The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam Page 3
The reactions of these Muslims were similar to that of Father Atta: both shock and indignation at the idea that Islam was being linked to terrorism. No, they cried emphatically and in unison: the perpetrators were not Muslims; some boys might drink and visit prostitutes, but these are non-Islamic habits that they picked up from the decadent West; they cited verses from the Koran completely out of context. No, Bin Laden is not a Muslim. No, all those shrieking young men celebrating 9/11 in the streets of cities in Muslim countries have misunderstood Islam: Islam is a peace-loving, tolerant, charitable religion. Whoever loves Allah and honors the bearer of His tidings will never want to cause trouble for other believers and nonbelievers, let alone kill them or participate in terrorist activities.
But if this is true, how then are we to explain the facts? What am I, as a Muslim, to think when I read that:
Muslims were responsible for eleven, and possibly twelve, of the sixteen major international terrorist acts committed between 1983 and 2000;
Five of the seven states that support terrorists, and as such appear on the U.S. State Department’s list, are Muslim countries, and the majority of foreign organizations on that same list are Muslim organizations;
Muslims were involved in two-thirds of the thirty-two armed conflicts in the year 2000, while only one-fifth of the world population is Muslim, according to the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies.
If nothing is wrong with Islam, why then are so many Muslims on the run? Of the top ten countries from which people have emigrated to the Netherlands, nine are primarily Muslim. Why do we Muslims move to the West, while at the same time condemning it? What does the West have that we don’t? Why is the position of women in Muslim countries so abominable? If we Muslims are so tolerant and peaceful, why is there so much ethnic, religious, political, and cultural strife and violence in Muslim countries? Why can’t or won’t we acknowledge the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves? Why are we Muslims so full of feelings of anger and uneasiness, and why do we carry so much hostility and hate within us both toward ourselves and toward others? Why are we incapable of criticizing ourselves from within?
If I had to characterize Islam, I would say that it has become like Father Atta: incensed, traumatized, shattered, and living in an illusion. Just as Atta fathered his son Mohammed, so Islam has fathered a branch that we alternately call fundamentalism or political Islam. Just as the father didn’t see that his son had a darker side, so too, for a long time, we Muslims have refused to acknowledge that a once peaceful, powerful, and robust religion carried within it elements of fanaticism and violence. We wanted, and still want, a Muslim solution for everything. We have always left the course of our lives, the organization of our society, our economic policy, the education of our children, and the relationship between men and women in the hands of God. Insha’allah (if God [Allah] wills it) is the most common expression among Muslims.
We Muslims have completely lost sight of the balance between religion and reason. Poverty, violence, political instability, economic malaise, and human suffering are the result. Just as Father Atta is proud of his son, so we Muslims are proud of our Islam; we are unwilling and unable to believe that Allah no longer has the answers to all our questions, or if He does have them, He doesn’t want to share them with us.
Yet there are a number of Muslims who do have doubts and who have already cautiously embarked on a process of self-examination and a quest for a way out of the labyrinth. They are a small minority and they still have to overcome both their own suffering and the fundamentalists’ antagonism. But that is not all. They also have to fight the reactionary forces that have become so adept at using the constitutional freedoms of well-functioning democracies like the Netherlands to maintain the illusion in which the Muslim masses find themselves.
We can rephrase the question Should we fear Islam? to Should we fear Father Atta? How well founded is the fear we feel, and what do we do with that fear? It is human to fear the dangerous sides of a religion such as extremism and fanaticism, but it is also human to understand the pain of Muslims and to want to help them.
The reactionary regimes in the Middle East have been successful in convincing the United States that the only evil to be fought is the terrorism stemming from Islamic fundamentalism. The United States fails to see that it is precisely these regimes and the clergy who keep them in power that are the secondary causes of fanaticism, or Wahhabism, as Saudi Arabia calls it. Given that the fundamentalists are the only opposition to the reactionary regimes, the policy of the United States will have the wrong effect. The “enemy” concept of fanatics like Bin Laden is reinforced by the actions of the United States. This is the bitter reality: the Muslim population is using Islam as a political tool by which to dispose of the repressive regimes, but the promises made by Muslim fundamentalists to the people offer no prospects of success whatsoever. This is why it is absolutely essential that Muslims begin to be critical of their religion and to review it from the inside, with help from the outside.
The West needs to help Muslims help themselves, and not support them in their illusion by avoiding the underlying questions. Despite the compassion and understanding one may feel for personal suffering, one cannot lose sight of the fact that this personal suffering is the inevitable result of the form Islam takes at home, at school, in everyday life, and in the media. Many Muslims lack the necessary willingness and courage to address this crucial issue. There is an essential difference between Father Atta’s situation and that of Islam. Father Atta’s son is dead; he can allow himself time to grapple with his trauma slowly. Unfortunately, Islam—we Muslims—do not have that luxury of time.
So what must happen? The primary task of both Muslims and non-Muslims is to face the malicious extremism manifest in the attacks of September 11. Do not underestimate it. Fear of that kind of Islam is valid. Fanaticism in Islam is a reality, and its following is growing steadily. Westerners and Muslims should stand together in their shared rejection of fanaticism, instead of blaming each other and cultivating mutual distrust. That solves nothing, and the fanatics may benefit from it.
The second task, for Muslims themselves, is that of enlightenment. We Muslims must realize the importance and urgency of restoring the balance between religion and reason, and work exceedingly hard at achieving it. Religion offers no appropriate solution for the clamorous situation in which Muslims find themselves worldwide. We must structurally drive religion back to the places where it belongs: in the mosque and in the home. We Muslims are inclined to view universal values, such as freedom of the individual and the equality of men and women, as exclusively Western values. This is wrong. We need to apply these values to ourselves and start creating political and legal institutions that can protect and promote those values. We also need to begin to engage in rational and scientific analysis. It is true that these values and methods were born out of Western tradition, but that does not mean they are any less pertinent for people in other parts of the world. If they were not, people would not be fleeing to the West in such large numbers. To achieve the aforementioned goals requires a fundamental shift in Muslim mentality. This change can only begin by subjecting the sources of Islam to thorough critical examination.
The third task is primarily one that pertains to Western non-Muslims who have already benefited for a long time from the fruits of the Enlightenment. Intellectuals and authorities must assist us in our pursuit of reason. This undertaking holds within it a dilemma: how can the West preserve an open, tolerant society based on the notion of rights and combat rightist extremism and religious intolerance, while helping Muslims with their process of enlightenment? Thus far, politicians and policy makers, as well as intellectuals, have been afraid to confront Muslims about the opinions, customs, and practices arising from their religion that severely damage Muslims themselves and society. At present, the reactionary forces within Islam continue to gain power. Just as the regimes in the Middle East are manipulating the Un
ited States in order to consolidate their own power, so too are countless Muslim organizations in the Netherlands managing to maintain their conservative opinions and practices, in particular regarding the position of women in their culture. The Dutch government is among those who pay heed to these reactionary forces in misguided ways. For example, the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, called on secular people to respect the unifying power of religion. As is typical of so much muzz-headed, empty political rhetoric, it is unclear what he was really asking, but he apparently believed that Islam is primarily a religious practice that provides comfort to immigrant followers by drawing them together in a community. He seemed to be making an appeal to the Dutch people to adopt an unreflective, unexamined tolerance of Islamic communities and their activities. With this “appeal,” however, he blatantly ignored the desperate situation of Muslim women in his own city. And he seemed to believe—mistakenly—that this “benevolent” sentiment and attitude would help the integration of Muslims into Dutch society.
It will not. It does exactly the opposite: it makes a virtual institution of Muslim self-segregation and isolation. The mayor’s misguided, benighted complicity with the Islamists’ agenda has earned him the honorary title of “sheikh” among reactionaries. Similarly, in another example of fuzzy thinking, Roger van Boxtel, the Dutch Minister for Urban Policy and Integration of Ethnic Minorities, stubbornly persists in defending Islamic education, which is precisely what perpetuates the poverty and alienation of Muslim peoples. For his knee-jerk support, van Boxtel earned the title of “mullah” among reactionaries.
Whatever the mayor’s point in his supposed humanistic appeal, he and other Westerners have to understand that we Muslims have religion inculcated in us from birth, and that is one of the very reasons for our falling behind the West in technology, finance, health, and culture. Sheikh Cohen and Mullah van Boxtel should realize that we Muslims are already imbued with faith and superstition. What we need are schools of philosophy and the liberation of our women. Has Sheikh Cohen ever visited a women’s refuge center in his city? If he had, he could not have failed to see some of the chiefly hidden yet omnipresent and undeniable suffering of Muslim women. Neither the Islam and Citizenship Society nor the Muslim community says anything about their women’s suffering, and every one of the 753 subsidized Muslim organizations in the Netherlands also remains silent about it. Only aid organizations such as the Regional Institute for Mental Welfare, the Child Welfare Council, and the Central Registration for Child Abuse recognize the suffering. Muslims report there in large numbers. But these and other aid organizations are also unable to speak out because of their duty to respect confidentiality.
There is a strict taboo in Muslim families on talking about birth control, abortion, and sexual violence. That taboo is a direct result of our religion. A girl who is pregnant keeps quiet about it at home. The unifying power of her religion works only negatively, as pure repression. The result is not unity or solidarity, but inner conflict and terrible loneliness. The only way out is the abortion clinic, where Islamic girls are frequently helped, a suffering they again bear in silence. Sixty percent of all abortions in the Netherlands involve immigrant women, many of whom have an Islamic background.
So it is clear that the fear of Islam is already present in the Netherlands. Politicians and policy makers in that country are already too afraid to confront us Muslims with our illusions. And thus the fear of offending leads to the perpetuation of injustice and human suffering.
Three
The Virgins’ Cage
Arab culture has spread to non-Arab societies by way of Islam, but is in many ways far behind that of the West. The three main shortcomings are insufficient individual freedom, inadequate knowledge, and a lack of women’s rights. These problems may also be seen in non-Arab countries that have embraced Islam and have begun to follow the Koran and the Hadith as political and economic guides for how a community should be organized. In countries such as Pakistan and Iran, and to a lesser extent in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Tanzania, after the introduction of Islam, a significant regression occurred in individual freedom, the acquisition of scientific knowledge, and the rights of women.
There are prospects for improvement, but progress is slow. The United Nations reports on Arab Human Development, prepared by Arab scholars, are first steps in the right direction, and they identified the core of these problems. The Arab world’s current wealth comes exclusively from the oil that is extracted by Western corporations. Its economic growth is the lowest in the world, with exception of sub-Saharan Africa; illiteracy is widespread and persistent. Only about 330 foreign books are translated per year in the entire Arab world (compared to 5,000 in the Netherlands alone and close to 400 in the United States). The situation for human rights is equally dire. Arab authorities use force against their own people, and population groups employ violence against each other. People are oppressed, and the position of women is, in my view, nowhere as bad as it is in the Islamic world. United Nations reports state that women are virtually excluded from any public and political life, and that legislation with respect to marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adultery puts women at an extreme disadvantage.
The same disadvantaged state of affairs in the Islamic world is reflected to a lesser degree in the position of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe. Muslims who have immigrated to Western Europe have brought their convictions and traditions with them. It is striking that in the West, Muslim men are overrepresented in prisons and Muslim women are overrepresented in shelters for abused women and the social-assistance system. Many Muslims fare poorly in school and in the job market. They only rarely take advantage of the opportunities offered in education and employment, and they do not sufficiently benefit from the freedoms that were unavailable in their countries of origin.
What is blocking the progress of Muslims? Why can’t they close the gap between themselves and the Western world? Why can’t they participate in Western society the way other immigrants do?
According to some experts, Western imperialism and unfavorable climatic conditions are at the root of the lagging development of Muslims. Many Islamic states were created too suddenly and artificially and became dictatorships. The dictators having been installed and maintained by Western states, thereby retarding Muslim development. However, historian Bernard Lewis convincingly refutes this claim. He believes the delay in Muslim development arises out of Muslims’ feelings of grievance against Westerners. For centuries, dating back to even before the Middle Ages, Muslims saw Westerners as stupid and backward, lacking in cleanliness, morals, and civilized conduct. The Moors, who conquered Spain and ruled there for seven hundred years before 1492, were responsible for introducing basic hygiene, for preserving the great Roman and Greek classics, for introducing modern agricultural practices such as irrigation, and for a great flowering of culture. Starting in the twelfth century, however, the Muslim mind-set became less tolerant, less inquisitive, more extremist in its views. At the same time, the Judeo-Christian West realized it needed to improve, and its people began learning, traveling, and exploring. As a result, the West caught up with Islamic culture and overtook it in a very short time.
An explanation from the Islamic point of view is provided by Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, the founders of radical Islam. According to them, the umma, the community, can flourish only if its members keep to the letter of the Koran and the Hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. They are of the view that Muslims have strayed from the path that the Prophet Muhammad outlined for them and have thereby brought their misery upon themselves. But actually, politics that follow Islam to the letter have failed dramatically. Islam does not possess a credible and workable political model, as the wavering regimes in Iran and Saudi Arabia illustrate. The Islamists are correct in stating that the huge majority of Muslims do not succeed in closely following all the commands and prohibitions of Allah. Nor should Muslims follow them, nor will they be able to follow them as long as the
se proscriptions are defined by fundamentalists.
The problems—aggression, economic and scientific stagnation, repression, epidemics, and social unrest—that confront most of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims spread over five continents cannot be explained by simply one or two factors. A complex combination of factors, sometimes regional, has evolved over time, one of which is the sexual morality of Islam, originally a tribal morality that has been elevated within Islam to the status of a dogma. This explanation appears too rarely in the existing literature. This premodern morality was sanctified in the Koran and then further developed in the traditions of the Prophet. For many Muslims this morality expresses itself through an obsession with virginity. This obsession with mastery over the sexuality of women is not limited to Islam, but is also evident in other religions (e.g., among Christians, Jews, and Hindus). Yet it has not hindered these other religious cultures’ modern development as much as it has the Muslims’. The value attached to a woman’s virginity is so great that it eclipses the human catastrophes and social costs that result from it.
Muslim girls are often told that “a girl with a ruptured hymen is like a used object.” And an object that is once used becomes permanently worthless. A girl who has lost her “seal of being unused” won’t find a marriage partner and is doomed to spend the rest of her days in her parents’ home. Moreover, if defloration occurs outside wedlock, she has dishonored her family to the tenth degree of kinship. Other families will gossip about them. They will say that the family is known for its loose women who throw themselves away to “the first man who comes along.” So the girl is punished by her family. Punishments range from name-calling to expulsion or confinement and may even extend to a shotgun wedding either to the man who is responsible for the defloration or to some “generous man” willing to cover the family’s shame. These so-called generous men are often poor, feebleminded, old, impotent, or all of these. In the worst-case scenario, the girl will be murdered, often by her own family. The United Nations reports that five thousand girls are murdered annually for this reason in Islamic countries, including Jordan, so often cited as a “liberal” regime.