Unveiled: How the West Empowers Radical Muslims

by Yasmine Mohammed

One of the first things he did was break all of my mom’s records and destroy our record player. He broke her Hank Williams, Dolly Parton, Fat Albert, and Kenny Rogers records with savage anger as we looked on confused. Why wasn’t our mom stopping him? Why was she allowing this man to break her things? She stood sheepishly off to the side. She was so different when he was around. Suddenly, she was meek and quiet and incredibly accommodating. She was all I had to protect me, but she was nothing like Wonder Woman on TV. I understood in that moment that she would never stand up for me. She would never defend me from his beatings. She wouldn’t even defend her records. He encouraged us to get in on it, but I had no desire to destroy the albums. I didn’t realize it then, but that was the very first coat of cement. It had not yet hardened, and so I didn’t hesitate before questioning. I picked up the sharp, shattered pieces of Bill Cosby’s stand-up album and asked my mom why he was doing this. “Because these are all haram!”