Punishing the Advocates of Freedom

When she was interviewed last year in Washington D.C., Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff mentioned the book Gabriel’s Whisperings by Jaya Gopal as an inspiration for her anti-jihad activism.

Mr. Gopal recently communicated with Elisabeth and shared his thoughts on her case. With her permission (and his), I am publishing them here, with this prefatory note from Elisabeth:

It’s all Jaya Gopal’s fault.

When I first started reading Gabriel’s Whisperings — currently available only in German; an English translation is in the works — I knew nothing about Islam other than what I had experienced first-hand when I resided in Tehran, Kuwait, and Libya.

Mr. Gopal’s book — which is based solely on Islamic sources — sent shivers down my spine back in 2006, prompting me at first to feel very lonely and afraid, not knowing just how to push back Islamization. However, in 2007, I was “discovered” by the Wiener Akademikerbund, “The Gathering Storm Show”, and later that year, by the Center for Vigilant Freedom, now renamed the International Civil Liberties Alliance. My career has taken off ever since and I am now in the Counterjihad limelight, thanks to a certain leftist magazine and its dubious journalism, not to mention a sharia-compliant justice system.

Thank you, Mr. Gopal, for supporting me. Your book is the best out there because it is unique: no other book uses only Islamic sources. For those who can read German, please get a copy of this book. Read it. Learn from it. Pass it on.

Everyone else will have to wait until it is translated.

Jaya Gopal sent the this introduction to Elisabeth, followed by his formal public appeal to Austria:

I have gone through the brief story, the trial against your speech in the Vienna Regional Court and the Judgment, and am sad about the outcome. We must appeal against the verdict before the highest court. There is no reason to despair. Let us all hope we will be victorious in the end.

Attached hereto are some comments of mine for your perusal and for the information of the readers of your ‘voice of freedom’. Please place my comments/opinion before your lawyer. If there is no problem in view of the appeal before the high court, it might be published.

Be happy in your noble and sublime fight for justice, reason and freedom.

In Solidarity,

Jaya Gopal

Mr. Gopal’s appeal:

Please reject the Sharia Laws

I appreciate the honorable judge for having declared that the language used in the seminars by Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff “was not inciting hatred”. It is clear, therefore, that the Austrian state has charged ESW with false allegations.

While relieving ESW of inciting hatred, the Judge found ESW half-guilty of utterances regarding Muhammad and paedophilia for having married Aisha, a girl of six years, and for having consummated the marriage when she was aged nine. Paedophilia is a sexual act or rape of male or female children. The judge seemed to believe Muhammad married Aisha when she was 18 years old.

According to well-noted Islamic exegetes and jurisprudents, the Prophet Muhammad married Aisha when she was six or seven years old and the marriage was consummated when she was nine to eleven years old. At that time Muhammad was aged about 53 or 54 years.

The great Islamic scholar Al-Bukhari in his Traditions recorded the event as follows:

“Aisha narrated the Prophet married her when she was six years and he consummated the marriage when she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years” (Al-Bukhari: Al-Sahih, Article II.771)

Another popular general compilation of the saying and deeds of Prophet Muhammad: Mishatk-Ul-Masabhi, Book II, 69, records:

“Ayesha : she was married to the Prophet after the demise of Khadiya when she was only seven years old. She was taken by the Prophet to live with him when she was only nine years old…. She was only 18 when the Prophet died”

In his life of Muhammad, the well-known Egyptian biographer Muhammad Husayn Haykal says that the Prophet asked for her hand from her father while she was nine years old and married her after two years (p.291)

According to Sir William Muir, Aisha was ten years old when Mahomet consummated the marriage with her (The Life of Mahomet — From Original Sources, p.171, Third edition 1874, Smith Elder & Co., London)

The Historian Margoliouth narrates from a Tradition that Ayesha, a child of seven, she was sent by her father with a basket of dates to the Prophet, whose manner inspired her with alarm and aversion. (Margoliouth D.S.: Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, p.176, New Delhi, 1985)

Muslim historians and exegetes also narrate in the Traditions that Aisha as a child carried toys and other playthings to the bedchamber of the Prophet, not knowing of what might happen next.

The Prophet set a wrong example for Muslims by marrying a child.

Consummation of marriage is a sexual act. If committed by an aged man, it would certainly be painful and a violation of the child’s body. What is wrong if such an act with a child is considered or mentioned as paedophilia, or feared and described as ‘rape’?

In defending ‘Religious Teachings’ under the Austrian law there is no justice in defending harmful acts and customs and punishing the advocates of freedom.

There is no use trying to defend certain ‘wrongs’ committed by great men in history. What ESW or freedom- and truth-loving people across the world want is reform or changes to the harmful customs, changes in the anachronistic traditions and laws. Muslim intellectuals must speak out. Muslim religious leaders must persuade Islamists to stop such evils.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is speaking for millions of her tongue-tied Muslim sisters, and fears that unless and until the Sharia Law is discarded, Western values would be detrimentally affected, and Western women and daughters would certainly fall victim to fanatical and fundamentalist tendencies in the near future.

The Austrian government is requested to withdraw the case against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff.

For previous posts on the “hate speech” prosecution of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, see Elisabeth’s Voice: The Archives.