Ex-Muslimah- Oppression Of Muslim Women Exists

"Marwa" is a "mostly-liberal" Arab, Middle-Eastern, ex-Muslimah, atheist blogger living in the U.S., and she's written an interesting response to an article she read on PolicyMic by Lauren Rankin. Rankin is a white, liberal feminist Western woman, who was being very critical of a series of tweets by Joyce Carol Oates equating the rape and sexual harassment of women in Egypt with religion.  Ms. Oates wrote:

Where 99.3% of women report having been sexually harassed & rape is epidemic--Egypt--natural to inquire: what's the predominant religion?
1:50 PM - 5 Jul 2013

Rankin launches into the typical accusations of Islamophobia, which she stupidly believes is a form of racism, claiming that it's patriarchy not religion that contributes to the oppression of Muslim women.  Marwa  begs to differ.

I love my feminist allies and friends, but sometimes white Western feminists get things all backwards when they try to speak about the experiences of foreign women of color. Especially if they’re talking about people they’ve never met, places they’ve never lived, religious and legal and patriarchal systems they are unacquainted with, and make broad, sweeping generalizations about those systems. This is such an example. I understand that it might be driven by a reflection of the voices of Muslim women who freely choose and cleave to their religion and rail out against accusations that they are being oppressed–what I do not understand is how the experiences and insights of free women with agency and self-determination can speak to the experiences of their sisters who do not have such freedom–the woman who is free to practice Islam or not, to wear hijab or not–this woman does not speak for me or my ex-Muslim and Muslim friends who suffer under Islamic systems any more than a Western woman does.

To be clear, I applaud the instinct to try to reduce anti-Muslim hate and bigotry. It is the approach here that I think is utterly misguided and frankly dangerous. Rankin is attempting to object to Islam being characterized in a monolithic manner…by characterizing it in a monolithic manner, as something that never contributes to or causes misogyny, rape, and oppression of women in Muslim-majority countries. And while I myself am a champion of trying to oppose anti-Muslim bigotry, I believe the strongest and most compassionate way of doing this is by resisting the characterization of Islam as a monolith. What has happened here is that Rankin has engaged in what I say is a dangerous refusal to examine the very real influences and intermingling of religion and patriarchy in violence and oppression against women and children in Muslim-majority countries.

The rest here on her blog Between a Veil and a Dark Place. It's an interesting read, not what some oppressed Muslim women and liberal idiots like Rankin would have you believe.

Marwa also wrote a great article about freedom and living in fear.

Ex-Muslimah Talks About Freedom and Living In Fear

From the blog of a Lebanese ex-Muslim, atheist who moved to the U.S. 11 months ago.

In this blog post: What it is like to be a Muslim woman, and why we know what freedom is (and you may not), "Marwa"  talks about what it was like to finally experience total freedom, for the first time ever. Fascinating read. I don't think we fully understand what it's like to live in constant, unmitigated fear. She takes you there.

I have keys.

When I first moved to the United States eleven months ago, it took me several weeks to grasp this bit of information.

I have keys.

I have keys to my own front door and I can open this front door and walk down the street whenever I want to.

I can walk down the street without being watched through the windows and without anyone calling my parents and telling them I am roaming loose on the street.

I can walk down the street, sit down on a bench under a tree, and eat an iced cream cone. Then I can stand up and walk back home.

There will be nobody waiting for me at my house to ask me where I have been, refuse to let me in, call me a liar, and use my walk as renewed incentive to rifle through all of my possessions for proof that I am doing something wrong.

Because the simple desire to take a walk cannot but hide something deviant.

Because there is no good reason why a woman should want to walk down the street just to walk, and expose herself to the questioning and predatory eyes of the neighbors and strange men.

I have keys to my front door, now, and I can open my front door and walk down the street whenever I want to.

Read the rest of her essay on her blog  Between a Veil and a Dark Place.

Indonesian Atheist Jailed For "Inciting religious hatred"

The 30-year-old West Sumatran atheist Alexander Aan, who was beaten up and jailed for writing "God doesn't exist" and posting Mohammad cartoons on his Facebook group page Ateis Minang, and was facing  a maximum of 5 years in jail, has finally been been sentenced.

Presiding judge Eka Prasetya Budi Dharma found Aan guilty of

“..deliberately spreading information inciting religious hatred and animosity."

“What he did has caused anxiety to the community and tarnished Islam.”

“Under the Electronic Information and Transactions law, we sentence him to prison for a length of two years and six months."

Initially, he was also charged with two other 'crimes'-  blasphemy and "persuading others to embrace atheism"- which could have netted him those 5 years. However, those charges were dropped, and prosecutors didn't get the 3 1/2 years they wanted.

Ironically, although not surprising, those who have attacked (and sometimes killed) Christians and Ahmadis (Muslim minority sect) have received far lighter sentences than Aan.

As I mentioned in my other post, Indonesia's freedom of religion is bogus.  These people need to get a life.

Turkish Atheist Pianist Faces Jail Time For Insulting Islam

It's not surprising when Muslims become atheists, and there's definitely a multitude of them. Not the route I would take, since I firmly believe in God, but I can certainly understand why they might turn their backs on Allah and their religion in its current incarnation. But atheists in Muslim countries are as persecuted as any other non-Muslim minority, and as liable as any other 'infidel' of being prosecuted for "explicitly insulting Islam.

And since the once secular Turkey has gradually become more like its Islamist-leaning cousins elsewhere in the Middle East, people over there now need to be very careful what they say about Islam- or they could wind up like 42-year-old Fazil Say. Say is a famous, world renowned Turkish classical pianist- who also happens to be an avowed atheist- who is facing an 18-month jail term for insulting "Muslim religious values."  Apparently Say (who has performed with orchestras all over the world) uses Twitter, and religious conservatives took offense to some quotes from a poem by Omar Khayyam (11th Century Persian poet of  "Rubaiyat" fame) that he posted.

“You say rivers of wine flow in heaven, is heaven a tavern to you? You say two hours await each believer there, is heaven a brothel to you?”

He also made fun of a muazzin:

someone who makes the Muslim call to prayer.

“The muazzin finished the evening prayers in 22 seconds ... Why are you in such hurry? A lover? A raki table?” he asked, referring to the aniseed-flavored spirit popular in Turkey.

His trial is set to commence on October 17 in Istanbul, and according to his attorney, Meltem Akyol, Say will be attending.

In the meantime he is contemplating getting the heck out of dodge.

The multiple award-winning artist said in April in an interview with the Hurriyet daily that he felt completely ostracized by Turkish society since he declared that he was an atheist and that the criticism he had received had highlighted a growing culture of intolerance.

“I think it’s time for me to move to Japan,” Say told the daily.

“When I said that I was an atheist, everyone insulted me and the legal authorities jumped on everything that I wrote on Twitter. I am perhaps the first person anywhere in the world to be the object of a judicial inquiry for declaring that they are an atheist.”

Ironically, Al Arabiya mentions that conservative Islamist Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was jailed in 1998,

...for reciting a poem that a court ruled was an incitement to religious hatred.

Erdogan, the then mayor of Istanbul, had belonged to an Islamist party that had been banned after the military forced its leader to resign as prime minister a year earlier. He served six months in jail. The poem he had read contained the verses;“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

You'd think Erdogan would be more understanding, then again, maybe it's his payback time. Besides, Islamists have little to no tolerance or understanding of anything other than their own ultra rigid beliefs.

7 Years In Jail For Blasphemy For Two Tunisian Men

 Since the Arab Spring, and the resulting rise of Islamism in the region, there seem to be more cases of jail time for 'blasphemers'.

Yesterday, a young Egyptian Christian teen was sentenced to three years in prison for mocking Islam on his Facebook page.  Now we hear of two Tunisians,  Ghazi Beji and Jabeur Mejri (both late twenties) who were fined approximately $800.00 each and sentenced at the end of March to seven years in jail.  According to the justice ministry spokesperson Chokri Nefti,

“They were sentenced, one of them in absentia, to seven years in prison, for transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order.”

Disrupting public order?

What's most troubling is that Mejri  and Beji (an atheist), like the young Egyptian, had posted their 'blaspehmous content'  on social networking sites. 

Beji wrote a book called “the Illusion of Islam”, discussing his views about Islam and religion. Mejri, also wrote a book. “Dark Land”, where he “cursed the government, Islamists, and expressed his hatred towards Arabs.“

Beji, a biotech food engineer, lucked out and fled to Greece, seeking asylum. When interviewed by Tunisia Live, Beji said,

  “After the Revolution, in March 2011, I said to myself Tunisia is a free and democratic country now and I should try to publish my book. I contacted several book publishers in Mahdia but they all refused to publish it. So I opted to upload it online.”

Not sure why he thought that a country that is now predominantly Islamist would not take offense to his writings, but I suppose hope springs eternal.  Not so, unfortunately, when you are dealing with religious fanatics. But it is interesting to note how many ex-Muslims there are who are atheists.  Plenty of them on Facebook.

On the other hand, Mejri, who is an English teacher, wasn't so lucky and is currently in police custody waiting to serve his seven years.

Human Rights Watch in Tunisia made their obligatory statement- that the sentencing was  “an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of belief.”   Not that any of the officials would care what HRW has to say about 'freedom', since there is no freedom of expression or belief in non-secular Muslim majority countries.