Unveiled: How the West Empowers Radical Muslims

by Yasmine Mohammed

I had suicidal thoughts daily, but I didn’t even have the energy to follow through. I was a shadow of a shell. I didn’t even have any anger left. I drifted through the motions of life. Everything was colourless and flavourless. I had no desires, no aspirations, no thoughts or feelings. I just existed.

In our home, I was the cat. It was as if my mother took sadistic pleasure in torturing me. It satisfied some pathological need in her. And, unfortunately, she was not alone. In speaking with other ex-Muslim women, I discovered that this pattern of behaviour was remarkably common. Some Saudi Arabian women told me about how their mothers would lock them in a room for months. This is extraordinarily easy to do in a country like Saudi Arabia, where there is no protection for girls who are being abused. Another woman told me of how, after she escaped to the United States and started dating an American man, she slipped and fell and started to bleed where she had scraped herself. Her boyfriend came running, and she flinched. She expected him to yell at her, to tell her how stupid she was, and ask her why she’s so clumsy and why she can’t walk straight. She was taken aback when his first words were, “Are you okay?” That was not the response she was accustomed to hearing.

Without

As

“Why

“Okay,

“Are

Abandoned

One

Depression

For

I stood up tall and decided I was tired of taking the bus into work every day, getting harassed by what seemed like multitudes of disgusting men in that overcrowded country. No woman walking without a man was ever spared, no matter her age or how much of her body was covered up. It seemed like all the men fulfilled the stereotype: they took harassment of women as their civic duty. Research shows that whopping 99.3% of women in Egypt have reported being sexually harassed.

When

continued

My mom is a strange paradox. I used to call her the persecuted princess. She would manage to somehow be superior yet simultaneously the victim. It took me a long time to identify this dichotomy. I now recognize that she is not alone in this mind-set. I see a great number of Muslim people comfortably nestled in the same spot. In the news, you will see Muslims angry and confrontational about a Diet Coke or having to shake a hand or their right to cover their face during a citizenship ceremony. Making demands on a country that you are not even a citizen of is presumptuous and condescending in the extreme.

The weirdest thing is that they are successful. Because they have brown skin, they are automatically seen as a victimized minority. And they use that illogical white guilt to their advantage. A woman in Canada demanded the right to cover her face during her citizenship ceremony, though it was against the law. She eventually succeeded in changing our laws (before she was even a citizen). She knows she is not being victimized by Canada. She knows that she is being a bully. But she will play the victim if that works as a satisfactory means to an end. Consider the group of Muslim protesters in the UK who were angry that the wife of a known terrorist was taken in by police for questioning. They chanted loudly and aggressively into megaphones: “UK go to Hell. British police go to Hell.” They waved black flags and held signs that said Shariah Law Is the Answer and UK Police Are Terrorists and Extremists. After a woman in niqab finished chastising a British woman for walking in the streets “naked” (she was actually wearing a full-length dress), and asking her, “Who are you trying to seduce?” and telling her to “go put on some clothes,” the protester then went on to explain that the demonstration was “a message to stop oppression.” The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

Christopher Hitchens called it the “horrible trio of self-hatred, self-righteousness, and self-pity.” It was as if he’d been raised by Muslims. How did he hit the nail so squarely on the head like that?

Quite fittingly, months later in her fake husband’s bedroom, where I had been coerced into vile situations as a child, I was coerced into a vile situation as an adult—the celebration of my marriage. I sat there as strange women did my hair and makeup. I kept crying and ruining their work, but they would just touch it up again. Not one heartless witch thought it strange that this young girl kept crying. Not one of them thought to say to my mom, “What are you doing?” Probably because they would all do the same to their own daughters in a heartbeat. There was food but no music, because that’s haram. There were no pictures being taken either, because the idiot I was about to marry believed that photographs were haram, too. Anything with faces is forbidden, even dolls.

Holding back the tears was proving too much. I had to let go. I had to release the pressure or I would end up in another full-on panic attack, and I had to avoid that at all costs. Panic attacks are too painful and too terrifying. Even though I knew my mom would be mad at me for embarrassing her, I let it all out. I heaved out all of the tears I had been holding back. The guests turned their backs on me. I suppose they felt awkward and uncomfortable seeing me sitting there crying like that, so they just ignored me and filled up their plates with more food. I sat there and stared at this surreal scene in front of me, trying to talk myself out of fainting. Many years later, when the Internet became a thing, I came across countless pictures of Muslim brides crying at their weddings. As alone as I felt that day, I now know that I was not alone. I was joining the millions of girls before me and the millions of girls after me who were pressured into marriages they did not want. They are not tears of joy, as they would be at an average wedding in the West. They are tears of anguish, betrayal, and hopelessness.

The tradition of Katb El Kitab was started when Mohammed wanted to marry six-year-old Aisha. By agreement, she would be his according to Islamic Law, but he wouldn’t consummate the marriage until the agreed upon date: the onset of menses. According to Hadith, that fateful day came when she was nine. It is not outside the realm of possibility for a girl to get her period at nine, but it is suspiciously young. The average age is twelve. Laughably, Islam apologists insist that girls mature faster in the desert, which is simply not true. Despite his conjured reputation of being the perfect example of a man for all humanity for all time, Mohammed’s decision to rape a child has ruined the lives of millions, if not billions, of girls across this planet over the past fourteen hundred years.

Initially,

“So what?” she said nonchalantly. “Don’t you know Allah has made it halal, permissible, for a man to beat his wife? You don’t know your own Quran? How are you a Muslim and you don’t know this? He has done nothing wrong.” “He’s a lunatic! He thinks someone will be able to see me on the seventeenth floor without my hijab on! I am not going back up there ever again!”

I felt trapped in that elevator. Like there was no air left in the whole world. Everything about the laws of Islam are clearly arranged to entrap a woman in a forced marriage with a man who beats her and rapes her. All sanctioned by Allah. It is incredibly common throughout the Muslim-majority world for women to be beaten by their husbands. It is so common, in fact, that in Morocco a popular daytime show had a segment on how women can apply makeup to cover their black eye. It is not against the law in most Islamic countries, because no human can forbid something that Allah has allowed. In Egypt there are debates on television where women try to say that men should not beat their wives, but they are quickly superseded by the Quran verse 4:34. Her argument is no longer valid. No human can contest the literal word of Allah. Some try to insist that Allah just meant lightly. Well, there is no trace of the word lightly in the verse. As well, lightly is highly subjective And finally, no. No one should be hitting their wife ever! But that argument will never hold any water in societies that have already accepted the opposite.

As well as being beaten, women are commonly attacked with acid in Pakistan and Iran for such infractions as dressing too Western, not wearing hijab, or cutting their hair. Women are not even afforded the basic freedom of choosing what to put on their body. They have no autonomy over themselves. All of this stems from the edicts of honour culture. A culture that sanctions this control of women. A large part of this effort is to control women so they do not lose their virginity before they are given to their husbands.

The three of us moved into a town house, and my mom moved in with us. As soon as we arrived, he went around the house and taped brown meat-packing paper over all the windows to block out the sun and prevent anyone from accidentally seeing me. Then he covered the papered windows with a curtain just to be sure.

My

Al

Escape

The

“Is

“Oh.

“Why

“Give me back my wife! I want my wife! You just wait till I get you! I will cut your face! You think you can leave me? No man will ever want you when I am finished with you! You are mine, do you hear me? You are mine or you are dead.” I sat in the dark, rocking my baby in my arms, waiting for him to leave or for the cops to arrive, whichever came first. I was absolutely petrified that someone would be going in or out of the building and that they would let him in.

House

Women do not get a say in this. If a man chooses his wife in Heaven, then that is where she will spend eternity. Islam, as you might have realized, is an extremely gendered religion. Women are only mentioned in relation to men. To illustrate, a dog is not communicated to directly by a trainer. The trainer speaks to the owner and informs them how to treat the dog. This is the relationship between Allah (the trainer) and women (the dogs).

Because of this, there are no revelations to describe who a woman gets to be with in Heaven. It is not even mentioned. No one asks a sex slave in a slave market if she wants to be with her owner. That would be ridiculous. I could hope and infer that if Heaven is supposed to be everything I want, I would not have to be with him; but this would directly contradict the revelation that he is the one who gets to choose if he wants to be with me. This stuff haunted me. I felt like I’d have a few years of reprieve on Earth, but then I might end up stuck with him for eternity anyway.

My

Would I never escape this life? I grew up in a home where I was abused, I married a man who abused me, and I escaped that to a home where my brother abused me. How would I get myself out of this cycle before my daughter slipped into this downward spiral as well? Between punches, I saw glimpses of her, not even two years old, watching her mother get the shit beaten out of her, and it wasn’t phasing her in the least. She wasn’t even slightly bothered by the scene in front of her. It was as commonplace for her as it had been for me. This had to stop. I had to end this cycle. I would not allow her to be on the receiving end of this one day because of my inability to protect her from that life. My unresponsive body seemed to shake my brother out of whatever diabolical temper tantrum he had been in. He suddenly shook me to check if I was still alive.

On

“Okay,

Once

“If he is Muslim, he will be honest.” “That’s not necessarily true.” “Yes it is! A real Muslim would never cheat another Muslim. He will cheat the kuffar, maybe, but he will never cheat another Muslim.”

At

words

Freedom

That

Doubt

As well, this notion that the Quran was special and divine was proven false as most of it had been (badly) plagiarized. There are even many instances where foreign languages like Hebrew or Syriac ended up in the Arabic printing. We were told, of course, that those were words with mysterious meanings that only Allah could decipher. But, no. It’s just a bad job of plagiarism. The Quran was cobbled together from the teachings and tales told by Jewish and Christian tribal leaders.

My mother, predictably, only mourned for the Muslims who were killed in the twin towers. “You know there was a day care in there,” I said. “Well, sometimes there are casualties in war.” “That’s not a war. That’s an attack on innocent civilians.” “Don’t be stupid. Muslims are always at war with kuffar. That’s your problem, you never understood that. And that’s why you’ll probably be killed with them. When you live among them, then you will be indistinguishable, and for that you will deserve what you get.” “You live among them, too.” “Not like you! I do not have kafir friends! I hate them and their country, and I will go home as soon as I can! You love it here! You love them! You think you are one of them! But you will have no choice but to join the Caliphate when we succeed in overpowering them, or you will be killed with them like a dog.” My mother’s view of the world was no different than that of the 9/11 hijackers, no different than that of ISIS. They all believed that it is a Muslim’s duty to fight until all people are Muslim and all of the planet is ruled by Islamic Law. It is the reason why when the Caliphate rose in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Muslims from all over the planet flew over to join the fight. It made no sense that young men and women from Western countries were choosing to go to a war-zone, people could not understand it. But it made perfect sense. Like me, those people were taught, from when they were children, that it is their duty to support an Islamic stat...

After 9/11, smugness and celebration were the kinds of attitudes I would get from the Muslim side of my life. Meanwhile on the kafir side, the polar opposite was happening. The Dean of my faculty called me down to his office to ask me if I had dealt with any backlash. Muslims had just killed thousands of Americans, and his first concern was that no one was making me feel uncomfortable. Oh Canada! If you only knew what you were dealing with and how strange your concern seemed to me. No, no one had made me feel uncomfortable. In fact, they were going out of their way to make sure that I was always comfortable. I felt like asking the Dean, “Seriously, are you kidding me? We’re calling for your death, and you’re concerned that our feelings might be hurt?”