Who is Wafa Sultan? Who is this woman who has the courage to speak out against Islam? Sultan was born and raised in Syria, where she witnessed the hellish lives of her mother and grandmother. Only through the uncommon support of her older brother was she able to receive her education and become a doctor in the male-dominated society. She began working in clinics in Syria before making what she refers to as her “escape” to America. Sultan no longer practices Islam but still identifies as a Muslim, as she is unable to divorce this faith from her identity. A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks out Against the Evils of Islam tells her story as well as the story of Islam, shedding light onto the experiences of women across the world.
Allah is a God who hates, Sultan argues. The God of Islam, born out of the desert, is a God who hates his people—specifically his women. Muslims parade their God as “the Harmer,” looking to him for moral authority even as he tells them that women are less than human. He compares them to dogs and fields, and he condones and conceals their mistreatment. When Sultan worked and studied in Syria, she witnessed countless horrors. Young girls were sexually abused by their fathers and brothers, women were mistreated by their husbands, females were preyed upon by the doctor who treated them—and all of them believed that they deserved it.
This book was hard to read. I do not mean that the language was difficult or the page count was enormous—I mean that it was dark. It was heavy. These are real things that happened, and still happen, to real people. Millions of women across the world are trapped in the lie of Islam. They are conditioned to hate themselves, to hate others, to raid, to stay silent, to take the blame, and to worship a God who hates them.
Sultan begins her book with a story— a story about fear. A man enters a beautiful village full of terrified people. They live each day in fear of an ogre who lives on the mountain above the village. When the man climbs the mountain to confront the ogre, he is surprised to find that it is small enough to stand on his palm. This ogre is Fear. He seems large from far away, but “as long as they refuse to approach and confront [him,] they will never know [his] true size.” Each day, Sultan approaches and confronts the ogre of Islam in order to expose its weakness and cowardice. With this as the backdrop of her own story, Sultan begins her book.
Sultan is seeking a God who loves. She is seeking a God who will be her father. She is seeking a God who is tender toward his women. Sultan is seeking a God who has not distorted or been distorted by the people who created him. There is only one God like this. The God of Christianity has an undying and unfathomable love for the world. He desires that Wafa Sultan and all the people of Islam would believe in his name and be saved. The true God is a God of love, but he is not the God of Islam. In Galatians 4:4-7, God speaks, saying,
“But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.”
God wants to make himself known. He sent his own Son in order to become the father of many. God does not tolerate evil. He does not tolerate the evils of Islam, but he does not tolerate the evils of our own hearts either. Without God’s grace, we are no better than those who steal, kill, rape, dehumanize, and destroy. Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We must respond to his love by confessing our sins against him and against others. We must admit that we have no power to make ourselves righteous. We must submit to his love, as the perfect father who will never mistreat or abuse his sons and daughters.
Wafa Sultan wishes to redeem the God of Islam, but he must be replaced. That little ogre of fear who looms so large in Muslim minds must be conquered. Although turning to the one true God may cost converts much, including families, friends, and even their lives, we have not been given “the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). The apostle Paul was one who left behind everything for the gospel, and he states boldly that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). May we remember that God is mighty, and he wishes to save those bound by falsehood even more than we do. Place your faith in his steadfast love. Place your faith in one who holds to his word. Place your faith in a perfect father. Place your faith in a God who loves.