Cheryl Benard (born in 1953) is an American-Austrian social scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and a B.A. from the American University of Beirut. She is a novelist and an author on topics including popular sociology, refugees, women in nation-building, youth radicalization in the European Diaspora, and humanitarian aid. Before becoming an adjunct researcher with the RAND Corporation and President of ARCH International, she was the research director of a European think tank, the Boltzmann Institute of Politics and before that, she taught Political Science at the University of Vienna. She married Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thank you RAND to open our eyes about your thoughts and plans about islam The author starts with her deep and fanatical belief in democracy and American values or the values of Western civilization in general in order to understand Islam in her own way and engages, criticizes and challenges the Qur鈥檃n, its rulings, the Hadith and the method of studying it. Then she gives a set of advice to the American administration with the aim of changing Islam and making it compatible with the values of Modern Western civilization Malicious ideas are being put forward, the most important of which is supporting the claimants of modernity, secularists, and Sufism, fueling conflicts, inserting poisons into educational curricula, and spreading suspicions. I do not want to address every point the writer made, but I would like to say it to her and to anyone who believes in the same ideas as her You are trying in vain, just like someone who wants to empty the sea water with a bucket. You will succeed in taking a quantity of water perhaps, but you will definitely fail in the end because the matter is beyond your capacity, and even beyond the capacity of all human beings. Even if we all stand with you, and even if the people most hostile to you believe in your ideas and follow your doctrine, that will not change the religion of God at all. God will bring a people who believe in His Book and do His command. People whose he loves them and they love Him. Indeed, you may suddenly find yourselves Muslims who believe in this religion. Because you are simply standing in the face of God, the Most High, the Mighty, who has everything in His hand and who is responsible for preserving this religion. God Almighty said, 鈥� But they plan, and Allah plans. And Allah is the best of planners鈥�