The Infidel Bloggers Alliance Golden Balls Award

Neo-Neocon has an enlightening post today on she of the humongous golden balls, Dr. Wafah Sultan, the female psychologist whose confrontational Al Jazeera last week is the rage of the internet.

Here's a partial transcript of the Al Jazeera interview.

Here's an excerpt of Neo's article:


Dr. Sultan is one of those "moderate Moslems" that many have been seeking, Diogenes-like, and she is nothing if not outspoken. This recent profile in the New York Times caused quite a stir, and she's received a number of death threats from those who were somehow able to obtain her phone number.

According to the (New York) Times profile, Dr. Sultan is writing a book that she believes is "going to turn the Islamic world upside down." I hope she lives to finish it. Recently she's been Salman Rushdiezed, and there seems to be a target painted on both her front and her back.I have a special interest in Dr. Sultan because she's a "changer," and a psychiatrist as well. What occasioned her change? Here's what the Times profile has to say about that:

Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith's strictures into adulthood.

But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.

"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said.

"At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

Recently, as Dr. Sultan's anger and drive to do something about what she saw happening in the Arab/Moslem world increased, she started writing for this website, "Annaqed." That, in turn, prompted the invitation to speak on Al Jazeera. Now, as a result, she needs protection from those who would kill her because of what she's done.

Dr. Sultan is sophisticated and knowledgeable enough about the forces arrayed against her that she must have known what the reaction to her statements on Al Jazeera would be, and so her "coming out" was at grave personal and familial risk. How does a person get such courage (courage which I doubt I'd have, by the way)?

I recall reading a book some time ago that attempted to analyze those people who made the decision to save or protect Jews in Poland during the Holocaust, at the risk of their lives and those of their families as well. The book, by Nechama Tec, is called When Light Pierced the Darkness," and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in these questions.

Some of those "savers" were motivated by money and personal gain, some by political dedication (Communists were overrepresented, for example), some by religious faith. There was a significant number, however, who didn't explain their actions by any of those things, but who seem to have been motivated by something else. I think that same something may be what's driving Dr. Sultan. And what is that something?

I'm doing this from memory, but I would state it this way: they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't act. These people were often a bit puzzled as to their motivations; they couldn't explain them too well, and seemed to think "anyone else" would have done the same.

This of course is demonstrably incorrect; most people did not do the same; most people don't have the courage. But the ones who do have it appear to have come to some sort of peace with the danger involved, and to have decided that the shame/guilt they would feel about doing nothing is greater than their fear of the consequences of acting. I believe this is what's going on with Dr. Sultan.


Read the whole thing.