferred to study Arabic literature, she studied at the Medical faculty at the University of Aleppo due to pressure from her family,[6] stating that she was shocked into secularism by the 1979 atrocities committed by Islamic extremists of the Muslim Brotherhood against innocent Syrians, including her witnessing while she was a medical student the machine-gun assassination of her professor, Yusef al Yusef,[7] an ophthalmologist from the university who was renowned outside Syria. "They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'Allahu Akbar!' " 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."[8] She worked for four years as a psychiatrist in a hospital.
She, her teacher husband and children immigrated to the United States in 1989, where she moved to Los Angeles, California and became a naturalized citizen. Initially she had to work as a cashier in a gas station and behind the counter in a pizza parlour, but found her treatment in these jobs better than as a medical professional in Syria.[6] From the time of her arrival she begun to contribute articles to Arabic publications in the United States and published three books in Arabic.
Sultan became notable after the September 11, 2001 attacks for her participation in Middle East political debates, with Arabic essays that were circulated widely, and for television appearances on Al Jazeera and CNN in 2005.[6]
On February 21, 2006, she took part in Al Jazeera's weekly 45-minute discussion program The Opposite Direction. She spoke from Los Angeles, arguing with host Faisal al-Qassem and with Ibrahim Al-Khouli, a professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo (Egypt), about Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations theory. A six minute composite video of her remarks was subtitled and widely circulated by MEMRI on blogs and through e-mail; The New York Times estimated that it has been seen at least one million times.[1] In this video she criticised Muslims for treating non-Muslims differently, and for not recognizing the accomplishments of Jewish and other members of non-Muslim society while using their wealth and technology. The video was the most discussed video of all time with over 260,000 comments on the video-sharing website YouTube.[9] The full transcript of the debate, which was made public later, also raised many online discussions.[10]
Following her participation in founding of the Former Muslims United on October 13, 2009, Sultan released her first book in English, A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam.[11]
In October 2010 Sultan was called as an expert witness to give testimony at the Geert Wilders trial. There she confirmed that she had met Wilders several times in 2009, had seen his film Fitna, and in general agreed with his views about Islam.[12]
On January 10, 2011, Sultan, opposing Ibrahim Ramey, appeared on the Russian television news show CrossTalk with host Peter Lavelle, where she stated: "I'm not against Muslims, I'm against Islam."[13]
Political views[link]
Sultan describes her thesis as witnessing "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose". It 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 Jerusalem by the American Jewish Congress.
Sultan believes that "The trouble with Islam is deeply rooted in its teachings. Islam is not only a religion. Islam [is] also a political ideology that preaches violence and applies its agenda by force."[14] In a discussion with Ahmad bin Muhammad, she said: "It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist and killed his humanity".[15]
Recognitions[link]
In 2006 Wafa Sultan was named in Time Magazine in a list of 100 influential people in the world "whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world."[16][17] Time stated that "Sultan's influence flows from her willingness to express openly critical views on Islamic extremism that are widely shared but rarely aired by other Muslims."[16]
Religious sentiment[link]
In the same Time interview, Sultan described herself as a Muslim who does not adhere to Islam, yet remains associated with the faith through her birth, rather than belief; "I even don't believe in Islam, but I am a Muslim."[16]
Stop Islamization of Nations[link]
Sultan, is a board member of Stop Islamization of Nations (SION), an organization founded by Pamela Geller, Robert Spence and Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE). Other board members are Ali Sina, Ex Muslim activist and author; Stefan Herre, a German activist of Politically Incorrect; Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli author; Babu Suseelan, a Hindu activist; Oskar Freysinger a Swiss politician , Cliff Kincaid, editor of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report, and Ashraf Rameleh the President of Voice of the Copts. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are President and Vice President of SION.[18]
Criticism[link]
About the University of Aleppo incident related above, related in an interview with the New York Times, in which Sultan claimed that in 1979, gunmen from the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor before her eyes, Riyad Asfari, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Aleppo, stated in an interview that the assassination took place off campus, and that no one had ever been killed anywhere at the university. Asfari's comment was also supported by Syrian expatriates Adnan Halabi and Ghada Moezzin. Moezzin, who attended the University of Aleppo in 1979, commented "We would’ve known about the killing if it had happened. It would have been big news on campus and I do not recall ever hearing about it." Moezzin added that government security was always present around the university at the time.
References[link]
- ^ a b c d John M. Broder (2006-03-11). "For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
- ^ Abdussalam Mohamed (March 3, 2007). "Wafa Sultan: Reformist or opportunist?". Southern California InFocus. http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/4009/135. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
- ^ Ruthie Blum Leibowitz. "One on One: A woman's work in progress". The Jerusalem Post. http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1159193523009&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
- ^ Gerard Henderson (2007-08-28). "Welcome to all who pass the test". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/welcome-to-all-who-pass-the-test/2007/08/27/1188067035595.html. Retrieved 2008-03-01.
- ^ womensenews.org
- ^ a b c Wendt, Jana, A Matter of Principle: New Meetings with the Good, the Great and the Formidable, Melbourne University Publishing, 2008, p.46
- ^ Kerry Howley. "Breaking the Silence: One woman is risking her life to speak the truth about radical Islam.". Readers Digest. http://www.rd.com/stories/inspiration/a-woman-speaks-out-against-radical-islam/article.html. Retrieved 2008-09-20.
- ^ John M. Broder (2006-03-11). "The Saturday Profile; For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E6D71331F932A25750C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2008-09-20.
- ^ Heffernan, Virginia (2007-11-04). "God and Man on YouTube". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2010-05-27.
- ^ Transcript Translation: al-Jazeera - The Opposite Direction 26/02/2006 Translator: Meph www.aqoul.com, March 22, 2006
- ^ Elisabeth Eaves (October 27, 2009). "Islam On The Couch - An ex-Muslim psychiatrist is attacked for apostasy". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/26/muslim-women-wafa-sultan-opinions-columnists-elisabeth-eaves.html. Retrieved 2011-10-01.
- ^ Baudet, Thierry (19 January 2011). "Thou Shalt Not Offend Islam". City Journal. http://www.city-journal.org/2011/eon0119tb.html. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
- ^ RT news: CrossTalk: host Peter Lavelle, at marker number 17.10 [1] RT news: CrossTalk: host Peter Lavelle, at marker number 17.10 [2]
- ^ "A "crack in the wall" - Wafa Sultan on the mohammed cartoons". http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Negt6IzxPTo. Retrieved 2008-10-14.
- ^ "LA Psychologist Wafa Sultan Clashes with Algerian Islamist Ahmad bin Muhammad over Islamic Teachings and Terrorism". Middle East Media Research Institute. http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/783.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
- ^ a b c Asra Nomani (2006-04-30). "Wafa Sultan". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187385,00.html. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
- ^ "The People Who Shape Our World". Time. http://www.time.com/time/2006/time100/. Retrieved 2008-02-24.
- ^ Reuters.com; Press Release, "Stop Islamization of Nations (SION) Calls on UN to Protect Christians of Syria", January 20, 2012, Retrieved February 5, 2012
Book[link]
- Sultan, Wafa (2009). A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-53836-1.
External links[link]
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Wafa Sultan |
- (Arabic) Wafa Sultan's articles at Al-Hewaar Al-Mutamaddin
- by Wafa Sultan -Who Should We Believe? June 12, 2009 at Hudson New York
- Heroes & Pioneers; Wafa Sultan - A Daring Voice Calls For a New Islam TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World
- "Wafa Sultan: Reformist or Opportunist?"
- "Dr. Wafa Sultan: A Lost Opportunity"
- "Islam's Ann Coulter: The seductive and blinkered belligerence of Wafa Sultan" Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Sultan, Wafa |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1958-06-14 |
| Place of birth | Baniyas, Syria |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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| Ayaan Hirsi Ali | |
|---|---|
 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2006 |
|
| Born | (1969-11-13) November 13, 1969 (age 42) Mogadishu, Somalia |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Alma mater | Leiden University (MSc) De Horst Institute (P) |
| Occupation | politician, writer |
| Known for | Submission anti-circumcision anti-female genital mutilation Infidel anti-sharia law |
| Influenced by | John Stuart Mill,[citation needed] Friedrich Hayek,[citation needed] Simone de Beauvoir,[citation needed] Karl Popper,[citation needed] Herman Philipse[citation needed] |
| Political party | 2001-2002: Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) (Labour Party) 2002-present Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD) (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy) |
| Religion | None (Atheist) |
| Spouse | Niall Ferguson |
Ayaan Hirsi Magan Ali ( pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; Arabic: أيان حرسي علي / ALA-LC: Ayān Ḥirsī ‘Alī; 13 November 1969) is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer and politician who is known for her views critical of Islam, practices of circumcision and female genital cutting. Her screenplay for Theo van Gogh's movie Submission led to death threats, resulting in the director's murder. The daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse, she is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA Foundation.[1]
When she was eight, Hirsi Ali's family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the centre of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet[2][3] in 2006.
In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[4] She has also received several awards including a free speech award from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten,[5] the Swedish Liberal Party's Democracy Prize,[6] and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship.[7] In 2006 she published a memoir. The English translation in 2007 is titled Infidel.[8] As of 2012[update] Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and lives in the United States.[9][10]
Contents |
Life and work[link]
Youth[link]
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born into a Majerteen family[11] in Mogadishu, Somalia.[12] Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a prominent member of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front and a leading figure in the Somalian Revolution. Shortly after she was born, her father was imprisoned due to his opposition to Somalia's Siad Barre government.[13][14]
Hirsi Ali's father had studied abroad and was opposed to female genital cutting, but while he was imprisoned, Hirsi Ali's grandmother had the traditional procedure performed on five-year-old Hirsi Ali.[13]
They settled in Nairobi, Kenya, where Hirsi Ali attended the English-language Muslim Girls' Secondary School. By the time she reached her teens, Saudi-funded religious education was becoming more influential among Muslims in other countries, and a charismatic religious teacher who had been trained under this aegis joined Hirsi Ali's school. She inspired the teenaged Ayaan, as well as some fellow students, to adopt the more rigorous Saudi Arabian interpretations of Islam, as opposed to the more relaxed versions then current in Somalia and Kenya. Hirsi Ali had been impressed by the Qur'an before she could even read, and had lived "by the Book, for the Book" throughout her childhood.[15]
She sympathised with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and wore a hijab together with her school uniform, which was unusual at the time but gradually became more common. She agreed with the fatwa against British writer Salman Rushdie that was declared in reaction to the publication of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses.[16] After completing secondary school, she attended a secretarial course at Valley Secretarial College in Nairobi for one year.[17] At this time, Hirsi Ali read English adventure stories such as the Nancy Drew series, containing modern heroine archetypes which overstepped the limits traditionally imposed by religion and society.[18]
Early life in the Netherlands[link]
| Part of a series on |
| Criticism of Islam |
|---|
Hirsi Ali arrived in the Netherlands in 1992. There is some lack of clarity about the events leading up to her arrival, and she has admitted to making false statements in her application for asylum to enhance her chances of staying in the Netherlands.[19] Hirsi Ali states that in 1992 her father arranged to marry her to a distant cousin. She says that she objected to this both on general grounds (she states that she dreaded being forced to submit to a stranger, someone with "the Holy Book on his side" who could force himself on her sexually),[15] and on specific objections to this particular cousin, saying that he was a "bigot" and an "idiot".[20]
It is not disputed that in 1992 she travelled from Kenya to visit her family in Düsseldorf and Bonn, Germany. It was planned that she would join her husband in Canada after obtaining a visa while in Germany. Members of her family have disputed the story of her forced marriage.[21] According to Hirsi Ali, she spent her time in Germany frantically trying to devise a way to escape her unwanted marriage. Ultimately she decided that she would claim to want to visit a relative in the Netherlands, but once she had arrived, seek help from that relative and claim asylum.[22]
Once in the Netherlands she requested political asylum, and obtained a residence permit. It is not known on what grounds she received political asylum, though she has admitted that she had lied by devising a false story about having to flee Mogadishu and spending time in refugee camps on the border between Somalia and Kenya. In reality, she did spend time in those camps, but in order to help relatives who were trapped there; she was already safely settled in Kenya at the time open warfare erupted in the Somali capital. She gave a false name and date of birth to the Dutch immigration authorities; something she says was necessary in order to escape retaliation by her clan.[23] She is known in the West by her assumed name, Hirsi Ali, instead of her original name, Hirsi Magan. Hirsi Ali received a residence permit within three weeks of her arrival in the Netherlands.
After being granted asylum she held various short-term jobs, ranging from cleaning to sorting post.[24] She then worked as a translator at a Rotterdam refugee centre which, according to a friend interviewed by The Observer newspaper, marked her deeply.[25] She says that she had been an avid reader from childhood, and access to new books and ways of thought stretched her imagination and frightened her at the same time. She says that Sigmund Freud's work placed her in contact with an alternative moral system, one that was not based on religion.[26] During this time she took courses in Dutch and a one-year propaedeutic course in social work at the De Horst Institute for Social Work in Driebergen. She states that she was impressed with how well Dutch society seemed to function and,[26] in an effort to better understand how this system had developed, studied at Leiden University where she obtained a MSc degree in political science in 2000.
Between 1995 and 2001 she also worked as an independent Somali-Dutch interpreter and translator, frequently coming into contact with Somali women in asylum centres, hostels for battered women, and the Dutch immigration and naturalisation service (IND, Immigratie en Naturalisatiedienst). While working for the IND, she saw inside the workings of the Dutch immigration system and became critical of the way it handled asylum seekers.[17] As a result of her education and experiences, Hirsi Ali speaks six languages: English, Somali, Arabic, Swahili, Amharic and Dutch.[13]
Political career[link]
After her education at Leiden University, Hirsi Ali became a fellow at the Wiardi Beckman Foundation, a scientific institute linked to the centre-left Labour Party (PvdA), of which Leiden University Professor Ruud Koole was steward.
During her studies, she was becoming increasingly disenchanted with Islam. Her identification as a Muslim suffered a strong blow after September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001. After listening to videotapes of Osama bin Laden citing "words of justification" in the Qur'an for the attacks, she writes, "I picked up the Quran and the hadith and started looking through them, to check. I hated to do it, because I knew that I would find Bin Laden's quotations in there."[27] She decided that, despite her upbringing, she had to regard the Qur'an as relative—it was a historical record and "just another book".[28]
The final blow to her faith was her reading of The Atheist Manifesto (Atheistisch Manifest) of Leiden philosopher Herman Philipse. She renounced Islam and became an atheist in 2002. During this period, she began to formulate her critique of Islam and Islamic culture, published many news articles, and became a frequent speaker on television news programs and public debate forums. She wrote up her ideas in a book entitled De Zoontjesfabriek (The Son Factory). It was at this time that she first began to receive death threats.[24]
In November 2002, after some disagreements with the PvdA about her security measures, she sought advice from Cisca Dresselhuys, the editor of the feminist magazine Opzij how to raise funds from the government for protection. Her party[clarification needed] having recently lost the election, Hirsi Ali would soon be unable to receive government-funded protection. Dresselhuys introduced Hirsi Ali to Gerrit Zalm, the parliamentary leader of the centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), and party member Neelie-Smit Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition. At their urging, Hirsi Ali agreed to switch to the VVD and stood for election to Parliament. Between November 2002 and January 2003, she lived abroad and was put on the payroll as an assistant of the VVD.
In 2003, aged 33, she became prominent in the parliamentary election campaign. Her message: the Dutch welfare state had overlooked abuse of Muslim women and girls, contributing to their isolation and oppression.[29]
During her tenure in Parliament, Hirsi Ali made a number of controversial statements about Islam. In an interview in the Dutch newspaper Trouw she said that by Western standards, Muhammad would be considered a pedophile. A discrimination complaint was filed against her on April 24, 2003. The Prosecutor's office decided not to initiate a case, because her critique did "not put forth any conclusions in respect to Muslims and their worth as a group is not denied".[30]
Going into hiding[link]
Hirsi Ali wrote the script and provided the voice-over for Submission,[31] a film produced by Theo van Gogh, which criticised the treatment of women in Islamic society[32]. Juxtaposed with passages from the Qur'an were scenes of actresses portraying Muslim women suffering abuse. The film also features an actress dressed in a semi-transparent burqa who has texts from the Qur'an written on her skin. The texts are among those often interpreted as justifying the subjugation of women. The film's release sparked much furore, and Mohammed Bouyeri, a member of the Hofstad Group, murdered Van Gogh in an Amsterdam street on November 2, 2004. A letter pinned to Van Gogh's body with a knife was primarily a death threat to Hirsi Ali.[33][34] After this murder the Dutch secret service raised the level of security that they provided to her.[35] In an interview to journalist David Cohen, Hirsi Ali has said that although she deeply regrets the murder of van Gogh, she is proud of the film and does not regret having made it. "To feel otherwise would be to deny everything I stand for."[36] At his televised funeral, Van Gogh's mother not only echoed this sentiment, she urged Hirsi Ali to continue the work that she and Van Gogh had done together.[37]
Earlier that year the group The Hague Connection produced a rap song, "Hirsi Ali Dis", and distributed it on the Internet. The lyrics included violent threats against her life. The rappers were prosecuted under Article 121 of the Dutch criminal code because they hindered the execution of her tasks as a politician. In 2005 they were sentenced to community service and a suspended prison sentence.[38]
After the murder of van Gogh, Hirsi Ali went into hiding. Government security services moved her around to many locations in the Netherlands, and eventually moved her to the United States for several months. On January 18, 2005, she returned to parliament. On February 18, 2005, she revealed the location of herself and her colleague Geert Wilders, who had also been in hiding. She demanded a normal, secured house, which she was granted one week later.
In January 2006 Hirsi Ali used her acceptance speech for the Reader's Digest "European of the Year" award to urge action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons and to say that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must be taken at his word in wanting to organise a conference to investigate objective evidence of the Holocaust. "Before I came to Europe, I'd never heard of the Holocaust. That is the case with millions of people in the Middle East. Such a conference should be able to convince many people away from their denial of the genocide against the Jews."[39] She also said that "so-called Western values" of freedom and justice are universal; that Europe has done far better than most areas of the world at providing justice, because it has guaranteed the freedom of thought and debate that are required for critical self-examination; and that communities cannot reform themselves unless "scrupulous investigation of every former and current doctrine is possible."[40]
In March 2006 she co-signed a letter entitled "MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism".[41] Among the eleven other signatories was British writer Salman Rushdie, the fatwa against whom Hirsi Ali had supported as a teen. The letter was published in response to protests in the Islamic world surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.
On April 27 a Dutch judge ruled that Hirsi Ali had to abandon her highly secure house at a secret address in the Netherlands: her neighbors had complained that living next to her was an unacceptable security risk to them, although the police had testified in court that it was one of the safest places in the country due to the large number of personnel they had assigned there.[42] In early 2007 she stated that the Dutch state had spent about 3.5 million euros providing armed guards for her, and the threats made her live "in fear and looking over my shoulder", but she was willing to endure this for the sake of speaking her mind.[43]
A private trust, the Foundation for Freedom of Expression, was established to help fund protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and other Muslim dissidents.[44]
Citizenship controversy[link]
 |
Wikinews has related news: Ayaan Hirsi Ali leaves Dutch Parliament |
In May 2006 the television programme Zembla reported that Hirsi Ali had given false information about her real name,[45] her age and the country she arrived from when originally applying for asylum. She had claimed to be fleeing the war in Somalia. However, she had been legally resident in Kenya for many years. Hirsi Ali admitted that she had lied about her full name, her date of birth and the manner in which she had come to the Netherlands, but said that she had fabricated this story while fleeing a forced marriage. Several sources, including her first book The Son Factory, which had been published in 2002, stated her real name and date of birth, and she had also publicly stated these in a September 2002 interview published in the political magazine HP/De Tijd.[46][47][48] and in an interview in the VARA gids (2002).[49] Accordingly, these details were considered by many to be public knowledge. Furthermore, Hirsi Ali has asserted that she made full disclosure of the matter to VVD officials when she was invited to run for parliament in 2002.[50]
Media speculation arose that she could lose her Dutch citizenship because of this identity fraud, rendering her ineligible for parliament. At first, Minister Rita Verdonk[51] said she would not look into the matter, but after Member of Parliament Hilbrand Nawijn officially asked her for her position, she declared that she would investigate Hirsi Ali's naturalisation process. This investigation took three days; the findings were that Hirsi Ali had not legitimately received Dutch citizenship, because she had lied about her name and date of birth. Rita Verdonk moved to annul Hirsi Ali's citizenship, a move that was later overridden on the urging of Parliament.[52]
On May 15, 2006, after the broadcast of the Zembla documentary, news stories appeared saying that Hirsi Ali was likely to move to the United States in September, and was expected to write a book entitled Shortcut to Enlightenment and work for a conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.[53]
On May 16 Hirsi Ali resigned from Parliament after admitting that she had lied on her asylum application. On that day, she gave a press conference,[54] in which she restated that, although she felt it was wrong to be granted asylum under false pretences, the facts had been publicly known since 2002 when they had been reported in the media and in one of her publications. In the press conference, she also restated that she had spoken the truth about the reason for seeking asylum, which had been the threat of a forced marriage, despite a claim to the contrary on the Zembla programme by some of her relatives. Her stated reason for resigning immediately was not the continuous threats, making her job as a parliamentarian "difficult" but "not impossible", but the news that the Minister would strip her of her Dutch citizenship.
After a long and emotional debate in the Dutch Parliament, all major parties supported a motion, requesting the Minister to explore the possibility of special circumstances in Hirsi Ali's case. Although Verdonk remained convinced that the applicable law did not leave her any room to consider such circumstances, she decided to accept the motion. During the debate, she astonished MPs by claiming that Hirsi Ali still had Dutch citizenship during the period of reexamination. Apparently the "decision" she had made public had been merely a report of the current position of the Dutch government. Hirsi Ali at that point had six weeks to react to the report before any final decision about her citizenship was taken. Verdonk was heavily criticised for not acting more prudently in a case that had so many political implications.[55]
Besides a Dutch passport, Hirsi Ali retained a Dutch residency permit on the grounds that she was a political refugee. According to the Minister, this permit could not be taken away from her since it had been granted more than 12 years before, in 1992.
In a reaction to the announced move, former VVD leader Hans Wiegel stated that her departure "would not be a loss to the VVD and not be a loss to the House of Representatives".[56] He said that Hirsi Ali was a brave woman, but that her opinions were polarizing. Former parliamentary leader of the VVD, Jozias van Aartsen, was more positive about Hirsi Ali, saying that it is "painful for Dutch society and politics that she is leaving the House of Representatives".[57] Another VVD MP, Bibi de Vries, claimed that if something were to happen to Hirsi Ali, some people in her party would have "blood on their hands."
Ali reveals in her second biography, Nomad that in early 2006, Verdonk had approached Ali personally and asked for her public support in Verdonk's campaign to run for party leader. Ali claims she actually personally supported Verdonk's opponent, Mark Rutte, as the better choice for the position. She admits that Verdonk's request made her uncomfortable, and when she was honest with Verdonk about her political feelings, Verdonk then became vindictive and took up a campaign against Ali once the "Zembla" program had been aired. (see pp. 100–103) Hirsi Ali, Ayaan (2010). Nomad. Free Press. p. 277. ISBN 978-1-4391-5731-2. Nomad (book) </ref>
United States Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick stated in May 2006 that "we recognise that she is a very courageous and impressive woman and she is welcome in the US."[58]
On May 23, 2006, Ayaan Hirsi made available to The New York Times some letters she believed would provide insight into her 1992 asylum application.[59][60] In one letter her sister Haweya warned her that the entire extended family was searching for her (after she had fled to the Netherlands), and in another letter her father denounced her.
Christopher DeMuth, President of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), confirmed that this controversy would not affect the appointment. He stated that he was still looking forward to "welcoming her to AEI, and to America."
On June 27, 2006, the Dutch government announced that Hirsi Ali would keep her Dutch citizenship.[61] On the same day a letter was disclosed in which Hirsi Ali expressed regret that she had misinformed Minister Verdonk. Hirsi Ali was allowed to retain her name because the Dutch government believes that Somalis are allowed to carry the name of their grandfather according to Somali family law, and her grandfather had used the last name Ali until his thirties and only then switched to Magan. The fact that this grandfather was born in 1845 complicated the investigation (her grandfather was a powerful warlord, and Hirsi Ali's father Hirsi Magan Isse was the youngest of his children, born when he was close to 70).[62] Also, the issue of the false date of birth was not that important, according to the Minister.
Later the same day Hirsi Ali, through her lawyer and in television interviews, made a statement declaring that she had signed the letter that was drafted by the Justice Department under duress.[63] She felt she was pressured into signing the statement in exchange for the passport, but that she had agreed to do it, swallowing her pride, in order not to complicate her pending visa application for the U.S. As of 2006[update] she still carried her Dutch passport. A close friend of Hirsi Ali, Leon de Winter, presented in his weblog a detailed account of the events which took place on June 27 leading to Hirsi Ali signing the statement confirming,[64] in his view, the involuntary nature of her action.
In a special parliamentary session on June 28 questions were raised concerning the alleged coercion of the Hirsi Ali statement by minister Verdonk, the dismissal by the minister of the false date of birth as a relevant issue, and whether Somali law prevails over Dutch law. The ensuing political upheaval on June 29 ultimately led to the fall of the Second Balkenende cabinet.[65]
American Enterprise Institute[link]
Following the citizenship controversy Hirsi Ali took up a position at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C.,[66] requiring her security to be upgraded once again.[67]
Her autobiography, Infidel, was published in September 2006. In a review posted on the summer reading list for the Middle East Strategy at the Harvard University website, American Enterprise Institute fellow Joshua Muravchik described the book as "simply a great work of literature," and compared her to novelist Joseph Conrad.[68] In 2007 she told David Cohen she was working on another book, Shortcut to Enlightenment, a philosophical fantasy about a visit by Muhammad to the New York Public Library in which he is confronted by various Enlightenment philosophers such John Stuart Mill, Frederick Hayek and Karl Popper (Hirsi Ali's "favourite liberal thinkers"), compares them to the state of Islam today, and then comes to a number of important conclusions.[43][69]
On September 25, 2007, she received her United States Permanent Resident Card (green card).[70] Since October 2007 she has continued her work for AEI from a secret address in the Netherlands. Her move back to the Netherlands was a result of the ruling of the Dutch minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin that, as of October 1, 2007, the Dutch government would no longer pay for her security while she was abroad. In 2007 she declined with thanks an offer to live in Denmark, and said that she intended to return to the United States.[71]
2006–2007[link]
According to journalist Jason Burke, Hirsi Ali had to move out of her house in The Hague in early 2006 after a court found that she was "endangering her neighbours" given the constant death threats and increasing criticism of her "trenchant statements."[72]
On April 17, 2007, a lecture held by Hirsi Ali at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown required tight security, due to a protest by the local Muslim community. One of the protesters, Pittsburgh imam Fouad El Bayly, said that Hirsi Ali deserved the death sentence and she should be tried and judged in a Muslim country.[73]
Hirsi Ali attended the 2007 Sydney Writers' Festival, giving an interview on June 2 and the closing address the following day, an extract of which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald of June 4. Hirsi Ali described her intellectual and religious journey as one in which she had "lost respect not for Muslims but for what they fear." Saying she was accused of hating Muslims and vilifying the Qur'an and Muhammad, she clarified that she did not hate Muslims, but rather the submission of free will.[74]
In September it was announced that she would take part in the New Yorker Festival in an event with Martin Amis. The event had originally paired Norman Mailer and Amis, but Mailer could not attend. However, ultimately Hirsi Ali also could not attend, so she was replaced by Ian Buruma.[75]
Social and political views[link]
Hirsi Ali is a member of the VVD, a Dutch political party that combines conservative views on the economy, foreign policy, crime and immigration with a liberal stance on drugs, abortion and homosexuality. She states that she is a great admirer of one of the party's ideological leaders, Frits Bolkestein, a former Euro-commissioner. Ali received substantial criticism as a result of her defection from the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) to the VVD. By way of response she asserted that she would show greater loyalty to the VVD.[citation needed]
She states that her personal views are for the most part inspired by her change from Islam to atheism. Hirsi Ali is very critical of Islam, especially of its prophet Muhammad and the position of women.
Islam[link]
Hirsi Ali is very critical of the position of women in Islamic societies and the punishments demanded by Islamic scholars for homosexuality and adultery. She considered herself a Muslim until 28 May 2002, when she became an atheist.[76] In an interview with the Swiss magazine Das Magazin in September 2006, she said she lost her faith while sitting in an Italian restaurant in May 2002, drinking a glass of wine: "...I asked myself: Why should I burn in hell just because I'm drinking this? But what prompted me even more was the fact that the killers of 9/11 all believed in the same God I believed in." Despite that, in the television programme Rondom Tien of 12 September 2002 she called it "my religion". She has described Islam as a "backward religion", incompatible with democracy. In one segment on the Dutch current affairs program Nova, she challenged pupils of an Islamic primary school to choose between the Qur'an and the Dutch constitution.[citation needed]
In an interview in the London Evening Standard,[16] Hirsi Ali characterizes Islam as "the new fascism": "Just like Nazism started with Hitler's vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate — a society ruled by Sharia law — in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism." In this interview, she also made it clear that in her opinion it is not "a fringe group of radical Muslims who've hijacked Islam and that the majority of Muslims are moderate. [...] Violence is inherent in Islam — it's a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder."
At the Sydney Writers' Festival in June 2007, she balanced her arguments, saying "I am a Muslim" because she understood why Muslims were silent when the Qur'an was "invoked to behead captured aid workers, journalists and other Western wanderers," as silence is "better than an argument with the author of the Holy Book who has given the command to behead infidels." Hirsi Ali stated that she was also "not a Muslim" as she had lost the fear of the Qur'an and of Hell and lost respect for "its author" and messenger; and that she felt a "common humanity" with those she once "shunned", such as Jews, Christians, atheists, gays, and sinners "of all stripes and colours."[28]
In The Reason Magazine, Ayaan Hirsi Ali stated that not just 'radical Islam' but 'Islam' must be defeated. She stated: "Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace."[77]
Muhammad[link]
See also: Criticism of Muhammad
Hirsi Ali criticises the central Islamic prophet on the grounds of both his morality and personality. In January 2003 she told the Dutch paper Trouw, "Muhammad is, seen by our Western standards, a pervert", as he married, at the age of 52, Aisha, who was six years old and nine at the time the marriage was consummated. These and other statements led to a lawsuit by a number of Muslims in 2005. The civil court in The Hague acquitted Hirsi Ali of any charges, but mentioned that she "could have made a better choice of words".[78]
She also has stated her opinions about his personality. When Trouw asked her about him,[79] she answered, "Measured by our western standards, Muhammad is a pervert. He is against freedom of expression. If you don't do as he says, you will be punished. It makes me think of all those megalomaniacs in the Middle East: Bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam. Do you think it strange that there is a Saddam Hussein? Muhammad is his example. Muhammad is an example for all Muslim men. Do you think it strange that so many Muslim men are violent?" In a 2003 interview with the Danish magazine Sappho, she explains parallels she sees between the personality of Yasser Arafat and that of Muhammad.[80]
Genital cutting[link]
Hirsi Ali opposes not just the genital cutting of girls, but also the practice of circumcision of boys as practiced by Jews and Muslims, as well as the routine infant circumcision practiced in the United States.[81] In her autobiography, Infidel, she writes: "Excision doesn't remove your desire or ability to enjoy sexual pleasure. The excision of women is cruel on many levels. It is physically cruel and painful; it sets girls up for a lifetime of suffering. And it is not even effective in its intent to remove their desire."[82]
A quotation from her on the subject: "girls dying in child birth because they are too young [...] The rise of radical Islam is an important part of this. I feel I have the moral obligation to discuss the source. I think if I think you are enriching the debate if you question it, you are not the enemy of Islam. We can look elsewhere using reason to discover answer to these problems, and we do not have to abolish religion. But we must do it by finding a balance."[83]
When in Dutch parliament she proposed obligatory annual medical checks for all uncircumcised girls originating from a country where female mutilation is practiced. If a girl turned out to have been circumcised, the physician would report this to the police, with protection of the child prevailing over privacy.[84]
On debate[link]
On August 31, 2006, while addressing the Dutch press on the occasion of her departure for the United States to work for the think tank the American Enterprise Institute, Hirsi Ali said: "...with like-minded people one cannot discuss. With like-minded people one can only participate in a church service, and, as is widely known, I do not like church services."[85]
Freedom of speech[link]
In a 2006 lecture in Berlin,[86] she defended the right to offend, following the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. She condemned the journalists of those papers and TV channels that did not show their readers the cartoons as being "mediocre of mind" and of trying to hide behind those "noble-sounding terms such as 'responsibility' and 'sensitivity'". She also praised publishers all over Europe for showing the cartoons and not being afraid of what she called the "hard-line Islamist movement", and stated "I do not seek to offend religious sentiment, but I will not submit to tyranny. Demanding that people should refrain from drawing him is not a request for respect but a demand for submission."
Political opponents[link]
Hirsi Ali supported the move by the Dutch courts to abrogate the party subsidy to a conservative Protestant Christian political party, the Political Reformed Party (SGP), which did not grant full membership rights to women and still withholds passive voting rights from female members. She stated that "any political party discriminating against women or homosexuals should be deprived of funding."[87]
Hirsi Ali has also stated that she wants the Belgian authorities to ban the (non-Muslim) Flemish Vlaams Belang party, claiming that "it hardly differs from the Hofstad Group. Though the VB members have not committed any violent crimes yet, they are just postponing them and waiting until they have an absolute majority. On many issues they have exactly the same opinions as the Muslim extremists: on the position of women, on the suppression of gays, on abortion. This way of thinking will lead straight to genocide."[88]
Vlaams Belang leaders and press statements reacted to her allegations by denying the party rejects in any way the rights of women or in any way promotes genocidal policies, instead pointing out Vlaams Belang's support for Shoah and Armenian genocide commemorations. Vlaams Belang party leader Frank Vanhecke responded to Hirsi Ali's allegations by writing an open letter to her, stating that she is "closer to the Vlaams Belang with her viewpoints than to the Flemish Liberals." He also rejected the likeness with the Hofstad Group, saying that his party "has never and nowhere called for violence." The Vlaams Belang reacted to Hirsi Ali's retirement from Dutch politics by stating that the party has "respect for the way she has conducted and promoted the debate in the Netherlands with respect to Islam, female oppression and failed integration."[89]
Opposition to denominational or faith schools[link]
In the Netherlands about half of all education has historically been provided by sponsored religious schools, most of them Catholic or Protestant. Ayaan Hirsi Ali said in November 2003 that no religious school should receive government financing,[citation needed] which brought her into conflict with Hans Wiegel, a prominent former VVD leader.
She went further in an interview with the London newspaper the Evening Standard in 2007,[16] saying "Close the Islamic faith schools today. [...] Britain is sleepwalking into a society that could be ruled by Sharia law within decades unless Islamic schools are shut down and young Muslims are instead made to integrate and accept Western liberal values. [...] We have to show the next generation of Muslims, the children, that they have a choice, and to do that — to have any hope whatsoever — we have to close down the Islamic faith schools." However, she said, ‘I haven’t seen anybody coming out of a Catholic or Jewish school advocating violence against women or homosexuals, or wanting to murder innocent people in the name of their religion.’[16]
Development aid[link]
The Netherlands has always been one of the most prominent countries that support aiding developing countries. As the spokesperson of the VVD in the parliament on this matter, Hirsi Ali said that the current development aid policy did not work to increase prosperity, peace and stability in the developing countries: "The VVD believes that Dutch international aid has failed until now, as measured by [the Dutch aid effects on] poverty reduction, famine reduction, life expectancy and the promotion of peace."[90]
Immigration[link]
Public statements[link]
In 2003 Hirsi Ali worked together with fellow VVD MP Geert Wilders for several months. They questioned the government about immigration policy. In reaction to the UN Development Programme Arab Human Development Report Hirsi Ali asked the following question of Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and the Minister without Portfolio for Development Cooperation Agnes van Ardenne. Together with parliamentarian Geert Wilders she asked the government to pay attention to the consequences for Dutch policy concerning the limitation of immigration from the Arab world to Europe, and in particular the Netherlands.[citation needed]
Although she always publicly supported the policy of VVD minister Rita Verdonk regarding limited immigration, privately she was not supportive, as she explained in an interview for Opzij,[91] given shortly after she had moved to the USA. In parliament, she supported the way Verdonk handled the Pasic case,[92] although privately she felt that Pasic should have been allowed to stay. On the night before the debate, she phoned Verdonk to tell her that she herself had lied when she fled to the Netherlands, just as Pasic had. Verdonk responded that if she had been minister at that time, she would have had Hirsi Ali deported. Subsequently, when the matter came to a head in public with Verdonk it led to the challenges over Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship and ultimately to her leaving the parliament and the country (see above).
In the Opzij interview, Hirsi Ali said she supported a general pardon and the granting of Dutch citizenship for a group of 26,000 refugees, who had spent more than five years in the Netherlands without hearing about the status of their asylum.[93] The VVD forbade her to speak her mind on this issue.[91][93]
Since leaving the Dutch parliament, Hirsi Ali has made further statements in support of restrictive immigration policies. She made her statements on this subject on 1 November 2006 in the television program Aspekte on the German TV station ZDF. She said that she feared that Muslim immigrants, once in the majority, would introduce Sharia legislation.[citation needed]
Writings[link]
Hirsi Ali has expounded on her view on immigration in Europe,[94] in an article, published in the Los Angeles Times in 2006.[95] Noting first that immigrants are over-represented "in all the wrong statistics", she sees as consequences of the European Union's current immigration policy the trade in women and illegal arms, and the exploitation of poor migrants by "cruel employers", to which she adds that "Muslim migrants are receptive to the seduction of the Islamist movement".
She draws attention to the numbers of illegal immigrants already in the Union. In her view current immigration policy will lead to ethnic and religious division, nation states will lose their monopoly of force, Islamic law (sharia) will, in fact, be introduced at the level of neighborhoods and cities, and exploitation of women and children will become "commonplace". To avoid this situation, she proposes three general principles for a new policy:
- Admission of immigrants on the basis of their contribution to the economy. The current system "is designed to attract the highest number of people with truly heartbreaking stories".
- Diplomatic, economic and military interventions in countries which risk causing large migrant flows.
- Introduction of assimilation programs which acknowledge that "the basic tenets of Islam are a major obstacle to integration".
Israel and the Palestinians[link]
"I visited Israel a few years ago, primarily to understand how it dealt so well with so many immigrants from different origins", Hirsi Ali says. "My main impression was that Israel is a liberal democracy. In the places I visited, including Jerusalem as well as Tel Aviv and its beaches, I saw that men and women are equal. One never knows what happens behind the scenes, but that is how it appears to the visitor. The many women in the army are also very visible."
"I understood that a crucial element of success is the unifying factor among immigrants to Israel. Whether one arrives from Ethiopia or Russia, or one's grandparents immigrated from Europe, what binds them is being Jewish. Such a bond is lacking in the Netherlands. Our immigrants' background is diverse and also differs greatly from that of the Netherlands, including religion."
As for Israel's problems, Hirsi Ali says, "From my superficial impression, the country also has a problem with fundamentalists. The ultra-Orthodox will cause a demographic problem because these fanatics have more children than the secular and the regular Orthodox."
On Palestinians: "I have visited the Palestinian quarters in Jerusalem as well. Their side is dilapidated, for which they blame the Israelis. In private, however, I met a young Palestinian who spoke excellent English. There were no cameras and no notebooks. He said the situation was partly their own fault, with much of the money sent from abroad to build Palestine being stolen by corrupt leaders".
"When I start to speak in the Netherlands about the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the role of Arafat in the tragedy of Palestine, I do not get a large audience. Often one is talking to a wall. Many people reply that Israel first has to withdraw from the territories, and then all will be well with Palestine."
On the way Israel is perceived in the Netherlands: "The crisis of Dutch socialism can be sized up in its attitudes toward both Islam and Israel. It holds Israel to exceptionally high moral standards. The Israelis, however, will always do well, because they themselves set high standards for their actions.
"The standards for judging the Palestinians, however, are very low. Most outsiders remain silent on all the problems in their territories. That helps the Palestinians become even more corrupt than they already are. Those who live in the territories are not allowed to say anything about this because they risk being murdered by their own people."[96]
Personal life[link]
Hirsi Ali is married to the British historian Niall Ferguson.[97] Hirsi Ali gave birth to a son, Thomas, in December 2011.[98]
Reception[link]
Hirsi Ali has attracted praise and criticism from Anglophone commentators. Commentator and journalist Christopher Hitchens called Hirsi Ali a "charismatic figure in Dutch politics" and criticised the Dutch government for its negligent attitude towards her protection from "fascist killers".[99] Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times called Hirsi Ali a freedom fighter for feminism who has "put her life on the line to defend women against radical Islam."[100] Novelist and screenwriter Roger L. Simon has praised Ali's defense of women's rights, calling her "one of the great positive figures of our time, a modern Joan of Arc who surpasses the original Joan in a moral sense and is at least her equal in pure guts."[101] He also criticises the ignorance of the Hollywood community about Ali's plight and the assassination of Theo Van Gogh.
The reception of Hirsi Ali's work in Scandinavia has been significant. She spoke at the meeting of the right wing Danish People's Party on 17 September 2010.[102]
Islamic columnist Hesham A. Hassaballa has criticised Hirsi Ali for "making sweeping generalisations about Islam and Muslims" as "the Arab Human Development report speaks only of the Arab - and not Islamic - world".[103] Hassaballa's criticism was in response to a comment Ali made on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" with Neil Conan, where she said "For empirical evidence on whether women and/or the Islamic world is in a crisis, I would like to refer Tony [a caller to the show] to the Arab Human Development report ... in which the writers of that report say the Arab/Islamic world is retarded when it comes to ... three factors: The freedom of the individual, knowledge, and the subjugation of women." Hassaballa has also criticized Hirsi Ali's statements by saying: "But what left me truly flabbergasted by that NPR interview was Ali's statement about the West: I know that Western societies have had a terrible past from the burning of women as witches all the way to what happened in the Second World War ... that's one part of the West. But there's the other part which is really developing institutions that safeguard the life and freedoms of the individual, and it would be a huge pity to confuse the two and to, you know, lump them together and describe the West only as a source of evil." Yet, she does exactly the same thing when it comes to Islam and the Muslim world."[104]
In its critique of Ali's autobiography, The Economist called her a "chameleon of a woman", referring to her "talent for reinvention".[105]
Awards[link]
Denmark: awarded the Freedom Prize of Denmark's Liberal Party (20 November 2004).[106] the country's largest party and opponent leader, "for her work to further freedom of speech and the rights of women".[107] Due to threats from Islamic fundamentalists she was not at the time able to receive it personally;[108] however a year later, November 18, 2005, she traveled to Denmark to thank Prime Minister and party leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen for the prize,[109] and made an unannounced attendance at Liberal Party's 2006 convention to thank party members.[108] In 2010 she spoke at the Danish People's Party convention, a national conservative party which has been accused of racism and being islamophobic. She was praised by the party leader, Pia Kjærsgaard for her stance against shariah law[110]
European Union: Voted European of the Year for 2006 by the European editors of Reader's Digest magazine. At a ceremony in The Hague on January 23, Hirsi Ali accepted this award from EU Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes.[111]
Belgium: awarded the Prize of Liberty by Nova Civitas, a classical liberal think tank in the Low Countries (January 2004).[citation needed]
Germany: given the civilian prize Glas der Vernunft Kassel, Germany. The organisation rewarded her with this prize for her courage in criticising Islam (1 October 2006).[112] Other laureates have included Leah Rabin, the wife of former Israeli prime-minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany.[113]
Netherlands: given the Harriet Freezerring Emancipation Prize by Cisca Dresselhuys, editor of the feminist magazine Opzij (25 February 2005).[114]
Norway: awarded the annual European Bellwether Prize by the Norwegian think tank Human Rights Service. According to HRS, Hirsi Ali is “beyond a doubt, the leading European politician in the field of integration. (She is) a master at the art of mediating the most difficult issues with insurmountable courage, wisdom, reflectiveness, and clarity" (June 2005).[115]
Sweden: awarded the annual Democracy Prize of the Swedish Liberal People's Party "for her courageous work for democracy, human rights and women's rights." She received the prize at a ceremony at the Swedish Riksdag from the party leader Lars Leijonborg (29 August 2005).[116]
United States: listed by American Time Magazine amongst the 100 Most Influential Persons of the World. She was put in the category "Leaders & Revolutionaries" (18 April 2005).[4]- United States: awarded the Tolerance Prize of Madrid (7 March 2005).[117]
- United States: accepted the Moral Courage Award from the American Jewish Committee (4 May 2006).[118]
- United States: given the Goldwater Award for 2007 from the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, at a dinner attended by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), Rep. John Shadegg (R-Arizona), and Steve Forbes (7 December 2007).[119]
- United States: presented with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction for her book for Infidel. Due to security concerns because of the death threats, the award was not announced in advance, but was a surprise presentation at the award ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio, presided over by Rita Dove (11 September 2008).[120] The Anisfield-Wolf awards recognize "recent books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture."
Publications[link]
- De Zoontjesfabriek over vrouwen, Islam en integratie, translated as The Son Factory: About Women, Islam and Integration. A collection of essays and lectures from before 2002. It also contains an extended interview originally published in Opzij, a feminist magazine. The book focuses on the position of Muslims in the Netherlands.
- De Maagdenkooi, translated as The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam. A collection of essays and lectures from 2003–2004, combined with her personal experiences as a translator working for the NMS. The book focuses on the position of women in Islam.
- Mijn Vrijheid, translated as Infidel. An autobiography published in Dutch in September 2006 by publisher Augustus, Amsterdam and Antwerp, 447 pages, ISBN 90 457 0112x/ISBN 978 90 457, and in English in February 2007. It was edited by Richard Miniter.
- Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations. Published by Free Press. Released 18 May 2010. ISBN 1-4391-5731-6 ISBN 9781439157312
AHA Foundation[link]
Hirsi Ali is the founder and president of the AHA Foundation, a non-profit humanitarian organisation created to protect women and girls in the U.S. against political Islam and harmful tribal customs that violate U.S. law and international conventions. Through the AHA Foundation, Hirsi Ali campaigns against the denial of education for girls, genital mutilation, forced marriage, honour violence and killings, and suppression of information about the crimes themselves through the misuse and misinterpretation of rights to freedom of religion and free speech in the U.S. and the West. Such crimes are increasing[citation needed] in America and may affect the rights of all Americans. For example, a nine-month old female was genitally mutilated in Georgia in 2010.[121] The AHA Foundation exists as a resource for women in America in this vulnerable population.
See also[link]
- Criticism of Islam
- Criticism of Islamism
- Irshad Manji
- Tasleema Nasreen
- Raheel Raza
- Wafa Sultan
- Women in Islam
References[link]
- ^ http://www.theahafoundation.org
- ^ "Dutch government falls in row over MPs passport"
- ^ Castle, Stephen (2006-06-28). "Dutch U-turn over passport for Somali-born MP". Independent.co.uk. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dutch-uturn-over-passport-for-somaliborn-mp-405771.html. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ a b Manji, Irshad (April 18, 2005). "The 2005 TIME 100: Ayaan Hirsi Ali". TIME. http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/2005/time100/leaders/100ali.html. Retrieved 2007-01-07.
- ^ "Hirsi Ali wins rights award from Danish cartoon paper". Agence France-Presse. 2010. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Hirsi+wins+rights+award+from+Danish+cartoon+paper/2963014/story.html. Retrieved 2010-08-09. [dead link]
- ^ "Smedjan.com". Smedjan.com. http://www.smedjan.com/etta.asp?sida=view_comment&entry=147. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ "Biography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali". The Globalist. http://www.theglobalist.com/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=947. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ "Infidel: My Life" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Faith, doubt and falsehood"
- ^ "Ayaan Hirsi Ali terug in Nederland". NRC Handelsblad. 2007-10-01. http://www.nrc.nl/binnenland/article778723.ece/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali_terug_in_Nederland.
- ^ "A Bitter Dutch Treat". TCS Daily. 2007-11-14. http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111307D.
- ^ Choudhury, Sohail (20 May 2006). "Controversial Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim turned atheist, to resign from Dutch Parliament". Asian Tribune (World Institute For Asian Studies). http://www.asiantribune.com/node/175. Retrieved 14 July 2011.
- ^ "Ayaan Hirsi Ali". PEN American Center. http://pen.org/page.php/prmID/1167. Retrieved 2007-01-07. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia on November 13, 1969."
- ^ a b c Linklater, Alexander (2005-05-17). "Danger woman". Guardian Unlimited (London: The Guardian). http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1485350,00.html.
- ^ "A critic of Islam: Dark secrets." The Economist. Volume 382. Number 8515. (February 10th-16th 2007): Page 87.: "The family's troubles began in 1969, the year Ms Hirsi Ali was born. That was also the year that Mohammed Siad Barre, a Somali army commander, seized power in a military coup. Hirsi Magan was descended from the traditional rulers of the Darod, Somalia's second biggest clan. Siad Barre, who hailed from a lesser Darod family, feared and resented Ms Hirsi Ali's father's family, she says. In 1972, Siad Barre had Hirsi Magan put in prison from which he escaped three years later and fled the country."
- ^ a b "To submit to the Book is to submit to their Hell", extract of speech in Sydney Morning Herald 4 June 2007.
- ^ a b c d Interviewed by David Cohen, published 2 February 2007 LAWCF.org and identically here [1] Retrieved March 24, 2007.
- ^ a b "Controversial Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim turned atheist, to resign from Dutch Parliament". Asian Tribune. http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/175.
- ^ Grimes, William (14 February 14, 2007). "No Rest for a Feminist Fighting Radical Islam". The New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/books/14grim.html?fta=y. Retrieved 26 April 2010.
- ^ Ali dispute brings down Dutch government, Financial Times, June 30, 2006
- ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, Infidel, 2007, page 173.
- ^ The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe, Klausen, J., New York:Oxford University Press, 2005; "She wasn't forced into a marriage. She had an amicable relationship with her husband, as well as with the rest of her family. It was not true that she had to hide from her family for years."
- ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, Infidel, 2007, page 188.
- ^ VVD Ayaan Hirsi Ali's statement to the press
- ^ a b Choudhury, Sohail. "Controversial Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim turned atheist, to resign from Dutch Parliament". Asian Tribune. http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/175.
- ^ Burke, Jason (May 21, 2006). "Secrets and lies that doomed a radical liberal". The Observer (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/21/jasonburke.theobserver. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
- ^ a b "To submit to the Book is to submit to their Hell", extract of speech in Sydney Morning Herald 4 June 2007
- ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, Infidel, 2007, page 271.
- ^ a b "To submit to the Book is to submit to their Hell", speech quoted in part in the Sydney Morning Herald 4 June 2007
- ^ Simons, Marlise (2003-01-22). "Muslim Woman Favoured in a Dutch Election". Netherlands: Nytimes.com. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/22/international/europe/22HOLL.html. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ Ayaan Hirsi Ali niet vervolgd, Volkskrant, April 24, 2003
- ^ Submission, on Google Video 2005-04-29
- ^ "Voices on Antisemtisim interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2007-01-04. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/index.php?content=20070104.
- ^ "Controversial filmmaker shot dead"
- ^ "Ayaan Hirsi Ali: My life under a fatwa". Independent.co.uk. 2007-11-27. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-my-life-under-a-fatwa-760666.html. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ Klausen, J Battling the racists, Expatica, May 12, 2006 Retrieved March 24, 2007.
- ^ Interviewed by David Cohen, published 2 February 2007 LAWCF.org and identically here [2] Retrieved March 27, 2007.
- ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, Infidel, 2007, page 325.
- ^ Werkstraf voor 'Hirsi Ali-rappers', nu.nl, 27 January 2005
- ^ Geen Iraanse atoombom toelaten, De Standaard. (Dutch)
- ^ Ayaan Hirsi Ali betreurt zelfcensuur Europa, De Standaard. (Dutch)
- ^ "MANIFESTO Together facing the 'new totalitarianism". Toronto Star. March 2, 2006.
- ^ The Caged Virgin—Holland's shameful treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christopher Hitchens, May 8, 2006. Retrieved March 24, 2007.
- ^ a b Interviewed by David Cohen, published 2 February 2007 LAWCF.org and identically here [3]
- ^ Sleutjes, Lianne (December 4, 2007). "Hirsi Ali zamelt bewakingsgeld in". PZC. http://www.pzc.nl/algemeen/binnenland/article2262815.ece. Retrieved May 8, 2010.
- ^ De heilige Ayaan, Zembla, May 11, 2006 (Includes streaming video)
- ^ Liberals don't care Hirsi Ali lied to get asylum in 1992, Expatica, May 12, 2006 Retrieved March 24, 2007.
- ^ Hirsi Ali verlässt die Niederlande, Der Spiegel, May 15, 2006
- ^ Hirsi Ali will die Niederlande verlassen, Tagesschau, May 15, 2006
- ^ Astrid ontmoet Ayaan (PDF), VARA TV Magazine, December 7, 2002
- ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan (2007). Infidel. Free Press. pp. 298, 338. ISBN 978-0-7432-8968-9. Infidel (book)
- ^ Onderzoek bepleit naar Hirsi Ali, NOS, May 13
- ^ The controversy over Hirsi Ali's citizenship followed a debate over the deportation of a Bosnian teenager Taida Pasić, who had lied on her visa application in order to return to the Netherlands to complete high school. Hirsi Ali claims to have spoken up for Pasic in a private conversation with Verdonk and to have told Verdonk that she herself had lied in her own application. Verdonk denies this version of the conversation. Hirsi Ali, Ayaan (2007). Infidel. Free Press. p. 343. ISBN 978-0-7432-8968-9. Infidel (book)
- ^ Hirsi Ali to leave Netherlands for job with US think tank, Expatica, May 15
- ^ Press conference Ayaan Hirsi Ali, VVD Website, May 16, 2006
- ^ Sterling, Toby (May 18, 2006). "Rita Verdonk Dented by Hirsi Ali Affair". Washington Post. The Associated Press. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051800202.html. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
- ^ Moslims blij met vertrek Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Elsevier, May 15
- ^ Van Aartsen: Vertrek pijnlijk voor Nederland, Telegraaf
- ^ America to welcome Hirsi Ali with open arms, Expatica, May 18, 2006
- ^ Somali in The Hague Faces a More Personal Attack, New York Times, May 23, 2006
- ^ Brieven bevestigen risico's Hirsi Ali, nu.nl, May 30
- ^ Brief minister Verdonk over naturalisatie mevrouw Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rita Verdonk, June 27, 2006
- ^ Hirsi Ali, Ayaan (2007). Infidel. Free Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-7432-8968-9. Infidel (book)
- ^ a translation of the letter
- ^ Israël is de frontstaat in de oorlog tegen het islamitische fascisme, Leon de Winter, August 8, 2006
- ^ "Dutch prime minister to step down". CNN. June 30, 2006. http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/06/29/netherlands/index.html. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
- ^ "AEI - Scholars & Fellows". American Enterprise Institute for Policy Research. http://www.aei.org/scholar/117. Retrieved 2009-07-09.
- ^ "Hirsi Ali under threat in US". Expatica. http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=38109. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
- ^ "Harvard.edu blog". Blogs.law.harvard.edu. 2009-07-18. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009/07/summer-reading-2009/. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ "Der Spiegel Online International". Der Spiegel. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,417478,00.html. Retrieved 2006-05-22.
- ^ "Noted Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali Receives Her Green Card" (PDF). United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. http://www.uscis.gov/files/pressrelease/HirsiAliRlease25Sep07.pdf. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
- ^ "Ayaan Hirsi Ali declines Denmark offer". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/16/africa/dutch.php. Retrieved 2008-01-31.
- ^ Burke, Jason (May 21, 2006). "Secrets and lies that doomed a radical liberal". London: guardian.co.uk. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/21/jasonburke.theobserver. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
- ^ Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Furor over author Ayaan Hirsi Ali's visit stirs debate on religious freedom, April 22, 2007
- ^ To submit to the book is to exist in their hell June 4, 2007
- ^ "New Yorker Festival website". Festival.newyorker.com. http://festival.newyorker.com/fri_event_list.cfm. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ "Dutch article link: 'Ik geloof niet meer'". Elsevier.nl. http://www.elsevier.nl/nieuws/politiek/dossier/asp/portal/0/sctr/0/dossier/290/hoofdstuk/2/sortering/False/artikel/12785/bt//index.html. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ Rogier van Bakel from the November 2007 issue. "'The Trouble Is the West' - Reason Magazine". Reason.com. http://reason.com/archives/2007/10/10/the-trouble-is-the-west/2. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ LJN: AT0303, Rechtbank's-Gravenhage, KG 05/123: "Daarmee is zij in het kader van de haar toegestane overdrijving binnen de grenzen van het toelaatbare gebleven. Het is echter de vraag of een veelvuldig gebruik van deze of soortgelijke woorden nog wel zal vallen binnen de grenzen van de proportionaliteit en subsidiariteit. Hoewel gedaagde heeft aangevoerd dat het gebruik van deze termen precies illustreert dat de Koran géén praktische handleiding is voor het dagelijkse leven, wordt geoordeeld dat zij deze zienswijze ook op andere (doeltreffender) wijze en met betere bewoordingen kan illustreren."
- ^ De Verdieping - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Trouw, January 25, 2003: "Mohammed is, gemeten naar onze westerse maatstaven, een perverse man. Een tiran. Hij is tegen vrije meningsuiting. Als je niet doet wat hij zegt, loopt het verkeerd met je af. Dat doet mij denken aan al die megalomane machthebbers uit het Midden-Oosten: Bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam. Vind je het vreemd dat Saddam Hoessein er is? Mohammed is zijn voorbeeld. Mohammed is een voorbeeld voor alle moslimmannen. Vind je het vreemd dat zoveel moslimmannen gewelddadig zijn?"
- ^ Interview - It's Your Life or Your Thoughts, Sappho November 23, 2003
- ^ RTL"Make circumcision for boys an offense", October 4, 2004
- ^ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (New York: Free Press, 2007): page 140
- ^ Journal of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's lecture at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
- ^ (Dutch)"VVD: extra inspectie tegen besnijdenis", de Volkskrant newspaper, January 22, 2004, frontpage
- ^ NOS Journaal, official Dutch newsrail, 8 pm, August 30, 2006. "Met gelijkgezinden kun je alleen maar een kerkdienst* houden, en zoals bekend, houd ik niet van kerkdiensten." "Kerkdienst" means church service of a Christian denomination, such as Mass (liturgy) and cannot be used in Dutch to describe a Muslim prayer service.
- ^ "The Right to Offend". NRC Handelsblad. http://www.nrc.nl/opinie/article215732.ece. Retrieved 2008-02-01.
- ^ Paul Belien "What Can This 'European of the Year' Teach Us?" Brussels Journal, 5 January 2006 Retrieved March 25, 2007.
- ^ Gazet van Antwerpen (1 February 2006)
- ^ Hirsi Ali gaat, Bouyeri blijft, Vlaams Belang, May 17, 2006
- ^ Snijden in bilaterale ontwikkelingshulp, Wereldomroep, November 19, 2003: "De VVD is van mening dat het Nederlands ontwikkelingsbeleid tot op heden is mislukt, gemeten aan armoedebestrijding, bestrijding van honger, aan levensverwachting en het bevorderen van vrede."
- ^ a b Het Nieuwe Leven van Ayaan, Opzij, June 2006
- ^ Hirsi Ali stoort zich aan ophef Taïda, Elsevier, March 3, 2006
- ^ a b "'Ik was een linkse vrouw in een rechtse partij'; Ayaan Hirsi Ali kijkt terug en vooruit". Opzij. 2006-07-01.
- ^ She puts its population at 450 million, which makes it clear she uses Europe as shorthand for European Union
- ^ "Europe's Immigration Quagmire", Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2006, M.1, also "The ostrich and the owl". There is a revised version available online at "The Owl and the Ostrich". The original was published in the Canadian "Toronto Star" October 15, 2006.
- ^ Manfred Gerstenfeld (August 3, 2006). "Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Israel". Jerusalem Post. http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1154525796199&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull.
- ^ Allen-Mills, Tony (9 May 2010). "In love ... and on an Islamist death list". The Sunday Times (London: Times Newspapers Ltd). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article7120478.ece. Retrieved 19 August 2010.
- ^ Numann, Jessica (30 December 2011). "Ayaan Hirsi Ali (42) bevalt van een zoon". Elsevier. http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Stijl/Society/326446/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-42-bevalt-van-een-zoon.htm. Retrieved 30 December 2011.
- ^ Hitchens "Holland's Shameful treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali". Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2141276/2006/May/8/Christopher Hitchens. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ Morrison, Patt (October 17, 2009). "Feminism's Freedom Fighter". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/17/opinion/oe-morrison17. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ "In Praise of Hirsi Ali". Pajamas Media. August 16, 2005. http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2005/08/16/in-praise-of-hirsi-ali/. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
- ^ "• Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Islam is a political movement | EuropeNews". Europenews.dk. 2010-10-17. http://europenews.dk/en/node/36499. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ Hassaballa, Hesham A.. "'Ayan Hirsi Ali: A One-Note Islam Critic, by Hesham A. Hassaballa". Beliefnet.com. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/212/story_21294_2.html. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ Talk of the Nation (2007-02-05). "'NPR Talk Show, 25:00'". Npr.org. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7181401. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
- ^ "A critic of Islam". The Economist (The Economist Group). February 8, 2007. http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8663231. Retrieved 2008-03-27. "Say what you will about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she fascinates. The Dutch-Somali politician, who has lived under armed guard ever since a fatwa was issued against her in 2004, is a chameleon of a woman. Just 11 years after she arrived in the Netherlands from Africa, she rode into parliament on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, only to leave again last year, this time for America, after an uproar over lies she had told to obtain asylum. Even the title of her new autobiography reflects her talent for reinvention. In the Netherlands, where Ms Hirsi Ali got her start campaigning against the oppression of Muslim women, the book has been published under the title "My Freedom". But in Britain and in America, where she now has a fellowship at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, it is called "Infidel". In it, she recounts how she and her family made the cultural odyssey from nomadic to urban life in Africa and how she eventually made the jump to Europe and international celebrity as the world's most famous critic of Islam."
- ^ Larsen, Jesper (2004-11-21). "Venstre gav frihedspris til van Goghs inspirator" (in Danish). Berlingske Tidende. http://www.berlingske.dk/indland/artikel:aid=507640. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
- ^ "Hirsi Ali i Odense er urealistisk" (in Danish). TV 2. 2007-10-09. http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php/id-8910662.html. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
- ^ a b "Stormende bifald til hemmelig gæst" (in Danish). Venstre party magazine, Liberalt Overblik. December 2006. p. 13. http://www.e-pages.dk/venstre/1/13. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
- ^ Jørgensen, Liv Arnth (2005-11-19). "Ayaan Hirsi Ali takkede for frihedspris" (in Danish). Berlingske Tidende. http://www.berlingske.dk/article/20051119/danmark/111190796/. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
- ^ http://avisen.dk/pia-k-til-ayaan-hirsi-ali-du-er-mit-idol_133966.aspx
- ^ "RD European of the Year 2006". Reader's Digest. Archived from the original on 2008-03-23. http://web.archive.org/web/20080323011817/http://www.readersdigest.co.uk/rd-european-of-the-year-2006-i-52.html. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
- ^ Sümer, Gabriele (2006-10-01). "Literatur: Auszeichnung für Islamkritikerin Ali". Die Zeit. http://www.zeit.de/news/artikel/2006/10/01/75756.xml. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
- ^ "Islamkritikerin Ayaan Hirsi Ali wird geehrt". Tagesspiegel. September 29, 2006.
- ^ Mees, Heleen (January 25, 2006). "Vrouwen zouden nu eindelijk eens écht aan het werk moeten gaan". nrc.nl. http://www.nrc.nl/opinie/article1649205.ece/Vrouwen_zouden_nu_eindelijk_eens_echt_aan_het_werk_moeten_gaan. Retrieved 2010-05-06.
- ^ Diplom fra HRS til Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Service Diplom fra HRS til Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Human Rights Service, June 23, 2005
- ^ (Swedish) Demokratipriset till Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Liberal People's Party
- ^ madrid.org Photo showing the moment at which the president of the Region of Madrid gives the award to Hirsi Ali.
- ^ Moral Courage Award to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Shoaib Choudhury American Jewish Committee, May 4, 2006
- ^ "The 2007 Goldwater Award Dinner Honoring Ayaan Hirsi Ali". goldwaterinstitute.org. Archived from the original on 2008-02-20. http://web.archive.org/web/20080220141020/http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/events/eventdetails.aspx?id=103. Retrieved 2008-03-27.
- ^ "An Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali," Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer; September 11, 2008 web version accessed Thursday September 11, 2008
- ^ "Genital mutilation of 10-month-old baby girl charged against LaGrange, Ga. woman | al.com". Blog.al.com. http://blog.al.com/live/2010/03/genital_mutilation_of_10-month.html. Retrieved 2012-01-27.
Further reading[link]
- Scroggins, Deborah. Wanted Women. Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui, HarperCollins, 2012
External links[link]
- Jusova, Iveta. "Hirsi Ali and van Gogh's Submission: Reinforcing the Islam vs. Women Binary." Women's Studies International Forum 31:2 (Spring 2008): 148-155.
| Find more about Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Wikipedia's sister projects: | |
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Quotations from Wikiquote |
- "Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the battle against the radical Islam". http://ayaanhirsiali.web-log.nl/ayaanhirsiali/english. weblog
- "The AHA Foundation". http://www.theahafoundation.org.
- "Ayaan Hirsi Ali". http://www.aei.org/scholar/117. American Enterprise Institute profile
- Susanne Pari, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (25 May 2010) (in English). From Islam to America: Ayaan Hirsi Ali (video recording). Palo Alto, California: Commonwealth Club. Event occurs at 1:09:24. http://fora.tv/2010/05/25/From_Islam_to_America_Ayaan_Hirsi_Al.
- The Viability of Hope conversation with David A. Harris at The American Jewish Committee, May 2008
- From Islam to America talk with author Susanne Pari at The Commonwealth Club, May 2010
- Nomad: From Islam to America discussion with Jennifer Byrne and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at The Wheeler Centre, July 2010
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Hirsi Ali, Ayaan |
| Alternative names | Hirsi Magan, Ayaan |
| Short description | Dutch feminist, author |
| Date of birth | November 13, 1969 |
| Place of birth | Mogadishu, Somalia |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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Wiki Summary
Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early written criticism came from Christians, prior to the ninth century, many of whom viewed Islam as a radical Christian heresy. Later there appeared criticism from the Muslim world itself, and also from Jewish writers and from ecclesiastical Christians.
Objects of criticism include the morality of the life of Muhammad, the last prophet of Islam, both in his public and personal life. Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, are also discussed by critics. Other criticisms focus on the question of human rights in modern Islamic nations, and the treatment of women in Islamic law and practice. In wake of the recent multiculturalism trend, Islam's influence on the ability of Muslim immigrants in the West to assimilate has been criticized.
The earliest surviving written criticisms of Islam are to be found in the writings of Christians, who came under the early dominion of the Islamic Caliphate. One such Christian was John of Damascus (c. 676–749 AD), who was familiar with Islam and Arabic. The second chapter of his book, The Fount of Wisdom, titled "Concerning Heresies", presents a series of discussions between Christians and Muslims. John claimed an Arian monk (whom he did not know was Bahira) influenced Muhammad and viewed the Islamic doctrines as nothing more than a hodgepodge culled from the Bible.
