ISLAM TODAY - What in God's Name do We do Now? part 2

Wafa Sultan is the author of a remarkable book entitled ‘A God Who Hates.’ The book jacket encapsulates her life story like this: ‘Wafa Sultan is a Syrian-born American psychiatrist included on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2006. She created a firestorm on Al Jezeera as the first Arab Muslim woman on that network who demanded to be heard.’

I discuss and quote her extensively because she has 'seen it all,’ and describes it with passion and honesty.

Growing up as a girl in Syria, she witnessed the prejudices and some of the brutality of Muslim men. In medical School and as a doctor, she saw a great deal of this brutality, treating Syrian girls and women on a daily basis, (with descriptions of unconscionable depravity that elicit shudders of repulsion - I’ll mention just multiple cigarette burns, but I can assure you that it is many pages of heart-wrenching stuff.)

She reveals her conclusions about the backwardness, inequality, immorality and inhumanity of Muslim men in their treatment of the girls and women in their lives; and their fear and hatred of anything non-Muslim, and especially Jews.

She experienced first-hand all the things we find (and must find) abhorrent about modern-day Islam in many countries, like the acceptance of rape, beatings and torture, murder, FGM, honor killing and child brides.

Ms Sultan is a powerful and insightful author, and I would say it is impossible to read the book and not come away changed forever in your overall view of Islam. I recommend it for every human who engages head and heart.

It is crucial for the (future) health of the world to acknowledge every strong-willed woman reformer in Islam, as well as the men who support them and echo their cries against entrenched, inhumane practices. If Islam is ‘the religion of peace,’ we must support everyone, everywhere, who is trying to bring it (back) to that place.

Ms Sultan: "People ask, why do Muslims hate their women?...And I can only reply, Because their God does.” And while she rejects the God of today's Islam, I don’t believe she is an atheist.

She and her husband eventually make it to America. And warts and all, America quickly becomes a true miracle for them and their children.

She affirms the notion of fear as being the overwhelming state of Bedouin tribes in the harsh deserts of Arabia, the birthplace of Islam. "Muslims in the 21st c. still fear they may be raided, and live every second of their lives preparing to raid someone else.”

Confirming this, we jump ahead to Wafa’s early days in America, as she describes a Muslim neighbor, ‘showing her the ropes,' who took her to a supermarket, where she proceeded to rip open packages or poke holes in them. When Wafa protested, her ‘friend’ said, “may God curse them. They stole our land…I’m trying to hurt them…don’t you know the owner’s Jewish?”

Still raiding, 1400 years later, but with up-to-date brainwashing.

She describes how Muslims can’t even answer a ‘yes or no’ question with a yes or no. The answer, instead, after wavering, is ‘inshallah’ (God willing), thus they cannot be held responsible for anything, as God will make the decision for them, thus justifying their ambiguity.

‘Say, nothing will befall us except what Allah has ordained.’ S9:51

She responded when the US found no ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq: “Weapons of mass destruction are in many Muslim countries. They are being produced in factories called madrasas.”

The schools which pump out little boys who hate, fear and fight against everything we hold dear: family, friends, our many freedoms, dignity, love, hope, joy, compassion, respect, passion, trust, truth, conscience, equality. Leaving only brutal, angry little ticwms.

Early in her life in America, she was treated nicely while working as a gas station attendant. She still muses: “The fact that I received more respect as a foreign gas station attendant in America than as a doctor in my native land still stuns me...."

And the differences in treatment of her children between Syria and America truly brings out the passion with which she endorses the US:

Their son “Mazen suffered from congenital hearing loss. When we lived in Syria, despite being a doctor, I couldn’t afford to buy hearing aids for him…” Shortly after he started school in America, "at the school’s suggestion, Mazen was sent to see an ear specialist, and within a week he was using his hearing aids.” !!!

“Mazel would come home from school bursting with excitement and tell me, 'mommy, can you believe it? Ms Scarf hugs me every day. Why didn’t the teachers in Syria ever hug me?’ My child’s questions etched themselves painfully and deeply on my mind and spirit, and I would reply silently: I’m still searching for answers myself, little one.

“When I got home I finished writing an article I had begun a couple of days earlier, and concluded it with the words: ‘Our Prophet Muhammad says: teach your children to pray at the age of seven and beat them if they don’t at the age of ten.’ To hell with a Prophet who demands that a father beats his ten-year old son to make him pray to God!”

Ms Sultan discusses how three of Muhammad’s eleven wives (a subject well-chronicled in his biographies) figure into Muslim history, largely unchanged, of course, 1400 years later.

“If there was ever proof that a pious Muslim woman need not be a submissive wife and mother, it is the life of Aisha, the third of the Prophet’s eleven wives. She has divided opinions ever since the seventh century, among both Muslims and non-Muslims.

“A top Islamic scholar, an inspiration to champions of women’s rights, a military commander riding on camelback, and a fatwa-issuing jurist, Aisha’s intellectual standing and religious authority were astonishing, by the standards of both our own time and hers.”

However, Aisha also figures in controversy that is still with us: at six, she was betrothed to Muhammad, and he consummated the marriage when she was nine or ten (at puberty). IMO, there’s no point in being horrified by that aspect; remember all the multiple wives and concubines present in the Old Testament? And marriage between young adults – age 13 – was the norm throughout the OT and NT. No, it is the fact that child brides still exist today, bought, sold and consummated all over the Muslim world, that is alarming and unconscionable.

Zeinab was the wife of Muhammad’s adopted son Zeid. His desire for her prompted a series of Qu’ranic verses that eventually allowed Muhammad to marry her. The indignity here is that it was socially questionable, so Muhammad (Allah?) rescinded Zeid’s adoption and banned adoption, except by family members, forever in Muslim culture.

Ms Sultan: "This ban put an end to a social system that at the time saved many children…and the ban, to this day, continues to rot the soul of Muslim societies.”

Lastly, then, the marriage to Safia, a Jewish woman, whose father, brother and husband Muhammad’s army had killed that same day! The lasting indignity? The confirmation of the grossest results of ‘raiding’ imaginable, and of Muslim man’s pathetic disdain, (Muhammad being the man whom Muslim men to this day try to emulate) showing zero concern for a woman’s life or feelings.

“I tell people, ‘God has given girls qualities and potential. If they aren’t allowed to develop them, if they aren’t provided with opportunities to study and learn, it’s basically a live burial.”

Back to Ms Sultan’s observations since moving to America:

“A Muslim man can see himself only in terms of his ability to pump out money and sperm. The Muslim woman, for her part, sees herself as an incubator for his sperm and as a piece of furniture he has bought and paid for with his money. The man alone decides when to take possession of this object and when to deposit his sperm in it, dictating a relationship in which human feelings have no value.”

And firmly, the enemy within names its scapegoat:

“What was written about the Christians and especially the Jews constitute the greater part of the Islamic heritage, the part that has held us back in a state of paranoia and hatred…mistrust of Jews and Christians has reduced Muslims to a state of paranoia that has reached a peak in the last 50 yrs, since the State of Israel was founded. With time, the Jews have become a peg on which we hang our problems and our political, economic, military and even moral misfortunes. Arab rulers, backed by the clergy, have been the beneficiaries of this conspiracy theory, and every one of them has accused anyone who disagrees with him as being in league with the Zionist lobby.”

Some of that universal propaganda still lingered when Sultan first moved to the US:

“Doubt as to the sincerity of the good intentions of Americans in general and Jews in particular was one of the greatest obstacles I faced as I tried to adapt to my new surroundings as an immigrant in the US. I spent my first few years in America in a fog of suspicion, unable to trust the people I was living among. I was utterly convinced that they were waiting for an opportunity to harm me because I was a Muslim.”

However, she experienced only good intentions of good people, who carried no rancor toward her whatsoever.

“90% of Americans do not think much about where Syria is on the map of the world, while 90% of Arabs believe Americans spend most of their time spying on them and plotting to destroy Islam, so as to seize control of their oil and resources."

Truly a powerful, personal expose; Ms Sultan has lived a clash of two cultures.

Manal Al-Sharif, “Daring to Drive”

Ms Al-Sharif was born in 1979, a date important enough in Saudi history that it bears heavily on her own story, a story of high-level brainwashing and subsequent soul-searching and activism.

Wahhabism, a very strict Islamic sect from the late 18th c, was the guiding force of Saudi life by 1925. Sovereignty of God, forced attendance at prayer, no shaving or tobacco and strict punishment of non-compliant Muslims and all other 'sinners.’

Isis, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram are ultra-Wahhabi spinoffs. Nuff said?

In 1979, a movement called Salafism tried to IMO 'out-strict’ and 'out-pious’ Wahhabism. The aftermath of a Salafi takeover of the Grand Mosque actually saw Salafi tenets absorbed into Saudi life, resulting in the ultra-mega-repressive conservatism of Ms. Al-Sharif’s childhood and of recent Saudi history.

Manal was born into a poor, pious family. Her father, though he always provided for them, thought nothing of beating her, her sister and her mother, and adhered to all the strict rules of Saudi Islam.

She bought into the propaganda, such that she became, at times, the strictest member of the family, even asking for the oppressive abaya before the mandatory age. And even after being subjected to FGM.

Then came a day like many others, when the young Manal played soccer and games with mixed-gender friends. After which, she had her first period. Not only could she never again touch or play with the boys, she literally never saw some of them after that!

Radical preachers on TV and cassettes at school played up the ‘global war against Islam’ and revived 7th c. sharia law punishments: chopping off hands and feet of pickpockets and public beheadings of miscreants. Books not in keeping with Salafism were banned, the press and media heavily censored.

The internet, cell phones, credit cards and insurance were rejected, as were music and photography. Other taboos for ‘adult’ females included wearing pants, styling ones hair and eyebrow plucking. And playing sports!

And, importantly, the deep Salafi belief in Hell was forced down the throats of children at every opportunity. Ms. Al-Sharif: “What I remember most from my own life during this period was the all-consuming fear that I, as a Muslim, wouldn’t reach the level of righteousness and devotion required to escape condemnation from the eternal hellfires.”

“Salafis are confident that they alone will survive the time of judgment.” Not unlike a lot of misguided Catholics and Baptists.

The turnaround in her life began when she was accepted at University in Jeddah, (considered the most ‘open’ city in Saudi Arabia,) where she could receive a degree in subjects she liked; physics and engineering. In the Medical school, females could attend lectures by male doctors. And the University was not only OK with women uncovering their faces, but was the only one in Saudi Arabia that allowed them to play sports.

These things worried her at first: “I might have been at University, but I still railed very much against Western values.”

She gradually let unfamiliar and haram events into her life, from the most innocuous, like hugs from friends, to satellite dishes, with everything from Al Jezeera to TV dramas to music, buying one for the family home, eventually accepted by all. “To my ears, the music flowing through the headphones was the dreamiest, most beautiful thing that I had ever heard. I could not understand how something so beautiful could be the work of the devil.”

Then came Sept. 11. “That was the date of the complete transformation of my beliefs, the start of my rebellion against the teaching of hatred and hostility toward non-Muslims. I prayed to God that Muslims had no part in the tragedy. I woke to news that the attack had been carried out by Al Qaeda, led by a Saudi, Osama bin Laden, and soon after, that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. I could not believe that God would demand the killing of innocent people…I was done with Salafism.”

Manal was soon accepted for work at Aramco, the giant Saudi-owned but American-run oil company that was so autonomous, it operated like a giant foreign embassy. She was shocked to see women without abayas, riding bicycles and even driving cars.

She later, in fairly rapid succession, started to see a man, “consumed with religious guilt,” married him despite his conservative views and demands, including several beatings, had a son by him and divorced him.

Accepted for a professional exchange program, she spent a year based in Nashua, New Hampshire, arriving to see her first real snow, getting a driver’s license, sightseeing, learning photography and living in a thoroughly mixed society.

Returning to Saudi Arabia 'modernized’, the wave of the ’Arab Spring’ riveted her, and she began to reform herself and her environs. Pissed that Saudi women could be stranded at home with kids and no way to leave the house, even in an emergency, she thought about driving outside the Aramco compound, and learned that technically there was nothing in the traffic code that excluded women from driving. It became an obsession.

In 1990, forty-seven women had driven. All were banned, along with their husbands, from foreign travel for a year and denounced as ‘immoral vixens.’

Manal stood on the shoulders of 'the 47’ and persevered. She got on Twitter and You Tube, and got 120,000 views, with mixed likes and hates. And finally, she took her obsession to the streets. The drive was watched by the world and hailed by many as a great victory, but the Saudis jailed her just the same, and she experienced first-hand the inhumanity of the system and the squalor and degradation of a Saudi prison.

Still, in 2020, women are actually, finally, allowed to drive. An important, if tiny, first step in reforming great systemic repression. IMO, it's partly a smokescreen, to take our eyes off them continuing to bomb the shit out of Yemen.

And the book, a fascinating capsule of Saudi culture and women’s rights over the last 25 years. Highly recommended.

PEACE IN OUR TIME