Moina Shaiq discusses the role of women in Islam, claiming that they had the right to vote before American women did. In point of fact, the only Muslim women who were granted the right to vote before American women received it in 1920 were in the new Soviet republics. The Crimean People’s Republic, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, and the Kyrgyz SSR were all under the rule of local Communists, atheists who granted women the right to vote precisely to weaken Muslim power. Local Muslims were not pleased that women were given the right to vote, but the Communists simply ran roughshod over them.
With the exception of Albania, all the Muslim states that throughout the 1920s and early 1930s gave women the right to vote were Soviet republics, under Communist rule, where the suppression of Islam was state policy. These include the Kyrgyz SSR, the Tadzhik SSR, the Turkmen SSR, the Kazakh SSR, and the renamed Azerbaijan SSR.
One Muslim state, Turkey, did grant women the right to vote — in local elections — in 1930, and in national elections in 1934. But this should not be attributed to Muslim desires. Turkey was then ruled by the determinedly secular Ataturk, who granted women the right to vote as part of his campaign of secularization, including complete legal equality of the sexes, which was enacted not because of, but despite, the power of the Turkish ulema.
Another fact left out of Moina Shaiq’s presentation is that the major Muslim states gave women the right to vote very late. Syria granted women the right to vote in 1949, Egypt and Lebanon granted it only in 1957, Iran did so in 1963, Jordan in 1974, Iraq in 1980, Kuwait in 2005, Saudi Arabia as late as 2015.
Moina Shaiq is no doubt counting on her audience not to know any of this. She can simply assert that “several Muslim-majority states gave women the right to vote before the United States did” — true, but wildly misleading, because those states were then under the control of anti-religious Communists who were determined to break the back of Muslim power, and giving women the right to vote was then seen as part of that campaign.
Shaiq claims that domestic violence has “nothing to do with Islam.” But what then shall we make of Qur’an 4:34, where husbands are given license to “beat’ wives who are “disobedient”? Presumably Moina Shaiq does not bring that verse to the attention of her innocent auditors. Nor is she likely to bring up the fact that Muslim fathers wield great power over their children, and in Muslim countries can go unpunished, or are lightly punished, for cases of “honor killings,” where girls and women are punished for disobedience, or for disgracing the family. Everything from not wearing a hijab, to having an Unbeliever for a boyfriend, to wanting a divorce, can result in an “honor killing.” Domestic violence — husband against wife, husband (and sometimes wife) against daughter, brother against sister — in cases where dishonor has been brought to the family — is part of Muslim life.
Moina Shaiq tells her Meet-A-Muslim audiences that Muslims see Jews and Christians as their brothers. This, presumably, is based on the “three abrahamic faiths” notion, but what they share doesn’t go much beyond that claimed descent from Abraham and the belief in monotheism. Far from regarding Jews and Christians as “their brothers,” Muslims are commanded “not to take Christians and Jews as friends, for they are friends only with each other.” (5:51) Moina Shaiq knows this verse, but will not quote it, nor will she quote the description of Unbelievers in the Qur’an as “the most vile of creatures” (98:6). And if, as she claims, Muslims see Jews and Christians as their “brothers,” then one would like someone among her auditors to ask her what explains all the verses in the Qur’an that denounce Unbelievers — that is, both Christians and Jews — and further, what explains the attacks by Muslims on those Unbelievers in so many lands conquered over the past 1400 years? Why are inoffensive Christians right now being attacked and killed in Egypt, in northern Nigeria, in Pakistan, in Indonesia? Why are their churches destroyed? Why did Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad commit suicide in 1998 to protest the cruel treatment of Christians by Muslims in Pakistan? Why have the Christian bishops of the Eastern church in Iraq bemoaned the failure of Christians in the West to speak out about their plight and predicted that soon, given the persecution they must endure, there will be no Christians left in most of the Middle East? Why were Christian villages burned down and Christian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram? Why, even in “moderate” Indonesia, have Christian schoolgirls had their throats cut? Those are some of the questions — you can no doubt think of a hundred more — that Moina Shaiq needs to be asked. She ought to be followed by a Truth Squad that shows up wherever she does, to bring up all the disturbing verses in the Qur’an and passages in the Hadith that she would prefer not to be discussed.
On the subject of cover, Moina Shaiq claims that the “hijab is optional.” That is not what the Iranian women who were recently arrested for removing their hijabs think. Nor is the hijab, or rather the head-to-toe niqab, optional in Saudi Arabia, or in Aceh Province of Indonesia. In many Muslim countries, the social pressure to wear the hijab, even if wearing it is not legally required, is so great as to never really be “optional.”
When Moina Shaiq claims that the “hijab is optional” (true in some places, false in others) because in Islam she invokes the second favorite verse of Muslim apologists — “There is no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an 2:256). But of course there is “compulsion.” There is compulsion for Muslims, who are not permitted to change their religion. Apostates from Islam may be executed. What is that if not “compulsion in religion”? And there has been compulsion for non-Muslims, whenever they were presented with the options of death, conversion, or dhimmi status. That status was so unpleasant that many millions of non-Muslims over the last 1400 years have felt compelled to convert in order to avoid it. To any fair-minded observer, this certainly constitutes “compulsion.”
According to Moina Shaiq, ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. Then where did its members get their ideas, if not from the 109 verses commanding Jihad in the Qur’an, such as the Verse of the Sword (9:5)? “When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.’’ Or what about the several verses that command Muslims to “strike terror” in the hearts of the Infidels, such as in Quran 8:12, where Allah says “I have cast terror in the hearts of those who have disbelieved”? Or what should we, and what did members of ISIS, make of Muhammad’s statement in a famous hadith that “I have been made victorious through terror”? Is not Muhammad the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct? Is ISIS wrong to have followed his example?