Thou Dost Protest Much

When people overuse comparisons to Hitler to make a point, the validity of what they are saying is overshadowed by the misuse of the imagery. Hitler is Hitler. There are few people on earth who will ever earn that level of infamy. While some tactics may be Nazi-like and Hitler-esque, most evil people are in a class all their own. Like Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter is Ann Coulter.

That is why an article I read recently, comparing Wafa Sultan to Ann Coulter, really irritated me.

Wafa Sultan, if you do not know, is a Syrian woman who debated a freak holyroller on Al Jazeera back in February, upsetting the Muslim world with choice tidbits like "Islam cannot be reformed" and "Only Arab Muslims can read the Koran properly because you have to speak Arabic to know what it means — you cannot translate it." Under the protection of the United States of America, to where she immigrated in 1989, Ms. Sultan has become a hero for parroting criticisms of the religion that have landed thousands of others -- people with real courage -- in the jails or graves of nations ruled by America's allies. Although nothing she says is original or particularly courageous, she has dethroned Irshad Manji to become the supreme angry Muslim chick to interview on Fox News.

But she is not Ann Coulter. To compare Ms. Sultan to the grand Nazi satan-worshipping empress of America is too flattering to Ms. Coulter. Ms. Sultan is not saying anything that has not been said before. Indeed, 99 percent of what she says is true and the other one percent is up for debate. The same cannot be said of our darling Annie. It is true that Islam cannot be reformed. No religion can be. Take it or leave it. You either like it or you do not. If you do not like it, find another religion that suits you. Similarly, Arabs do think they own Islam because of the unique nuances of the Arabic language (even though they are the minority racial group) and there are few mosques that will place a seal of approval on a translation of the Quran. All true.

There is no universe in which Ms. Sultan's criticisms can be deemed the moral or intellectual equivalent of the sewage that spews from the lips of that serpentine whore who calls the 9/11 widows the "witches of New Brunswick"!

The following op-ed piece from Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein, about which the Muslim community is beaming, is heartwarming in its koombayah-peace-on-earth mantra, but the comparison between Sultan and Coulter and the underlying defensiveness about Judaism diminish its credibility:

Islam's Ann Coulter
The seductive and blinkered belligerence of Wafa Sultan.
By Stephen Julius Stein
STEPHEN JULIUS STEIN is a rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple,
where he also directs inter-religious programming.June 25, 2006

RECENTLY I WAS one of about 100 L.A. Jews invited to attend a fundraiser for a Jewish organization that seeks to counteract anti-Israel disinformation and propaganda. The guest speaker was Wafa Sultan, the Syrian American woman who in February gave a now legendary interview on Al Jazeera television, during which she said that "the Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations" and "I don't believe you can reform Islam."The audience warmly greeted Sultan, a psychiatrist who immigrated to Southern California in 1989.

One of Time magazine's 100 "pioneers and heroes," she said she was neither a Christian, Muslim nor Jew but a secular human being. "I have 1.3 billion patients," she quipped early in her remarks, referring to the global Muslim population. Sultan went on to condemn inhumane acts committed in God's name, to denounce Islamic martyrdom and to decry terror as a tool to subjugate communities. Those statements all made perfect sense.

Then this provocative voice said something odd: "Only Arab Muslims can read the Koran properly because you have to speak Arabic to know what it means — you cannot translate it." Any translation is, by definition, interpretation, and Arabic is no more difficult to accurately translate than Hebrew. In fact, the Hebrew of the Bible poses many more formidable translation problems than Arabic. Are Christians and Jews who cannot read it ill-equipped to live by its meanings?

Another surprising remark soon followed: "All Muslim women — even American ones, though they won't admit it — are living in a state of domination." Do they include my friend Nagwa Eletreby, a Boeing engineer and expert on cockpit controls, who did not seek her husband's permission to help me dress the Torah scroll? Or how about my friend Azima Abdel-Aziz, a New York University graduate who traveled to Israel with 15 Jews and 14 other Muslims — and left her husband at home? There is no subjugation in the homes of these and other American Muslim women I know. They are equal, fully contributing members of their families. The
more Sultan talked, the more evident it became that progress in the Muslim world was not her interest.

Even more troubling, it was not what the Jewish audience wanted to hear about. Applause, even cheers, interrupted her calumnies. Judea Pearl, an attendee and father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, was one of the few voices of restraint and nuance heard that afternoon. In response to Sultan's assertion that the Koran contains only verses of evil and domination, Pearl said he understood the book also included "verses of peace" that proponents of Islam uphold as the religion's true intent. The Koran's verses on war and brutality, Pearl contended, were "cultural baggage," as are similar verses in the Torah. Unfortunately, his words were drowned out by the cheers for Sultan's full-court press against Islam and Muslims.

My disappointment in and disagreement with Sultan turned into dismay. She never alluded to any healthy, peaceful Islamic alternative. Why, for example, didn't this Southern California resident mention the groundbreaking efforts of the Islamic Center of Southern California, the leading exemplar of progressive Muslim American life in the United States? Why didn't she bring up the New Horizon School-Pasadena that the center started, the first Muslim American school honored by the U.S. Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School?

You might wonder why a rabbi is so uneasy about Sultan's assault on Muslims and Islam. Here's why: Contrary to practically every mosque in the U.S., the Islamic Center has a regulation in its charter barring funding from foreign countries. As a result, it is an American institution dedicated to propagating an American Muslim identity. Maher and Hassan Hathout are the philosophical and spiritual pillars of the mosque. They also have been partners of Wilshire Boulevard Temple rabbis and others throughout L.A. for decades. The Hathouts' mosque has twice endorsed pilgrimages to Israel and the Palestinian territories, its members traveling with fellow L.A.-area Jews and Christians. It invites Jews to pray with them, to make music with them, to celebrate Ramadan with them. This is the mosque whose day school teaches students about Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah alongside lessons in Arabic and the Koran. Recently, the Islamic Center joined the food pantry collective of Hope-Net, helping feed the hungry and homeless.

Make no mistake: I am not an Islamic apologist. But Sultan's over-the-top, indefensible remarks at the fundraiser, along with her failure to mention the important, continuing efforts of the Islamic Center, insulted all Muslims and Jews in L.A. and throughout the nation who are trying to bridge the cultural gap between the two groups. And that's one reason why I eventually walked out of the event.

Here's another: As I experienced the fervor sparked by Sultan's anti-Muslim tirade and stoked by a roomful of apparently unsuspecting Jews, I thought: What if down the street there was a roomful of Muslims listening to a self-loathing Jew, cheering
her on as she spoke of the evils inherent in the Torah, in which it is commanded that a child must be stoned to death if he insults his parents, in which Israelites are ordered by God to conquer cities and, in so doing, to kill all women and children — and this imagined Jew completely ignored all of what Judaism teaches afterward?

In a world far too often dominated by politicians imbued with religious fundamentalism of all flavors — Jewish, Christian, Muslim — we need the thoughtfulness, self-awareness and subtlety that comes from progressive religious expression. We have that in Judaism, in Christianity — and in Islam, right in our backyard. If only Sultan, applauded in many quarters yet miscast as a voice of reason and reform in Islam, were paying attention.

The questions Rabbi Stein raises reveal more about the weaknesses of both religions than about the validity of Ms. Sultan's statements. It is true that both books cannot be translated accurately; it is also true that both religions have a lot of violent, disgusting commands that are in no way displaced by a handful of commands not to covet your neighbors ass; and, if there was a "self-loathing Jew" pointing out the horrors of the Old Testament to a group of Muslims, her statements would be as valid as Ms. Sultan's. Because Judaism suffers from so many of the despicable defects that characterize Islam, the rabbi is at least intellectually honest enough to know that he must defend both if he is to redeem one. Thou dost protest much.