As a first generation Lithuanian-American whose parents fled approaching Communism in worn torn Lithuania in 1944, I grew up in a home where the intellectual development of females including higher education in the university system was not only encouraged but practically required. Lithuania, now a free nation once again, is a country where the literacy rate of the population at large is nearly 100 %. That is why it has always fascinated me that there are women in the world that have been kept in such darkness by religious clerics who claim to be doing the will of God. This is what originally drew me toward reading this book.
In this book Irshad Manji so clearly describes what the trouble with Islam is today. After what happened on 9/11 there are many Americans, particularly New Yorkers, who would be tempted to blame Islam as having the fatal flaw of on the one hand, promoting peace and love, and on the other using any means possible to destroy anyone that does not adhere to their rigid belief system. As Manji writes in Chapter 2 Seventy Virgins "We have to own up to the fact that the Koran's message is all over the bloody map. Compassion and contempt exist side by side. Look to its take on women. Hopeful and hateful verses stand only lines away from each other. So, too with religious diversity. There's no single thrust in this so-called perfect, indisputable and straightforward text. The Koran's perfection is ultimately suspect."
As a social worker who worked for many years with the female victims of domestic violence, I have been particularly appalled at the way Muslim women are mistreated using the Koran (a supposedly good and "holy" book) as justification for abuse. Manji made me even more aware of just how unjust these abuses have become. I did not know, for one, that the only women obliged by the Koran to wear veils were the wives of the Prophet Muhammed! No other culture in the world "has the hubris" Manji writes "to treat its female citizens as clones" of the prophet's wives. I was also shocked to learn how Pakistani General Zia al-Haq, in an effort to win favor among village leaders, mixed a punitive reading of Islam with tribal customs. It became a requirement that a rape be witnessed by four men before any offender could be charged. "But suppose a rape doesn't have the testimony of so many male eyes?" Manji questioned. "Then it must naturally be a case of adultery committed by the woman and therefore to be condemned by the stone." In other words, the VICTIM of a rape would end up being stoned to death as a legal punishment for adultery! What a travesty!
Sometime ago I had been made aware that, as Manji wrote: "In an explicit passage that imams rarely publicize to the middle and lower classes, the Koran permits women to negotiate marriage contracts that meet their personal conditions. 'If a woman fear(s) ill-treatment..on the part of her husband.' says a verse in chapter 4, 'it shall be no offense for them to seek a mutual agreement, for agreement is best. People are prone to avarice.' Today, a woman's personal conditions for marriage might include: 'My husband can't lay an unwanted finger on me or on my earnings. If he does, I'll regard it as 'ill-treatment' and I'll have the right to divorce him." I agree with Manji when she concludes that a man who tries to snatch away the rights of his wife "will have an informed Koranic argument to answer, and a prenuptial agreement that Sharia judges can't easily bypass." No wonder Muslim men have such a need to keep their wives as uneducated and uninformed as possible!
I think the most significant thing I learned from this book, however, was how strong an impact tribalism has on the practice of this ancient religion. In Chapter 6 The Hidden Underbelly of Islam Manji claims "Muslims today are not so much an international community as an Arabian tribe. In an Arabian tribe, lowly members must pledge uncritical allegiance to the sheikhs." Manji wonders if it's the desert mind-set itself that manufactures the systematic repression of Jews and Christians in Muslim lands. She questions "Why, even at the height of our tolerance, have Muslims treated certain people as inferior? .... It's got to be more than the Koran, which allows for the love of non-Muslims. What then has tipped the scales toward bigotry?" At this point Manji quotes Dr. Eyad Sarraj, the founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, himself a Palestinian: "I know we have a lot of psychopathology. It's a male-dominated society, there is no role for women, there is no freedom of expression, there is a heavy atmosphere of intimidation...This is the tribal structure in which dissent is seen as treason." Manji then concludes: "Maybe the grip of desert tribalism is why Palestinian suicide bombers rely on handouts from Arab despots. The paternalism of the desert tribe means the welfare trickles down at the discretion of the sheikhs. And maybe the desert personality of Islam is why a Muslim woman can be raped to compensate a dishonored clan, even if the clan's honor was violated not by her but by someone else. Because a woman belongs to her family, raping her is shunning her family, making the woman a fitting pawn in family blood feuds." Imagine that? How sad that this in the state of affairs in this world in 2011!
At any rate this is an OUTSTANDING book and WELL WORTH a good read. It leaves you with a lot to think about...
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