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'Tolerating Intolerance Is Not A Virtue'

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  • 'Tolerating Intolerance Is Not A Virtue'

    'TOLERATING INTOLERANCE IS NOT A VIRTUE'

    Catholic Herald Online
    9 October 2009

    Ed West meets the extraordinary Egyptian convert warning Europeans
    not to abandon their Judeo-Christian heritage

    Picture Nonie Darwish: 'In times of trouble Arabs will trust Jews. They
    don't believe their own hatred' www.ddconsult.eu

    Slight of build and dressed in the stylish manner of the
    European-influenced Arab middle class, Nonie Darwish could be any
    wealthy Levantine in Paris or west London.

    But behind the veneer of Egyptian elegance is a one-woman anti-jihad
    machine, a Christian convert from Islam, founder of a group called
    Former Muslims United and author of two books highly critical of
    Sharia law, Arab policy towards Israel and Islamists' ambitions for
    global conquest.

    Darwish is often compared to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch
    feminist, but whereas Ali is an atheist who stands up for Europe's
    "Enlightenment values" against Islam, Darwish is a Christian who
    believes "that Judeo-Christian culture produces healthier, happier
    and more just societies, whereas Islamic culture produces tyrannical
    regimes and oppression".

    As a result her life is in danger. Is there any specific death threat,
    I ask, when we meet in central London.

    "I'm not aware of a fatwa, but my life is in danger," she says with
    a shrug. "Just like anyone who speaks about the nature of Islam."

    And Islamic fundamentalists have every reason to hate her. She is
    regularly attacked on the front pages of Egyptian newspapers, where
    she is called a "traitor". She campaigns against Sharia law and against
    those who threaten apostates. She is a regular on the lecture circuit,
    where she criticises Arab foreign policy.

    And perhaps even more irritating for many back home, she is the founder
    of the oxymoronic-sounding group Arabs for Israel, and has written
    two books with subtitles that need little explanation: Now They Call
    Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War
    on Terror, and the recently published Cruel and Usual Punishment:
    Th s the story so more amazing is that she is the daughter of the
    godfather of the Palestinian resistance movement.

    Born and raised in Cairo, she grew up in Gaza, where her father, Lt
    General Mustafa Hafez, was head of the Egyptian army's intelligence in
    Gaza, and founder of the Fedayeen, the paramilitary force that killed
    over 400 Israelis in the early 1950s. Although, as she points out,
    with a look of fierce loyalty: "At that point the Fedeyeen did not
    do suicide bombings."

    But in 1956, when Nonie was just eight, the Israeli Defence Force
    killed her father, who was proclaimed a martyr by President Nasser,
    who then asked his children: "Which one of you will avenge your
    father's death by killing Jews?"

    Darwish explains that she always blamed Israel for his death and grew
    up pledging jihad against Egypt's neighbour.

    But she also lived in two different worlds. Being from an educated,
    middle-class family, she attended a British Catholic school and
    an American university, and got to experience the last days of
    cosmopolitan, secular Egypt, just as President Nasser's disastrous
    Arab nationalism drove out the ancient communities of Greeks, Italians,
    Armenians and Jews.

    "The British were able to separate mosque and state. We got used
    to that, and it took us two decades to go back to our roots," she
    says. "When the British were in Egypt for 70 years we had incredible
    reforms for human rights, minorities were protected, and there was a
    feminist movement protected by the British. In 1919 Egyptian feminist
    Hoda Shaarawi visited Europe and when she returned to Alexandria
    and arrived at the railway station, she threw off her headscarf,
    along with 20 other women from the upper class. It was a huge event,
    and that was why my grandmother and mother never wore a hijab. And
    I have to say, thank you, Great Britain, for protecting those women,
    and for stopping them going to jail or being killed."

    After university she worked as an editor and translator for the
    respected Middle East News Agency, before emigrating to the United
    State erican and converted to Christianity, and now attends an
    Evangelical church, and yet she still remained hostile to Israel
    until an extraordinary incident 40 years after the death of her father.

    "My brother in 1995, living in Gaza, had a stroke and was
    unconscious. Someone said to his family: 'If you want him to live,
    send him to Israel.' They [Arabs] prefer Israeli hospitals. You know,
    even Arabs don't believe their own hatred. In times of troubles Arabs
    will trust Jews. "They saved my brother's life, they were very kind
    to his family. And I started changing my views after that."

    She now states firmly that "the Palestinian Arabs are the victims of
    the Arab world" and "if Israel withdraws from the West Bank, it is
    finished". "I just wrote an article called 'Arab-made misery'. It is
    the Arab League's policy to never absorb the Palestinians, because
    then there will be no pressure." She also cites the disastrous rule
    of Hamas in the land where she grew up after the Israeli withdrawal.

    "Instead of paying attenton to internal issues, instead of building a
    trade centre, instead of making it the Hong Kong of the Middle East,
    and it is in a very central position, what did they do? They started
    hurling missiles from schools. They started having a civil war."

    Her spiritual journey was completed by a visit to Egypt with her
    American-born sons in August 2001, after several years in the United
    States.

    "I saw the poverty not improving at all, the unemployment, and
    the oppression of Christians," she says. "The Christians are very
    oppressed. I receive stories every day. A woman called Sherine,
    a Muslim, was caught in a church, arrested, taken for interrogation
    and apparently tortured and killed, just for being found in a church."

    But there was something else. "From the minute I arrived I thought:
    'Did I land in Saudi Arabia?' It has changed totally. I never wore
    a head cover when I was a Muslim. Women wore modest western clothes,
    the peasants wore head covers but it wasn't because of religion. It
    was more tradition and prot

    "When I left Egypt it was a hot day and everyone came to greet me
    with sun dresses, with no arms. When I landed again, in 2001, those
    same cousins came to greet me wearing Islamic clothes in the heat of
    August in Egypt. One of them was completely covered in black. Even her
    face, it was a slit. She's a physician, and she did it on her own -
    the government didn't force her, nor did her husband. In fact she
    forced her husband to go to mosque more and to be more obedient to
    Islamic tradition. Some women are more radical than men."

    "For a Muslim woman to have respect and also a good career and social
    rewards, she has to become as radical, if not more so, than men. In
    Egypt I was wearing a very modest bathing suit on a towel. Next to me
    there was a woman who was quite educated, her husband was a doctor,
    quite sophisticated in many ways, and yet she would not talk to me
    because I was not dressed in Islamic dress."

    Darwish began to write about Sharia a year after the September 2001
    attacks on her adopted homeland (which were led by an Egyptian), as
    a way of warning the West. She says that if a religion goes unchecked
    it becomes "like a mafia", with everyone too afraid to speak up. And
    she is quite convinced that Islam does want to expand.

    "The West is the great civilisation that Islam wants to seize and
    conquer. They wouldn't take their eyes off it. Because of the West's
    superiority it makes Islam feel ashamed.

    "The entire Arab world has lived in total indoctrination for a very
    long time. They are used to being oppressed, living under Sharia,
    having no freedom of speech whatsoever. They hear only one side of
    the news, and they vote accordingly. Even wealthy Arabs believe the
    most incredible theories - I had that experience even before 9/11."

    But Islam has been moderate from time to time, I point out. Voltaire
    put it best in describing it as a violent sect that had become
    "benign and tolerant".

    "I tell you why Islam was becoming moderate, and that was because
    Islam was weak. Then they discovered oil and a lot of Mu il as a
    blessing from God."

    But it is also, perhaps, because the West does not believe in itself.

    "The West is no longer proud of the Judeo-Christian culture and
    democracy. It does not believe in its own beliefs. Tolerating
    intolerance is not a sign of virtue, but gross negligence. The West
    hates itself and it's very sad."

    She shakes her head at the thought that elements of Sharia law are
    recognised in England.

    "We look to the European democracies as our escape to freedom. As a
    former Muslim and someone who lived under Islamic law, one of the major
    reasons I went to America was to escape my second-class citizen status.

    "There are forces of reform in the Middle East. People are sticking
    their heads on blacklists, whether they are journalists, intellectuals
    or simply people who want change. When we see the West treat groups
    like Hamas as a legitimate government, and allowing something like
    Sharia law to be practised, it really weakens their position. And
    the radicals see that violence works!"

    And that would be very, very sad indeed.

    Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of
    Sharia Law is available on Amazon for £11.49
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