Why We Left Islam (3 page)

In 1990, due to her non-compliance with wearing the
hijab
(covering up of women), she was fired from her position as a professor at the School of Medicine.

Later, my sister was harassed in her practice for the same reason until finally, when life was made too difficult for her, she closed down her practice and became a full-time housewife for the first time in her life.

During her professional life my sister was under pressure from some parents of her younger patients to give the label of “mentally incapacitated” to many perfectly intelligent young girls so that they could be saved from the tortures of the zealots (150 strokes of a whip for things such as wearing makeup or lipstick). Having to label these young women truly broke my sister’s heart.

When a sixteen-year-old girl was shot to death in northern Tehran for wearing lipstick, my sister could no longer handle the guilt she felt about her former involvement in the Iranian
Revolution. My sister felt Iran had been hijacked by the religious factions, and the way women were treated in Iran was unforgivable. . . . She wanted the world to know what was happening. She finally decided to protest the oppression of women by setting herself on fire in a crowded square in northern Tehran on February 21, 1994. Her last cries were:

Death to tyranny!

Long live liberty!

Long live Iran!
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My sister came to this world prematurely, and died prematurely.

Today, millions of people, especially women, are still echoing my sister’s last cry, yet, sadly, few are listening. It is because of this that I wrote my book
Rage Against the Veil.
It is presented in the hope that the West and particularly America begins to understand the enormity of the problem. How just like in Iran, Islam is now universally being presented as a peaceful religion when ultimately it is a fascist form of government which is most evident in my former nation. This was a problem that my own sister was prepared to sacrifice her precious life for and I am writing about it now in order to help preserve everything we in the West hold dear. My story is an attempt to try through education and awareness to prevent what happened in Iran from happening throughout the entire world.

My sister Homa believed it was worth dying to bring attention to the problems of fundamentalist Islamic regimes. She died in order to preserve liberty and the country of Iran, which she loved. Today, Homa would be horrified to know how even more extreme and fundamental Iran has become and devastated to learn about the examples of Islamic tyranny and terrorism which exist in other parts of the world today. Yet, while it may be hard for many to understand what women inside of these radical regimes experience and why, the words of the Prophet Mohammad himself allow us to gain insight into why this is permitted. Indeed, it is from the mouth of the man most emulated within Islam itself, the Prophet Mohammad, that we learn exactly how women are regarded in
Islamic culture and how many actions within the Islamic world toward women reflect Mohammad’s sentiments.

I was standing at the edge of the fire (hell) and the majority of the people going in were women.
Prophet Mohammad
²

Ever since I began my activities in exposing Islam and its oppression of women, I have been attacked by Muslim men and a few Muslim women about what they say is my misconception and misinterpretation of Islamic laws regarding women. I have been told that Islam is a religion of peace and equality; that Islam has a high regard for women, and that Islamic laws have given women power. However, I have seen little evidence of this and certainly virtually nothing written in the Qur’an.

In fact, in the back of one edition of the Qur’an translated into English by M.H. Shakir, it is stated that:

The Qur’an is a complete and original compilation of the Final Revelation from God to mankind through the last prophet, the Prophet of Islam, Mohammad. The Qur’an has essentially three qualities that make it universal. First, in its original Arabic form, it is a masterpiece of immense literary value—fusing the style of presentation with the substance being presented in a blend of unique proportions. Second, though its message is a continuation of that contained in the earlier Revelations made to Abraham, David, Moses and Jesus, yet this message has a sense of fulfillment and originality that attracts toward it Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Finally, it has a wealth of information—which provides the code of life for mankind generally and Muslims in particular. Indeed, the Qur’an’s miracle lies in its ability to offer at least something to non-believers and everything to believers.
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I would like to analyze some of these “immense literary values” presented in the Qur’an regarding women. I would like to find where it is that Islam has placed women on a pedestal for men to worship. And how it is that if we women were given so many rights by this book, then why we are not able to assert ourselves as human beings, but instead remain subjected to tyranny in Islamic countries?

Let’s begin with the notion that Islam is a religion of peace. “Islam” in Arabic means “submission.” Therefore, if we as people
would submit to the rules and laws of Islam, we will have peace. What exactly does this mean? Well, by my calculation based on my own experiences within Islamic regimes, it seems that as long as we accept that women were created inferior to men; that limbs can be cut off for theft; that people should face stoning for such crimes as adultery; and that men have the right to divorce, sole custody of their children, and multiple wives—then we can live in peace. Additionally, we can have peace as long as one prays five times a day, goes to mosque every Friday, and women sit in the back behind the men. Furthermore, in this peaceful scenario we must also accept that any inheritance allows a man’s share to be twice that of women. We must also bear in mind, however, that we must never, ever criticize Mohammad or the fine religion of Islam, otherwise we cannot have peace. Also, if a person like author Taslima Nasrin, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or myself, criticizes Islam we must endure the wrath of the good Muslims and endure multiple threats to our lives. I ask you: Is this peace?

It is indeed difficult to find any way to attribute the word “peace” to Islam, especially when we consider that a filmmaker such as Theo Van Gogh makes a documentary about the life of a Muslim woman to show the atrocities she must endure and then he is brutally murdered. This is peace? Furthermore, when a Danish paper published cartoons of the Prophet, these so-called “peaceful Muslims” carried signs of violence, and created bloodshed all over Europe and throughout the Islamic world.

Is this a peaceful religion which allows killing over the publication of some cartoons? I suggest that it is very difficult to understand any of this equating in any way to peace. Yet maybe the Qur’an itself sets forth the tone for such behavior? Here are some of the revelations in the Qur’an regarding the religion of peace, which may explain why millions of followers of this book behave the way they do. In the Qur’an it is written:

And kill them wherever you find them and drive them out whence they drive you out.
Qur’an 2:191

Surely they who disbelieve in the communication of Allah—they shall have a severe chastisement.
Qur’an 3:4

Say to those who disbelieve: you shall be vanished, and driven together to hell; and evil is the resting place.
Qur’an 3:12

As for those who disbelieve in our communications, we shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skin are thoroughly burned, we will change them for other skin, that may taste the chastisement.
Qur’an 4:56

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
Qur’an 8:12

Certainly the above revelations and many more like them in the Qur’an are not peaceful or inspired by a peaceful and benevolent Creator. It is therefore easy to begin to see why our definition of peace is not one that the Qur’an actually follows.

Additionally, our definition of equality of women and of human rights which we hold dear in the West comes into stark contrast and conflict with the definition held by Islam. The status of women in Islam does not allow women to live a peaceful or harmonious existence and certainly the Qur’an does not offer words that would inspire equality for women. According to Islam, a woman is the ward of her father as long as she is in his care and then becomes the ward of her husband when she marries, and when her husband dies she becomes the ward of her son, grandson, and so on, and if she has no male relatives she becomes the ward of her community.
⁴

The
Webster’s New Word Dictionary
defines “ward” as “a person under the care of a guardian or court.” Therefore, according to Islam, a woman never matures, and she must always be under the care of a male relative, a guardian, or Islamic court. I don’t consider this respect for women but an insult to womanhood.

Once a Muslim explained to me that this is because women get pregnant and take care of their children; therefore their men should take care of them. This is a wonderful idea for men to take care of their women while they are pregnant or have small children.

However, why should an unmarried woman, a woman who is not pregnant, a grandmother, or an elderly woman be under the care of a guardian? In addition, only people with mental disorders are placed under the care of a court. Women are not crazy
or immature; therefore, they don’t need to be under court-appointed guardian supervision.

According to Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Islamic revolution and the past leader of the Shiite Muslims, the Islamic requirement for a judge is that “the person have reached puberty, know Qur’anic laws, be just, not have amnesia, not be a bastard and not be of a female sex.”
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Therefore, women are not considered mature enough to be able to judge others. This is the reason for not giving women the right to vote in many of the so-called Islamic democracies. What an oxymoron considering half the population of many of these countries cannot get involved in the destiny of their nations. Yet these nations still consider themselves democracies.

It is indeed because of the numerous contradictions within Islam that long before my sister’s death I chose to leave the religion I had inherited from my family. I will share something of my journey here to enable you to see why I, like so many of the people you will hear from in this book, chose to leave Islam.

Apparently, or so I was told, I was six days old when my grandfather passed on his religion to me. He did so by reciting a series of Arabic words into my ear. I am quite positive that those were the only Arabic words my grandfather could recite and perhaps he did not understand those words himself. We are Iranian and our language is Persian and a vast majority of the Iranians, including my family, do not speak Arabic, the language of Islam. For Muslims, religion is like the color of our eyes. It is hereditary. Whether you ultimately believe is really not the issue, but it is something you are born with.

For my kindergarten education I was sent to this neighborhood religious school where an old lady named Kobra was its headmistress. I hated this school and the headmistress because she always looked so mean in those black shrouds she covered herself in. She wore black at all times. No laughter, no music, no play—just Allah and Islam. The school was dirty and all the teacher did was read her Qur’an and prayer book. Even at my young age, my instinct suggested to me that she had no education
and could not read, a fact confirmed when I would place her Qur’an upside down and she would still read it just the same.

As a child I learned very quickly how differently boys were treated from girls. I wanted to ride a tricycle like the boys did, but I was told that girls don’t ride tricycles. When I went to school I wanted to learn how to play the violin, however I was told a good girl does not play musical instruments. When I wanted to ride a bicycle, I was told good girls don’t ride bicycles; the same went for riding horses, swimming, and any other activities.

From the time I was a little girl I learned the importance of virginity for a girl in Islamic culture. A girl must be a virgin when she gets married. In addition, the marriage age for a girl is nine years of age. As a matter of fact, Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, stated that, “The most suitable time for a girl to get married is the time when the girl can have her first menstrual period in her husband’s house rather than her father’s.”
⁶
I have learned that this quote originally is from Imam Mosa-e-Kazem, the eighth Imam of Shite—the twelfth sect in Islam—the religion of 98 percent of Iranians. This is the mindset of the Islamic regime.

Luckily my family was not religious; however, the culture of the family and the society we lived in was Islamic. The thought of being married and sent away to a total stranger at age nine used to send shivers down my spine. I watched when the father of the girl who worked for our mother married her off to a man with three sons older than she was. She was just eleven years old, an old maid by her father’s standard.

There were also other aspects of Islam which affected me personally. I remember the time when my father had a lamb sacrificed in front of our eyes in our yard. Watching how that poor animal struggled to get himself free and how he moaned and moved his legs and body after his throat was slit made me hate and curse the ritual for which this lamb had to die.

The night following the lamb sacrifice my father’s mother, the only religious person in our entire family, told me the story of Abraham and his son Ishmael. She told me how God had asked Abraham to take his son to a place and sacrifice him in order to
show his devotion to Al-mighty. And that as he placed the knife over his son’s throat he had heard a lamb and then had sacrificed the lamb instead. That was why we had to sacrifice the lamb that morning. The story was quite scary for me. Many nights I had nightmares about this story. I would dream about my father sacrificing me to show his devotion to God and then I would jump and find out I was still alive. I finally convinced myself that God would only ask men to sacrifice their sons and not daughters. After all why should anyone sacrifice a girl? In a way I would feel happy being a girl. My father’s mother used to teach me about religion and Islam. She used to tell me, “God is great, knows everything, and has created man and the universe.” Then she would ask me to pray in Arabic.