[New York Sun] Youssef Ibrahim - Yes, world, there is a silent Arab majority that believes that seventh-century Islam is not fit for 21st-century challenges. That women do not have to look like walking black tents. That men do not have to wear beards and robes, act like lunatics, and run around blowing themselves up in order to enjoy 72 virgins in paradise. And that secular laws, not Islamic Sharia, should rule our day-to-day lives. We, the silent Arab majority, do not believe that writers should be killed or banned for expressing their views. Or that the rest of our creative elite - from moviemakers to playwrights, actors, painters, sculptors, and fashion models - should be vetted by Neanderthal Muslim imams who have never read a book in their dim, miserable lives. The leader of Hizballah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, received a resounding "no" to pulling 350 million Arabs into a war with Israel at the Arab League's meeting of 22 foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday, and from pundits and ordinary people across the Arab world. All in all, it seems that when Israel decided to go to war against the priestly mafia of Hamas and Hizballah, it opened a whole new chapter in the Greater Middle East discourse. And Israel is finding, to its surprise, that a vast, not-so-silent majority of Arabs agrees that enough is enough.
2006-07-20 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive