Women in Islam: Suffering the Barbary of an Ideology

News spread quickly that anti-Islamofascism activist Dr. Wafa Sultan has gone into hiding, along with her family. They are in hiding because of her participation in a recent debate on Al-Jazeera in which she challenged Egyptian Islamist Talat Rheim over Dutch cartoons of Mohammed and the ideology of Islam in general. For her truthful criticisms of Islam Dr. Sultan earned a fatwa, a “religiously” decried death sentence, from an Islamic scholar. That she criticizes Islam is enough justification in the eyes of the radical Islamist to kill her. That she is a woman infuses into the fatwa an unbridled viciousness and a need for expediency.

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In the al-Jazeera interview, Dr. Sultan proclaimed:

"...any belief that chops off the heads of its critics is doomed to turn into terrorism and tyranny. This has been the condition of Islam, from its inception to this day. Islam has sentenced [its critics] to prison, and whoever crosses the threshold of that prison meets his death... If you want to change the course of events, you must re-examine your terrorist teachings, you must recognize and respect the right of the other to live, you must teach your children love, peace, coexistence and productive work. When you do that, the world will respect you...”

Not long after Dr. Sultan’s remarks, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of Islam’s most respected scholars, presented his religious edict and denounced Dr. Sultan, calling for her death. Qaradawi, it should be noted, has also declared the killing of American soldiers in Iraq and suicide bombings against Israel as a religious obligation for all Muslims. Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, describes Qaradawi as, “one of the world’s pre-eminent Islamofascists.” More...