Criminal Harassment of a Muslim Predator

"That kind of conversation [obscene calls] happened so often I couldn’t even count. I told him, ‘You need to go to a psychiatrist'."
"I was really shocked [to be found guilty] because all the witnesses said clearly I was not the one who transmitted the material."
"I don’t really get what was defamatory [charges her predatory boss lodged against her]. It is you yourself telling people about your bad behavior [in recorded messages of his unwanted, bullying, lewd and intrusive calls to her]."
"A lot of women still feel they are under pressure from their bosses and their bosses can do whatever they want."
"For me, justice seems so far away."
Nuril Maknun, Lombok Island, Indonesia

Nuril Maknun after she received a six-month jail term for violating a controversial law against spreading indecent material, in Mataram on Lombok island on November 16, 2018. (PIKONG/AFP/Getty Images)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"As long as the law does not change, women will forever be closed off and will never want to report it [sexual harassment]."
"Especially if you look at Nuril’s case. You are the victim, but then you are the one who is put into prison."
"If the case review does not provide justice, then she can apply for clemency to the president. Once she has applied for clemency, that’s where I come in."
Indonesian lawyer, Joko Jumadi

A panel of three judges saw fit to sentence 40-year-old, mother of three Nuril Maknun -- a bookkeeper at a school in Mataram on Lombok Island, Indonesia -- to prison in a six-month sentence. She must also pay a fine levied against her that amounts to about $35,000. Indonesian jurisprudence does not look kindly on women who soil the public character of an Indonesian man, even if that man had hounded this woman with repeated, insistent calls that she listen to his obscene talk of his sex life and agree to have a sexual dalliance with him.

Nuril Maknun did nothing to attract those calls and the lurid monologue that was unleashed on her by the man who was the principal of the Senior High School Seven where she worked as a bookkeeper. She informed her husband of the harassment that began in 2012. Eventually she took to recording those calls and had someone of her acquaintance listen to them. The obscene calls were downloaded to an electronic device. Which led the principal, whose name is simply Muslim -- quite fitting -- to declare himself to have been defamed.

The woman had shared the content of the calls from the principal in hopes of saving her own reputation from the rumours that were circulating that she was having an affair with the man she loathed. To convince her husband that the rumours were untrue, and to inform another teacher of the very same thing; she was innocent of leading the man on, had no interest in having any intimate relations with him, and wanted only to be left alone, she made the recordings.

A lawsuit ensued and an investigation and eventually a legal battle, in 2015 when Muslim, discovering the presence of the recordings reported the bookkeeper to the police claiming that his comments shared by Nuril Maknun with others without his authorization must be interpreted at defamation. That resulted in imprisonment for Nuril Maknun for a month while an investigation ensued. She was subsequently acquitted of the charge, but an appeal was filed by prosecutors.

When the panel of three judges sentenced her to six months in prison and a substantial fine, she fought for justice, evidently believing it could be achieved, and her case was brought to the Supreme Court. There, another panel of judges denied her request for a review of the verdict. She now faces the reality that should her family be unable to pay the $35,000 fine imposed upon her for defamation of Muslim's character, her prison sentence could be expanded.

"We are concerned about the impact of this decision because it opens a door for perpetrators of sexual violence to criminalize victims", stated Ade Wahyudin, head of Legal Aid Foundation in Indonesia. Bearing in mind that the superior Indonesian court handed down their ruling this week that it is she who should be punished, not her aggressor, on the basis that sharing the recordings was akin to distributing indecent material, given their content.

"If later she does not find justice ... she can request clemency to the president", declared President Joko Widodo, urging the woman to seek a judicial review. Justice in Indonesia finds women guilty of the acts of conscienceless predatory men. But as an act of public compassion, the president of the country is willing to respond positively to a request for clemency. This is the plight of women living in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.

Nuril Maknun, a bookkeeper in Indonesia, recorded one of her boss’s phone calls after facing months of propositions and sexual remarks from him. But she has been the one to pay.    CreditRichard C. Paddock/The New York Times

Avoiding Islamophobia

"We're still waiting for a march against honour killings, child marriages, polygamy, sex slavery or female genital mutilation."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Q. Nomania (Muslim Reform Movement)

"If one finds white male sexism intolerable, then one should find all male sexism just as intolerable. Excusing men of colour, Muslims, immigrants or men living in non-Western societies for bad behaviour toward women is an expression of the bigotry of low expectations."
"The result of this mindset is that Christianity is criticized for every misstep against women but Islam is protected from the glare of scrutiny."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ex-Muslim Somalian, writer, activist

"What I describe as a 'faux feminism' has arisen in the last 30 years, a postmodern and post-colonial feminism that passionately condemns Christianity and Judaism but dares not critique religiously supremacist Islam for this same reason."
"[Today's Western feminists] are too nervous about being called Islamophobes, racists or colonialists] to dedicate themselves to rescue of victims of rape from Islamic communities]."
"In recent years, I fear that the 'peace and love' crowd in the West has refused to understand how Islamism endangers Western values and lives, beginning with our commitment to women's rights and human rights. The Islamists who are beheading civilians, stoning Muslim women to death, jailing Muslim dissidents, and bombing civilians on every continent are now moving among us both in the East and in the West. While some feminist leaders and groups have come to publicize the atrocities against women in the Islamic world, they have not tied it to any feminist foreign policy. Women's studies programs should have been the first to sound the alarm. They do not. More than four decades after I was a virtual prisoner in Afghanistan, I realize how far the Western feminist movement has to go."
Phyllis Chesler, American feminist

Women wearing the Chador. Getty Images

The campaign by women fed up with their secondary, unentitled place in society engaged in a protracted campaign to shame society with the understanding that in institutionalizing a social contract that diminished the stature and the intelligence and opportunities of women, not only were women and their children suffering great harm, but society itself, like those it targeted, would never reach its full aspirational potential. Equal-pay legislation, marital rights, equal access to education, opening up politics and the professions to women has enabled Western societies to move forward and grow.

All of which have been a tremendous benefit to the societies which finally accepted equality for both genders in every aspect of social, political, and working life. Yet, since those victories were established, with feminists forever cautious that nothing occur to set back the advances that took so many years to accomplish, it is women in the West who have benefited, not women universally. There were overtures to some societies to improve the lives of women virtually held in bondage to patriarchal societies who were condemned for the strictures they placed on women's lives.

But the issue of women living under Shariah law in Islamic countries where it is traditional and a vital part of the culture to assert female inferiority to the place of men has been consistently and deliberately overlooked. Women who ascribe great value in the feminist ideal and the men who support them have hesitated to criticize those cultural practices that dominate and repress women. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fierce critic of Islam and Asra Q. Nomania, co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement recently called upon western feminists to re-adjust their focus.

Noting the women's march across the United States decrying the ascension of a crude sex predator to the presidency of the United States, they declared their dissatisfaction, yet while bringing attention to a man whose exploits as a braggart and a bully has brought infamy to the office of the president, pay no attention whatever to the plight of women and girls living in Islamic societies, both abroad and within Western countries where the cultural and religious traditions that have kept women as disadvantage chattels were brought as baggage to be practised in the West.

Feminists, so swift to denounce Western men for not recognizing women as equals and respecting them for the same traits and capabilities that men gain respect for, have chosen to overlook the attitudes and behaviours of Muslim men. Are they regarded as underdogs and therefore to be pitied should they be deprived of "their last source of pride: their domination over their women"? For this is what Islam views as a man's 'honour', that complete control of a woman be exerted. Any Muslim woman's father, brother, uncle, husband, son or brother-in-law has explicit control over her, dominating her life as seen fit lest family honour be shamed.



Phyllis Chesler's feminism dates back to the 1960s and 70s, when she campaigned with the National Organization for Women and allied organizations with the understanding that they were meant to support women everywhere. That has changed. In lock-step with the emergence of Islam as a factor and a growing one by leaps and bounds in the world of the West thanks to rampant immigration and migration. Now, Western societies are aware of child marriages, of female genital mutilation, of social forces that ghettoize Muslim women, of honour killings taking place within Muslim communities.

The heart of Islam beats hard for the misogyny they feel is the correct social order of relations between the sexes; women are not to be trusted, and must be firmly held in place under the heavy fist of a man, and if she requires physical punishment to emphasize her obligations, that is readily arranged. At one time feminists organized rape-crisis counselling centres and helped to bring in new rape laws; even in India which has a long tradition of violence against women has brought in new rape laws though violence has scarcely abated, so engrained is it in the culture of male entitlement.

Now, Phyllis Chesler hopes to influence feminists of their moral duty to advance human rights to aid girls and women "who are being beaten, stalked and threatened with death by their own families because they refuse to veil or to marry their first cousin". She feels there is an obligation to erect shelters as havens from honour-based violence, all the cultural 'norms' of Islamic society imported with immigration to the West. To each thing there is a season and a time for everything....

Muslim women in Amsterdam, wearing different styles of veils

Yet Another Islamophobe, (sigh)

"[The Muslim School of Montreal was grooming] fundamental activists. [Offering a model of a society] where men are probably going to commit honour crimes against their sisters."
"[The school was institutionalizing] sexual apartheid [and as such was] very far from the values of our [Quebec] society."
Djemila Benhabib, author, feminist, critic of Islamist fundamentalism

Djemila Benhabib says she doesn't regret likening the Muslim Schools of Montreal to militant Islamic training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Radio-Canada)

"Certainly these remarks are severe and could have been hurtful. However, they have a place in a democratic society like ours."
"Everyone must be allowed to express themselves as freely as possible on these questions."
"[Djemila Benhabib's remarks] are at the heart of freedom of expression's raison d'etre, that is, to favour active participation in debate on subjects of public interest."
Superior court Justice Carole Hallee, Montreal

"I was devastated, appalled, horrified, insulted and worried. How was it possible that someone who had never set foot inside our school could make such damaging and insulting statements?"
Ahmed Khebir, president, Muslim School of Montreal board of directors

The Ecoles Musulmanes de Montreal is suing the secularist author for $95,000 in a defamation lawsuit. © EMMS website

Mr. Khebir chooses to overlook the reality that anyone may now access websites on the Internet to form their own conclusions from the very statements pertaining to the site and purpose such websites advertise of their own initiative. And when Ms. Benhabib found herself provoked with interest after perusing a brochure that the school produces which featured female students wearing hijabs, further investigation on their website informed her that the curriculum was heavy on memorization of Qur'anic passages.

One of which, evidently waxed poetic over the beautiful virgins in Paradise, at the service of male faithful choosing to believe in an afterlife where non-believers are consigned to the fires of hell while the faithful are wooed by nobile beauties. Subsequently, in an interview on a radio program, she made her statements that caused such personal and religious anguish to the school board that it felt justified in bringing a lawsuit against the woman, suing her for $95,000.

Her statements linking the school's curriculum to military camps, he insisted elicited fear within the board that an anti-Muslim backlash from the public was certain to erupt by fanatics who hate Islam. However, the justice hearing the case found logic and truth absent in the credibility of Mr. Khebir's statement of injured protest. The school, she pointed out, presented no evidence of reputational suffering resulting from that interview.

She did find acceptability to Ms. Benhabib's reasonable explanation that when she uttered the statement relating to military camps it was her intention to describe a rigid military mindset, and not reference to camps involved in terrorist training. Furthermore, Justice Hallee stated that there was no support in reality of the contention that enrolment dropped s a result of what the school board considered pernicious slander waged against it.

Her considered judgement was that Ms. Benhabib had not slandered the school or the school's students. She was merely discussing issues of contention in the wearing of the hijab and rote memorization of Qur'anic religious passages. "In this case, the court acknowledges the very important role of freedom of speech and freedom of expression", noted her lawyer, Marc-Andre Nadon.

When Patriarchy Prevails

"He was like a kid in a candy shop. [Here], he could speak Kurdish, he could write Kurdish -- he was put in prison for [that] in Iran -- so when he came [to Canada] he was excited and contacted people from all over the world who would support Kurdish culture and identity. And some of those people were pro-PKK".
Shirish Chotalia, lawyer

"It sounds silly now [when she first met him], but I was swept off my feet. He was charismatic. He had a presence."                                                                          "I didn't want them [her children] to go [trip with their father], but my legal bills were piling up and with one successful trip under his belt the courts would have been inclined to favour Saren."

"I didn't think they [PKK Kurds] would give me my kids that day. But I thought they would at least recognize m humanity as a mother."
"I want Canada to do something that we don't often do as Canadians, and that's flex a little muscle." There are four Canadian kids being held captive in a war zone and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Canada has a lot of clout in this region right now with the Kurds. It is time to use it to bring my kids safetly home."
"I'm not going to stop until my kids are home."
AlisonJeffrey/Azer, Comox, British Columbia

Saren Azer, shown in the photo from 2002, is alleged to have abducted his four children, after they failed to return from a trip to Europe this past summer. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press) A Canada-wide warrant has been issued for Saren Azer, also known as Salahaddin Mahmudi-Azer, after he failed to return with his four children from a trip to Germany

In human relations, emotions forever trump reason. And we, intelligent creatures that we are, fail to recognize the vital importance of concordance in intimate relations that a shared culture can bring; we give its dominance short shrift at our own risk. A risk that goes unrecognized because judgement is clouded by passion.

There are many inter-religious marriages that succeed. And many that do not, with tragic consequences. Needless to say it is not necessarily and generally mixed cultures failing to meet in moderation that causes failed marriages, since personalities, mental health and a patriarchal social contract also play their part in the ruination of an emotional bond sundered.

Non-Muslim women, however, should be aware that in matching themselves with a man who has been culturally and religiously inculcated with the belief that women's role in life is one utterly subservient to men they risk all that may be of value to their own lives. Men often defy court orders, to abduct their children, but women also do this. In the case of a Canadian woman who married a Kurdish Muslim man and bore and raised four children with him, there is no contest in Islam over which of the parents is endowed with the 'right' assured by the Almighty over custodial ownership of the children.

A Canadian court may have given her sole custody of her children, then under constant petition shared custody enabling her husband to take the four children against her wishes and theirs to his country of origin in the Middle East where conflict rages, but Canadian law does not extend to Middle Eastern countries where the law of Sharia holds sway held to be an all-encompassing law handed down directly from Allah to the Prophet Mohammad; not paltry, insignificant man-made laws of democratic countries.

Now a woman originally from Alberta, Alison Jeffrey, is without her children, Sharvahn 11, Rojevahn 9, Dersim 7, and Mitan 3, and they are with their father Saren Azer in northern Iraq, among the Kurdish PKK, considered a terrorist group whom their father supports. Officially, as far as Canada is concerned, Saren Azer -- originally a refugee from Iran but under suspicion by Canada's intelligence agency as a member of the PKK who eventually achieved Canadian citizenship -- is now a fugitive for having abducted those four children. Canadian courts gave him leave, as a respected medical practitioner, a known community organizer and humanitarian, to take his children abroad briefly under certain conditions; that being maintaining contact with their mother and returning the children as scheduled to their her.

It is six months since the children were abducted, their whereabouts uncertain, although intelligence has it that they are in the mountains of Iraq in a small town in an area dominated by Kurds, in a semi-autonomous region. Their mother, after coming across one roadblock after another to energize the Government of Canada to exert its political-diplomatic muscle to persuade Kurdish allies in the war against ISIL to have the children returned to Canada, travelled herself to Iraq, in an attempt to track down her children.

She met, as a convert to Islam, with the village elder in Qandil to explain her situation, and found him understanding enough; unlike Arab Muslims, the Kurds have a reputation of treating women as equal to men. He directed her to where she could deliver her hopeful message appealing to the better nature of Kurds, to speak with PKK militants. Her appeals were meaningless to them, since her husband has taken up his lot with their struggle for independence, has worked in Kurdish refugee camps to bring relief, and she returned to Canada, heavy-hearted with her mission a failure.

Mother Alison Azer, holds Meitan as her other children Sharvahn, left to right, Dersim and Rojevahn pose for a family photo taken before they disappeared. (Alison Azer/The Canadian Press)

A New Era Dawns in Afghanistan

"I don't do politics. [I am] a counsellor ... a listening post."
"I seem to have answered a need that was there. I think previous first ladies were not accessible. And I am accessible."
"What I've said from the beginning is that I am going to try to help all the vulnerable populations in Afghanistan -- and to a certain extent that's the majority of Afghanistan."
"One of my roles is to tell the world that they are very strong women [Afghan women] indeed, living in very challenging conditions, showing a lot of resilience, a lot of resourcefulness, and that they need to be recognized for that, not for their weakness, their alleged weakness."
"The whole fight to reduce violence against women is within the fight of reducing (all) violence, period. It is within the process of trying to bring back peace to this country."
Rula Ghani, Afghan First Lady

Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, right and his wife Rula Ghani, left, attend a campaign rally for women on the occasion of the International Women's Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, March, 9, 2014. Ten Afghan presidential candidates are campaigning in the presidential election scheduled for April. (AP Photo/Massoud Hossaini)

The wife of President Ashraf Ghani is not presenting herself within her country as would a typical Afghan woman, a quiet, unseen and unnecessarily modest woman never to be seen in public. Her husband, President Ghani  took the unusual step of introducing his wife to the public, both internal and external, during his inaugural speech eight months ago. Since then Rula Ghani has attended public events beside her husband.

Although she steers clear of politics, leaving that to her husband, a man whom Afghans in a spirit of hope and renewal elected in a free democratic vote despite threats from the Taliban and grumbles from the Islamist orthodox, she speaks before audiences on topics relating to current issues. She also listens, carefully, to what people have to say. She receives them in a meeting room, enabling ordinary Afghans to air their grievances and problems, seeking her advice.

Her predecessor, wife of Hamid Karzai, was spoken of as the "invisible first lady". Not that invisibility of 'first ladies' of Islamic presidents is unusual. Zinat Quraishi Karzai once spoke her belief in a rare interview that the time had not yet arrived in Afghanistan when its people were prepared to accept the presence of a first lady alongside her presidential husband.

In this Monday, May 25 photo, Afghan first lady Rula Ghani speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the presidential palace in Kabul. (AP)

Political antagonists of her husband's presidency claimed that neither Rula Ghani nor her children were Afghan or Muslim and as such unacceptable to the people of Afghanistan. She had been quoted as expressing her approval of France's ban on the burqa or the niqab in public. That occasioned a ferocious backlash from both conservative Islamists and religious figures in the country.

Lebanese by birth, but Afghan by ethnic heritage, she speaks fluent English, French, Arabic and Dari. She was brought up in a Christian family, meeting her future husband at a university in Beirut. Upon marriage, they moved to the United States and lived there for 30 years where she studied journalism at Columbia University and had two children. Their daughter is an artist in Brooklyn, their son an economist living in the U.S.

They are Afghans, but they are also cosmopolitan in their nature, experience and outlook, a combination that the backward country badly needs to help in the process of  bringing it into the 21st Century. In the aftermath of 30 years of war, the society that was primitive in many ways had also become brutalized. And in such societies women are the most vulnerable among the population.

The "horrible, barbaric tragedy" of Farkhunda, a young Islamic scholar who was beaten to death at a Kabul shrine by a mob of men after being accused of burning a Koran, horrified her. Four defendants were sentenced to death and eight of them to 16 years in prison over that atrocity. Eleven police were charged with dereliction of duty for not intervening to prevent the death of the young woman, their sentence one year in jail.

Afghan protesters demand justice for Farkhunda, the woman beaten to death by a mob in Kabul in March. Photograph: Hedayatullah Amid/EPA

The case, said Rula Ghani has "shaken the nation". Its barbarism, and the fact that among the crowd of hundreds of men no one intervened to stop the mutilation and murder of a defenceless young woman on a rumour of having defiled the Islamic holy book "really opened up the eyes of people ... we don't want to live in a society in which violence is the rule", she said in her calm way.

The Liberation of Souls

The Taliban represent an outgrowth of Wahaabi Islam, a strict, fundamentalist view of Islam that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia successfully proliferated through its funding of madrassas through its oil riches and its fierce dedication to their brand of unforgivingly-Islamist salafism. Other fundamentalist jihadi groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Boko Haram, Hamas and al Shabaab also reflect Wahaabi Islamism.

Just as in Saudi Arabia women may not venture into the public arena other than in the company of a male family member, and even then, fully veiled and body-concealed; may not drive a car; may not travel without a husband's or father's permission, may not vote, may not be in the presence of a male outside the family unit, and other massive indignities as fully mature independent-minded individuals, the women of Afghanistan had been forbidden to gather for celebrations or parties, work for a living, listen to music, dance, along with all the above-mentioned strictures imposed on them by a clearly misogynistic society.


Under the Taliban women could not be medically treated by a male physician. And nor were women permitted to have treatment in a hospital that catered to men; they had to have their own under-funded hospital. Moreover, the women who catered to them in the health professions had to themselves -- even surgeons conducting operations -- be fully burka-clad.

Under the post-Taliban Afghan government of Hamid Karzai, a demand by Shia Muslim Afghans that a law be promulgated whereby women's role would be defined in a marriage as "readiness for sex and not leaving the house without the husband's permission"; in effect the men would have "their sharia rights" under Islamic law, and women under that law would effectively be pawns of a society whose Medieval-era enslavement of women the former president enshrined into law.





There is now a new government and a new president, but women's rights in Afghanistan have not even begun to see the light of day. They remain subordinated to men, denied fundamental human rights. They cannot even be seen at a gravesite to grieve, let alone have the right to drive, vote or run for political office. But they can now vote. Even so, in 2011 Afghanistan was singled out by a study undertaken by the Thomson-Reuters Foundation as the worst place in the world for women in recognition of high violence levels, poor health care and poverty.

None of these constraints stops some Afghan women from excelling in professions which in the previous decades have been off limits to women. Even though however, lip service is paid by the government to women's rights, a crowd of men visiting the Shah-Do Shamshira mosque in downtown Kabul became a ravening mob out for blood in mid-March as they beat and stomped a student of Islam, Farkhunda, 28 years of age, to death on the basis of a rumour spread by a mosque cleric that she had burned a Koran. She was, in fact, a Koranic scholar, teaching Islam to other women.

Afghan women's rights activists carry the coffin of Farkhunda during her funeral in Kabul Photo: AP Photo/Massoud Hossain

And she had expressed her outrage at the fact that mosque clerics were predatory money-grubbers, convincing poor women they must pay them for services. It was her outspokenness that led to her horrible death shown in photographs and videos of the rampage that ended with the young woman run over by a truck, dumped on the banks of the Kabul River and then lighted on fire. Her beautiful face bruised and ravaged, her body broken and mangled in death enraged Afghan women.

Women who are outstanding Afghan professionals from the fields of activism, journalism, sociology, theatre, photography, medicine, political science, gathered to implore Farkhunda's family to allow them the honour of bearing her simple wooden coffin to the cemetery where she was to be buried, and the family acceded to their request, a cultural, social anomaly. Amid mass protests at the horrible assault against the young women and the fact that not one man moved a finger to save her, and nor did Afghan police make an effort to extract her from the rampaging male mob, her coffin was carried in dignity and honour to her final resting place.

"I was just  crying. It was a long trek and I injured myself but all my energy was focused on giving Farkhunda a respectable burial. It was the first time I realized my real power and told myself that I'm breaking the boundaries of tradition", said Yeayish, a medical student who along with other outraged women carried the coffin to the Pansad Family Cemetery in Kabul, stopping traffic as they snaked through the streets.

And then, a cleric appeared at the burial site at the cemetery, a man named Mohammad Ayaz Nianzi.

His statement had been recorded on video before the funeral in support of the attackers of the woman being buried. That any woman desecrating a Koran deserved to die. The woman who had managed the event, gathering others to lend themselves to honouring the dead young Koranic scholar shouted at him: "You are not allowed to do the janaza, the funeral prayer Leave!"

Leaving Islam

"I just couldn't agree with most of the stuff, especially with the treatment of women -- that got me out of Islam."
"They [her family] think I'm a bad Muslim. But I doubt if they'd ever think I'm an ex-Muslim. That would be the end. He [father] would never accept my apostasy."
"There was a lot of pressure to be completely religious. [Punishment followed transgressions]...There was a tear in a page [Koran] and my father assumed I'd ripped it. He got my hand -- and put it on the stove."
"I just filled in two bags of my papers and stuff and told my brother, 'I have to take out the trash', and there was a cab waiting for me and I went straight to the shelter."
Halima, 18, Ontario biology student

"As a kid I really believed with all my heart, but my faith just kind of went away. It flickered out. I stopped feeling the presence of God. And that's when I took seriously the possibility of Islam being wrong."
"There really isn't a defence for any of it [religion]."
"I realized that I don't want to stick to just one way of looking at the world."
"I wanted to do my part for the apostate community, I guess. To normalize the process of apostacizing ... To say, 'I'm an ex-Muslim, you are not alone, you are not the only apostate in the world' There's such a taboo surrounding apostasy in Islam."
Zain, 27, Pakistani Canadian

"There's great animosity towards ex-Muslims. You're treated like a traitor, just for not believing the same thing. And you're expected to keep your mouth shut and not criticize the religion."
"I wanted to belong [to be a good Muslim]. I wanted to feel connected to my roots. I wanted to have a certain identity. And I really wanted to believe."
"Men can date, have sex outside of marriage can marry somebody not of their religion -- they can pretend to have their wives convert -- they can go through the motions. But if we want to be free, we have to leave. There is no middle ground for women."
Kiran Opal, founding-member EXMNA: Ex-Muslims of North America

It certainly is not Islam alone that prefers to have its faithful remain faithful. Other religions are quite the same in that respect, as are other cultures representing ethnic groups, as well as ideologies. Most view those that leave the fold as traitors to a common faith, belief, cause and work to impose isolation and suffering on those who dare to withdraw from or reject those sacraments that held them to the community of faith, cause or belief.

In many faiths, the result of some intrepid soul risking being rejected by those they are emotionally closest to, of bringing shame to them from within the community is to be viewed with incredulous dismay disdain and dismissal, so that hearts are hardened toward them and just as they have chosen to reject what is of inestimable value to those who have given themselves over to the religion, culture or ideology, they find themselves alone in an unfamiliar, desolate place of mind, struggling to find themselves.

Most religions, however, do not view those they know as apostates as no longer worthy of life. God, after all, regardless of the religion that claims the Almighty, happens also to be the fount of life, the maker of life. So how much sense does it make for a religious authority to delegate to itself the taking of life? Yet some countries devoted to their fundamentalist version of Islam -- a growing phenomenon all over the world of Islam -- take it upon themselves to sentence those who leave Islam to death.

It is not only the religious authorities that pronounce capital punishment upon those of their citizens who are incautious enough to make it be known that they will no longer live as Muslims, but the extended families of those who remove themselves from the Islamic orbit. For women, breaking away from the tradition of 'modesty' under Sharia that requires them to be subservient to men, and who have little defence against rape when they are held to have led men astray, their lives may be forfeit to the Islamic charge of having defiled Islamic precepts of female purity.

For Halima, the young Ontario biology student whose strict Muslim family initiated a process to have her marry a 50-year-old Yemenite and enable his re-settlement in Canada, that constituted the final break. She could not envision herself at 18 married to a 50-year-old man she did not know, and living a traditional life of an obedient Muslim woman; she chose freedom and opportunity. "Come home -- or you'll regret it", her father wrote to her, and Halima would know very well what that regret might constitute; "honour killings" by family members of those who transgress have made their mark.

When Zain with his Pakistani background, born of immigrant parents to Britain, pursued philosophy, the study of Friedrich Nietzsche freed his mind of doubts and by age 19 he no longer believed. He made online contact with a young woman in Canada and they planned to elope. When his parents discovered his plan to marry a woman who was not Muslim they attempted to convince him to reject this path. But he had left the faith and at age 20 left Britain for Canada, and there married the young Canadian woman.

It is doubtful he will ever be reconciled with his parents. He fled Britain to find his destiny in Canada, outside Islam, and with a young woman not of his ethnic group, his culture and the religion he was born into. And now that he has been very public with his apostate status his extended family became aware from an online testimony in aid of others like himself, and they took it upon themselves as pious Muslims to "collectively shame[d] my parents for being bad parents", leaving them socially isolated. Forgiveness is not to be found in that dead zone.

A young Bengali-British woman interviewed for Simon Cottee's soon-to-be-published The Apostates: When Muslims Leave Islam, spoke of the shame and self-hate experienced by those vulnerable to being shunned and cast out and held to be less than human for their choice to leave Islam. "It was rough and I could barely pull myself together ... because I knew they wouldn't accept me", leaving her "lost, as though I don't know who I am anymore".

Enter a support group established in Toronto and in Washington in 2013 for ex-Muslims to find comfort and companionship within the emotional embrace of others like themselves who mustered the courage to find their own way in life, outside Islam. EXMNA: Ex-Muslims of North America was set up to help these rejected souls meet others like themselves. The group states its opposition to avoidance of religious criticism.

Its motto is "No Bigotry and No Apologism", aptly describing their mission to oppose those who fall in line behind accusations of "Islamophobia"; insisting that moral relativism is a false yardstick by which to measure Islam. Kiran Opal, one of the group's founders, experienced doubts about Islam and Sharia, but it was not until her family brought candidates for marriage within the faith to her attention that she realized she would have to be responsible for herself to escape the trap.

Kiran Opal in her complaint overlooks one important thing; when men marry outside Islam, they seek to convert their wives to Islam, and that usually solves the problem. Islam is a prosetylizing religion, it has always, and continues to, focus on converting non-Muslims to Islam. This represents an important obligation due Islam by its faithful. Women, on the other hand, deciding to marry a non-Muslim do not necessarily observe the need to convert their husbands because they are isolated and rejected to begin with, for marrying outside the faith.

She, like others who leave Islam, know that in making that decision they leave behind much more than just a religious belief. Islam is a complete way of life, a social, political cultural structure whose strictures are well defined, with immutable expectations from its adherents. Leaving Islam means leaving family, friends, and all that is familiar in life. Leaving those who decide they can no longer live within its confines with guilt and indecision and a profound sense of loss; all that was ever familiar and dear to them sacrificed to achieve their individuality and an altogether different future.

Britain's Shameful Conscience

"There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone. Girls as young as eleven were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators."
"The collective failures of political and officer leadership were blatant. From the beginning, there was growing evidence that child sexual exploitation was a serious problem in Rotherham."
"Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."
Alexis Jay, author, independent report

"Cultural sensitivities should never stand in the way of protecting children."
"It is hard to imagine the damage caused to victims who were preyed upon with almost impunity over many years, because of a reluctance to comprehend or address what was widely happening."
John Cameron, head of helpline, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

"[Rotherham victims: They were the ones with troubled family backgrounds, with] a history of domestic violence, parental addiction, and in some cases serious mental health problems. A significant number of the victims had a history of child neglect and/or sexual abuse when they were younger. Some had a desperate need for attention and affection. [A third were already known to social services because of child protection and child neglect, domestic violence and school truancy.]"

"I didn't want the story to be true because it made me deeply uncomfortable. [However] I could not escape a nagging feeling that I hadn't done my job properly [in 2003 in Leeds; stories of young teenage girls targeted by 'Asian men']. I'd looked the other way rather than sought to establish the truth."
"[His conscience nagged by 'strikingly similar' stories from towns and cities across northern England and the Midlands]. It was always more than one man in the dock. And it was hard not to notice that ... the convicted men in each case had something else in common. They invariably had Muslim names."
Andrew Norfolk, reporter, The Times

The report found 1400 children were abused in Rotherham from 1997 to 2013. Photo: Getty Images

What was widely happening was the gross sexual and violent abuse of defenseless children by predators whose success in their venture went unopposed, leaving them with the correct impression that because they were of Pakistani origin no one would dare confront them for fear of social backlash in a country that has become too 'liberal' in its multicultural consciousness to 'stand in judgement' of violent crime committed by minorities.

Rotherham, a borough of 250,000 people, sits in England's industrial north. Photo: Getty Images

And not just any minorities, but those of southeast Asian descent, Muslims whose takeover of parts of Great Britain is so complete that their cultural heritage predominates leaving them to feel quite at home in their demands for Sharia law and unquestioning surrender to their very particular entitlements. So the "collective failures" by authorities over a period of sixteen years to protect children from the gang violence and sexual predation of criminals was left unchecked.

This, even while in some media reports were being circulated of these despicable crimes against children and no one in authority appeared ever to take notice. Not that the abused children and their frightened families never complained to authorities. More that those in public office chose not to react in fear of exposing themselves to charges of racism.

Those accusations seemingly more to be avoided than to act in defence of the defenceless. Britain does have a well-earned reputation for the lax manner in which it chooses to give safe haven to child predators ranging from public figures to these gangs.

Ms. Jay, formerly chief social work advisor to the government of Scotland, informed the British Broadcasting System that she was "very shocked" by what was revealed to her when she investigated what had been happening in Rotherham. From her understanding that police "regarded many child victims with contempt", to the first of the reports being "effectively suppressed" because senior officers chose not to place any trust in the data.

So, in a town of some 250,000 individuals as many as 1,400 children were beaten, raped and trafficked between 1997 and 2013. Blame points directly now to mostly British Pakistanis who trafficked children to other towns and cities in northern England; the children abducted, beaten and completely intimidated. Five men were jailed in 2010 convicted of grooming teens for sex. And from that time forward the full spectrum of the sex trade in young children was finally revealed.

Implicating Pakistani criminal rings plying their trade in Rochdale, Derby and Oxford, as well as the now-infamous Rotherham, England.

Raheel Raza: In the Muslim world, silence falls

Raheel Raza, National Post | August 13, 2014 | Last Updated: Aug 13 6:45 AM ET

AFP/Getty Images    Syrian refugees arrive at the Masnaa border crossing on the Lebanon-Syria border on August 7, 2014. 

 

In Saturday’s National Post, Rex Murphy asks why there’s so much outrage over Israel’s response to Hamas rocket fire, but the same activists are silent about atrocities committed in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. In the same edition, letter-writer Al Lando argues that the people who are “attacking Jewish citizens, firebombing synagogues and launching protests against all things Jewish, in the name solidarity with Palestinian victims” seem to have no objection to the “200,000 innocent non-combatants [who] are in danger of genocide” at the hands of ISIS.

Rex Murphy: How the specious concept of ‘proportionality’ became code for Israel-bashing

Even other terrorists shun ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The brutal, merciless Sunni terrorist group has been rampaging through town after town along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Now they are besieging the “infidels” known as the Yazidi, a Kurdish ethnic subgroup with an obscure religion all their own. About 40,000 Yazidi have fled their homes and now are encamped on Mount Sinjur without either food or water. Within the Muslim Middle East, the Yazidi are a tiny people, easily extinguished. Western activists throw around the word “genocide” all too lightly. But atop that mountain, the word might become grimly appropriate.

And yet, the advance of ISIS and its horrors has inspired no campaigns of outrage in the streets of the West. No marches in Toronto or Paris. “Proportionality,” a piece of international legal jargon thrown around promiscuously as a shorthand to indict Israel for its (allegedly) excessive reprisals against Hamas’ (allegedly) insignificant provocations, apparently does not govern the scale of protestors’ response to the world’s many injustices.

Indeed, today’s global events seem surreal and fictional in their evilness. The Yazidis of Iraq are facing genocide. Boko Haram and the Taliban continue their reign of terror: Horrifying, brutal, cruel and inhuman terror from beheadings to rape. Where is the outrage in the Muslim world over these atrocities?

I ask this as a Muslim activist who’s exhausted, not from defending my faith, but from asking the same question over and over again for the past two decades. When I asked this question in the aftermath of 9/11, I was criticized for being a “fear-monger.” Following the 7/7 terrorist attacks in the U.K., I called on the larger Muslim community to “wake up and smell the coffee before it’s too late.” For this, I was labelled a traitor. Later — as I uncovered and exposed the subversive agendas of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah — I was labelled a heretic.

Today, ISIS is indiscriminately killing women and children in Iraq. These terrorists want women to undergo female genital mutilation and cover their faces — essentially they want to push them back into the dark ages. At the same time, Yazidi women in Iraq are being kept as slaves, while their men are killed. In Pakistan, my country of birth, minorities are being persecuted with no accountability and the movement to eradicate them has been given a religious justification, so the perpetrators are celebrated as champions.

Yet, much of the so-called “civilized world” is frozen by either political correctness or ignorance. U.S. President Barack Obama would rather play golf than address the crisis unfolding all over the Muslim world. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau apparently sees no problem visiting a Wahhabi mosque with strong links to terrorism. And protesters at the Ontario legislature continue to focus their rage on Israel, rather than addressing the heinous crimes committed by Muslims.

So it falls upon the communities where these atrocities are happening to take action. And rightly so.
The world is once again asking, “where are the moderate Muslim voices to counter the evil of ISIS and other terrorist organizations?”

Let me respond by saying that I’m completely revolted by what’s happening in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Arab world. I wish I could say the same for my larger community. When a recent documentary exposed the crimes perpetrated against women in many Muslim countries was released, so-called “moderate and progressive” Muslim women opposed the cause.

I ask all Canadians to please stop asking where the moderate Muslims are. Our voices have been subsumed by the din of the mercenaries vying for power and hegemony in the Muslim world; we have become pawns in the games played by Saudi Arabia and Iran; we are shouted down by those who would lobby for political causes over human rights; and, most importantly, our communities still bask in the belief that all is well.

National Post
Raheel Raza is the president of The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow.

The City of David

While in Tehran hard-line Iranian lawmakers interrogate the country's foreign minister about deviating from the Republic's official line on the Holocaust, referring to an interview that Mohammed Javad Zarif participated in with German media where he called the Holocaust a "horrifying tragedy" that should never re-occur though the regime denies it ever did, in Jerusalem an Israeli archaeologist claims the discovery of the legendary King David citadel dating to the capture of Jerusalem.

Validating in one instance, meticulous records maintained by the German Fascists in detailing the atrocities they visited upon European Jewry, and on the other the veracity of Biblical passages as a guide in identifying ancient ruins. Eli Shukron's claim has been criticized. As have been other announcements by Israeli archaeologists who have unearthed palaces of the biblical king, revered in Jewish tradition for establishing Jerusalem as Judaism's central holy city.

Eli Shukron, an archeologist formerly with Israel's Antiquities Authority, walks in the City of David archaeological site near Jerusalem's Old City on May 1, 2014. Photo by AP

 

The costly ($10-million, U.S.-funded) excavation took place within a currently Arab-dominated neighbourhood of East Jerusalem where such news runs counter to Palestinian demands that the Old City be recognized as the capital of a nascent Palestinian state. The archaeological dig was financed by an organization settling Jews in areas of East Jerusalem whose aim is prevention of dividing the ancient city.

"This is the citadel of King David, this is the Citadel of Zion, and this is what King David took from the Jebusites", said Mr. Shukron who worked on the excavation at the City of David site for almost two decades, believing that the evidence he uncovered had the effect of supporting his theory. "The whole site we can compare to the Bible perfectly."

The dig, initiated in 1995, uncovered a massive fortification comprised of five-tonne boulders stacked six metres wide. Shards of pottery were used to date the fortification walls as being 3,800 years in vintage. The fortifications represent the largest walls ever discovered in the region from the era of King Herod, and the presence of the Second Temple of Solomon, almost 2,100 years ago.

It had been built 800 years before King David would have wrested it from its then-Jebusite rulers. Mr. Shukron insists that  his discovery provides ample clues identifying this particular fortification as David's entry point into Jerusalem, conflating with the second Book of Samuel where David orders the walled city captured through entry at the location of a water shaft.

Fittingly enough, the excavation revealed a narrow shaft where spring water flowed into a carved pool, representing a place where people who lived at that time in history would gather to access their potable water. No other structure in the area of ancient Jerusalem appears a match to the biblical account naming it the "Citadel of David" and the "Citadel of Zion".

Claims that will be vociferously debunked by the Palestinian Authority and the greater Muslim world both of which discount entirely the presence of an ancient Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount over which Islam built their golden-domed Dome of the Rock where the Prophet Mohammed is held to have ascended to Heaven riding a white stallion. For Muslims that represents the third most holy site in Islam. The very concept of validating a Jewish prior presence is anathema to them.

Dome of the Rock, East Jerusalem

For Jews, the Temple Mount alongside of which remains the only portion of the fabled Temple of Solomon to have survived extant as the Wailing Wall, it is the first most holy site venerated in Judaism. A site forbidden for Jews to enter, to pray, to view, when it was under the control of Arabs when Jordan held the area. A site which is open to all under Israeli jurisdiction; Muslim, Christian, Jew.

And which Jews aspire to continue having access to, which would be denied them should the Palestinian Authority ever dominate it as their capital. Even under the protection of Israel, Muslim extremists in Israel riot violently when Jews ascend to the Temple Mount; Arabs refusing to allow Jews access to their most holy site. Israel remains sensitive to Muslim sensibilities; Muslims run roughshod over Jews'.

The Muslim proclivity for building mosques over the places of worship of other religions is legendary. The Islamist penchant for destroying sacred symbols of other religions represents the atrocious reality of fundamentalist intolerant rejection of equality in religious freedom.

The Backstory

"Our situation was aggravated by our displacement in Africa for many years after fleeing our home country of Somalia because of war conditions. As a result, my son was not able to receive any formal education before we immigrated to the United States."
Abdulahi Yusuf, Somali immigrant to United States

"What people need to understand is that these young teens are coming from a country torn by a civil war with no basic education and suddenly put in these high schools or elementary schools where they have a cultural shock."
"This whole thing should be looked at in the context of a teen who is emotionally attached to his mom and grandparents.  ...The father is working 24 hours a day to take care of family here and other family members in the Horn of Africa."
Talha Nooh, Muslim Community Association San Jose, California

A 15-year-old boy, seen sitting on a stretcher center, who stowed away in the wheel well of a flight from San Jose, Calif., to Maui is loaded into an ambulance at Kahului Airport in Kahului, Maui, Hawaii Sunday afternoon, April 20, 2014. The boy survived the trip halfway across the Pacific Ocean unharmed despite frigid temperatures at 38,000 feet and a lack of oxygen, FBI and airline officials said. FBI spokesman Tom Simon in Honolulu told The Associated Press on Sunday night that the boy was questioned by the FBI after being discovered on the tarmac at the Maui airport with no identification. "Kid's lucky to be alive," Simon said. (AP Photo/The Maui News, Chris Sugidono)

This is a boy who made the news. Media around the world were alerted that a young boy had managed to survive in the wheel well of a jetliner that flew for over five hours, with him hanging on. Somalia has been in the news for quite a long time; it has well earned its reputation as a failed state. Violent Islam has made a giant footprint in that country, and there are few signs it will be diminishing any time soon. Somalia made the news for the years that its nationals turned to piracy on the high seas.

It made the news when a UN peacekeeping mission UNOSOM I was temporarily suspended to allow a multinational force known as the United Task Force (UNITAF) led by the United States in an operation named Operation Restore Hope led to the chaos and instability that brought the United Nations back with UNOSOM II, which itself led to the episode known as Black Hawk Down.

This is the story of a 15-year-old Somali youth whom incessant war in his home country displaced along with his family. In Muslim societies children become the 'property' of the father in a marital dispute. And so, the boy lived with his father along with his siblings, and moved with his father to the United States in 2010. Over one million Somali refugees live in Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen, neighbouring Somalia.

This family sought their future in the United States; not all refugees who apply are accepted as Abdulahi Yusuf and his children were. The boy was under the impression that his mother was no longer alive. And then he learned that she was living at a refugee camp in Ethiopia for displaced Somalis.

The boy's mother spoke in an interview with Voice of America: "I know he was looking for me, and I am requesting the U.S. government to help me reunite with my kids." Her ex-husband, she said, without her knowledge or consent took their three children to California, and she had received no word of them since 2006. He had told their children their mother was dead.

"Every day he was telling me: 'I miss Somalia, I miss my mom. He just wanted to see his mom", said a teenage friend in California, speaking of his friendship with the shy, religious boy. Members of the Muslim community in California stated that the family is taking advice from the Council on American-Islamic Relations steering them in communication with law enforcement, social workers, the media and medical providers.

CAIR is certain to manipulate the issue in favour of the father whose plan to fly to Hawaii to be reunited with his son, still in  hospital there, leaves him "excited to bring him back home to his 'deeply concerned' family in California." The boy's mother, Ubah Mohamed Abdullahi, will likely only see her children again when they come of age, are independent, and make an effort to reunite with her, should she live so long.

An Excellent Response to the Stupidity of Muslim ‘Feminists’ who Defend the Hijab and Niqab

by TarekFatah • March 17, 2014 

“I just love this excellent letter written by Pakistani journalist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid. Such a wonderful response to those ‘educated’ women who are proud of being veiled Muslims and who foolishly defend Islam, the anti-women religion. The author of this letter is a man. I am proud of men like Kunwar Khuldune, who believe in women’s rights.” – Tasleema Nasreen

Thank you, dear ‘Muslimaat’

A letter of gratitude to Muslim feminists who defend the hijab and niqab and are social media jihadis

Dear Muslimaat,
I don’t have words to express my gratitude and appreciation for your noble battle against evil. Your #MuslimahPride movement against #Femen was a slap on the collective face of Western imperialists who believe that Muslim women can’t fight for a cause. It was also a resounding reminder for the rest of the world that you have what it takes to spark a revolution. What the ignorant world does not realise is that once you have the permission of your husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, the approval of your neighbours, in-laws, their relatives and the consent of your spiritual guardians, their God and their scriptures, you can be quite the rebels.
It takes a lot of courage to ridicule something that is already taboo where you live. It takes volumes of bravery and valour to bow down to the status quo, and toe the lines that have been forced upon you. It takes unbelievable amounts of gallantry to act out a script that someone else has written for you. And it must take guts and the proverbial cojones to take a stand against cruelty and the personification of tyranny that a horde of topless women is.
Who on earth are those damn Europeans to try to steal your voice? Do they not realise that your lives were defined a million-and-a-half ago by the Arabs, who protected your rights and guarded your modesty by ensuring that you don’t have much of a say in most things? Who are those unabashed infidels to protest on your behalf? Do they not realise that you are not allowed to express, let alone clamour in favour of, anything that contradicts the ostensibly divine scriptures? Who are those shameless activists to try and liberate you? Do they not realise that you can’t be liberated without the permission of your mehrams?
I can’t thank you enough for choosing to be more offended by naked bodies than dead bodies. And since there are so many different kinds of you to thank, I’ll try to address you one by one.
Dear ‘guardians of modesty’ Muslimaat, thank you for letting patriarchal societies define ‘modesty’ for you. Thank you for accepting contrasting definitions of modesty for men and women, and for not being a source of strength for your sisters and daughters, vindicating the men’s claim of you being the weaker sex. Thank you for teaching your daughters about the sin that having sex is, throughout their lives, and then compelling them to do it immediately with a man they first met a couple of hours ago, after signing a few papers and getting the clergy’s approval. Also, thank you for blaming your fellow women when they are raped, since men have the divine license to refuse to keep their emotions in the right place. And thank you very very much for being more misogynistic than any male chauvinist can ever possibly be.
Dear ‘feminist’ Muslimaat, thank you for being a ray of hope for bacon-eating vegetarians, god-fearing atheists and peace-loving terrorists. Thank you for reiterating the fact that your mehrams choose to overlook the divine orders and allow you to think freely and take your own decisions. Thank you for citing your personal example to highlight how you wear the hijab by your own choice, ignoring the fact that an overwhelming majority of Muslim women are coerced into doing so. Thank you very much for making the whole debate about you, when it was always about the torment and suffering that most of the Muslim women are going through.
Dear ‘liberal’ Muslimaat, thank you for defying the orders of your deity by choosing to not cover your heads. Thank you for disregarding other restrictions that your religion commands, and then having the audacity to condemn someone who is critical of these very commands. Thank you for cherry picking the commandments and making your ideology sound compatible with the 21st century, only to castigate those that take the same ideological orders literally and implement them. Thanks a lot for elucidating that you don’t need liberation and for paying no heed to the fact that the most of the women in your country do. And thank you very much for clinging on to those very shackles that have enchained the prospect of women empowerment in your country.
Dear ‘revolutionary’ Muslimaat, thank you for ignoring the life threats that Amina Tyler and many others like her are facing, after choosing to protest against the harassment that they have to bear on a daily basis. Thank you for overlooking other lesser issues like terrorists attacking a 15-year-old schoolgirl; female genital mutilation; women being raped with judicial approval just so they don’t die virgins; two-year-old girls being forced to wear veils because the disgusting men in your country have no self-control; and fathers legally getting away with raping their daughters by paying a few riyals. Thank you very much for screaming bloody murder over half-naked women’s claim of representing you, but accepting rapists, pedophiles and sorry excuses for human beings as your state leaders and role models.
#MuslimahPride is not just a hashtag, it’s a symbol of integrity and pride. It’s about taking pride in inequality, in half testimonies, in blaming rape victims and in gender discrimination. It’s about taking pride in chauvinism, where men have divine permission to beat and rape their wives, marry multiple times and possess slave girls. It’s about taking pride in patriarchal societies where husbands are categorically told in detail how they should punish their “disobedient” wives, while not a single text exclusively tells women what they should do with unfaithful husbands. It’s about taking pride in not being allowed to vote, let alone lead your nations, and about finally being allowed to ride a goddamn bicycle – under a mehram’s supervision – in the year 2013 AD.
The #MuslimahPride jihad will be written down in history as the moment where Muslimaat made it clear to the world that no one should protest on their behalf, half-naked or otherwise. Thank you, dear Muslimaat, for saving the rest of the world’s time by clarifying that you’re fine living in the 7th century AD, and no one should push you towards the enlightened times, regardless of whether they have clothes on or not. Thank you for being a source of inspiration and an illuminating example for everyone. We all know that you have what it takes to transform the plight of the women and change the dynamics of the world, as long as you are back home before sunset.
More power to you.
PS: I hope being addressed as ‘dear’ does not land you in trouble with your oversensitive male guardians.
Yours thankfully,
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
The writer is a financial journalist and a cultural critic. Twitter: @khuldune

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Patriarchy and Female Circumcision

"If the equivalent procedure were done on men there would be global thermonuclear conflict. People would be at each other's throats, seeking revenge and restitution. And here we've tolerated this for millions of women worldwide."
Dr. Marci Bowers, reconstructive surgeon, San Fransciso, U.S.A.

Female genital mutilation ... or cutting (FGM), is a tradition in 29 countries concentrated in the Middle East and Africa. According to the latest report out of UNICEF, 125-million girls and women have been cut. Another 30-million are at risk over the next decade. This is a rite of passage for girls becoming women, and sometimes for girl-children long before they will ever become women, to pass through in a culture that values virginity before marriage and the assurance that before marriage no girl or woman would seek to have sexual relations lured by hormones and pleasure.

For most of the girls and women who undergo this procedure, it is part of their Muslim heritage. The custom is a tradition that most women themselves cannot see beyond, for it garners them respect, and without evidence that cutting has taken place, no woman can be self-respecting, knowing that no man would take her as a wife whose modesty and adherence to customary practise signifies she will make a good, 'traditional' wife. Whose issue he can control. It represents male ownership of female fecundity.

Some types of FGM are devastating in their results, particularly infibulation, considered the most seriously invasive and dangerous surgical technique of all. It is a barbaric flesh version of the medieval chastity belt, an iron girdle whose key a woman's husband kept, and only he could free her from the affliction of that confinement....

                                                 Women in a fifteenth century Italian breviary

Infibulation involves cutting the clitoris just as the other forms of cutting do, but it goes beyond this, by stitching the vaginal opening shut with a tiny hole left open for passage of urine and menstrual fluids. While undergoing the procedure some girls have been known to bleed to death post-operation, while others suffer chronic infections and incontinence. Sexual intercourse in an adulthood of marriage is painfully difficult, and childbirth a dreadful misery that some never recover from.

Moreover, neither do the babies. A study by the World Health Organization found that an additional one to two babies per 100 delivered in a hospital setting die as a result of FGM. With such casualties in hospital settings, speculation of far greater losses are fairly well guaranteed in less formal, clinical settings such as rural villages where specialist medical assistance is not available. Even when women from the Middle East and Africa migrate to Europe or North America the tradition carries on.

Women themselves, concerned for the future welfare of their daughters and granddaughters see to it that they are 'cut', thus sparing them the potential of being passed over as wives in traditional marriages. A 2011 Canadian census and statistics from UNICEF on the prevalence of FGM holds that with recent waves of immigration from Africa and the Middle East an estimated 80,000 or more FGM survivors live in Canada. In that number is included very young girls and teens.

Somali-born Kowser Omer-Hashi, a midwife living in Toronto 14 years ago, involved herself in speaking out about FGM, wanting to protect girls from being taken by their families back to Africa for a 'visit' back home, whose mission was to have the girls 'cut'. She, along with Dr. Beverley Chalmers, adjunct professor of obstetrics and gynecology, University of Ottawa, surveyed over 400 female Somali immigrants on their Canadian birthing experiences.

 FGM is illegal in Canada. The survey discovered that nearly half of the women expressed a desire to have their own daughters circumcized.  Omer-Hashi worked with doctors, social workers and educated health professionals, to increase awareness of the situation. She found herself ostracized by her own community, threatened and put aside. Her marriage, her health, her job were all affected. Until she finally stopped her anti FGM activism.

 

For 15 years, Amran Mahamood made a living circumcising young girls in Somalia. Four years ago, she gave it up after a religious leader convinced her the rite was not required by Islamic law. She now fights the practice, also known as female genital mutilation. FGM is declining in parts of Somalia, but the country still has the highest rate in the world.Photograph by: AFP , AFP/Getty Images

"That's why FGM has survived hundreds of years. People keep their hands off, saying, 'That's their tradition', and that attitude is wrong, wrong, wrong", she said, blaming the white host community for their sensitivity to tradition and culture emanating from other countries. "It's time we broke the silence", Lynne Featherstone, British education minister said last month. All government hospitals in Britain now must record information on patients suffering or at risk of FGM.

The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada recommended training on the issue to be included within the Canadian medical curriculum. "We need to raise awareness of this issue (and start) support groups", Dr. Margaret Burnett, chair of the society's committee on social and sexual issues, claimed. French urologist Pierre Foldes began treating women with FGM while working with WHO over two decades ago, developing a reversal procedure.

He now performs 50 reversal procedures monthly, paid for by the health service in France. And he has taught his procedure to doctors interested in performing it themselves.  Dr. Foldes has operated on over four thousand women, teaching the procedure  to doctors from around the world. One of those he taught was U.S. surgeon Marci Bowers. She became the first North American doctor five years ago to perform FGM reversal surgeries, and it comprises her pro bono work.

Dr. Bowers was born male. She was married and bore three children, but became convinced she was acting out the wrong gender role and underwent transgender procedures that altered her identity from "Mark" to "Marci" Bowers. "When I see so many of these women say I've lost my identity, that really pulls on my heartstrings", she says. Dr. Bowers specializes in gender reassignment surgery, a procedure very much in demand.

It is her unpaid work that inspires her to return the lives of women deprived of their idea of themselves as femininely sexual, and the reality of their loss and their pain, that gears her to offering to these women a biological, personal treasure that has been taken from them in a culture of male dominance.