Author: Bala Ambati
Publication: The Chronicle
Date: February 5, 2003
URL: http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/02/05/3e412ca979dd0
Liberals now seem to cover for the
most illiberal force on the planet, Islamic fundamentalists who destroy
free speech and enslave blacks and heap blame on U.S. policy, but do not
ask the Muslim world to take a hard, long look in the mirror.
These trends converge in Europe,
where Michael Houellebecq, a French writer, stated that "Islam is the stupidest
religion." That dumb and wrong remark landed him in a criminal trial, where
a Muslim plaintiff and spokesperson for a Paris mosque stated, "Words have
a price. One can kill with a word. Freedom stops when Muslims feel insulted."
This suppression of speech is not isolated: Islamic activists in Europe
seek to ban Oriana Fallaci's book The Rage and the Pride, and, most ironically,
Somali Muslim Ayaan Ali, who immigrated to Holland, was forced by Islamic
fundamentalists' death threats to flee the nation because she criticized
domestic violence among Muslims.
In America, Muslim author Kola Boof
and UCLA law professor Khaled abou el Fadl received death threats from
Islamic fundamentalists and no support from free speech advocates. A Muslim
legal group tried to censor Alan Dershowitz's writings. David Frum, who
defended Isioma Daniel (the Nigerian journalist whose commentary earned
a fatwa and led to Islamic fundamentalist riots that killed hundreds),
received a letter reminding him of "the fatal consequences" of ignoring
what is objectionable to Muslims. Bat Ye'or and Andrew Bostom were shouted
down at Georgetown by Muslim students who prevented them from speaking
on the history of Jews under Islamic rule. Political correctness yoked
to Islamic fundamentalist intolerance bodes ill for free society. Where
are the guardians of free speech, liberals, defending Boof, el Fadl, Fallaci,
Hirsi Ali, Houellebecq, Ye'or, Bostom, Frum, Daniel and Dershowitz? Preoccupied
championing convicted terrorist Laura Whitehorn?
Moreover, liberals blinded to Islamic
fundamentalist imperialism's evil are whitewashing slavery's history in
Islamic empires as "not as bad as the Atlantic slave trade." Slavery in
Islamic empires for centuries involved castration of men guarding harems
and religious sanction for masters to sleep with slave-girls, a practice
that persists today in Sudan openly and covertly in Saudi Arabia as concubinage.
Those saying Quranic verses justifying slavery and sleeping with slave-girls
are acceptable given 7th century mores forget that the Constitution's three-fifths
compromise has been rightly judged immoral. In any case, such verses compromise
shari'a as a timeless, complete and immutable rulebook of ethics; hence,
other verses inciting violence should also be questioned. Slavery is always
wrong and it is time for the Islamic world to ask forgiveness for its legacy
of slavery and conquest, much as several Western leaders have apologized
for similar acts.
Shari'a law and imams justify slavery
today. Islamic terrorist groups quote Hadith (Sahih Muslim 8:22 and 8:29)
that coitus interruptus is permitted with slave-girls and captives (to
avoid impregnating women and consequent reduction in ransom value) and
that one is permitted to have intercourse with captive women, since their
marriages are abrogated upon capture. Official Saudi cleric Sheikh Saad
Al-Buraik told "Muslim brothers" in 2002 to "not have any mercy on Jews,
their blood, their money their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately.
God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women?" In Sudan, a fatwa
in 1992 endorsed by the oil-funded theocracy states "a non-Muslim is a
non-believer standing against the spread of Islam, and Islam grants the
freedom of killing him".
Hundreds of thousands of black Africans
are enslaved by Arab masters. According to Abannik Hino of Wingate University,
over 2,000 Sudanese slaves are shipped to the Arab world annually. Dr.
George Ayittey, a Ghanaian-born professor at American University, commented
on lack of Western outrage: "We feel betrayed, not only by our leaders
in Africa, but by our fellow Africans in the diaspora. While African-American
leaders played important roles in dismantling apartheid in South Africa,
they maintain a passive stance on Arab apartheid and enslavement of black
Africans." Where are liberals? Too busy divesting from Israel and bashing
America?
Imbued with Wahhabism and Salafism,
sects borne in Saudi Arabia, Islamic fundamentalists view most Muslims
as apostates. With oil money, they've exported toxic notions and hatched
terrorism from Indonesia to Nigeria. Now they want to achieve Islamic fundamentalist
empire. Liberals and moderate Muslims must open their eyes: Islamic fundamentalist
imperialism suppresses free speech and nourishes slavery as well as wallows
in mass murder.
Bala Ambati is a former fellow in
the School of Medicine and is currently on the faculty at the Medical College
of Georgia. His column appears every third Wednesday.
