Kiran Opal has marked International Women’s Day by putting together accounts by 17 ex-Muslim women on her blog.
For those of us who have left Islam as a faith and as an identity, the pressure to stay silent is intense. For many ExMuslims, the price for speaking out about their skepticism, atheism, or agnosticism, is often very high. There is no one monolithic Muslim identity; there is nothing essentially, inherently “Muslim” about someone born into a Muslim family. Yet, for too many people, Islam has become a racialized identity. Many Muslims and non-Muslims see the Muslim identity as a race, not just a doctrine. Although ExMuslims, whether ‘out’ or ‘closeted’, do not identify as Muslim, others often insist on imposing this identity on us.
From the page on Muslim privilege:
Question:
What are the privileges you do NOT have as an Exmuslim woman that you did have as a Muslim woman? (e.g. speaking openly about your beliefs, etc.)Taslima: I no longer have the luxury of openly speaking about my beliefs and opinion of Islam without offending my family and friends. My family makes sense, because they are Muslim, but as an ex-Muslim woman, I am more or less culturally pressured into silence by a lot of American “progressive” friends who will openly tell me to “stop being so Ayaan Hirsi Ali”.
From the page on ex-Muslim privilege:
Question:
What are the privileges you DO have as an Exmuslim woman that you did not have as a Muslim woman?Maha:
I’m freer than I would have ever been had things not gone the way they did ten years ago. I get to experience life to the fullest – the good and bad. I know what it’s like to fall in love, to be in a relationship, and to fall out of love or have my heart broken. I know what it’s like to try to make ends meet while working paycheck-to-paycheck. My friends hop, skip, and jump from longitude to longitude. I get to travel freely, explore freely, and think as much as my mind wants without the threat of hell or shame from a fake community.
The day I left Islam was the day humanity and science released me from the hell of religious solitary confinement.
I get to hug a dog and fall in love with him because he’s a beautiful soul – without horrifying screams from Muslims about washing my hands seven times to get rid of the pup’s kisses.
Ophelia, I have a question for you, not on this topic, necessarily, but I don’t know where else to ask it. On the public radio show, they were saying that people of color and in the developing world are prevented from self-determination by the US military and the liberal-progressive media. If they’d said the right-wing conservative media, I would have understood. How is the “liberal-progressive media” interfering with people’s right to self-determination?? Do you understand that? Thanks.
If “liberal/progressive” means “being against people of color’s right to self-determination”, what am I to call myself now??
Blanche on which public radio show? Who were saying that?
Not KPBS (I’m VERY disappointed with their corporate-influenced coverage and perspective) but KPFK (listener supported 90.7 FM out of LA), on the (goes to look) “Freedom Now” program with Dedon Kamathi. Wouldn’t you know it, that’s the ONE program from this afternoon that isn’t available on their audio archives! http://www.kpfk.org/index.php/programs/programschedule#.UxvH_fldXDV – 2 PM, http://archive.kpfk.org/
to get rid of the pup’s kisses.
Seriously, any religion that trains people there’s something wrong with a puppy’s kisses is just all kinds of fucked up.
“The day I left Islam was the day humanity and science released me from the hell of religious solitary confinement.”
Says it all, really.
Islam is a prison of the mind, with shoot-to-kill armed guards on the watchtowers.
Newly liberated Iraq marks International Women’s Day…
http://news.yahoo.com/iraqi-women-protest-against-proposed-islamic-law-iraq-180932752.html?soc_src=copy
Blanche, are you seriously asking Ophelia how to define yourself based on some random comment on a radio show?
If it is a leftwing show, as it sounds based on looking up the presenter, they probably mean liberals with our audacious notions of universal human rights and equality are really just cultural imperialist monsters.
The concept of “self-determination” is actually rather oxymoronic for most traditional societies.
Well I think Blanche was asking more what they were talking about. Your gloss sounds about right; it’s what I would have guessed too. But it’s hard even to guess without knowing more.