Susan Carland - Muslim Hypocrite
Susan Carland is one of a kind - really. In 1999 at the mature age of 19 she became the only natural blonde Muslim in Mebourne after "a 2 year study of all religions". She found "a beautiful balance of the spiritual and the intellectual" in Islam and has become Australia's most famous revert. According to Islam all people are born as Muslims so they do not convert to Islam but revert to Islam. When born in non-Islamic cultures their parents and/or devils and demons corrupt them from the only true religion - Islam.
Nasty and Nastier
Ms Carland made a particularly nasty and baseless attack on Paul Sheehan in Confused and confusing: What Paul Sheehan and Michael Adebolajo* have in common on the ABC website May 28, 2013:
She begins with a haphazard, opportunistic list of quotes demonising Islamic terrorism supposedly written by expert Muslim scholars. She includes a quote from Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri and mentions his 500 page fatwa against terrorism. He is a Pakistani Sufi scholar involved in a long term political struggle for democracy, human rights, justice, and women's roles in Pakistan, a struggle he has spectacularly lost. Pakistani police have murdered some of his followers and he had to spend seven years living in exile in Canada. Ms Carland fails to mention that his views, worthy though they are, have received little support and official repression in Pakistan.
But while the haphazard, opportunistic list of verses of the Qur'an that Sheehan enlists into his cause may suit the black-and-white pseudo-logic of terrorists and columnists alike, both of whom are looking to justify their predetermined prejudices, they simply do not stack up to the centuries of devout, meticulous Islamic reflection on the problem of violence, nor with the experience of the vast majority of the 1.4 billion Muslims alive today.
There may well have been "centuries of devout, meticulous Islamic reflection on the problem of violence" however violent jihad by the Ottoman Muslim empire, the last Muslim military power, continued into the 20th century with the genocide of the Armenians and there were no public calls for peace and non-violence from Muslims. Islamic terrorists may use "black-and-white" logic but is it not bogus.
Relying on a list of atrocities about which even its creators state "we are not making the claim that this is a scientific product," Sheehan laments that we do not hear about Muslims who are killed by other "[Muslim] psychopaths using Islam to justify their bloodlust."
In fact the creators of the list state that it is incomplete and that in December 2014 the BBC did a thorough analysis of Islamic terror attacks which counted twice the number of jihad attacks and murders.
She berates Sheehan for concentrating on the violent verses in the Quran saying "centuries of thoughtful Muslim scholarship has repeatedly and successfully grappled with such seeming contradictions" in the Quran. This is a typical response by Muslim apologists invoking Muslim scholarship that will supposedly negate Quranic violence. In fact, Muslim scholarship states that the later Medinan, violent "revelations" in the Quran and Muhammad's actions abrogate the earlier Meccan "revelations" about peace and tolerance.
The problem with Sheehan's line of thought, beyond the blindingly obvious, is that it is precisely the same mode of reasoning employed by Muslim terrorists to justify their actions.
The problem with Carland's line of thought is that Sheehan's line of thought is precisely the mode of reasoning employed by Muslims throughout the centuries of conquest based upon Muhammad's life and the Quran. Far from being confused and confusing, Sheehan's logic is simple and straightforward. Carland employs wishful thinking that somehow the basis and the history of Islam can be completely negated by scholarship of which she approves. It's bad enough that she invents a commonality between Sheehan and Adebolajo but even worse is Carland's vicious tone which reeks of Islamic supremacy and contempt for non-Muslims. Sheehan's article contains no errors of fact and he states that most Muslims, like most non-Muslims are peaceful, and that those "who gravitate to the wrathful messages of the Koran bring their own pathologies with them, which they then cloak in zealous piety." In this he may be wrong as it seems quite possible to gravitate to the wrathful messages of the Koran through misplaced idealism and imitation of Muhammad who is the perfect model of humanity to Muslims.
Lifting the Veil
In 2007 Ms Carland attended a conference on "Muslim Women in the Midst of Change", held in Kuala Lumpur. Her speech was discussed in an article in the English language Star newspaper. She reported that new converts are bombarded with rules and regulations and are often expected to give up their own cultures and take on a more "Islamic" culture. She said that Muslims liked converts because they reinforced their positive beliefs but converts were often made to feel inferior by those born Muslims (though according to Muslim theology everyone is born a Muslim). Converts are advised to leave their homes and and sever ties with their kafir (infidel) family and friends, while female converts are urged to get married as soon as possible, to a Muslim of course. She has often felt degraded and condescended to by Muslims demanding she prove she's a Muslim.
Ms Carland tends to change her stance depending upon her audience. When conservative columnist Andrew Bolt discussed her views on the ABC Q&A she quickly got lost trying to back-pedal
SUSAN CARLAND: The quick response would be absolutely there are people, a very small minority of people, within the Muslim community that are reluctant to engage with the wider community, but this is more…
ANDREW BOLT: You put it as a majority in this interview and, excuse me, I just read it again.
SUSAN CARLAND: I said the majority of Muslims reject friendships with … well, I'm afraid that that …
ANDREW BOLT: You did.
SUSAN CARLAND: Well, I'm afraid that's just not correct.
ANDREW BOLT: Well, you said it there and you …
SUSAN CARLAND: Maybe your translation from the Malay is not …
ANDREW BOLT: It was an English language newspaper.
The article in question does not appear to be an interview but a report on Carland's speech.
Susan Carland is Waleed Aly's blonde trophy wife, but they don't sleep together while she's menstruating because during menstruation a woman is impure and unclean.
* Michael Adebolajo is the machete beheader of Drummer Lee Rigby