The hijab. Try to take it off and see what happens. This excerpt from “ex-hijabi journal” is unfortunately all too typical and from a woman who describes her Islamic upbringing as “moderate”:
“My parents’ reactions were also more intense than I expected. There are women in my family who took it off as well and some who never wore it at all so I thought it wouldn’t be that bad. My mother said she would kill herself, she wouldn’t let me graduate high school but instead take me to turkey, leave me there at a quraan school. My father told me to fuck off and never come back home and my brother threathened to kill me. So my only option was to put it back on the next day.”
You can read all over the Internet of ex-Muslims or Muslims still trapped within their stifling culture where it is not “Big Brother” that is watching you but your parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, neighbors, teachers, classmates, police, religious police, government, imams.
Like a Baptist kid in the American South, say Kentucky, who one Sunday decides church is nonsense and quietly announces he isn’t going to attend services today…Good luck with that.
AND another excerpt from another female stuck in an Islamic culture:
“This is exactly how Kurdish girls are treated as well. They are expected to do as they are told always. The girl does not only have father, uncle and brother to obey anymore; now she’s got; father, brother, uncle, husband, father in law and brother in law to obey. Cleaning and cooking are her duties.
Having this sort of picture in my mind of marriage all my life, it hit me once when a friend of mine referred to her wedding as the best day of her life. Because for me, marriage was something I had to do. To satisfy my parents. To make them happy. That day, I struggled to sleep at night because I was feeling so upset about the fact that I had NEVER viewed marriage as something that would benefit me or something joyful.
After some time, I met a guy. He understands me, he loves me, he listens to me when I need to be heard, he respects me. I can with the whole of my heart say that I truly love him. There is no one in this world that I rather spend the rest of my life with. However, he is British.
I fear talking about him to anyone because of the risk comes with me dating a guy that is not Muslim. My mum have many times prayed to god that I will never end up with someone who isn’t Kurdish and Muslim. This hurts every part of my body because I feel so restricted in my own life. I need to be able to make such a major decision myself. To choose who I want to spend the rest of my life with. To choose who I want to have children with. To make my own life choices.”
I’d like to see any man volunteer for this duty. Religion sucks in a lot of ways, but mostly for women.
Religion is not free but coercive in every way. Religious folks think these examples are normal and OK. It is perfectly OK to teach your kid your religion to the exclusion of all others and demand your child conform even when they start to see through it.
No better example of the Arrogance of Religious Thought (TM)
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