Islam

I read an article in the NYT about a woman named Wafa Sultan, who was raised Muslim but has denounced its violent turn, which made her give up the religion. She said the turning point was when she was in medical school in Syria and an anti-govt group came in and shot her professor numerous times while shouting, "God is great!" You can see how that would make you question--what sort of greatness goes around killing people like that? What sort of greatness needs deaths to prove itself?

I've been thinking about Islam a bit lately because I'm again teaching Shame, by Salman Rushdie. A passage we had yesterday included a family where all the women sleep in a large room and the husbands steal in at night to have sex, while everyone pretends nothing is going on. I agree with my students that it's bizarre, but I tried to help them see where it might be coming from. Sex, after all, stems from original sin. Sex draws you away from God. It's a punishment that you have to do it to propagate the species, but it's a sin because it pulls you from God.

Then last night I read the first section of Reading Lolita in Tehran. I really dislike this book. It's written completely in that "memoir" tone. All the speakers sound the same. I wish she had collaborated with a novelist. I focus on the stylistic defects because what truly disturbs me about the book is the life these women have to lead. I don't know anything about the Islamic Revolution. Apparently 20 years ago women led fairly ordinary lives, were protected and had freedoms. Wearing the hijab was a choice. Then the purists came in to throw off the secular imperial non-Muslim influences, to bring the country back to God. This meant keeping the women absolutely pure. (You can see the traditional confluence of a woman's body as icon for the nation.) So now the women have to wear a dark robe and also a head scarf (hijab). No pink socks, that might drive men wild. No makeup. No stray hairs to entice men. There's a group that goes around the streets making sure women are appropriately dressed, that they don't lick ice cream because it's too sexual, that they eat apples in a non-seductive manner, that they walk with no men except a husband or relative. One group of 6 women went to the coast to visit the fiance of one of them, and while they were sitting around, doing nothing, the watchdog group broke in. The women were kept in jail for days, because they were suspected of having broken a rule, but mostly because they went without male protection. They endured humiliating exams to prove they were virgins. When their parents finally found them, they were released after being forced to sign confessions and being whipped. The Islamic Revolution lowered the marriage age to NINE. And as a way of "protecting" women and keeping your mind on heaven (I suppose), women are continually abused. Your body isn't your own. And it doesn't even work, because the men are so obsessed with looking for anything sexual, that how can they be focused on heaven?

I'm trying to see where this is coming from, trying to be sympathetic with the drives and not just condemn. I tell my students that the Qu'ran is a move against materialism. Whenever there's a Muslim crack-down it's against materialism. I liked what Wafa Sultan was saying though. She said it's being reactionary, and that seems spot-on to me. It's like a rebellious child saying, we don't need your Western capitalism and whatnot. Which is fine if you want to be independent but you've really got to spend your energies figuring out who you are, not who you aren't. You can't decide not to like country music because your parents like it, for example. That isn't independence, it's just rebellion. I think some parts of Western imperialist culture are good. But then, I'm an atheist, so no one's going to take my view seriously.