Free A God Who Hates by Wafa Sultan Page B

will live her whole life in this country, she knows that this will be the home of her children, her grandchildren, and her grandchildren’s grandchildren. Yet she seems to care nothing for the state of its environment, for she is here only to pillage and cause harm to her enemies. The idea or philosophy of raiding has taken root in her mind as well and was a motivating factor in her immigration to this country. She regards the comforts here as her own private booty and her actions, to me, seem to be just one more Muslim attempt to harm others.

     
    Muslims eat raiding, dress raiding, talk raiding, and drive their cars like raiders. To see the truth of what I am saying you have only to observe a Muslim preaching a sermon on a Friday in any mosque anywhere in the Muslim world. You don’t need to understand the language he is preaching in: you have only to listen to his shouts and observe his gestures in order to become acquainted with the art of raiding. I was born and brought up in a small town that contains four mosques—one in each quarter—where public prayers are performed on Fridays.
    On Fridays all activity in the town stopped. The men retired to the mosques for prayers while the women remained shut up at home with their children and eavesdropped on the sermon from windows and balconies. There was no concord between voices from the various mosques. Each preacher gave voice stridently and their shouts were deafening. Our home was very close to one of these mosques, so close that it felt as if the mosque’s loudspeaker were in the bedroom. Our family, like everyone else, had to put up with this noise pollution.
    When I look back and remember those days I know that I began, at a very early age, to refuse to allow anyone to raid my world without my permission. The voice of the muezzin burst into my bedroom at five o’clock in the morning and I struggled with myself, even at a young age, as to how I should respond. Why was I irritated by this early-morning raid? It was bringing me the voice of God and his Prophet. Why would I reject the voice of God and his Prophet? Surely God is severe in retribution! I rejected the shouting, but, at the same time, I was afraid to reject it.
    My confusion was compounded by my mother’s reaction to the shouting. My mother is illiterate. She can barely read or write a single word. Arabic is different from many other languages in that the official language used for reading and writing is completely different from the colloquial language used in conversation. Illiterate people are perfectly fluent in the colloquial language, but are virtually unable to comprehend the form of Arabic used for reading and writing. My mother had never read the Koran or any other book on Islam, its teachings or its history. Her knowledge did not extend beyond what was transmitted orally by the local women from one generation to the next. Naturally, my mother could not understand what the preacher in the mosque was saying. Although she could perhaps pick out a word here and there, she most certainly could not understand any of the expressions used. Nonetheless, listening to the preacher at the local mosque fascinated her. She would rate preachers by the stridency and volume of their voices and the degree of emotion they displayed; some she praised, with others she found fault.
    My mother was fascinated by the shouting and I hated it. I had to work this out for myself and I have parted company with the culture of shouting and raiding in the Islamic environment. My experience has been that two Muslims cannot talk together without their conversation turning into shouts within minutes, especially when they disagree with each other, and no good can come of that. When you talk to a Muslim, rationally, in a low calm voice, he has trouble understanding your point of view. He thinks you have lost the argument. A Muslim conversing with anyone else—Muslim or non-Muslim—cannot remember a single word the other person