Wafa Sultan speaks

Here is Wafa Sultan’s December 1 talk in New York City, taped by Pamela Geller. Wafa speaks informally for 15 minutes, followed by questions from the audience. At 28:00 into the tape I ask her what we should do about the Islam threat. At first she speaks of the need for people to know Arabic to understand Islam. I reply that that would place a very heavy burden on the anti-Islamization cause, and obviously it’s not necessary, since there are lots of Islam critics who do not know Arabic yet understand how dangerous Islam is. I then ask her again, if people understood how bad Islam is, what should be their platform, what is the A, B, and C? She answers the question in stunningly strong if non-specific terms, as I mentioned earlier in the week.

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LA writes:

By the way, not to take anything away from Pamela Geller’s considerable contributions to the anti-Islamization cause, but the gal is a riot. She attends an event in a New York City apartment where Wafa Sultan addresses an audience of about 30 people. And how does she describe it?

I spent an amazing morning with Wafa Sultan, author of the best book of the year, “A God Who Hates.”

We could imagine Geller as a Forrest Gump-like traveler through history, writing an entire revised history of the United States, with Geller as the central attraction at every event:

“I spent an amazing afternoon today at the Gettsyburg battlefield cemetery with President Lincoln.”

“I had a lovely time with Martin Luther King at the Washington Mall yesterday where he gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”

“I spent an extraordinary day with President Reagan at the Berlin Wall.”

December 6

Michael P. writes:

You wrote:

“By the way, not to take anything away from Pamela Geller’s considerable contributions to the anti-Islamization cause … “

I guess. However there is something off about her. Have you seen the photos of herself that she plasters all over her site? Does that seem normal, to you? And in all this Rifqa Barry, dare I say self-promotion?, has she ever asked what on earth are these people even doing here in the first place?

LA replies:

Again, I don’t want to take away from what Geller does. As an example, earlier in this year when the AIPAC conference after dithering decided not to invite Geert Wilders to speak, she and others arranged for a reception for Wilders in the same hotel where the AIPAC conference was taking place. She’s a doer and makes things happen and I admire that.

At the same time, it’s simply her personality that she is very vain and everything is about her—to a laughable degree. I commented on this in April 2009:

Meanwhile, over at Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs website, we find out that there was another anti-jihad conference over the weekend with Geert Wilders, this one a gala affair in Florida at which, judging by Geller’s own coverage of the event, the main attraction was Pamela Geller’s breasts. When a movement starts to celebrate itself (an instructive example is National Review’s celebrity-centered cruises), that’s an indication that it is, or is danger of becoming, unserious.

As to Muslim immigration, I brought it up last March in the only in-person conversation I’ve had with her, and I can tell you that the subject had never before occurred to her and that even when it was presented to her, she could not process the idea that if you don’t want your country Islamized, you don’t let Muslims into your country. It was clear that she’s a Randian libertarian and has only one political idea: individual freedom. To restrict the immigration of any group would be to restrict individual freedom.

But here’s a further question. Since she identifies so strongly with Geert Wilders, and Wilders states front and center that Islamic immigration should be stopped and to a significant degree reversed, how can she go on ignoring the immigration issue? Eventually she will either have to agree with Wilders or not.

In fact, doing some searching at her site just now, I see that she has switched on immigration and supports the Geert Wilders position. Last June she wrote:

WILDERS: STOP THE ISLAMISATION OF OUR COUNTRIES, STOP MASS IMMIGRATION

We should listen to Wilders. The State department is importing whole Muslim communities from the most dangerous Islamic countries. What are we importing? Why?

Not only that, but in the Wilders interview that she references, he confirmed that the number of Muslims he was talking about who support sharia and should be deported number in the millions.

So this is very interesting and promising. On one hand, it appears that she does and will support the view that Muslim immigration should be stopped and (to some degree) reversed, insofar as Wilders supports it and insofar as Wilders is the subject under discussion. On the other hand, I doubt that she will support that position in her own words, beyond the kind of rhetorical question she asks above. Still, Wilders has moved a Randian libertarian to support immigration restriction of a non-Western group, and that is an achievement, a mark of how important he is.

At the same time, as I said, insofar as Wilders is not the subject, I don’t think Geller will ever bring up immigration on her own. She will go on pouring her energy into causes like the Rifqa Barry case, while failing to make the connection that if you keep letting Muslims enter and remain in your country you’re going to have lots and lots of Rifqa Barry’s—forever.

LA writes:

On the same page at Atlas Shrugs where the Wafa Sultan video is posted, in the side bar, there is a video of Pamela Geller speaking in Texas last month. The video appears in a small box but you can enlarge it to full screen.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 05, 2009 01:32 PM | Send