Aftab Malik takes us down the usual apologetic detours, but Nagina Shah says a number of interesting things. From the BBC, with thanks to Daffersd:
As extremists increasingly claim it is not, and attack Western values not only through rhetoric but acts of violence, many Muslims find themselves being forced to respond by re-examining their values.Here two Britons, both born into the Muslim faith, explain why they have ended up following different paths as far as their religion is concerned.
Nagina Shah
Nagina Shah, who walked away from her faith and family 14 years ago after a forced marriage, believes that traditional Islam and modern Western life do not mix.
NAGINA SHAH
I was born into a strict Pakistani Muslim background but, when I was 19, I decided to break away from my family.
I have three brothers and three sisters, and am the youngest in the family. I'm the only one born in England, in 1972, a few years after my parents had emigrated from Pakistan.
My upbringing was very strict, even by Asian community standards. My family were Sunnis [the majority branch of Islam] and our faith and religion were largely influenced by - and intertwined with - our culture.
But it was backward, strict and suffocating. I was not allowed to go out on my own or even travel on buses.
I went to an all-girls school, although my father believed girls should not really be educated. Instead, all attention was focused on my brothers, who were expected to become doctors or lawyers.
My father preached one thing but did something else in practice. He said we needed to be pure and pious but was himself quite volatile. In contrast, my mother would never say boo to a goose.
The double standards really struck me. I always felt suppressed and suffocated by my father and brothers, who ran the household.
I was never able to accept or understand why my brothers were treated better than me. They were allowed to go out, mix with women, drive, go to college, have an opinion. I was allowed to do none of these things.
Turning point
My parents chose a husband for me. I was engaged to him at 14 and forced into marriage at 17. when I was 19, I had had enough and I decided to run away from home. On 8 August 1991, I packed my bags and went.
Read it all.
Interesting, but hardly surprising that the man saw Islam through rose-coloured spectacles, while the woman had a more realistic view. Ultimately Islam is bad for both men and women, but there is no doubt that women have a much tougher time of it.
The double standard that the woman talks about, where the men in the family were given much more freedom than the women, tallies with the experience of a close friend of mine. Double standards are pretty much universal, but in Islam they are far more pronounced, because Islam comes from a shame/honour culture, shame and honour both deriving from sexual containment of women.
But, Nagina, can you not realize how much islam loves you?
It loves you soooooo much that it doesn't want you to get educated, or have the same rights as men, or even get on buses, you big silly! But it loves you.
It loves you like an abuser, like a controller, like a Mecca-lovin' volatile islamic holy roller.
It wants to run your body, run your mind, run all of you and all the time.
It wants your head, it wants your soul.
It wants to keep them both like a big empty bowl.
Word.
Prophet Geoff
PS: Oh - and if you don't want the same?
Then it wants to kill you.
Out of love!
Interested - exactly the point I was logging in intending to make.
The point I find hard to grasp is the respect given to brothers. I have heard teachers say that after a certain point they are having to deal with the older brothers of children not the parents. And these are not families where the parents have died young, or have returned to Pakistan for a lengthy period to nurse very old grandparents. These are parents who have handed over responsibility (or have had responsibility wrested from them) to their very aggressive oldest sons. Which to me did not sit well with what we are often told is a culture which (supposedly unlike us westerners) respects age and maturity and the wisdom of the elders.
If the plethora of stories about the fate suffered by thousands of other muslim women can be taken as a guide, this woman is extremely lucky to be alive to tell her story.
The short and simple answer to this question is NO! And there are very good reasons why it is not. The first main one is that Islam recognises no separation of politics and religion: this is a cornerstone of the Western way of life. Secondly, Islam is not compatible with democracy, another cornerstone of the Western way of life. The reason why this is so is plain to see: in Islam, all power rests with Allah and filters down to the people via his vice-gerents; in democracy, all power filters up from the people to the leaders.
In the West, we believe in the dignity of man, giving equal rights to both men and women; in Islam, the dignity afforded man is questionable, and any they do have is certainly not shared with Muslim women, or Muslimahs.
The West is largely egalitarian in its outlook; the Muslim East is supremacist, favouring the superiority of Muslims over infidels.
Muslims believe in the Shariah, or the body of Islamic laws that have been allegedly sent down to man from Allah. What need to they have for democracy when all they have to do is put Allah's injunctions and laws into practice?
Much more could be said; but how much more needs to be?
Could Nagina Shah be our own Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Irshad Manji? She says she wants to help others who wish to leave Islam - we should support encourage and help her, emotionally, materially, psychologically, spiritually. The exodus from Islam will be lead by the women - the Nagina Shah's of the world.
First of all, she's probably lucky that her brothers haven't found her and killed her yet.
But I still think she is giving Islam a bit of a pass when she concludes that her experiences would be similar if her family had been of any other religion. I don't think that's true.
I can relate somewhat to the bare facts of her family's life in Britian. Though a 3rd generation American without direct "old-country" customs to protect, it is still a struggle to remain Jewish and maintain some of the age-old traditions that are not in perfect harmony with modern society. So we perhaps do live a life style that is restrictive by secular Western standards. But we do it with a different perspective, that somehow makes all the difference. Hence, my children do go to religious schools, with separation between the sexes. But we take as much care to ensure a good exucation for our daughters as for our sons (and make sure that they know we value their accomplishments). We have different roles within the religion for men and women, but we make it clear that both are equal partners in running the family. We may choose to steer our children towards suitable partners who will share their values into the next generation, but we arrange introductions, not marriages.
Outlooks inform actions.
I agree with Saychel's comment about Nagina's safety. I think that she had better watch her back now that she has gone public with her story. She sounds like a perfect candidate for an old-fashioned honor killing. I hope that she stays safe and continues to speak out. I was also very interested in Granny Weatherwax's comments about the older sons in families becoming the agressive "large and in charge" representatives to the world. It appears that many families intentionally create generation after generation of cruel, authoritarian figures who perpetuate the problems of Islamic violence, both inside the family struture and to society as a whole. I have a great deal of sympathy for women caught in Islam, but I also blame part of the Islamic mess the world over on the mothers and wives. If they can do nothing with their husbands or sons, they can surely support their daughters in search of freedom and equality. Will even one female relative of Nagina's step forward to say that she supports Nagina's decisions that she has made about her life?