Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Wafa Sultan

Quote by Wafa Sultan

“Why does a young Muslim, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up in a bus full of innocent passengers? In our countries, religion is the sole source of education, and this is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched. He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources—I am referring to scientific sources—to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist, and killed his humanity; it was not [the terrorist] who distorted the religious teachings, and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim. When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse 'They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternative sides cut off,' regardless of this verse's interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed, or its time, you have made the first step towards creating a great terrorist.”

Quote by Wafa Sultan

Author

Wafa Sultan
Wafa Sultan

Wafa Sultan, born on June 14, 1958, is a distinguished psychiatrist whose career has been marked by significant contributions to the field of psychiatry. Her expertise lies in mental health, with a particular emphasis on the psychological issues faced by women and children. Sultan's extensive clinical experience and research have led to groundbreaking findings and have influenced both clinical practice and policy-making in mental health. more

You May Also Like

“These trees were dying. My friends told me I should uproot them to spare the rest of the forest. But I could feel too much life in their trunks to pluck them from the ground.' 'How did you save them?' Biana asked. 'I listened. And I realized their voices had been silenced. So I gave them mine. I sang of sunlight and rain and rich soil. And hope. Always hope.' Calla moved to another tree, one that had the widest curve of them all, and lay in the slope of its trunk. 'For a week, I stayed right here. I didn't stop, even to rest my throat. I could barely rasp by the end, but I could feel their strength returning. They'll forever bear the mark of their trials, but they are survivors. Proof that anything can be overcome.' Keefe sat on one of the curved trunks, and Sophie waited for him to make a joke. But he just slid his fingers over the rough bark.”

“You look to him even now?” I said, my voice dripping with disdain. “You beg him?” I stepped forward, grabbing her by the pale hair and yanking her neck back to meet my eyes. “You say you want a better world, but only for you,” I seethed. “When it’s all stripped bare, Ingrid, you don’t even believe in your own words. You still seek out a man to beg. But no one puts a blade to my mate’s throat.” I dropped my mouth to her ear. “And no man will save you from my steel.”

“It's the causes, not the dependent person, that must be corrected. That's why I see the United States' War on Drugs as being fought in an unrealistic manner. This war is focused on fighting drug dealers and the use of drugs here and abroad, when the effort should be primarily aimed at treating and curing that causes that compel people to reach for drugs.”

“The punishment approach and bad consequences approach to treatment is the kind of thinking that is prevalent in every residential substance abuse treatment center in the United States of which I'm aware.”

“Once at a meet and greet a smartass intellectual offered me a glass of alcohol, knowing quite well that I despise the stuff. He just wanted to piss me off - so, when I refused, he remarked in ridicule - 'what are you, some kind of sissy!' As always, with a smile on my face, I replied, 'may be - but more importantly, I am just the best role model you wish you could be to your children'.”

“Not that I'm complaining. It was better than my old dream, where Harma Dogshead was feeding me to her pigs." "Harma's dead." Jon said. "But not the pigs. They look at me the way Slayer used to look at ham. Not to say that the wildlings mean us harm. Aye, we hacked their gods apart and made them burn the pieces, but we gave them onion soup. What's a god compared to a nice bowl of onion soup? I could do with mine myself.”

“It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific. By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have to love this one. I was connected to the world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the same with patriotism: You loved the idea of the United States so much more powerfully than the country itself, and it was thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the fact that your fellow Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of chowder to buy a limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither of us ever went to church, I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.”