The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam Page 10

  3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

  It is a capital offense to insult God’s prophet, Muhammad. God himself let this be known to the Prophet, as He gave him other such opportune messages. You need only read the Koran: He stole Zayneb, His pupil’s wife, with the excuse that it was Allah’s will. And, even worse: he fell in love with Aisha, his best friend’s nine-year-old daughter. Her father said: “Please wait until she has reached adulthood.” But Muhammad did not want to wait. So what do you think happens? He receives a message from Allah that Aisha must prepare herself for Muhammad. In other words, Muhammad teaches us that it is fine to take away your best friend’s child. By our Western standards Muhammad is a perverse man. A tyrant. He is against freedom of expression. If you don’t do as he says, you will end up in hell. That reminds me of those megalomaniacal rulers in the Middle East: Bin Laden, Khomeini, and Saddam. Are you surprised to find a Saddam Hussein? Muhammad is his example; Muhammad is an example to all Muslim men. Why do you think so many Islamic men use violence? You are shocked to hear me say these things, but like the majority of the native Dutch population, you overlook something: you forget where I am from. I used to be a Muslim; I know what I am talking about. I think it is tragic that, now that I finally live in a democratic society, where freedom of opinion is the greatest good, I still have to struggle with the posthumous blackmail of the Prophet Muhammad. In the Netherlands a Muslim can read the Koran and think that Muhammad is fantastic. And I am also allowed to think that Muhammad is a despicable individual. He says women should stay indoors, wear a veil, avoid certain types of work, can’t have the same rights of inheritance as their husbands, and should be stoned if they commit adultery. I want to show that there is another reality, besides the “truth,” which is spread across the world with Saudi money. I realize that the women who call themselves Muslims do not understand me yet, but one day their blinkers will drop. We must open up all the channels of socialization—family, education, the media—to make sure that Muslim women become independent and self-supporting. This will take many years, but one day these women will realize, as I did: I don’t want my mother’s life.

  4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.

  At busy times I think, Now I must recover myself. At such moments I like to be by myself for a bit. Walk around in pajamas, read a book, or just stay in bed. Yes, hanging around, that’s what it amounts to. There was a time when I would sit around like this for three days in a row, but in recent months that hasn’t happened. I think the Christian use of Sundays will stand me in good stead.

  5. Honor thy father and mother.

  Allah says, First you must obey me, then the Prophet Muhammad, and finally your father and mother. Obey them in everything. There is only one moment when you are allowed to refuse them: when they ask you to stop believing in Allah. I waited a long time before I openly declared my break with Islam. I was afraid of the consequences, of losing my family. All my life I had been sitting on the fence until I couldn’t any longer. Everything I do now, the things I write and say, I could not have done if I had remained in that awkward position. Now there is a big empty god between my family and me; they no longer wish to see me. That is how perverse religion can be: it interferes with intimate relationships and forces parents to choose between their children and their god.

  They are always in my thoughts. I miss them. There is sadness. And yet I am better able to control my guilty feelings now that I no longer believe I will have to pay for my disobedience with a place in hell. What makes me particularly sad is the thought that it is all so unnecessary: why don’t they accept me as I am? I want my father to be there when I am sworn into the Dutch Lower House of Parliament. I want him to hold and cuddle me, like he used to. It won’t happen. I want to send my mother money, but the money won’t reach her. I want to know how she is, but I am afraid to phone her. She has chosen Allah, not me.

  My mother is a strict woman with a strong will. She knows how to manipulate her surroundings, and if it doesn’t work, she hits you and starts throwing things about. Everything in our house used to be broken. She was cool, distant, a perfectionist. If I managed to give nine out of ten correct answers at school, all she would ask was why I had got one wrong. I was afraid of her, but I also admired her. She was always there for us, and she had to do it all on her own. My father was the most important man in Somalia when he first met my mother. That was shortly after the country became independent. My father was busy with politics twenty-four hours a day, setting up a parliament and a literacy program. When the democratic movement failed and my father ended up in prison, she was very loyal to him. She went to visit him every day, often taking him food. But when she was tired and needed his support, he wasn’t there for her. This happened again and again. We had to follow him to different countries, where people spoke languages that she—the proud daughter of a prominent judge—couldn’t understand; where she had to leave the house—although Allah had asked her to stay inside—in order to converse, in poor Arabic, with the local shopkeepers. I can understand why she became so bitter. It is not a fair comparison, but I can’t deny it: I miss my father more than my mother. He was affectionate, cuddled us, and played with us. My father used to say I was beautiful. And smart. He would praise me very highly. When my father was with us I was happy. But he kept leaving us without saying good-bye properly. The last time he left the house, he said “I’ll be back next weekend,” but we didn’t see him again until ten years later. And yet…yes, perhaps our loss of contact is the heaviest price I have had to pay. I want to go and visit him, but I know he will shut the door in my face. I know he prefers to remain under the illusion that I am mentally ill. But I will keep trying. When I miss him, when I feel the urge to speak to him, when I would like him to give me a hug, the way he used to, I am enough of a realist to know that he won’t listen to me this time. But I am also enough of an idealist to keep hoping that one day he will answer the door again.

  6. Thou shalt not kill.

  There are a few religious fanatics around who will want to kill me because I have become an atheist, and because—by killing me—they will secure a place in heaven for themselves. Or so they believe. But I think that I pose a threat, above all, to those Muslims who fear that I might be able to influence Dutch opinion, and thus see to it that subsidies to ethnic minorities will be withdrawn and Islamic schools closed. Don’t forget: I already have many Dutch Muslims on my side, but they are keeping it under tight cover. As soon as they reveal themselves, as soon as things begin to change and new laws become accepted, the drive to kill me will cease. To me it is simply a matter of persevering. How much longer will I need protection? Not very long. This is not just about me. Islam and the way in which people or parties devote themselves to defending Muhammad’s doctrines have become a topic for international debate, documented in United Nations reports. Bin Laden and his followers have achieved exactly the opposite of what they had in mind. Things will probably have to get worse first—the United States’ invasion of Iraq will show how much worse—but September 11, mark my words, was the beginning of the end of Islam as we know it.

  7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

  I was contracted to marry a distant cousin and start a family with him in Canada. When I ran off, my father disowned me. With the passage of time my father regretted his decision and went to great lengths to get me a divorce. He felt I should marry again; the prospect of me staying childless was unbearable to him. Last summer the divorce was settled, but of course the good news fades once you know I was never faithful to my husband in those years. I have had various boyfriends and lived with someone for five years. I never told my father, but the Somali community in the Netherlands—which keeps close tabs on me—undoubtedly passed on the information. It’s not looking good for me: for committing lechery I should be given ten strokes of th
e cane, according to the Koran, and for committing adultery I could be stoned.

  Outside the religious context I have always been loyal. I have observed that people find it difficult to enter a relationship with me. Marco, the boy with whom I lived for a while, used to say I was elusive. “You don’t express yourself,” he would say. “I never know where I stand with you.” It is true that I find it hard to attach myself to others, but I do it all the same. (It is more likely that I will break up with someone because of an argument.) I am on good terms with Marco now; so good, in fact, that he is wondering why we don’t move in together again. But I know how quickly he flies off the handle, and I just don’t want to have to go through that again. I am not good at expressing my anger. I don’t want to; I come from a family whose members were always squabbling, and now I want the opposite.

  8. Thou shalt not steal.

  My mother thought exercise classes were indecent. She refused to give me the extra money required by the school, so I stole it. I did the same in order to attend singing lessons and to buy the crayons we needed for school. As soon as she noticed money had gone missing from her purse, she would begin to swear, grab me by the hair, and pull me all the way across the room. I was always covered in bruises. She struck me with her hand, a stick, or anything she could lay her hands on. I also used to steal food from my mother’s pantry to give to the beggars passing our door. The first time this happened, my mother seemed mildly amused, but when she saw a whole crowd waiting outside the house one day—and realized our food for the entire month had vanished from the cupboard—she flew into a rage.

  A saint? Me? Not by a long stretch. I have sinned according to the religious principles I was brought up to observe. I’ve also been naughty—teased other girls at school, rung people’s bells and run away, hurt my grandmother’s feelings by questioning her authority. And if that is not bad enough, let me tell you how I was responsible for stigmatizing our Koran teacher. When my mother came to the conclusion that sending us to Koran school was a waste of time, she hired a private teacher to teach us at home. We had to prepare our own ink and copy out passages from the Koran on wooden boards. Then we had to wash the boards and start all over again. Every Saturday. After a while I got fed up and locked myself in the lavatory, together with my sister. The teacher, my mother, or my grandmother—whoever it was that came to the door—we refused to open it. I shouted the most dreadful things at the Koran teacher, that writing on boards was obsolete, even back in the sixteenth century. At a certain point my mother sent the teacher away: “Here is your money, they don’t want to have Koran lessons. I’m exhausted, I’m giving up.” Not much later—I was at home on my own—I saw the Koran teacher approaching our house. I ran to the gate, but it was too late. He dragged me into the house, blindfolded me, and began to hit me. He thumped me, again and again, until I managed to pull off the blindfold. Then he took hold of my head and threw me against the wall. More than once. I heard a crack and lost consciousness. It turned out he had fractured the base of my skull. I had to stay in hospital for twelve days and the bill was sent to him. On top of that, he had to pay us compensation for the grief he had caused. After that he couldn’t show himself anywhere. Damaged for life. I will have to live with that: I drove someone to destruction.

  9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

  I mastered the art of lying. But when I no longer needed to lie—there is no God; I don’t have to tell the truth just because God wants me to—I made a conscious choice never to do so again.

  10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.

  It depends on what you covet. I would like to write philosophic treatises, like Karl Popper, for example. So, paradoxically, this step—going into politics—is not in line with my ideal. What I would like to do best is become a philosopher and develop my own theories. A place where I can write; someone to do the cleaning; no worries about bread and butter; real debates instead of pointless talk about nothing. Ultimately, that is what will make me happy.

  Eight

  Bin Laden’s Nightmare

  Interview with Irshad Manji

  At the age of fourteen the Ugandan-born Canadian writer Irshad Manji was expelled from school for asking critical questions about Islam. But she was undaunted. She continued to study her religion by herself from her room at home. Thus she became, in the eyes of many Muslims, a traitor. For Irshad Manji is a harsh critic of Islam in newspaper articles, books, and lectures. And she openly admits to being a lesbian.

  To mark the publication of the Dutch translation of Manji’s The Trouble with Islam, I met with her for an interview.

  I notice that in your book you address your “fellow Muslims.” Do you still consider yourself a Muslim?

  Yes, I am a Muslim. I want to be one, because I’m convinced that we can reform Islam. Believe me, when I was expelled from school I learned more about Islam on my own than could be learned by all those Muslims on the other side of the school walls. If only more Muslims would do the same—think for themselves, that is—our religion would be very different. I have noticed that many young Muslims are keen to. Whenever I give a talk at a university, students come up to me afterward and say, “Help, we are suffocating; this religion is strangling us.” That is why I wrote the book.

  But do you feel you are a Muslim because it’s part of your identity, or is it just that you happened to grow up within the system?

  No, it’s not about identity. What I care about are human rights. I can’t keep quiet when I see women who are suffering humiliation in the name of Islam. I constantly urge my fellow Muslims: stop being so selfish. Get up and say something! Women who choose to wear headscarves and face veils always point out to me that it is up to them whether they do or don’t. To which I say, Yes, it is fine for you: you have the choice to wear these garments. But think of your sisters who are living under a tough regime that forces them to wear headscarves and will oppress and abuse them if they don’t. Fight for them. The Prophet Muhammad himself said: religion is the way in which we behave toward others. In other words, if you brush your responsibilities under the carpet, you have no right to call yourself a Muslim.

  But Muhammad also married a nine-year-old girl. Don’t you think that’s awful?

  Of course I do. I don’t know Muhammad, I never met him. I can’t prove he was a feminist, or a misogynist, for that matter. But the Koran contains a number of very modern-sounding statements by him. I always make a point of asking Muslim men: why is it that you have a beard and dress in seventeenth-century Arabian costume, but you won’t take an interest in any of the progressive ideas which Muhammad also included in the Koran?

  In theory, Islam is a beautiful and tolerant religion. The problem, however, is that this beautiful religion is weighed down with the pressures of Arabian cultural imperialism, which dictate that women must give up their individuality in honor of the family and become communal property. A raped girl is given one hundred eighty lashes with the whip because she had sex before marriage. We must rid ourselves of such practices.

  Yet that remains very difficult. Islam has its roots in Arabian cultural heritage. Before A.D. 610, when a man in a cave suddenly had a few ideas, Islam didn’t exist.

  And that is precisely why any reform of Islam is so hard. Independent thinking is not encouraged in Arabian culture. Yet it is the only chance Islam has. To get millions of Muslims to think for themselves, no, that is not going to happen. But we can try to form a strong, critical voice, which will prevail upon the rest. The important thing is that we don’t allow a small group of mullahs to tell us what to do, but that we Western Muslims—for that is the group I have pinned my hopes on—will have the courage to discover for ourselves how ambiguous and contradictory the Koran is, and to discuss our findings freely.

  How do you get Western Muslims to do this?

 
We need politicians who have the courage to say these things, who aren’t afraid of being called controversial and racist. Just like you can’t interpret everything in the Koran literally, the multicultural society should not be seen as a dogma. The thing to remember is that people, whether they are Muslims or not, only have the right to be respected if they themselves respect others. You can’t deal with human rights and apply double standards.

  Why are liberal, secular Westerners so afraid of taking a stance against the abuses of Islam?

  You tell me! I have been asking myself that question for a very long time. What are you so anxious about? I ask my friends in the West. Why do you not condemn the violation of human rights in Islamic countries, when you regularly speak out against such atrocities in the United States and Israel?