Darwish, who grew up in Cairo and Gaza and converted to Christianity as an adult, addressed the "oppressive" effect of radical Islam on free speech and human rights reforms within the Arab culture. She said that in many cases, fundamentalism infuses Arab society to such an extent that the common people are more dangerous than what she claimed was the already-corrupt leadership.
"Tyranny in the Middle East doesn't come from the top to bottom -- it also comes from the bottom up," she said.
Darwish recalled the story of a maid employed by Darwish's mother who had been raped by her previous employer. Because Arab culture prohibits premarital sex, the maid could not return to her family for fear that they would kill her, Darwish said. Darwish's mother directed her to a government agency. A year later, when Darwish's mother inquired about the maid, the government agent told her that the woman's father and brother had killed her.
Radical Islam has had a similar stifling impact on political reform within Arab countries in the Middle East, according to Darwish. For example, fatwas, or religious decrees, are used by Muslim clerics to condemn to death those who they view as violators of the faith. These targets include reformers and activists, she said, arguing that these murders are a major reason democracy and human rights have lagged so much in the Middle East.
"The ones who get killed are the ones who are affiliated with peace," she said, referring to pro-democracy politicians in Lebanon and the former Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat, who was assassinated for normalizing his country's relationship with Israel. The only governments that can survive in the Middle East, she said, are those brutal enough to counter the power of the radicals.
Darwish contended that Arab governments manipulate the anger of the common people against Israel in order to keep themselves in power. She recalled visiting Cairo recently and seeing pollution, poverty and unemployment everywhere, but reading in the newspaper only stories about Israel and America. In a survey of Egyptians, she noted, the majority called their number-one problem Israel, despite rampant unemployment and poverty in their own country.
"A lot of people think the victims of terror are just Israelis and Americans; a lot of victims of terrorism are Muslims" she said, noting that more Muslims are killed by terrorists than members of any other religion.
She called the plight of the Palestinians a deliberate propaganda tool engineered by the Arab League to further its case against Israel.
"The Palestinians in those two regions [Gaza and the West Bank] were supposed to be refugees, and they were kept as refugees," she said, "It was done by design. People wanted to use this territory as a war zone."
Not all of the audience was receptive to Darwish's view of Israel -- one young woman yelled "Bullshit!" when Darwish denied that Israel had played a role in displacing Palestinians during the war.
Darwish claimed that the events of September 11 were another symptom of the Arab people's rage towards Israel and America.
"I knew immediately, this is the anger that I left behind," she said. "Jihad has come to America."
Darwish accused American and European societies of not standing strongly enough against radical Islam. She described a 2007 parade in New York that featured signs saying "The Holocaust is a hoax" and "Ban the Talmud."
"After 9/11 a lot of Muslim apologists said Jihad means an inner struggle," she said wryly, "I like that meaning, but I never heard it in the Middle East."
Some students were unsettled by Darwish's pointed remarks.
"The Muslim community was troubled by the arrival of this controversial speaker," Al-Nur Vice President Shamis Mohamud '08 said in a statement. "We are concerned that aspects of our religion were misrepresented, and we are looking forward to a dialogue with the organizers of the event and any other interested students."
The event was hosted by the Terrorism Awareness Project and the College Republicans. TAP also sponsored Islamo-Fascism awareness week in the fall.
Darwish was invited to the College through the Horowitz Freedom Center, a pro-Israel organization that also sponsors TAP.
