Wafa in her youth, when the mind is tender had a bad experience with what she claims a gang of the “Muslim Brotherhood” who barged into her classroom and shot her professor. Although the Muslim Brotherhood renounced any violence in the 1970s, Wafa claims that it was them who carried out this heinous crime in 1979 in front of her. We will not debate that issue. Had Wafa been a knowledgeable Muslim rather than being a one raised in Islamic tradition, she would have known at that instant that such an act is not only condemned by Islam but the people carrying out such an act are criminals under the Islamic Shariah. The Quran is very clear in its teachings regarding such acts: 

“if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the entire Mankind…” (Quran 5:32) 

However, Wafa was not a knowledgeable Muslim and thought that Islam teaches people to kill others for no reason and thus she thought of searching another god. Ironically the Jews for whom Wafa spoke with such enthusiasm and favor, she could not find any truth in “their god” either. Finally she decided she will not believe in any “god”. If we analyze the mind of Wafa we can easily come to the conclusion that she left Islam because “Islam’s god” taught violence. She stated in an interview with New York Times that after the incident she ‘had to look for another god’. 

What happened to her search for another “god”? Later on in her interview she said that the Jews do not blow up restaurants in Germany, pointing to the fact that they were peaceful even after the holocaust. This would mean that their “god” does not teach violence. Then why did Wafa not accept that “god”? It is obvious that she does not believe what she meant to convey in the interview. She did not find a “god” who is non-violent in neither Christianity nor Judaism. Which means she believes, deep inside, that these religions also preach violence. Thus she preferred to call herself a secular human being who does not believe in the supernatural. 

The interviewer relates to Wafa that it was not Bin Laden who started with the phrase “Clash of Civilizations” to which Wafa said that the Muslims originally used this phrase. Wafa is indeed incorrect as this phrase was first used by Bernard Lewis in his article in “The Atlantic Monthly’s” September 1990 issue. 

Moreover she stated that no civilization on the face of the earth would allow a person to call others by names they do not choose for themselves. Well one does not need to go back in history. The prime example is the United States and organizations like the KKK within it which discriminated against the Blacks. The same ‘civilizations’ were the ones that made slaves out of the Black people. Even today it is harder for a Black American to find a job as opposed to a White American. These are the practices of Wafa’s so called ‘civilized world’. 

Wafa further lists Muslims tearing down the statues of Buddha while claiming that Buddhists have not done that to the mosques. She also claims that the Jews have made the world respect them not by violence but by knowledge. She speaks in favor of the Jews overlooking the atrocities committed by them in the Middle East. Wafa generalizes and labels all Muslims to be violent and terrorists. By the same token Wafa should also speak about the violence by Buddhists and how Christian Churches were attacked by them. She also conveniently forgot to mention the violence by the Jews especially in the recent war. She also forgot to mention how in Bhopal two Christian women, one pregnant, were raped when they refused to renounce their faith or how Nuns were raped by Hindus. Again she refused to mention the atrocities by the Christians in Iraq, which by the way were so severe that some soldiers refused to fight the war. Keeping Wafa’s approach in mind where she has labeled all Muslims to be terrorists, one should label all Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists etc as terrorists as well. 

I think Wafa has conveniently chosen to forget the history of terror by the crusaders who slaughtered not only Muslim but also the Jews. She has also chosen to ignore the continuous terror which the Palestinian children face everyday at the hands of the Jewish occupiers. She forgets how women and children were bombed in Lebanon – an incident which the whole world condemned. She needs to update her knowledge with the reports from the Human Rights Watch which were released after their investigation of the Lebanon War. Not only does Wafa need to take history lessons but also needs some update on the current affairs. She states that the creative and free thinking of the West has enabled them to excel in the field of science. She obviously has no idea of the numerous contributions not only in the field of science, but many other fields, by the Muslims in the past. She should read, just to name a few, about the contributions by Muhammad Bin Musa Al-Khwarizmi, Zakariya Al-Razi (Rhazes), Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ali Ibn Isa, Abu Ali al-Hasan (Alhazen) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). 

In all her interview was the same old rhetoric used by many previously. She has not come forward with anything new that would be worth analyzing. She has built up her argument on the same grounds on which many others have only to face failure. In her interview with New York Times she stated that her answering machine is full of death threats. Psychologically the incident she witnessed in her youth has left her unstable. I take her nothing to be but an attention seeker who craves to be another Salman Rushdie. From the way she speaks in the interview it is very obvious that she craves attention. Her comments should be best ignored. Muslims are advised not to try to threaten her at all. Attention seekers should be overlooked and disregarded. We should let Allah(swt) take care of her.