(Compiler's note: Based on the title, I almost missed this one as having a bearing on national security -- don't you!!!)
by Ruth King
“First, do no harm” sounds nice, but contrary to legend, it is not part of the Hippocratic Oath, one of the oldest binding documents in history. Hippocrates invoked the medical deities Apollo and Hygeia for physicians to treat the ill to the best of their ability; to respect privacy; to teach the next generation; to guard the ill from harm and injustice; to remember obligations to all infirmed regardless of their soundness of body and mind. This oath is still sacred to the medical profession, and, in general, it is adhered to by physicians throughout the world.
There are many exceptions. There were unspeakable monsters among Nazi doctors who were the acolytes of Dr. Mengele. There are brutal and murderous doctors such as the recently captured Radovan Karadzik; Che Guevara, Fidel’s enforcer of terror; and the former “President for Life” of Malawi Dr. H. Kamuzu Banda, whose tourist guide included a warning that if anyone appeared with the purpose of overthrowing his holy reign, they would be “cut to ribbons and fed to the crocodiles.” Angola’s Marxist dictator Agostino Neto was also a doctor, whose murderous regime was the first to invite Cuban Revolutionary corps to meddle in the local wars.
Bashar Assad, dictator of Syria and son of the late butcher Hafez al Assad of Syria is an ophthalmologist as well as a supporter and enabler of Arab terrorists. But this is where the list really gets interesting.
When does religious fervor trump Hippocrates?
Many years ago when the Shah was toppled I had an acquaintance who was a beautiful and ultra chic physician from Shiraz, Iran. One day she arrived at a gathering wearing a Chadhor over her décolletage in honor of the Ayatollah. Shortly after, she and a group of pious Iranian doctors returned to Iran. At first I thought it a noble gesture…to bring their considerable medical skills back to their country. However, she quickly debunked that notion. They were returning to practice a stricter form of Islam. Moving to Israel is called “aliyah.” I guess this is “allahya.”
In the almost immediate aftermath of 9/11, 2000 Muslim doctors in Mumbai announced a boycott of all British and American medicines to protest American war in Afghanistan.
The boycott was a dud since avoiding drugs from the “big Satans” would leave them with little but poultices and leeches, but it does say something about their mindset.
Only 200 miles from Mumbai there is the town of Malegaon, home to fundamentalist Muslims and many madrassas, including one with a medical school which teaches anatomy, physiology, and strict Muslim piety - as well as hatred for the West as reported in The Washington Post by Amir Bakshi on July 13, 2007.
Thanks to the intrepid lawyer/investigative journalist Debbie Schlussel, there is a list of Muslim medical doctors whose sub-specialties are terrorism and murder of innocent women, children and assorted “infidels.”
They are:
- Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri , (a surgeon by night, his day job is mastermind of al Qaeda “operations”)
- Dr. Abu Hafiza, (a psychiatrist from Morocco who provided “counseling” to the 9/11 bunch)
- Dr. Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi ( the unlamented late Hamas leader who was a pediatrician)
- Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar (a surgeon who also does “operations” for Hamas)
- Dr. Fathi Abd Al-Aziz Shiqaqi, (another pediatrician and founder of Islamic Jihad)
- the late (too late) Dr. George Habash (founder and chief of the Popular Front for the Libration of Palestine, another pediatrician whose work for kiddies included bombing a school bus loaded with them)
- Dr. Wadih Haddad who was (second in command to Habash in the PFLP)
Shlussel also lists many other Muslim physicians in the United States accused and convicted of murder, plotting with terrorists and overtly raising funds for them while busily conducting medical work.
But there is much more: On July 6, 2007 a group of 45 Muslim men - most of whom were medical doctors - were apprehended for planning to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States. In their own words: "We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake Jihad and take the battle inside America.” They went on to cite specific targets including a naval base in Florida.
On July 3rd of the same year, three doctors were arrested in connection with planned car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow. Part of the inquiry into the London and Glasgow incidents focused on whether al Qaeda had recruited doctors or other medical professionals because they are less likely to attract suspicion and can move easily around the Western world.
The ringleader of the car bombers, Saudi Mohammed Asha, was described as a “brilliant neurologist” working for the British National Health Service. How would he treat infidel headaches?
In Israel, in 2006, an Arab pediatrician employed in an Israeli hospital assisted in the “honor killing” of his sister. He gave his brothers an anesthetic to daze her so that they could choke her to death.
A column by Patrick Sawer in the UK Daily Mail of July 2008 states that Muslim doctors and para-medical personnel are passing information to families of young Muslim women who have asked for contraceptives so that their kin can restore “honor” to the family by killing them.
The UK Sun of February 2008, reported “Thousands of hospital patients are in danger of catching deadly superbugs because Muslim medical students refuse to follow new hygiene rules. The Department of Health has ordered staff across the country to be ‘bare past the elbow’ in a bid to halt the spread of infections which are easily hand borne. They say the rule is essential to ensure workers are properly able to wash their hands and wrists. But female Muslim students training in hospitals in England have refused to implement the directive because Islam forbids women exposing more than their hands and face in public.”
When challenged about this a spokesman for the Islamic Medical Association said: “No practicing Muslim woman doctor, medical student, nurse or patient should be forced to bare her arms”
And that was that.
You might ask: where is the Hippocratic Oath here? Well it appears that there is an organization of Muslim Dentists and Doctors in England and they do have an oath….sort of.
Here is what the Muslim Doctors and Dentists Association UK exhorts its members to do:
- To advance the Islamic religion in the practice of medicine in the United Kingdom.
- To advance medical education in relation to the doctrines, practices and traditions of the Islamic religion.
- To promote research in various aspects of medical science and to disseminate and publish the useful results of such research.
- To promote the preservation and protection of the good health of Muslims in the United Kingdom.
Got that? Islam trumps Hippocrates.
But what can explain the silence of the British non-Muslim medical establishment? Well, they have been busy with more pressing matters. Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, has decried the war in Iraq, deliberately inflated the number of fatalities, accused the United States of “torture” in prisons and printed a column on the trauma inflicted by Israel on the Arab victims of the “occupation.”
In fact, since doctors are virtually unhampered in requesting visas to work abroad one might ask why American medical associations are not more concerned.
Or, why IMANA, the Islamic Medical Association of North America has not addressed the issue. For an answer I went to their website. This association is also member of FIMA, an International Federation of Islamic Medical Associations. Its introduction states, “Islamic Medicine is defined as the art of practice of medicine in the service of humanity under Islamic guidelines as ordained in the divine book al-Qu’ran and taught by the Prophet Muhammad.”
In discussing Islamic medical ethics: “a physician derives his conclusions from rules of Islamic laws (Shar’iah) and Moslem medical ethics.” The site goes on to state their four basic principles: respect for the autonomy of the patient; beneficence; no malfeasance and “distributive justice.”(What exactly is that?)
But a quick jump to their ethics section includes mainly a statement opposing force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strikes in United States custody and support for Physicians for Human Rights recommendations of February 2007 on ten steps the United States should take to restore its “Moral Authority.”
Terrorism, or so called honor killings, or sexual mutilation are not even mentioned, although their guiding principle is “Whoever saves a human life, saves the life of the whole mankind”….which actually originated in the Jewish Talmud centuries before Mohammed.
A medical doctor and scholar of Islam, Andrew Bostom, has pointed out that this quote from the Koran comes from the most blatantly anti-Semitic section.
“(5:32) Therefore We prescribed for the Children of Israel that whoso slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether; and whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if he has given life to mankind altogether. Our Messengers have already come to them with the clear signs; then many of them thereafter commit excesses in the earth. (5:33) This is the recompense of those who fight against God and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement .”
One positive example of the good melding of Islamic faith and Hippocrates is the UMMA clinic at UCLA, a primary health care source for over 15,000 children and adults in South Los Angeles, many of whom otherwise would have no access to primary health care services. It has a patient clientele from every conceivable faith, culture and background. Over 95% of the beneficiaries of UMMA's services are not Muslim. They named it UMMA, an acronym for “University Muslim Medical Association” and the Arabic word for “community.”
Among the most heroic and articulate critics of Shar’ia and its practices are three medical doctors, Wafa Sultan, Tawfiq Hamid and Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser- but where are the others?
It is not “Islamophobic” to expect more of the thousands of Muslim physicians and their organizations to decry the outsize participation of Muslim doctors in terrorism and to denounce “honor killings” and the oppression of women. Their failure to do so will result in very harsh immigration policies as well as profiling.
Phobia is defined as an “irrational” fear. There is nothing irrational in being prudent when choosing a physician who will let me keep my head on my shoulders.
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