Voices against violence sound off

I recall her as a plump, upbeat middle-aged mom. I met her in India. She lived in a nice house and had a comfortable life. I've known few people more courageous.
Her name was Rajinder Kauer, and she did a rare thing: She spoke out against religious militants of her own faith. She did this despite repeated threats to kill her.
I'll tell you in a moment why I'm bringing her up today. But first, her background:
Rajinder was a prominent Sikh during a volatile time in India. Extremists of her faith wanted their own republic in the country's Punjab province. The government cracked down. And, in 1984, two Sikhs assassinated Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The Punjab was full of violence when I traveled there in 1987. There were terrorist killings. But few moderate Sikhs dared denounce the militants.
Rajinder Kauer was an exception.
She called for an end to the violence, first as a member of parliament, and later, with a magazine.
Extremists stole bundles of her publication and torched them.
"The burning of magazines," she wrote, "will not quiet me down."
Rajinder's philosophy
When I met her, she wore a ritual knife that she said was a symbol of courage and self-protection. She was clearly well-off, so I asked why she didn't just enjoy life.
She told me that the measure of who you are is whether you stand up to evil, especially among your own kind. The best hope for stopping religious terror, she said, was for people of that faith to speak against it.
She wondered why so few do it.
I bring her up today because I have been wondering the same thing.
To use a mild word, it has been frustrating to see planes being flown into buildings, riots being staged over cartoons and videos of innocent hostages being beheaded by Muslims invoking Allah.
But there is another frustration, perhaps as great: that so few within are speaking out against all this.
Muslim woman speaks out
Finally, one such voice seems to have emerged. It's a woman who even reminds me of Rajinder Kauer.
She, too, is a middle-aged lady, a 47-year-old psychiatrist from Syria, raised as Muslim and now living in Los Angeles.
She is Dr. Wafa Sultan, and a few weeks ago, she was interviewed on Al-Jazeera TV. In Arabic, she denounced the Islamists, with words so clear and courageous she has become an international figure.
"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions," Sultan said. "It is a clash between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."
The interviewer asked if she was saying that an enlightened West was being attacked by backward, ignorant Muslims.
Sultan didn't mince words.
"Yes," she said. "That is what I mean."
She went so far as to hold up the Islamists' archenemy as a model.
"The Jews have come from the tragedy of the Holocaust and forced the world to respect them -- with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling," said Sultan. "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church.
"Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results."
She went on to denounce Islamists for wanting to kill those who disagree with them. Of course, in response, many now have threatened to kill Sultan.
It's sad for me to have to note that, a few months after I spoke with Rajinder Kauer, terrorists shot her to death.
But in the end, voices like hers, on all sides, did make a difference.
During that same trip to India, I talked with Ashwini Kumar, a prominent Hindu who was a member of the International Olympic Committee.
He was known for having once, with carbine rifle in hand, stood off a Hindu mob that was trying to kill Sikhs in his neighborhood. Kumar told me he would not stand for his own faith turning to that kind of terror. His example made a difference, too.
Today, India has a Muslim president, a Sikh prime minister and a Hindu foreign minister. Far more than when I was there, the faiths coexist in peace.
Despite the death threats, Wafa Sultan told The New York Times, there is no going back. She will continue to speak out.
May others join her.
Patinkin writes for the Providence Journal. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.