Mick Hartley

At Quillette, an interview with Lubna Ahmed, a Muslim apostate who fled her native Iraq to live in California:

Ahmed told me she stood strongly for freedom of religion, with, again, a crucial caveat:

“You can believe in anything you want. But you don’t have to force it and kill others to believe in what you believe. You can be a good Muslim, but you don’t have to force others to follow you.”

“Islam” means “submission” – to the will of God. The religion’s very name, thus, evokes conflict, since not all will submit willingly. It’s no accident that a line from the Quran famously quoted by (ignorant or deceptive) apologists for Islam – “Let there be no compulsion in religion” (Surah al-Baqarah 256) – precedes a warning that eternal hellfire awaits nonbelievers. If there’s no “compulsion,” there is an implicit instigation to revile those who refuse the Almighty Lord’s word and destine themselves for hell, the supernatural antipode of paradise and all that is good and godly.

During our talk Ahmed repeatedly returned to the misogyny of Islam, and made it clear that this is what most angered her about the faith.

“In my country I saw a lot of women, a lot of children, treated in a very bad way because of that religion. Look at what happened in Mosul and what ISIS did there. ISIS reflects the true identity of Islam. Islam treats women as trash, as, I’m sorry, not even animals. Women are just objects in Islamic countries, in Islam.”  […]

By chance we happened to speak on “World Hijab Day” – a vile slap in the face of the brave women of Iran protesting against the Islamic regime for the freedom not to wear it, yet, out of mistaken notions of solidarity, celebrated in the West by at least some morally oblivious, regressive leftist simpletons. It was not hard to imagine what Ahmed thought of the Islamic headscarf, yet I asked.

“Islam wants all women to wear the hijab – it’s a sign that women are slaves, not human beings. Whether you’re eight years old or an adult woman, you don’t have the right to choose for yourself. Islam has to control you [if you’re a female]. Menshould control your whole life as a woman. . . . Islam was created by men to control women, to be slaves, to use and abuse them, sexually, physically, mentally, and treat them like trash, as if they were nothing.”

She paused and took a deep breath.

“This is what drove me to think for myself, to think for women. Even in my country, all these women wear headscarves and pretend to fight for women’s rights. No. If you want fight for women, first you have to take off your headscarf, because headscarves are signs of submission, of saying you aren’t worth anything. Even an eight-year-old [male] child can lead you and decide for you, a woman. This is happening in my country.