The Devil We Don't Know (15 page)

Similar statements were made by Saudi women's rights activist Wajiha Al-Huweidar, who also insists that Islam was originally respectful and liberating to women and was only later corrupted:

Preachers spread distorted notions about women. . . . This Saudi patriarchal culture has become prevalent under religious guise, but if you examine everything that goes on in this society, none of it has anything to do with religion.” She added, “How can it be that people are stripped of their individual judgment, and the Commission [for the Prevention of Vice] is sent to spy on people in the streets, and to determine who errs and who acts properly? Who gave them the right to do this? People have the right to decide for themselves what they do and don't want.
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The answer to her question “Who gave them the right to do this?” is that Islam and sharia gave the Islamic government and its virtue police such rights. Yet it is not only the governing authorities who are the problem. Arab feminists, who blame preachers but ignore sharia, must also ask, Where do these preachers who spread distorted notions about women get their views? We cannot simply say that they are all misinterpreting the Koran, because they are not. In fact, they are following the Koran; they are repeating what Mohammad and the Koran have commanded them to do. The sexual and physical abuse of women in Islam became institutionalized as a reward for men who wage jihad; that is the link between women and jihad. Women have been reduced to the status of seductive sexual objects, virgins, toys, and slaves who distract men from performing the duty of jihad and of sacrificing their lives on earth for a promise of many virgins in heaven. Muslim women must compete with all of the virgins in heaven to keep their men right here on earth.

Islamic feminists have an insurmountable barrier to climb, and very little is understood about the dynamics of Islam that led to this tragedy. That is why the few Islamic feminists seem to be running in circles, only to achieve minor changes that barely scratch the surface of the problem. They have done so while paying a heavy price, earning disrespect and threats without being taken seriously. Even more sadly, their example has produced a group of Muslim women who embrace another solution: if you can't beat them, then join them. They have discovered that the key to power and respect in Muslim society is to become as radical as, if not more radical than, men. We have all seen Muslim women in black, showing nothing but their eyes, while demonstrating in London. They carry signs protesting British laws, supporting sharia, and warning Europe about another holocaust and another 9/11 to come. Sharia enforcers are pursuing a policy of generously rewarding women who tell the world that women are happy under sharia, and many embrace jihad with open arms. We have all seen Arab mothers celebrate the deaths of their jihadi sons and volunteer their other children for jihad. I do not know what is in the hearts of these women, but mothers who did so in Gaza were highly respected and rewarded handsomely with life pensions. One mother was even elected to a position in the Palestinian parliament.

An extreme and almost laughable case of pandering to sharia occurred in mid-2011 when a Kuwaiti woman, Salwa al-Mutairi, spoke to the
Kuwait Times
demanding the reestablishment of sexual slavery. The woman, who is an activist and a former candidate to the Kuwaiti parliament, wants the return of a law based on sharia that permits men to buy and sell non-Muslim girls, captured in jihad, as sexual slaves in order to protect Muslim men against seductive sexual immorality. Al-Mutairi suggested the minimum age of fifteen for non-Muslim slave girls, Christian, Jews, or other, to be sold. She demanded the immediate establishment of slave agencies—similar to agencies for maids—where the slave girls would earn a whopping 50 Kuwaiti dinar monthly and in return they would cook, clean, take care of the kids, and be the slaves of the wives during the day. At night, the girls would serve as concubines to the husbands.

The sad truth is that under Islamic law, everything Mutairi said is allowed. Sexual slavery was official and legal not only in the seventh century, when it was practiced by Mohammed and his fighters, but as recently as the early twentieth century under the Islamic caliphs. Even my own grandmother, who is half Turkish, remembers the institution of the harem existing in the Islamic caliphate. It was a way of life for some men who could afford to have and support sexual slaves. According to Islamic values, owning a slave against her will for sex and for housework is not morally corrupting, but for a man or a woman to have a loving sexual relationship with a boyfriend or a girlfriend outside of marriage is corrupting. It is especially unacceptable in Islam for a woman to have consensual sex with a lover before marriage. For that, she could be severely punished, flogged, or killed.

Unfortunately, Mutairi is not the only one who advocates the official open return of sexual slavery. Some Islamic sheikhs have spoken about their right to indulge in sexual slavery on national TV in Egypt and elsewhere. A female expert on sharia once stated on Egyptian TV that under sharia, it is permissible to rape Jewish women.

What Mutairi advocates is indicative of the pathology and the warped thinking that some Muslim women have fallen prey to, while attempting to adjust to the system. It has been documented that in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, or anywhere that sharia permits it, a good number of Muslim women accommodate the existence of a sexual relationship between their husbands and their maids, who are considered sexual slaves under the control of the home. Cases such as this have been discovered right here in the United States, where, in one instance, a Saudi man who pursued this lifestyle was sentenced to jail for enslaving his maid. In Saudi Arabia, he would have gone unpunished. Not so in the West. Here, the man was punished, along with his wife—as an accessory.

In the United States, there were two high-profile kidnappings for the purpose of sexual slavery: the cases of Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard. The abductors succeeded and went undetected for many years because their deranged wives were willing enablers who posed as mothers to those poor girls. Their enabling was similar to the role of most Muslim wives who accept the sexual enslavement of maids by their husbands, a situation found in many homes, especially in Saudi Arabia. Mutairi represents the worst in women: those who sell out their gender in order to gain honor and attention in a Muslim world that gives them no respect. The entire Islamic culture has succeeded in pitting women against one another and has normalized the pathology of women accepting the enslavement of other women.

Convincing Muslim women to be on the side of sharia has even reached as far as U.S. academia. Islamic and Middle Eastern studies departments in the United States have a good number of Muslim female professors who defend the veil as “liberating.” In an article titled “Veil of Ignorance,” Leila Ahmed, the author of
A Quiet Revolution
, wrote, “The veil, once an emblem of patriarchy, today carries multiple meanings for its American and European wearers. Often enough, it also serves as a banner and call for justice—and yes, even for women's rights.”
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“Ignorance” in the title of Ahmed's article obviously refers to the American people who need to remove the veil over their eyes to see how liberating the Islamic veil really is. This is the kind of pride in bondage that the Islamic state has convinced many women to live by. For Ahmed and those who share her viewpoint, even the veil, an established symbol of Muslim women's slavery and oppression throughout the history of Islam, has been turned into a positive sign of freedom. What Ahmed is trying to say is that many Muslim women are wearing the veil not necessarily for personal religious reasons, but to make a statement to the outside world (a banner) to demand justice. But what justice? And if they are demanding rights in the United States, what rights is she talking about? The West is the only country to offer freedom and dignity to Muslim women, even to those who defy Western culture by wearing Islamic garb. The happiest Muslim women on earth today are the ones who are living under the U.S. constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Some Muslims in the United States claim that they have been discriminated against after 9/11, but I believe that claim is unfounded. I, an Arab and a former Muslim, have never been discriminated against in the United States after 9/11, and perhaps it is because I did not celebrate but rather mourned that day with my fellow U.S. citizens. Arab and Muslim Americans who originally came from the Middle East should know better, because compared to the Middle East or any country on earth, America is the most tolerant, welcoming, and forgiving nation. Just imagine what would have happened if nineteen American men had flown commercial airplanes into buildings in Riyadh or Mecca, Saudi Arabia. When one Danish cartoonist drew a picture of Mohammed, the entire Muslim world, governments and media, erupted with extreme anger and violence. Muslims did not say that they must not discriminate against all of the Danish people. Instead, Muslim crowds set the Danish embassy on fire, boycotted Danish products, and sent death threats to Danish people and businesses. There was no understanding on the part of any Muslim entity that this was only one cartoonist who had freedom of speech under his country's laws and who did not represent all of Denmark.

American female Muslim students who wear the hijab to protest injustice in the United States (which is the only kind of feminism allowed by Islam), are misplacing their anger, just as feminists in the Muslim world do. Compared to what Muslims would have done in similar circumstances, if Western terrorists had attacked a Muslim country on the scale of 9/11, the American people have shown more heroic self-control, grace, and tolerance than anyone could have expected. This is something that Muslims in the United States should have noticed—instead of playing a game of defiance with a country in mourning.

Muslims who immigrated to the United States from the Middle East, including Ahmed and myself, all have dual citizenship. If the situation in America was so bad after 9/11 that some felt forced to wear Islamic garb simply to make a point, that act was silly and juvenile. The Islamic attire movement on college campuses cannot be for justice and equality, as is claimed. I think it is done as an expression of defiance against American culture. If the goal of these Muslim women is really equality and justice, then let them demonstrate on behalf of women in Cairo or Mecca, where women cannot legally leave their houses without their husbands' permission.

Wearing Islamic attire on U.S. college campuses is simply an in-your-face way of saying “We support sharia.” I once asked a Muslim woman whom I personally know not to be religious at all about her reason for wearing the head cover. Her answer was, “In America, the ethnic look gives one more power and respect.” I think she is right. The United States unnecessarily bends over backward to accommodate people who refuse to assimilate into American culture. It is a bad sign that many of us immigrants are getting from the politically correct crowd in the United States; they constantly remind us that they love us just the way we are. Americans who try to protect immigrant cultures, thinking that it is honorable and normal not to assimilate, are actually hurting, rather than helping, immigrant communities. After moving to another country, as I did, most people actually find it very hard
not
to assimilate or learn the new language and way of life. That is why we chose to come to the United States in the first place, to be Americans. But some Americans try to welcome ethnic communities by going overboard in rewarding them for remaining encapsulated in their own culture, language, and pride of their national origin. I think this has produced a few pockets of immigrant groups, even on our college campuses, who use ethnic power to their personal advantage.

I also find it extremely hypocritical when Muslims riot, burn, and kill when an American threatens to burn the Koran, as was the case when a Florida pastor, Terry Jones, said he was going to burn the Koran. The reason this is hypocritical on the part of Muslims is because Muslim governments and individuals habitually confiscate and burn Bibles and other people's holy books. Most Westerners don't realize that the government of Saudi Arabia has engaged in burning Korans—yes, Korans—that belonged to the Shiite minorities in Eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. I received this information about Muslims burning other Muslims' Korans from Bahraini Shiites who were surprised by the audacity of the Sunnis who threatened to kill any American who would dare burn a Koran.

The Koran-burning incident has exposed a one-sided respect for Islam by the U.S. media and politicians that is not reciprocated by Muslims toward Shiite Korans and mosques. The U.S. media failed to do its homework and expose this hypocrisy, and, instead of protecting the right of free speech for Americans, they chose to throw that right to the wolves. The U.S. media have also failed to explain to the Muslim world that Americans as individuals are even protected under the law to burn the U.S. flag, the Bible, and the Koran. I would have liked to see the so-called moderate Muslims in the United States say they would not go down in history as the reason behind America's suppression of free speech, and if that meant that someone wanted to burn the Koran, then that was his right under the U.S. law that we all enjoy. Unfortunately, no Muslim said that, and the U.S. government and the media caved in. I believe this will not go down well in the history of the United States.

Muslim feminist defenders of sharia have influenced not only U.S. educational institutions but also political institutions in the United States. In 2009, when President Obama spoke to the Muslim world in Cairo, he talked about protecting a woman's right to wear the hijab but never mentioned a woman's right
not
to wear the hijab. Obama's speech was partly written for him by the head-covered White House Muslim adviser Dalia Mogahed, who was born in Egypt. She is an assertive defender of sharia, denies any connection between Islam and terrorism, and defends the Muslim Brotherhood. She is also a firm defender of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). These organizations have radical ties and are promoters of sharia in the United States. CAIR has been described as an unindicted coconspirator in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation and its former officials.