You could see her face, because she was Somali. Saudi women had no faces.
It is possible to free oneself – to adapt one’s faith, to examine it critically, and to think about the degree to which that faith is itself at the root of oppression.
The argument in this book is that religious doctrines matter and are in need of reform.
Most Muslims never delve into theology, and we rarely read the Quran; we are taught it in Arabic, which most Muslims can’t speak. As a result, most people think that Islam is about peace. It is from these people, honest and kind, that the fallacy has arisen that Islam is peaceful and tolerant.
Saudi women had no faces. We pulled away and ran over to the black shapes. We stared up at them, trying to make out where their eyes could be. One raised her hand, gloved in black, and we shrieked, “They have hands!” We pulled faces at her. We were truly awful, but what we were seeing was so alien, so sinister, that we were trying to tame it, make it less awful. And what these Saudi women saw, of course, was little black kids acting like baboons. After.
Contrast this with the use by modern Islamic scholars of Muhammad’s decision to marry a six-year-old girl, consummating their marriage when she turned nine, to justify child marriage in Iraq and Yemen today.
I found myself thinking that the Quran is not a holy document. It is a historical record, written by humans. It is one version of events, as perceived by the men who wrote it 150 years after the Prophet Muhammad died. And it is a very tribal and Arab version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war.
A key problem for Islam today can be summarized in three simplifying sentences: Christians worship a man made divine. Jews worship a book. And Muslims worship both.
When I look at people talking about intersectionality, what I see is the human being magnifying a biological attribute, and then putting them aside, putting them in a corner as victims of oppression... I most certainly don’t see myself as a victim.
Let me make my point in the simplest possible terms: Islam is not a religion of peace.
There is in fact no good reason al-Ghazali and his ilk should have the last word in defining Islam. Muslims around the world cannot go on claiming that “true” Islam has somehow been “hijacked” by a group of extremists. Instead they must acknowledge that inducements to violence lie at the root of their own most sacred texts, and take responsibility for actively redefining their faith.
American liberals today are hesitant to speak out against the denial of rights that is perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Abeh would always protest, and quote the Quran: “Paradise is at the feet of your mother!” But when we looked down at them, our mother’s bare feet were cracked from washing the floor every day, and Abeh’s were clad in expensive Italian leather shoes.
Multiculturalism helps immigrants postpone the pain of letting go of the anachronistic and inappropriate. It locks people into corrupt, inefficient, and unjust social systems, even if it does preserve their arts and crafts. It perpetuates poverty, misery, and abuse.
The good times, when the rains came and made everything green, when streams of water suddenly raced through the dried riverbeds and there was milk and meat in abundance. She tried to teach us how that led to decadence: how when the grass grows green, herders become lazy and children grow fat.
The Sudanese intellectual Mahmoud Mohammed Taha argued that Muslims should embrace the spiritual Islam of Mecca and let go of the Islam of Muhammad’s more warlike and political Medina period, which, Taha argued, applied only to that specific moment in time and not to subsequent generations. Taha also campaigned against introducing sharia in Sudan. Though he still believed there was no god but Allah, and that Muhammad was his messenger, Taha was nonetheless hanged for apostasy in 1985.
His name meant “He Who Fasts for a Hundred Days,” and in person he more than lived up to his name. He was so thin that he looked like skin stretched over bone. While Sister Aziza wore the hijab, Boqol Sawm wore a Saudi robe, a bit short, so that it showed his bony ankles.
I said, “Allah wouldn’t test us on whether we condemn somebody who became pregnant outside of marriage; He would test us on our hospitality and charity.
Before the Brotherhood came, you could see everyone’s arms and legs. We never used to notice. But now that woman are covering so much, all I can think about is those round calves and silky arms and the hair, smelling of coconut. I never used to think about a neck before, but ooh, a neck is so sexy now.
I have faith, but I have faith in human reason.
The Saudi girls were light-skinned and called us abid, or slaves – in fact, the Saudis had legally abolished slavery just five years before I was born.