The Plight of the Muslim Woman

By

 Barbara J. Stock

As I read e-mail messages that I have received in response to my columns about Islam, I began to realize that 99.9% of the responses were from men.  Thinking back, I remember receiving only three messages from Muslim women. 

One was a young woman from California who desperately wanted to get out the word that not all Muslims were terrorists.  Of course, being an American Muslim, her Muslim acquaintances were probably not terrorists.  I told her that she could write a column or whatever she wished and I would post it on my website.  This brave, young woman excitedly told me she would love to post a column but would have to seek permission from her Imam. 

I never heard from her again.   

Another respondent was an obviously wealthy, educated woman who admitted that she lived in a country that was a democracy.  She was safe and protected by the laws of the land and her money.  She wholeheartedly supported the terrorists.  This woman, in her arrogance, ignored the plight of her fellow female Muslims around the world.  Her life was good and that was all she cared about.   

The third respondent was a young woman from Saudi Arabia who freely admitted that much of what I said was true.   She also insisted that life in the kingdom was not so bad for women anymore.  Apparently she has already forgotten the 15 young girls forced to burn to death by the Islamic police behind a locked gate because they sinned by not covering their heads in public.  I have been told that there was outrage from the Saudi people over this terrible act, which is good, but the men responsible were never punished for outright murder. In fact, excuses were made for them by a Royal Family which was apparently afraid to push the radical element too far. 

This young Saudi lady was saddened that Islam has been given such a bad name by a “few.” Yes, there were many in her country that hated America, but not all.  Well, that’s comforting for Americans.  In this case, because her life “wasn’t so bad,” this young woman seemed oblivious to the treatment of Muslim women in strict Islamic states.  She also seemed blissfully unaware that she is only a heartbeat away from the same fate.  When I pointed out the treatment of women in strict Islamic states, she ceased communication. 

I began to wonder what the women of Islam were thinking here in the United States and how they are being treated.  There was a time when life for Muslim women in America was very good.  They lived as other American women lived.  For some, the lucky ones, it remains good.  However, there have been ominous changes and American Muslim women find these changes very disturbing. 

American Muslim women feel that they interpret the Quran correctly.  They feel that men and women are equal and a marriage is a partnership, just as in any society.  Pre-Mohammed, Arab women were quite successful.  They owned businesses, could obtain divorces from abusive or lazy men, inherit wealth, own land, and were educated.  Mohammed and Islam changed all that.  Where in the Quran American Muslim women are reading about the equality of the sexes is a mystery to me.  The passages I have read speak only of the superiority of men and the weakness of women. 

Strict Islamics bolster their own power by considering women physically, mentally, and intellectually inferior to men.  When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini succeeded in his Islamic revolution in Iran, one of his first edicts to Muslim men was, “"Your wife, who is your possession, is in fact, your slave."  Women in Iran have lived in terror for years.  In the mid-1980’s, Khomeini realized he needed more bodies to fight Iraq, women were suddenly elevated--at least high enough to become cannon fodder.

Life for Iranian women became slightly better after Khomeini’s death.  But just last, year humanitarian groups fought to save the life of 13 year old girl sentenced to be stoned to death because her brother had raped her.  Without the required three male witnesses to the act, the women who are raped are the ones that are punished as harlots.  Such is life in Iran for Muslim women.    

Everyone should be familiar with how women were treated by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  They were beaten if the wind blew their skirt and an ankle became visible and publicly executed in soccer stadiums for such crimes as leaving their home without a male family member’s permission.  Women had no value in that barbaric Islamic state.  A man probably would not treat his cow as he treated his wife or daughter.   

Even in Western countries, honor killings happen almost on a daily basis.  Any Muslim woman who marries without permission, even to a Muslim man, is subject to execution by her father, brothers, uncles, or any male family member who feels that he was slighted.  Young girls that are raped are often killed on the spot by enraged fathers or brothers who feel that it was the woman’s fault and these unfortunate girls are now “soiled” and a disgrace to the family.   Arab Muslims who immigrate to Western countries tend to cluster in neighborhoods and isolate themselves, bringing their Arab Islamic traditions with them.  Men who rape are rarely punished.  Those committing honor killings are protected by the Islamic community. 

Another horrific tradition inflicted on Muslim girls is female circumcision.  This is done without any anesthesia and is for the sole reason of robbing the woman of any pleasure from sex.  This is an honor reserved for men only.  Surely women will sin if they receive any pleasure from the sex act.  Men, however, will not.   

So how are American Muslim women faring these days?  The American Muslim websites I read had mixed views.  Many women feel that the influx of Arab Muslim men to America is having a bad influence on American Muslim men.  They are ridiculing them for allowing their women to work, go to college, and “show their bodies.”   They are convincing many American Muslim men that American life is un-Islamic.   

These Arab immigrants are also refusing to follow the American law of only having one wife.  They take more wives and marry them only under the laws of Islam.  When they become bored with them, they just turn them out on the streets with their children.  Because they were never legally married in the eyes of American law, these women have no legal recourse.   

American Muslim women, who were always allowed to go to mosque and pray with the men, are now finding themselves shunted to separate rooms where the words of the Imam may or may not be piped in via loudspeaker.  Only men are allowed in the main part of the mosque.  Women, once equals, are now finding themselves on the outside looking in, literally.  They don’t like it.   

If a wife is beaten by her husband and dares to report it to the police, she is shunned by her fellow Muslims.  Taking such problems to outsiders is considered un-Islamic but Islamic leaders have no pity for women beaten by cruel husbands or fathers.  Obviously, they had done something to deserve it.  Battered wives have no recourse within Islamic law.    

This seems to be pattern of Islam.  Native Muslims, peaceful and friendly with their neighbors sometimes for hundreds of years, are infiltrated by Arab Muslims who quickly begin to exert their influence and seize power.  Soon, life is not good for the Muslim woman.   

American Muslim women have more opportunity to fight back because the law of the land is on their side.  However, to benefit from this protection, many must often make the choice--freedom or Islam.  It is a difficult decision for them to make.  Even here in America, the fear of punishment is ever-present.  Fear of isolation and loss of family support weighs heavily on these battered women.  The good news is American Muslim women are fighting back.  I wish them luck. 

One has to wonder if the words “Islam” and “freedom” can even be used together.   Those two words seem diametrically opposed to each other.  There is no Islamic country in the world that is free. I have been repeated told that Islam is peaceful.  But there is no peace or freedom under Islamic rule anywhere in the world.