They don’t call themselves feminists. They don’t belong to any groups or organizations. They don’t claim victim status and they aren’t members of NOW or CodePink. They don’t have big bucks or political backing. They don’t have the ear of the media or the establishment press. They most assuredly don’t have the backing of the plethora of established human rights, civil rights, or women’s rights groups who claim to be the voice of the underdogs and the champions of the oppressed.
All they have is their own experiences, their passion, and their voices, which are raised in unison against the religion of Islam.
Meet Wafa Sultan: She was born and raised in Syria. She is one of the lucky ones who, though indoctrinated in Jew hatred, the Koran, and the Arab version of “history,” was able to emigrate to the United States and become a citizen in 1989.
To Wafa, Islam is not a religion of peace. It is evil. Mohammed was an evil man who proclaimed himself the voice of God. His word was law and he fashioned it according to his whims and enforced it at the point of a sword. Wafa condemns all of Islam. Not just the terrorists. Wafa calls the religion of Islam a “brainwashing machine” for 1.3 billion people. It is only because she was born Muslim that Wafa can get away with condemning Islam. If Americans dare to criticize the “religion of peace” they would be branded “Islamophobes” and shunned for not paying proper obeisance to alternate cultures.
Wafa thanks God every day that she can walk alone in America without being condemned as a whore. That she can engage in conversation with a male neighbor without being subject to 200 lashes or death by stoning. She remembers her niece, who, at age ten, was married off to a forty-year-old cousin. A practice made “legal,” she points out, because Mohammed wanted to marry his own six-year-old cousin (can you spell pedophile?). At age twenty-five, her niece set herself on fire, leaving behind four children.
Wafu is passionately pro-American. More so than many Americans who had the good fortune to be born here. Hearing her shout “God Bless America” affected me in a way I can’t describe.
Meet Nonie Darwish: She was born and raised as a Muslim in Egypt and the Gaza Strip. She is the author of Now They Call Me Infidel, which explains much about the mindset and conditions of women living under increasingly extreme forms of Sharia law.
“In the Arab world, you are either the oppressor or the oppressed,” she says. For Muslim women, the only way to obtain status or respect is to join the oppressors—to become a fanatic observer of Islam’s teachings. This is the only choice or free will available to many Muslim women.
Muslim wives are the property of their husbands. As in chattel, slavery. Their word is worth only half of a man’s word in the court system. They can be divorced on a whim, losing their children, honor, and future. A husband can take other wives and/or beat his existing wives if he happens to have a bad day. A man’s honor is, to a large part, dependent on the behavior of his female family members. And woe to her if she brings disgrace on the family by talking with a man not her husband or having the misfortune to be raped.
Many Muslim women have absolutely no support systems, not even have the support of other women. Because Mohammed wanted a variety of women, the Koran allows polygamy. (Can you spell David Koresh?) This means a Muslim wife must constantly be on guard that another woman doesn’t catch the eye of her husband. This makes trust between women nonexistent. Their lives are without friends or hope.
The plight of many Muslim women is getting worse. In 2007, Iran sentenced fifty young people to death for “immorality.” Saudi Arabia sentenced a girl who was gang raped by seven men to six months in prison and 200 lashes. For adultery.
