A heroic defender of Civilization named Stephen Lawrence recently took an unpopular stand with a letter to the editor in the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader, in which he warned that about twenty Saudi Arabians were going to be attending Wilkes University. He is of course being denounced in all the usual terms (intolerant, bigoted, racist, yadda yadda yadda) which is what usually happens when the politically-correct Left cannot deal with the facts.

Dhimmi Watch reports,

Stephen Lawrence is refusing to bow to intimidation. Would that we had 300 million more people like him in America. “Criticism of Saudi students sparks protest at Wilkes: Students object to a letter in the Times Leader portraying Saudi students as a potential danger,” from the Times Leader:

…Nearly 300 students attended the hour-and-a-half exposition outside the Henry Student Center Wednesday afternoon to protest the letter written by Forty Fort dentist Stephen M. Lawrence referencing 9/11, honor killings and the treatment of women and Christians in Muslim states.

“It is said we are having a clash of civilizations, but as we can plainly see, only one side is civilized,” he wrote. “Wake up Americans. We are letting the barbarians in and we must be diligent.”

…Salman Punekar, 19, a business major at Wilkes University and a naturalized American citizen of Saudi Arabian decent, organized the peaceful protest that drew out many students on the final day of classes. He said he learned about the letter earlier this week and began circulating e-mails to fellow students.

“His statements undermine American values,” Punekar said of Lawrence. “I’m a naturalized citizen now and there’s no difference between me and anybody else. We came out here so that he (Lawrence) knows there’s a strong opposition to his views. He’s exercising his freedom of speech and so are we.”

If Mr. Punekar is a naturalized American citizen who has embraced American values (like a pluralistic secular society in which all people are equal regardless of race, religion, and gender) then Dr. Lawrence’s remarks were clearly not directed at him and he should not take offense. Our problem is not with Arab-Americans who have assimilated into our society and embraced American values, or even with individual Arabs who visit our countries, but rather with the pre-medieval dirt cultures from which they came. We sent the following to a Wilkes educator (cc: to Dr. Lawrence) who criticized Dr. Lawrence’s position in a lengthy letter to the Times-Leader:

I saw your letter in Wednesdays’s Times-Leader, and I would personally be delighted to explain to your Saudi students why I despise their country even though I have nothing against them as individuals. Please feel free to share this letter with them and the other students who protested Dr. Lawrence’s letter to the Times-Leader.

First, I dislike terrorists and anyone who helps terrorists. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of the Saudi Royal Family was involved in raising money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He also donated $20 million to Georgetown University for an Islamic studies center to “promote Christian-Muslim understanding” or something to that effect. This is a very interesting comment from an individual who once boasted openly to an interviewer, “There are no Christians in Saudi Arabia.” It is illegal to possess a Bible or a cross in Saudi Arabia, and Jews are not welcome there either. A Saudi teacher was sentenced to forty months in prison and 750 lashes for “mocking religion,” i.e. discussing the Bible and praising Jews. Saudi Arabia is indeed a savage and barbaric nation that is totally unworthy of respect by civilized people, although there are decent individual Saudis who would rather live under a different regime if they could. I am quite open to the possibility that the Saudi students at Wilkes University might be among them.

Although the Saudis at Wilkes University may be well-behaved guests in our country, they do come from a barbaric nation that treats women little better than domestic animals. While American criminals (e.g. wife beaters and rapists) behave as you described, our culture condemns their behavior and our laws jail the perpetrators. Saudi culture and law condone rape and domestic violence, as shown below.

You raised the example of an American who “molests children because he thinks that’s an appropriate way to treat kids.” An adult man who is caught having even consensual sexual intercourse with a twelve year-old girl will go to jail for a LONG time here. In Saudi Arabia, a father can give his twelve year-old daughter to another man in “marriage” and she has no say in the matter. In other words, Saudi law and culture sanction the forcible rape of twelve year-old girls.

Saudi Arabia is not the only Middle Eastern country with a barbaric militant “Islamic” culture. Even Turkey, the only Muslim-majority nation that is a modern democracy, allows the “marriage” of nine year-old girls. Per Bret Stephens’ “The Foreign Brides” (Wall Street Journal, May 2, A17) “Turkish law will allow even a nine-year-old girl to marry.”

Militant “Islamic” societies often consider rape victims guilty of adultery, and they may be stoned to death under the local laws or else murdered by their own families in so-called “honor” killings. Iran recently sentenced a teenage girl to be hanged for accidentally knifing her would-be rapist to death and the Saudi police arrested a Filipina maid for wounding her employer with a knife when he tried to rape her. As far as I know, the married employer was arrested neither for attempted rape nor adultery, which is a capital crime in that country– at least for women.

Saudi “blood money” compensation tables for wrongful deaths say that a woman is worth only half of a man. Someone who kills a Muslim man must pay his family 100,000 riyals but a Muslim woman is worth only 50,000. A Christian man is worth 50,000 and a Christian woman is worth only 25,000. Several Saudi schoolgirls were killed in a fire because the Saudi religious police, upon seeing that the girls were not properly veiled, would not let them leave the burning building. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1874471.stm) Any civilized nation would define this as murder but Saudi Arabia’s barbaric pre-medieval culture finds it quite normal and acceptable.

Far from being a U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia has committed acts of war against the United States by holding female American citizens in white slavery as described by the Wall Street Journal (three excerpts below).

Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2002, page A18, “Daughters of America.”

“As William McGurn reported Tuesday in an article on this page, Pat
Roush’s two daughters, Alia and Aisha, were kidnapped from America in
1986. On Monday she learned that her Saudi ex-husband has married off
Aisha in what she believes is retribution for her participation in these
hearings.”

“Unfortunately, the State Department has not yet recognized that
when an American child is kidnapped, or when an American woman charged
with no crime is held against her will, it’s not just an affront to the
individual. It’s an affront to America.”

“Saudi law forbids women of any age from leaving their country
without permission. Another way of stating those same facts would be to
say that two adult U.S. citizens are trapped in a country where women
are treated as the property of men…”

“All the President’s Women” (Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2002)

“Amjad Radwan is 19 years old and, unlike her older brother, cannot
leave Saudi Arabia because she is a woman and must have the permission
of her Saudi father, who refuses to give it. In highly charged testimony
delivered via videotape, Amjad’s mom, Monica Stowers, told the House she
remains in Saudi Arabia because she fears for her daughter’s life; Miss
Stowers further reported that both her son and daughter were raped by
members of her former husband’s family. The Roush sisters are also adults.”

“…This [U.S. State Department’s response] is a long way from
“Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead”–Teddy Roosevelt’s tart reaction when
a Berber bandit chieftain took an American hostage in Tangier.”

William McGurn, “Saudi PR Turns from Spin to Stonewalling,” Wall Street Journal, 16 December 2002, A12.

“…the State department admits that the Saudis have never returned a
kidnapped child to the U.S. To the contrary, the Saudi response has
always been to obfuscate and propose “solutions” (e.g. a special
commission) that are aimed at delaying everything until the issue fades
or the children are old enough to be married off and impregnated. In
Saudi Arabia, marriage can come as young as 12 years old for girls.”

Furthermore,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114506102681426702.html?mod=moj_latest_news

“Saudi Arabia likes to highlight rights that Islam affords women — but
it does not enforce them. Shariah law criminalizes egregious domestic
abuse. Judges, however, turn away the few courageous women seeking
redress against abusive husbands unless they are accompanied by a male
guardian — typically a father more concerned about the family’s
reputation than his daughter’s safety.”

“…Ordinary citizens face daily harassment, often from the religious
police, the mutawwa’in, who intrude without warrants into private homes
where they suspect unmarried men and women are meeting. …Victims of
abuse have no redress.”

“…The law does not protect the religious freedom even of Muslims. Thus
the Shiites of Medina have to marry, divorce and inherit in ways
prescribed by Sunni judges that differ substantially from Shiite
jurisprudence. Some Sunni courts do not recognize a Shiite as a legal
person.”

Regards,

Bill Levinson

More can be said about the American citizens who are being held against their will in Saudi Arabia. If this was the 19th century, a time when both personal and national honor actually meant something, there is no doubt that we would be at war with that filthy country. England did in fact send the Royal Marines to deal with some crappy little African country that seized a British servant as “security” for a debt owed by her employer. The Royal Marines decided that, as long as they were in the neighborhood, they might as well burn down the crappy little country’s slave warehouses after turning their human contents loose. Theodore Roosevelt would probably not have sent the Marines to handle the Saudi Arabian problem, he would have led the Rough Riders and taken care of the problem personally. This would in fact be a service to at least half the Saudi population (the female half) as well as to millions of male Saudis who don’t want to live in an oppressive dictatorship. Imagine the King of the House of Saud (think Jabba the Hutt or Vladimir Harkonnen) gibbering in terror and squealing like a pig as Uncle Sam (played by Clint Eastwood) points a .44 Magnum at his head while saying, “Look, punk, to me you’re nothing but a piece of dog crap…”

Today’s Times-Leader featured a letter from Badr Al Hussain and Fahad Al Yami who wrote, “We would like to get an education, hold jobs, raise families, and make the world better for our children. We, too, resent the fact that the few radicals in our culture are the ones grabbing the attention of the media. These radicals kill their own people as well as people in other nations. …As true believers of Islam, we strive for peace in the world.”

We can assure Mr. Al Hussain and Al Yami that we have no problems whatsoever with them personally or other Arabs who share their beliefs. The world is full of decent Arabs who, like most normal human beings, seek only peace and better lives for their families. There were also millions of decent Germans during the period 1933-1945 who wanted nothing more to be good industrious German workers and professionals. This did not make the Nazi government, which consisted of the not-so-decent Germans, any less evil and the same applies to the barbaric filth that make up the Saudi Royal Family and Saudi Arabia’s religious police. The individual Saudi is not the enemy but Saudi Arabia is, and we must never forget that.

A constructive outcome to these students’ presence at Wilkes University would be to educate them in the superior Euro-American value system that upholds the natural human rights of all people regardless of race, religion, and gender. (Regarding the latter, one might ask them why there are few or no female students among them, the answer being that chattel property like a woman, goat, or camel is not allowed to leave its master’s custody in Saudi Arabia.) They should also be encouraged to criticize anything they like about our society and– big surprise!– no religious police will take them away or give them 750 lashes for insulting Christianity or Judaism. If they were to actually adopt our value system, they might in fact make fine American citizens. Many of the immigrants who built this country came here to get away from what passed for Christianity in 16th-18th century Europe and there is no reason why immigrants who are escaping what passes for Islam in the Middle East and Central Asia should not do the same.