Sarah Hyder: Muslim, who consciously rejected Islam. Interview

We do not really know much about the lives of Muslim and their attitude towards what is happening in world politics and in their own countries. Therefore, we were particularly interested to read the translation of an interview with Sarah Hayder (Sarah Haider), the American activist of the Muslims of the EXMNA, immigrant from Pakistan.

I was 8 years old when I arrived in America, and I remember that at first she seemed to me someone else's and strange. I remember how I taught English, who also seemed very strange to me. The first few years were hard, but then I was drawn to me and I made a very big impression that in America there is freedom of speech, human rights - concepts that are practically absent in other parts of the world. You can say whatever - well, nothing, of course. And when at school, we began to study social studies, I was very impressed by Bill on the rights, the separation of the authorities - and I went to the study of all these cool pieces.

I was lucky, it was very lucky that my father was a real liberal. Of course, I could not walk around the house in shorts or meet with boys, of course, it was expected that my marriage would be concluded by agreement, but my father did not prevent me in reading books and was not preparing especially about their content. He believed that I would somehow come to the right beliefs. Just a couple of years later, I was allowed to leave home to go to college. I was lucky that my father gave me to find, as a woman, a sense of self-esteem, in which many Muslims denied not only their daughters, but also wives, and even mothers. I was not forced to wear a hijab, although I put it on a couple of times on my own initiative.

In a word, I believe that I was very lucky - I understand that it may sound strange - that my childhood passed in conditions close to what exist in ultra-conservative Christian families.

When I was 15 years old or 16, I began to appear doubts about my religion. I participated in a school discussion club, where I got acquainted with different points of view. But what pushed me to atheism - this is acquaintance with the so-called "militant atheists", these unpleasant types that everywhere climb with their opinions. There were several of them, but one of them was especially remembered. He brought me the printouts of all terrible quotes from the Qur'an, and, without saying a word, I just pissed them into my hands, like "here, see."

And, perhaps, for the first time in his life, I became truly read in them. For me, it was a kind of quest - to show all these atheists as they are wrong, to prove that Islam is the path of truth that Islam is the best religion for women, and that all these quotes have their own explanation in the context. And I started studying the context. Often, in the context, they looked only worse, and I had to recognize my defeat. And I did not take much time to tell myself that I no longer see any point in all this, and that I could no longer call himself Muslim.

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For three years, I have been supporting the people who came from Islam. And it constantly drives me into a stupor the reaction of the left. I always hear from other activists that they also hoped to find among the left allies and brothers that they hoped to get from the left at least moral support. But those whom I regarded as my brothers and sisters in this struggle, just turn away from me, for purely political reasons. And after the attack on the "Charli Ebdo", the secularists were disappointed - too many of them said that in some respect it could be justified, too often I heard all these meaningless conversations about "Islamophobia". And I felt completely abandoned.

Too many people try to put me "the right of right." To say at least something negative about Islam means to bring accusations of intolerance. It doesn't matter exactly whether you are driven by anxiety for human rights or pure hatred of Muslims. It does not matter what you say and how you say it.

I sometimes ask me, I could not advise Richard Dobinz and Sam Harris to criticize Islam more constructively. I ask in response, but do you know anyone who would criticize Islam, and so that it helps him from hands to be not accused of intolerance, and that he managed to preserve his liberal reputation?

As for liberal Muslims, I think it would be wrong if we began to work together, because our goals are actually very different. In some point, they are similar: we want to reduce the amount of evil in the world, we defend secular values, human rights. But our methods are fundamentally different. Of course, I put contact with them and I respect them very much - but I absolutely disagree with them.

In the basics of Islam, there is nothing exactly nothing that I could take. I hardly find at least some kind of "beauty" or "love of neighbor" in the text of the Quran. I am sometimes called extremist - but it is not. Just on my part it would be dishonest to talk about Islam with some other words. I think atheism is a self-sufficient and very strong criticism of religion that it is not just internally consistent, but does not contain contradictions in ethics. And I believe that this should be said about this, that the point of view of atheists should be presented at the court of public opinion as it is. If we are talking about the ideas market, it is important that we mark our own position - and then people will choose what they are more suitable.

Many say that I demanding from Muslims too much that Muslims will never agree with me. But we don't even know if it or not. I do not think that I have overestimated expectations. Most Muslims just never heard anything that I would like to say. And I believe that if I had the opportunity to hear me, it would change a lot.

I suspect that I personally know more ex-Muslims than anyone. And I constantly hear from women that the attitude towards a woman in Islam is the reason why they left him. They felt that they were deprived of the mercy of the dignity, which in Islam was put on men. And feminism for them played a big role. What, of course, in itself is very interesting, because when we are talking about modern feminism, here in America, I expected to find a lot of allied, but in fact very few of the feminists supported me. To say that I am disappointed - it's nothing.

Feminism, the rights of women - this is what Moving by me when I left religion that prompted me to become an activist. Therefore, I especially deprivates misunderstanding from feminists. For example, on many feministic sites you can see articles written by Muslim women, how they are "released" hijab. Of course, if this is their personal choice, if this is how they consider it necessary to live, then there are no questions. But Muslim, who writes something similar, looks like a woman of the 30s, which would say that she is proud that she is a housewife that sitting at home with children is exactly what she needs in this life. I am very happy for you, I am very glad that the society in which you live is so perfectly sharpened for your preferences.

But still, it should be recognized that in the 30s in America, those women who dreamed of a career were slightly limited in freedom of choice, which existed many factors that prevented them from living as they want. And I also want all these "women in the hijabach" to recognize that a huge number of Muslimians do not want to follow the Islamic canons of modest clothes and that they are deprived of their liberty to live as they want.

I was tired of hearing that "colonialism is to blame for everything." I do not deny the horrors of colonialism, including, in South Asia, from where I come from, and where the consequences of colonialism are still visible. But when it comes to radical Islam - it would be too easy to explain it with one only by colonialism. Muslims found justifying violence in the name of religion long before colonialism appeared on the historical stage. To blame in all colonialism - it means to deny the entire preceding story, deny the oppression of many nations in the name of Islam, which took place earlier and which is going on right now.

I do not believe that there are people who seriously believe that extremism in the Islamic world has nothing to do with religion. It would be possible to say that the extremists "were excluded Islam", but then, at a minimum, it should be recognized that they took some part of Islamic theology and then they have already been distracted. Least. Therefore, I believe that those who claim that terrorism does not have religion, in fact they say it for the form, guided by pure political motives.

Sometimes they say that children who have grown in the families of immigrants and Islamic countries are as if between two cultures. But it seems to me that they are rather devoid of choices. They can no longer adhere to the traditional faith of their parents and at the same time, they do not fit into modern Western society. They do not cling to neither one or the other. That is why they can easily captivate the ideology of radical Islamism.

And we, refusing to criticize Islam, in fact, leave the battlefield without a fight. Instead of involve the descendants of immigrants to themselves, to their values ​​and lifestyle, we give them to the hands of Islamic preachers. The concept of multiculturalism makes extreme harm and should be discarded immediately. I feel my American, but I am afraid that not all the children of immigrants share my feelings. But I want them to be able to feel the Americans too.

Source: Interview with Dave RubyTranslation of fragments Interview: Roman Sokolov