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A powerful statement of why Sharia is incompatible with Western standards of justice and human rights. "It's time to take a stand against Islam and Sharia," by Juliet Rix for The Times:
Picture this, says Maryam Namazie: “A child is swathed in cloth from head to toe every day. Everything but her face and hands are covered for fear that a man might find her attractive. At school she learns that she is worth less than a boy. She is not allowed to dance or swim or feel the sun on her skin or the wind in her hair. This is clearly unacceptable, yet it is accepted when it is done in the name of religion.”
Namazie is the founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims in Britain (CEMB) which started life in the middle of last year. On Monday - in celebration of the centenary of International Women's Day - she spoke at a conference on Political Islam and Women's Rights, and launched a campaign against Sharia.
Iranian Muslim by birth, Namazie, 41, is friendly and softly spoken. But she does not mince her words. It takes nerve to start an organisation for people who have rejected Islam. In Islamic law, apostasy is punishable by death. Namazie receives periodic threats, usually on her mobile phone: “One said, 'You are going to be decapitated'...I went to the police. They were very attentive at first because they thought it might be linked to the attempted bombings in Glasgow . But when they realised it wasn't, they never bothered contacting me again.” Doesn't she worry about her safety? “Yes, I do, frequently. I worry about whether I will live, especially now I am a mother. If I see someone looking at me strangely, I wonder.” Why doesn't she use a pseudonym? “They can find out who you are anyway. And the point of the Council of Ex-Muslims is to stand up and be counted.” She doesn't really like the label ex-Muslim and would prefer not to frame her identity in religious terms but, she says, it is like gays “coming out” 30 years ago: something has to become public if you are to break taboos. The CEMB has more than 100 members with inquiries from people who do not dare to join. “Some have horrendous stories but do not put them on the website because they are afraid.”
Namazie's grandfather was a mullah and her father was brought up a strict Muslim. Both of her parents (now living in America) remain Muslim. When Namazie told her father about the launch of the CEMB, she remembers that he said: “Oh no, Grandpa is going to be turning in his grave.” “So I told him that what I am doing benefits Muslims, too, because if you live in a secular society, you can be a Muslim, a Sikh, a Christian or an atheist and be treated equally.” Namazie's opposition to state religion is informed by her own experience. She was 12 when the Iranian revolution “was hijacked by the Ayatollahs” and her country became the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“I had never worn the veil and was at a mixed school. Suddenly a strange man appeared in the playground. He was bearded and had been sent to separate the sexes - but we ran circles round him.” She can still picture, too, the face of “the Hezbollah” who stopped her in the street because her head was uncovered. “I was 12 or 13. It was really scary.” Worse happened to others: “There were beatings and acid was thrown in women's faces, and there were executions on television every day,” she says. Then her school was closed “for Islamicisation”.[...]
At university, she joined the United Nations Development Programme and went to work with Ethiopian refugees in Sudan. “Six months after I arrived Sudan became an Islamic state. I was, like, this is following me around!” Along with others, Namazie started an unofficial human rights organisation, gathering information on the government. The Sudanese security service called her in for questioning. “I wasn't very respectful and the UN guy who came with me said, ‘No wonder your parents took you out of Iran'. The Sudanese guy threatened me, saying, ‘you don't know what will happen to you. You might have a motorbike accident or something'.” The UN quietly put her on a plane home.
This was a turning point, shifting her from non-practising Muslim to atheist. Two decades on, she is devoting her life to opposing religious power. She is in the midst of organising the first international conference of Ex-Muslims, to be held in London on October 10. And she is about to launch a “no Sharia” campaign.
She must have been shocked, I suggest, when the Archbishop of Canterbury said the introduction of some Sharia in Britain was unavoidable. No, she says; she wasn't even surprised. “It was quite apt, although he didn't expect the reaction he got. It was an attack on secularism really. It is, in a sense, to his benefit if there are Muslim schools and Sharia. It makes it less likely that anyone will oppose Christian schools and the privileged place of religion in society.”
She is adamant, though, that no form of Sharia should be allowed here. “It is fundamentally discriminatory and misogynist,” she says and is dismissive of the idea that people would be able to choose between Sharia and civil jurisdiction. Women could be railroaded into a Sharia court, she says. “This would hit people who need the protection of British law more than anyone else.”
She believes that we are confused about the meaning of human rights. “Rights are for individuals, not for religions or beliefs. ‘Every human is equal' does not mean that every belief is equal.” Islamists portray themselves as victims, she says, and policymakers have bought into this. Namazie says that the Muslim Council of Britain should not be seen as representative of British Muslims - but would nonetheless welcome any opportunities to debate with it. “Ex-Muslims are in a good position to challenge political Islam,” she says. “We must not let little girls or anyone else lose their human rights. We can't tolerate the intolerable for any reason - including religion.”
Posted by Marisol at March 12, 2008 12:08 AM
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Islam is not a religion; it is a fascist political cult. It is a serious mistake to attack all religion based on the experience of being abused by Islam. Real religions, when their members are properly informed (that is, not deceived by the "Islam is a religion and therefore deserving of respect" line) can be powerful allies in the resistance to Islamic depredation.
Islam is the hijacking of the very idea of religion in service to piracy. Mohammed was a pirate (he walked like a pirate, and he talked like a pirate, so therefore ...). And the Koran is a strategic and tactical doctrine manual for piracy. Sura 8, the chapter about how to distribute the loot taken from the infidels, proves that to me (among other things).
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at March 12, 2008 12:54 AM
"She [Namazie] believes that we are confused about the meaning of human rights. “Rights are for individuals, not for religions or beliefs. ‘Every human is equal' does not mean that every belief is equal.”
-- from the article above
This is exactly what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has stressed, when she notes that in the Netherlands she found people who were all too willing to think in terms of groups, and of one group, the still more powerful non-Muslims, whom they thought should allow another group, the Muslims, to be autonomous in most ways, which meant that Muslim men would still impose Muslim rules on Muslim women. In other words, individual Muslim women were to be sacrificed on the alter of whatever is meant by "multiculturalism" (a word I find it difficult to use, even if only to mock it), by those non-Muslims who were indifferent to, or ignorant of, their likely fate.
Posted by: Hugh at March 12, 2008 1:20 AM
"Islam is not a religion; it is a fascist political cult. It is a serious mistake to attack all religion based on the experience of being abused by Islam."
This is just as much poppycock as "terrorists aren't real Muslims."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Namazie are to be commended for rejecting all manner of inferior ideologies.
Posted by: non-croyant at March 12, 2008 1:33 AM
Remember International Apostacy Day is on the 14th June.
Posted by: Voltaire at March 12, 2008 3:32 AM
Remember 14th June is International Apostasy Day.
Posted by: Voltaire at March 12, 2008 3:33 AM
Maryam Namazie presents the Islamofascists with a problem because they can't resort to their usual name-calling tactics to close down debate. They can neither label her a racist nor an Islamophobe.
Good for you Maryam.
Posted by: watling at March 12, 2008 6:06 AM
Ex-Muslims are in a good position to challenge political Islam,” she says. Yes, and I'd add that every American, and for that matter every non-Muslim the world over, is in a good position to be critical of Islam, just based on its acts alone. We don't need to know the texts; we have 50 years of terrorism culminating in 9/11 to judge Islam. An honest scholar will tell you its been happening since 620 AD of course. And I personally have taken the time to read in-depth the core texts, and they are the obvious motivators of terrorism and horrible "laws" throughout the Muslim world. We are all sick of hearing about the terrorism, taking ridiculous measures at the airport, etc. I lost a year serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom to rebuild this vile culture. Meanwhile, we could have rebuild all of Latin America for the same price.
Criticizing Islam should not be relegated to ex-Muslims. One did not need to know the philosophical roots of Nazism to know it was patently evil, just by its acts alone.
at March 12, 2008 6:30 AM
"Ex-Muslims are in a good position to challenge political Islam,” she says. Yes, and I'd add that every American, and for that matter every non-Muslim the world over, is in a good position to be critical of Islam, just based on its acts alone. We don't need to know the texts; we have 50 years of terrorism culminating in 9/11 to judge Islam. An honest scholar will tell you its been happening since 620 AD of course. And I personally have taken the time to read in-depth the core texts, and they are the obvious motivators of terrorism and horrible "laws" throughout the Muslim world. We are all sick of hearing about the terrorism, taking ridiculous measures at the airport, etc. I lost a year serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom to rebuild this vile culture. Meanwhile, we could have rebuild all of Latin America for the same price.
Criticizing Islam should not be relegated to ex-Muslims. One did not need to know the philosophical roots of Nazism to know it was patently evil, just by its acts alone.
at March 12, 2008 6:32 AM
Apostasy is the Achilles heel of Islam. If we were an enlightened society, we would be encouraging it in our schools and media.
When the trickle becomes a flood, we'll know we have won.
Posted by: Cornelius at March 12, 2008 7:51 AM
She blames sharia law. Can sharia law be separated from islam itself?
Posted by: Borg at March 12, 2008 9:09 AM
“Islam is not a religion” Posted by: Stendec
“A religion is a set of beliefs and practices often organized around supernatural and moral claims, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.” Wikipedia.
Islam fits perfectly this description. It is a religion. It just has more !2%$# then other religions.It does not deserve any respect of cause. Respect is for reason not faith.
Posted by: pong at March 12, 2008 9:21 AM
We should all support Namazie and her work in any and every way we can.
She is a candle in the wind and we can't let her light be snuffed out.
Period.
Posted by: undaunted at March 12, 2008 9:22 AM
non-croyant, pong,
From years now of reading on this subject, I am convinced that Islam is not a religion. It is primarily about conquering territory, enslaving populations, and looting civilization--and not in some divine, metaphoric sense, but in the worldly here and now. Indeed, Islam carries the trappings of religion (ala the wikipedia description), but only as a handy Trojan Horse for the explicit purpose of infiltrating, fooling, and then subduing its next victims.
When one affords Islam the status of religion, he is falling into this psychological trap and weakening his own defenses, in the manner of divide and conquer. Islam has duped him into attacking his own allies in the battle to preserve civlization.
Don't permit yourselves to be so duped. That you despise all religious beliefs should not be an excuse to "frag" principled comrades who are helping to defend the ramparts in the midst of a defensive battle.
Posted by: Stendec
at March 12, 2008 10:17 AM
Islam is a political entity. It should be treated as much.
Posted by: tanstaafl at March 12, 2008 10:44 AM
Is there an ex-muslim group in the US? Give a link if you have one.
Thx.
Posted by: undaunted at March 12, 2008 11:41 AM
"Don't permit yourselves to be so duped."
How condescending. Islam might be a pale copy of Judaism and Christianity, but it is a religion.
I guess Christianity was a political body in the Middle Ages because of that abomination known as Christendom.
Thank Yahweh that we Westerners grew out childishly ignorant phase of our culture.
The present-day aherents of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, &c. might be much more respectable people, in sum, than the adherents of Islam, but Islam is a religion.
A system of beliefs that promises eternal heavenly rewards granted by an omniscient and ominipotent Supreme Being is a religion.
"When one affords Islam the status of religion, he ..." must face the fact that Islam, vile as it is, shares many features in common with all religions (fixed).
It's absurdly disingenuous to pull this no-true-Scotsman bullshit in order to distance yourself from a like ideology.
Sure, I'll ally with the Christians against the subhuman Muslims. After all, Christians have been tamed by the enlightened secular West. I'll ally with them after directly being the recipient of their religiously motivated violence against me.
Yeah, I'll stand with a religion whose belief system causes people to hurl insults at me, spit on me, and punch me. It's much better than a religion that motivates its adherents to behead, flog, and stone people like me. And much better than one that entices, with supernatural rewards, its adherents to blow up random innocent people along with themselves.
But you have another thing coming if you believe that I'll trade the threat of being their dhimmi for being your dhimmi.
Don't be duped, indeed. I won't be duped by your equivocation.
at March 12, 2008 5:45 PM
There is an inherent danger in any idea that someone believes to have universal applicability.
Universal applicability of a belief can imply a mandate to commit acts that would otherwise be unwarranted.
The removal of doubt can be catastrophic.
Posted by: non-croyant at March 12, 2008 6:02 PM
non-croyant,
I can see your mind is made up, so there is nothing I can say that will cause you to reconsider your hatred of all things religious. So I'll just try to lay out my position a little better, and you can have the last word.
First, though, let me say that I'm sorry you have suffered some bad personal experiences of physical abuse. But that kind of attack would never be something taught in any church or synogogue as acceptable behavior--certainly not as religiously sanctioned behavior. Moreover, and more abstractly, as I understand the doctrine (I am an engineer, not a religious scholar, and I am not particularly religious in my personal life), no Christian has the right to judge or to personally carry out judgments on others--the right of judgment is reserved to the Almighty, in His time and in His way. I don't know anything about Buddhist or Hindu doctrine, but I doubt there is any call for violence against others in their doctrine or teachings, either.
There is a pretend-religion, though, that does teach such physical abuse, to the point of torture and murder, both in their doctrine and in firey sermons in their mosques all across the globe. Walking past a mosque at the end of "Friday prayers" is, in many places, to risk your life, if you are not the right kind of person.
Religion crops up naturally in all societies and cultures. So does lust for power. Through the centuries, many power-hungry kings and princes and the occasional pope or other "holy man" hijacked local religious movements to help control populations and to build personal empires on earth. But religion is not supposed to be about worldly empires, but instead about the eternal verities, about the meaning of life and death, and about the relationship of an individual to his Maker.
The most successful hijacker of religion was the pirate Mohammed, who hijacked elements of Christianity and Judaism for the purpose of achieving his political empire in Arabia and beyond. Yes, he promised his followers (promised via his sock-puppet, Allah) a divine bordello in the sky as an enticing afterlife--such a carrot: what else would pirates want the most? But he also promised them great rewards in the here and now--loads of loot from the subjugated "other," and lots of sex from multiple wives and captured infidel women. All they had to do for this bounteous loot was to kill, plunder, and subjugate their neighbors. So religion was turned away from the Big Questions and toward an endless quest for territory, loot, and sex.
That's generally how I see the historical unfolding. I have nothing against religion, per se. But I am always expecting to see new would-be hijackers. Because of human nature, there is no doubt such will appear, sooner or later, in the future. Eventually such persons get found out and dethroned.
But Islam, created by the pirate king Mohammed, the biggest hijacker of them all, keeps going and going like the Energizer Bunny. Islam persists so because it reliably fools its next victims about its nature using taqiyya and kitman. It persists so because it reliably, through concentrated bullying backed up by terroristic violence, causes victim societies to turn against each other rather to stand together in effective resistance.
"Islam is the Religion of Peace," they would have us infidels believe. To that I still say, Islam is not a religion, and quite obviously (as evidenced not only from doctrine, but from current events and centuries of unfettered mayhem and brutal conquest) it is not peaceful
Posted by: Stendec at March 13, 2008 1:05 AM
Stendec,
I actually agree with a lot of what you said in your reply.
As I think I stated - Islam is a pale copy of Christianity and Judaism. The latter two (or former, speaking chronologically) are organic religions, and Islam is, quite literally, synthetic. It's synthetic in the sense that it combines elements from Christianity, Judaism, and endemic culture, and - I agree - that it is also, at least in its origins, synthetic in the common connotation of the word: artificial ... contrived.
It might even be a fact, as you seem to imply, that Muhammad created the system à la L Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith as a means of gaining influence over people.
Proving that it was deliberate, and not some psychotic delusion that he believed himself, might be an endeavor whose achievement is lost to the mists of time.
But now for the however: claiming that Islam, especially in the time subsequent to Muhammad's lifetime, is not a religion is a semantic game, and I believe it is undertaken to hide the fact the religion can motivate its adherents in a negative fashion.
When terrorists beheaded Nick Berg they were religiously motivated. When I received a punch in the eye - quite unexpected mind you - at a high school bus stop because I replied in the negative to the question, "Do you believe in Jesus?" the person who punched me was religiously motivated.
Systematic abuse that authorities turned a blind eye to: http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/05/12/crusade.lawsuit.ap/index.html
- religiously motivated -
Yes, I agree that the difference is that Islam would encourage such actions - and worse - against the kufr while Christian doctrine, to its credit, would not (I even challenged the kid who punched me to go tell his preacher what he did - in my naïveté I actually believed his preacher might reprimand him), but the fact remains that in both cases both actors were motivated by their religious beliefs.
Yes, there is a lot of truth to what you are saying. Islam does covet temporal mundane power.
Even religions like Christianity and Buddhism (I do have a minor in Relgious Studies), whose eschatological concerns are decidedly atemporal and extra-mundane, can acquire temporal mundane power - e.g. the Church of Christendom, and the influence and extortion some present-day Buddhist monks wield over their laity.
Part of my problem with Islam it is that it doesn't recognize that the religious and political spheres should be divorced.
But then there are expressions of Christianity, even or especially in the US, that have a similar mindset: http://www.religioustolerance.org/reconstr.htm
Your assertion that Islam is merely a political entity with the "trappings" of religion plays into the notions of such people as Sageman that the religious beliefs of Islam are no motivation for the acts of terror.
It's disenfranchisement. Poverty. Boredom.
Or is it that their religion tells them that a transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient supreme being requires of them to submit to his will, his Shar'ia, and then to jihad to propogate it throughout the world?
I agree with Robert Spencer (though I know he wouldn't agree 100% with my beliefs, nor I in his):
"Islam combines the interior comfort provided by religious faith with the outward power of a world-transforming political ideology."
http://jihadwatch.org/islam101/
(section 4f)
PS Please excuse any bad editing, spelling, grammar, or typos. It went on longer than intended.
Posted by: non-croyant at March 13, 2008 3:16 AM
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