Mohammed turned into born and raised in Vancouver, BC, however she comes from a politically essential family in Egypt. Her grandfather's uncle become the primary president of that country, and for a time her family was, she writes in her new e-book Unveiled, "prosperous and robust."
whereas they lived below strict laws and taboos about what both women and guys might put on, say, and do, life for her folks' generation became far more liberal. In her fogeys' wedding pictures, she writes, her mom became dressed like a "Bond lady." She wore a knee-length dress and her hair changed into swept up in a beehive. There changed into dancing and music on the occasion, and girls and guys combined collectively, all things that became taboo in Egypt after the upward push of the Muslim Brotherhood and anti-Western sentiment in the Eighties.
Mohammed's parents relocated to San Francisco after which Vancouver, and it became there, as her marriage became falling apart, that her mom grew to become deeply spiritual. Feeling alienated, alone, and in want of neighborhood, she joined her native mosque and without delay changed from a "Bond woman" into the imaginative and prescient of a pious Muslim girl—albeit one who handled her babies terribly.
soon after Mohammed turned into born, her folks divorced and her father moved throughout the nation and began a new household. He had little contact with Mohammed and her siblings, however like many secular Muslims, her dad didn't enforce Islamic rule in his new home. He definitely married a Catholic. not so with Mohammed's mom: desperate, Mohammed writes, to connect herself to a man, her mom grew to be the second spouse of an Egyptian immigrant who managed every aspect of the family's lives. They moved into a squalid basement residence where their new step-father (a term Mohammed nevertheless refuses to use) lived upstairs together with his other spouse and three babies from a prior marriage. He always beat and molested his 2nd wife's babies. (the marriage changed into legal below Islamic legislation, however now not identified by Canadian law.)
Mohammed recollects within the booklet how her stepfather beat the bottoms of her feet so it wouldn't leave marks, and the way he pressured her to put on the hijab any time she left her residence. At one point, a teacher tried to intervene but her siblings and mother denied any abuse turned into occurring, and so it persevered.
Yasmine blames Islam for this upbringing, a religion that teaches that women are the property of guys—if not their fathers and husbands than their own sons. And like her mom earlier than her, this was Yasmine Mohammed's route, too: She became pressured into marrying a stranger at age 20, a person named Essam Marzouk, who become later published to be a member of Al Qaeda.
Mohammed hoped that her life under Marzouk could be greater than it had been in her step-father's basement, but he too beat her and compelled her to put on the niqab, a garment she informed me is like "a private sensory deprivation chamber. It restricts each feel: smell, touch, hearing. You don't have interaction with the world, the realm doesn't have interaction with you. You stroll unseen among them, like a ghost."
Marzouk turned into abusive. He berated Mohammed for opening the curtains of their seventeenth-ground house, lest somebody searching up and notice her unveiled, and he beat for her singing the ABCs when looking whatever up within the cell publication. This became no better than her existence as a baby, but soon, she had a baby to fret about too. At age 21, she grew to be pregnant.
After her first child—a girl—become born, Mohammed realized her life would on no account change except she walked far from her husband. So she did. She discovered a legal professional inclined to support her pro bono and filed for divorce. Her husband threatened to cut her so badly that "no man would ever want her," however soon after, he disappeared. She discovered later that the husband went to Azerbaijan and was considered one of 14 Muslims taken via the CIA in pre-9/eleven "staggering rendition." He was extradited to Egypt, the place he changed into convicted of abetting terrorists and sentenced to 15 years of difficult labor.
After leaving her husband, Islam's hold on Yasmine gradually lessened: She stopped donning the niqab, which she writes, made her feel "as inclined and self-mindful as if I have been topless." She stopped caring about every thing haram (the list is lengthy) and she acquired her personal house, enrolled in college, acquired a vehicle, raised her daughter. She began taking courses in religion, and she or he writes, "For the primary time, i used to be allowed to study Islam with a critical eye, and that i found out that the Quran became no distinct from any other ancient philosophy. With references to the Earth being as flat as a carpet to the price of drinking camel urine to cure ailments, Islam become full of absurdities. It changed into glaring that it changed into written via men who knew no distinct." She got here to the conclusion that not most effective was Islam made up through man; all faith was, too. It become all only a fiction, as unreal as any superstition or fa iry tale. "What a reduction to finally be in a position to breathe sparkling guilt-free air!" she writes.
there were setbacks, to make sure. Mohammed was forced at one element to flow returned in with her mom, a girl practically as abusive as her husband had been, and far extra manipulative. notwithstanding traumatized, she steadily escaped her mom's iron fist as well: After she took off her hijab for the remaining time, her mom referred to she was dead to her and they haven't considered each other in almost 15 years. Mohammed become broke, a single mother, and dwelling without the bonds that had been there for her entire existence, however, for the first time, she turned into free.
nowadays, Yasmine Mohammed is an atheist. She's a professor, married to a non-Muslim man, and she works as an recommend for ladies dwelling beneath Islam the world over. As part of this work, three years ago, she all started a blog called Confessions of an Ex-Muslim, which she saved nameless for the first year earlier than coming out, because, she says, "I essential to speak for those that had been no longer able to. i will reveal my face. they could't."
She details all this in her new ebook, however the simple message of the text is more political: She argues that by means of ignoring, or excusing, what's occurring in Muslim societies over fears of performing "Islamophobic," liberals in the West are contributing to the oppression of women in all places the planet. It's appropriate there within the subtitle, Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam.
"This e-book became written for Western liberals," Mohammed advised me, "my pals, fellow liberals who do not keep in mind what celebrating Islam is doing." She references businesses like Nike, which showcased a model in a hijab for the primary time in 2017, an advert campaign that was celebrated through many in the feminist media (including newly feminist outlet Teen Vogue, which called the campaign as "outstanding as the feminine athletes who impressed it").
Mohammed doesn't buy it. She says women who have fun the hijab are both Westerners who don't keep in mind the heritage or Muslims who've been brainwashed to accept as true with that showing their hair in public will condemn them to Hell.
"It's celebrating fundamentalism," Mohammed says, "whereas women in Muslim-majority countries are basically loss of life to take it off."
This criticism of Islam has proved controversial: Amazon has refused to run advertisements for the e-e-book, announcing in an e-mail, "it's Amazon's coverage now not to promote content during which our audiences may also see a controversial theme, grownup, or event."
Mohammed isn't certain exactly what became so controversial about her ebook—the advert that was rejected turned into just an image of the cover—and she's continually upset that other girls who go away fundamentalist religions are celebrated while ex-Muslims like her are commonly neglected. She compares the reception of her work to that of Megan Phelps-Roper, who currently posted a ebook referred to as Unfollow about leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, and her family. Phelps-Roper had been all over the media—from fresh Air to good Morning america—and is commonly viewed as both a survivor and a hero.
"i love Megan," Mohammed spoke of, "but the response to our reviews couldn't be extra different. And what's the change? The simplest factor i can feel of is the color of our epidermis."
Mohammed referred to as the defense of Islam by way of Western liberals "a faulty try to curb anti-Muslim bigotry. We're taught to not ever criticize other cultures and different religions," she continued. "we will handiest criticize Western cultures and Western religions, however what we're doing is condemning others to this 1400-yr-historical ideology."
As for what Mohammed would want to see from the West, above all from the same liberals who are satisfied to criticize fundamentalist ideology when it comes from Christianity or Judaism or the Westboro Baptist Chuch, it's pretty elementary: Don't forgive or ignore oppression out of worry of being perceived as racist or Islamophobic.
"Some Muslims are liberal and a few Muslims hate gay individuals and trust in cutting off their daughters' clitorises," she says. "as an alternative of thinking of us as one blanket community, don't aid cruel and inhumane beliefs, no depend who they arrive from."
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