The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Read Free Book Online Page B

tension exists between the inhumanly strict demands that Islam makes on the faithful and what they are able to live up to. Young men or women may want to meet the demand to remain virgins until marriage, but their hormones give them inclinations and thoughts that conflict with that demand and are therefore considered sinful. Along with the realization that the strict prescriptions of the Koran cannot be put into practice come doubts. Yet one is not allowed to doubt either the Koran or the Sunna (a collection of traditions about the life of Muhammad). After all, Muhammad’s life was exemplary. Doubt is immediately punishable, if not by the social environment, then by Allah. But without doubts, without a standpoint reached through questioning, human beings can’t acquire knowledge. Consequently, even ardent followers of Islam find themselves in a precarious dilemma.
    Because of this inner impasse, Muslim women and men often become confused; a community that lives according to the prescriptions of Muhammad and the Koran inevitably becomes pathological in its fears of contradictions, in its anger at inner and outside questioning, and in its frustrations at never being able to fulfill the ideals that they are taught to live up to. But many Muslims refuse to attribute responsibility for their misery to their own community or to the sexual morality imposed by their religion. Instead, they blame Allah, the Devil, or other external sources such as the Jews, Americans, or colonialism. Muslims don’t recognize that, in fact, the pursuit of a life based on their own Holy Book is the most significant source of their unhappiness.
    A large number of Muslims, however, do manage to cope through denial. They say, I’m absolutely not going to ask my wife whether she is a virgin. I don’t care. I’ll leave that to Allah. And that way they survive.
     
    T O BREAK OUT of the cage in which Muslims are imprisoned and in which they’ve imprisoned their women, they must start to practice self-criticism and test the moral values they derive from the Koran. The 15 million Muslims who live in the West are in the best position to do this because of civil rights and liberties, with freedom of expression not the least among them. A Muslim in Europe who closely examines the foundations of his faith does not have to fear a prison sentence or, as in the Arabic-Islamic countries, the death penalty. Ni Putes Ni Soumises (“Neither whores nor submissives”), the group of Muslim women in France that is protesting against gang rapes committed by fellow Muslims, is an example of a group making use of their freedom of expression. The leader of this group, Samira Bellil, was herself a victim of gang rape. A comparable protest is virtually impossible in any Islamic country. Another example is the pamphlet “Off with the Veil!” by the Iranian Chahdortt Djavann. In Iran, where wearing the veil is obligatory, this pamphlet would never even have been published. Several other writers and thinkers with Islamic backgrounds are also taking advantage of Western liberties, for example, the novelist Hafid Bouazza and the philosopher Afshin Ellian, who both work in the Netherlands. Maybe one day their work will be translated into Arabic and Persian, but for now it is banned in most Islamic countries. Perhaps the writer who has best identified the problems within the Muslim world is the philosopher Ibn Warraq, of Pakistani origin, author of Why I Am Not a Muslim. That this courageous man writes under a pseudonym shows that even in the West he does not feel safe.
    Muslims who live in the West have easier access to information, and particularly the long tradition of religious criticism in the West. They can gather knowledge from not only libraries and in universities, but also from other people, and they can start to take a critical look at their own faith.
    Self-criticism for Muslims is possible in the West, because the West, primarily the United States, is waging war on