Courtesy of the MEMRI organization:
Hani Al-Sibai (Islamist nutjob): These cancerous cells that have spread through the nation’s body, which are the garbage and refuse of the obsolete secular ideology, are the source of corruption, and the reason for all the disasters that befell this nation. These are ideological microbes that are alien to this nation.
[…]Sayid Al-Qimni (Modernist Muslim): We live in a region that does not know what democracy is. In democratic countries, people participate in elections, and the rule changes hands peacefully from the government to the opposition, or vice versa. Here, on the other hand, people prepared cars and bombs, in order to booby-trap the former and blow up the latter. We have no democracy to begin with. We don’t understand the meaning of democracy.
Interviewer (nutjob sympathizer): But there are attempts to have democracy, Dr. Al-Qimni. There are attempts to have democracy and people like you are thwarting them. This is what happened in Palestine.
Sayid Al-Qimni: No, there are no such attempts.
Interviewer: There are attempts. There were elections in Palestine.
Sayid Al-Qimni: The ballot box alone does not constitute democracy. The ballot box is just a box made of glass, and nobody knows what goes on inside. People put a piece of paper in it. By no means does the ballot box constitute democracy. We are the prey over which two types of [predators] compete: Ruling families and military governments, on the one hand, and Islamic dictatorships, on the other hand. These two types of dictatorships compete over us, the prey.
When the mufti of the government bans a certain book, the mufti of the [Islamist] groups bans a movie. The former places a ban on words, and the latter places a “ban” on an entire person, by killing him. The women wear a uniform like soldiers. You see them in the street, and they all look like soldiers. The government whips anyone who goes to the police station to file a complaint. The Islamists legitimize whipping. If you legitimize whipping, why are you angry when the government does it? How can you be angry at the government for whipping you, when you are the ones legitimizing the whipping? Whipping is part of Islamic law.
When you go to the mosque they humiliate you, saying: “You are responsible for what happened to the nation.” This poor man merely came to fulfill his religious duties, and they pile this dirt on him in the mosque. They humiliate him and attribute all the sins of this nation to him. All the nation’s defeats are due to this wretched man’s defiance of God. They are constantly setting new red lines. Is there such a thing as red lines in democracy? The government has its own red lines, the ruling families have their own red lines, and so do the military and the Islamists. I also have red lines, but it’s useless.As you’ve said, these people issue fatwas about saliva, about the urine of camels, about the urine of the Prophet, and so on… Look, all these people, this entire process, all the candidates, the people who won the elections, the people who helped them succeed – they all belong in the madhouse. More here.
