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Lady Sadat sez US doing good work in Iraq
The former First Lady of Egypt, Jehan Sadat, said in an interview recently that she remains hopeful about the situation in the Middle East despite growing animosity toward America following revelations that U.S. soldiers tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners. The anger will pass, she said, because people will see that the American effort to rebuild Iraq is mostly good. "There are very few Americans who make this mistake," she said, referring to soldiers who abused the detainees. "The majority of the people in the American army are brave people and brave soldiers."Sadat, who speaks at 8 p.m. at Orchestra Hall tonight in the Star Tribune Women's Lecture Series, said she can't help but consider the damage that a few individuals can wreak on the reputation of an entire nation. Just as some people now judge all Americans by the acts of guards working at Abu Ghraib prison, so, too, did many people judge all Muslims by the Sept. 11 attacks, Sadat said. "They always say 'Islamic terrorists,' always putting terrorists as if they are all Muslim," said Sadat, speaking of media accounts of the war. "I wanted to say that some few, like [Al-Qaida leader Osama] bin Laden, these terrorists give a bad image for Islam." A practicing Muslim, she hopes the non-Muslim world will come to see her faith less as the source of extremists like Bin Laden and more like the platform from which her husband, who was assassinated Oct. 6, 1981, sought peace. Jehan Sadat plans to talk about her family and her views on raising children, the needs of the Third World, and her life in Virginia, where she lives today just 20 minutes from the White House. Christians and Muslims have little to fear from one another, she said. "The religion is so similar. It is the same God we are worshipping," she said.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-05-19 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=33361 |