An article that has disappeared from the web (and isn't archived anywhere):
Behind the Veil: Interview with an Atheist Niqabi
(Originally on http://www.robmcleod.net/2017/06/15/behind-the-veil/)
Ed: On apostasy, women in Islam, the hijab/niqab and the Left
The following interview is transcribed from a Skype call with “Arwa,” a closeted atheist niqabi, and Bushra, an ex-Muslim cybersecurity professional living in the United States. It has been lightly edited for clarity. Some details have been concealed to protect “Arwa’s” (a pseudonym) identity.
Robert: Thanks for speaking with us. It seems that Islam and its believers are at the center of many of the political clashes and events shaping our world today, from terrorism, immigration, the burkini, etc. And yet it seems we suffer a glaring poverty of narratives about Muslim experiences. As a closeted-atheist living in a niqab (a full face veil which only exposes the eyes) you surely have a unique perspective on many of these issues.
To start with, though, could you tell us a bit about your bio and how you came to be in the position you’re now in today.
Arwa: We immigrated 15 years ago when my father got a job as an Imam. I come from a relatively large, conservative family. Before moving, we actually lived in a very conservative society. In the area I’m from, at least, you still rarely see a woman on the street.
The culture clash became immediately apparent as soon as we arrived. My parents actually became far more conservative than they were before immigrating. I remember as a child having a very gender-neutral childhood and wearing my brother’s clothes. But as soon as I came to [European Country], my mother said, “you need to put on a headscarf now, because we don’t trust this country, and we fear that you may become Westernized.” And when we hit puberty, our Mom said “that’s it, you can’t play outside anymore.”
They tried to keep us inside this bubble for a very long time. But then the educational system exposed me to a completely different way of thinking, and that helped me get away from my religion.
It started by denouncing my culture. I realized I didn’t want to follow it anymore because it’s too conservative, too sexist. It took me a very long time to accept that religion was actually the problem. I just didn’t want to get away from it. Very recently, I finally decided I’ve had enough.
Bushra: You mentioned that the outward manifestation of the conservatism, the niqab and all of that, happened after you immigrated to a Western Country. That strikes me as very similar to what happened to my father and his family. He grew up Palestine where they were sort of religious and very conservative, but they didn’t grow up wearing the niqab. They only became very religious and fundamentalist and started requiring that the females in the family wear the coverings when they immigrated to Western countries because of the perceived lustfulness and sinfulness of those societies.
Arwa: Yes, you’ll notice that many families will become a lot more conservative after they immigrate. My mother was told that, when many Muslim girls come to [our current country] they take off the hijab and become sluts. That really scared her, and it’s made things far worse. Things are becoming even harder for my younger family members than it was for me. At this point, I doubt they will be able to attend University because my family is becoming increasingly scared of where society is going and they’re thinking “we don’t want that for our daughters, so we’re going to keep them in a box and away from Western Culture.”
Robert: So what was the process of becoming an ex-Muslim like and how did you deal with those doubts?
Arwa: For many, many years I refused to even think about going down this path. I doubted the religion, but I said to myself that I wasn’t going to leave it no matter what happens. I think that was largely due to my fear of hell.
But I eventually came to decide that I needed to leave. Now that I’ve done so, I really have to hide myself and who I am. If this was to be known among the community, there would be a lot of backlash not only towards me, but toward my family.
It’s scary because of the views I hear about apostates. I also worry about my community back home, which we visit quite a lot. I’m scared about the next time we visit. I don’t want to anymore—even though I miss it a lot—because I know I wouldn’t be safe there. Anything could happen. Someone could find out and….my life would be in danger.
Bushra: I’m interested in the process you went through internally and the gradual doubt that eventually led to your religion didn’t make sense.
Arwa: The first time I was exposed to a completely different way of thinking was when I went to college. Back in High School, I was inside my head all of the time, I accepted the religious ideology and everything my family told me. But when I went to college, one of the first things that triggered doubts was meeting someone who was gay. I thought being gay was absolutely disgusting at the time, I didn’t want to sit next to that lady. I remember thinking “Oh my God, oh my God, please, please don’t make me sit next to her, do something.” But I started talking to her and it really started to humanize her for me.
In my class we started debating gay marriage and civil ceremonies. I suddenly realized that I agreed with a lot of things being said [in defense of gay marriage] and it took away the hatred and disgust I had for gay people. It occurred to me that this was a complete contradiction of my religion.
Then I got exposed to new ideas, including the Marxist idea that religion is used to control people. I also thought more about the fundamentalist perspective that, in order for a society to be productive, women need to stay home and cook and clean, and realized how stupid it was. This was the view of my culture and religion and, when I could finally see it from a wider perspective, it became clear that I didn’t agree with any of it.
After that, it was an upward spiral and I discovered that there was this entire, larger world that I agreed with rather than what I had been taught my entire life. I realized how repressed I am in my life, and how many things I can’t do simply because Islam says so. I can’t travel on my own, I have to cover-up. I was a staunch feminist at the time, and I realized that Islam was incompatible with those beliefs.
Holding onto Islam was affecting my mental health because I knew I didn’t believe—I didn’t want to pray, I didn’t want to fast, I didn’t want to think about God. Ultimately, this huge weight was lifted off my head and I was so happy. But then, I realized how this would impact my life…
Bushra: It’s funny, I remember going to prayer and saying “Allah’u Akbar” and immediately thinking, “this is bullshit.” So that definitely resonates with me.
Why didn’t you gravitate towards more liberal interpretations of the faith we’re seeing now?
Arwa: I couldn’t buy into that bullshit. My Dad has been teaching me from a very young age with authentic sources. It was clear that all of this liberal stuff I was being taught was people just grasping at straws. I knew it wasn’t real.
Bushra: It does seem to be a requirement in order to be one of these “feminist Muslims” to be either uninformed or simply lie to yourself wholesale.
Robert: Apostasy—the act of leaving the faith—is often considered to be an offense punishable by death, a view endorsed by all 4 major schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Pew Polls have also revealed that this view is held by majorities as high as 88% in countries like Egypt. Of course, many Muslims do not hold this view, or interpret “apostasy” in a very liberal way. Do you know your family’s beliefs about apostasy? If you were revealed to be an atheist, do you have any sense that your life could be in danger?
Arwa: I’ve never discussed it with my father. But I know that, when it comes to the rest of my community, their view of apostates is not good. I know back during Charlie Hebdo, and, I think there was a movie released a couple of years ago, they were saying these people need to be killed. I can only assume what kind of view they have of apostates.
It’s not something I like thinking about. It’s not good, basically….
Bushra: That’s something I never asked my father directly, simply because I knew the answer and I didn’t want to expose myself to risk by him knowing that I was thinking about this. But I think there’s a difference between believing what should be done—believing that an apostate should be killed, for example—and actually doing it yourself. I don’t think he would kill me himself, but I do think he believes that’s what should be done and may see it as a failure of his faith that he wasn’t able to do it himself.
Arwa: I think the worst-case scenario for me is that I would be taken back to my home country and married-off or have to live my life there. They would take away my passport. I see that as a high possibility.
Will they kill me? Not in this country. I can’t say the same thing of my home.
Robert: What’s it like to wear a niqab? How does it affect your daily life and your interactions with those around you?
Arwa: As a person who is forced to wear it, there are times I don’t want to step out of the house. I feel like a freak most of the time.
Physically, it’s very uncomfortable. It gets into your eyes, and makes them itchy, and makes it hard to read, as well.
It also acts as a huge communication barrier. This is something people who are pro-niqab won’t talk about. People often can’t hear what you’re saying because the niqab is muffling out your voice. People are constantly putting their ear close to me and asking me three or four times to repeat myself because they can’t hear what I’m saying. It’s very, very frustrating when you have to do that. I don’t want to have to repeat myself three or four times and it stops me from asking questions to my professors.
Talking to people is very difficult, because they can’t see your facial expressions. Being sarcastic is almost impossible. Whatever you’re saying, it sounds like you’re being serious.
I also believe it’s a high security issues. Most of my lecturers don’t know what I look like. My sister could go to the same university and sit in my exams and nobody would know. My university ID has my face, but most professors won’t ask to see it out of respect. I remember a teacher checking IDs before an exam and when she came up to me, she didn’t pull me outside, she just left it because she wanted to be respectful to me. I thought, “do you realize what you’re really doing here?”
Robert: To many of us outside the ideology, the roles and restrictions imposed upon women by conservative Islam seem clearly wrong and destined to produce suffering. Can you help us understand how women rationalize their subjugation? What are most devout women’s thoughts about things like a niqab?
Arwa: Most of the time, they just say this is a command of God. If you wear it, you’ll get more brownie points.
The underlying reason for wearing the niqab is that your face is part of your body and it can attract men, so you need to cover it to make God happy with you. It’s definitely seen as a form of respect and honor. I hear from so many men who say, “we’re so proud of you for covering your face.” Women who choose to wear it usually do so for that reason. The others are forced into it and there’s not much they can do about it because the families simply won’t listen. There will be huge repercussions if they say, “no, I don’t want to wear this anymore.” Then, it’s not just you who decided to take your niqab off, your entire family is involved and the entire community will talk about you and it will reduce your respect. That’s not something families can afford to have happen in honor societies.
Robert: There’s been a lot of media attention in recent years—especially with Brexit, the election of Trump, and the rising popularity of figures like Geert Wilders and Marie Le Pen—around the rising prevalence of anti-Muslim bigotry (generally referred to as “Islamaphobia.”) As someone who wears your purported religious identity so visibly in the form of a face veil, have you suffered any blatant acts of anti-Muslim violence or discrimination?
Arwa: There was one incident where a man was walking towards me and he had a bat in his hand. He started sort of swinging it towards me, but then moved away from me as he became closer. But you could see that he was really angry and had intentions to harm me, but he didn’t do that.
I’ve been called things like “ninja” and “batman,” but I don’t suppose I’ve really had many experiences with racism.
RM: To many on the Left, there seems to be a tension between letting some communities express and exercise their own norms, customs, and beliefs, and upholding other values like free expression, gender equality, and freedom of belief that seem fundamental to modern civilization. How do you think well-intentioned liberals should approach this problem?
Arwa: That’s the thing. One point of view is, “what right do you have as someone not from the society to change it?” The other is that it’s your moral obligation to do something because there are so many individuals in that society being oppressed. But how do you know who is being oppressed and who is, say, wearing the niqab voluntarily? That’s a question I’ve thought about a lot. If it could be banned, would I ban it? I can’t answer that question. I know so many people who choose to wear the niqab and if it was banned, they would feel like a right was being taken away from them. Do I really want to take that right away from them because a lot of people are being forced into it? I don’t think I can answer that question.
Bushra: I have an opinion that I want to insert here about banning niqabs. It has almost the opposite effect from what liberal legislators may hope for. If a woman is a niqabi, for example, perhaps not by choice, and the country that she lives in bans the niqab, her family isn’t going to just say “Oh, okay, it’s banned.” They’ll likely keep her at home and she’ll have less chances to interact with the outside world as someone living in a free society. So it may not make sense at the level of legislation, but there’s still the question of how do you help these people?
Arwa: The other effect could be that people like my family, who are all immigrants, may just decide to go back to their home countries because the niqabs are important. Yes, this may excite some people, but at the same time, you’d be taking away so much freedom that these women have living in a Western country, despite the oppression of the niqab. If I was forced to go back home, I would have no life.
I have no idea how you can help. But when it comes to minors, something needs to be done. I’ve seen a lot of Muslim children who are really oppressed—especially girls. They’re being forced into niqabs, and not allowed to step outside of their house, or play. It really sucks because it’s having a huge impact on their mental health. But when it comes to the adult population, I really don’t know what could be done.
Robert: So you think it could be a problem without a solution?
Arwa: Yes…
Robert: So when you first started examining your faith, what did you find to be the most troubling aspect of it?
Arwa: Definitely the treatment of women. It got to this point where I didn’t want to be a woman anymore. I remember having dialogues with this imaginary God asking “why the hell would you make me a woman, why would you do this to me? What you did to me was basically torture.”
I know that my entire life will be controlled by men. When I’m by myself, I’m controlled by my father. He then chooses somebody for me to marry and hands his responsibility over me to my husband. Then I have to ask my husband if I can step out of the house, if I can go get a job, or travel, or even if I can go see my sick father.
It’s not fair, because I don’t want to be controlled. People may reconcile that by saying, “Your husband may be able to control you, but you can control your son.” But I don’t want to control my son—if I ever have a son—I just want my own body, my own autonomy. I want to be able to make my own choices.
I don’t even believe in marriage, and that whole idea was like blasphemy. “How could you even say something like this? You need to get married, you need to have children”
Bushra: It’s really painful to hear this coming from someone else—painful and also satisfying, because I went through the very same thing. Those doubts crept in from a very young age because I was a female. I actually suspect there are many more secret female atheists in the Muslim community then male ones, because it’s great to be male in Islam, why would you question it?
I remember having questions for my father like, “why can’t I go to a good school that’s further away from home? Why do I have to get married when I’m 18 and have kids?” That fundamental injustice is really what first opened that Pandora’s Box of doubt.
Arwa: One of the most distributing things I’ve experienced was my Mother speaking to a group of young women who were married—I think they weren’t wearing hijabs. She told them your husband is your “majāzī khudā,” which means, nonliteral God. The Prophet said, “If I could order you to bow down to anyone other than Allah, I would order you to bow down to your husbands.” I remember saying, “No! I don’t believe that.”
I later got in an argument with my sister who told me that the hadith said women are intellectually inferior to men, so it has to be true.
Bushra: Yep, that’s why hell is going to be populated by women…
Speaking of disturbing memories, one I vividly remember in my own life is my father talking to my younger half-sister who was less than three years old and wearing a children’s dress. Just a little dress that little girls wear, she was barely a toddler. And he screamed her name and said, “Awrah” which meant your private parts are showing. She was still in diapers.
It was really disturbing for me to witness because I struggle with sexual shame all the time, and seeing it instilled in this tiny child who has no concept whatsoever of what an awhra is was a moment of clarity for me, personally.
Robert: So what were you taught about female sexuality, generally?
Arwa: Basically that women needed to be covered up because they attract male attention. It got to the point where if we were talking out loud in public, our Mother would say, “Shut up! Don’t talk so much. Your voice is part of your awhra and you’re attracting men.”
Sex was never spoken about. You can’t say the word “sex” in the household, it’s not allowed to the point that you can’t even say “sexism” because it contains the word “sex.”
Everything remotely sex-related is seen to be so shameful that you have to hide it from the rest of society. You can’t talk about periods, and you can’t let the other members of the family know you’re on your period—especially men. You need to hide your bump if you’re pregnant, because it’s shameful.
Everything, when it comes to this, needs to be under wraps. You, as a woman, need to be under wraps because you’re appealing. Of course, by trying to make woman not sexually appealing, you’re turning them into sex objects.
Robert: It’s striking that the onus for men not to be sexually abusive seems largely placed upon women…
Arwa: I remember being at my Islamic school, and my teacher saying, “I know a lot of people feel really sorry for a rape victim. But my question for that rape victim is “why were you wearing those kind of clothes? Why were you outside late at night?”
I was an 11 year old who agreed with her at that time in my life. I was a child, and she was teaching me how to react at rape victim. I look back at that now that I’m older and I realize how disgusting it is, how sad it is. She was basically saying to us, “later on in life, if you get raped, it’s your own fault. Not the man’s.” It feels like that’s engrained in much of Muslim culture, where women are often blamed for the sexual crimes.
Robert: I recently watched the movie “A girl in the River.” There’s a moment in the film where she interviews the girl’s father in prison, after he shoots her in the head over a brief encounter with a local boy. Fortunately she survived. He used a metaphor that I think actually crystallized the concept of honor culture perfectly, remarking that a “drop of piss ruins an entire jug of milk”
Could you reflect the impact of honor culture in your life?
Arwa: For everything I do, I have to think about my family’s honor, because I don’t want to tarnish it. Even though I don’t believe in the construct—I think it’s disgusting—I have to act upon it, because it’s so important to my family. As a woman, if you destroy the honor of your family, you’re not important to them anymore. That’s why honor killings are so prevalent in my culture. That’s all you are, you are the family’s Izzat, and if you run away, or commit apostasy, you’ve tarnished it until death. So either we kill you or we live with you for the rest of our lives as a stain on us. It dehumanizes you as an individual, they don’t see you as a person, they see you as honor. Yes, they will love you now when you’re not doing anything wrong, but the moment they find out, many will resort to violence. It sucks in terms of how much it is still within our societies, and how many people follow this concept to the letter.
Robert: Given the concerns you’re grappling with, I imagine staying within your community would be intolerable. Is that the case? Have you developed an exit strategy?
Arwa: I initially decided that I was going to leave and didn’t give a shit anymore. Now that I’ve had more time to think about it, I’ve just left it.
If anything happens, and I have to run for my life, I will. Otherwise, I’m going to keep evaluating my options and see how my life plays out, because…I still really love my family, and I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to them. I wouldn’t want to do this to them.
A lot of people say, “Well, they’re still your parents, and if they really loved you, they’d accept you for who you are.” The truth is that love is more complicated than that, people are good and bad. Yes, they may not let me live my own life, but they’re still loving and caring individuals and I still want to stay with them for as long as I can, and be happy with them. If it comes to a point where I’m no longer happy or fear for my life, I will leave.
Bushra: It’s sort of a naïve thing to say, “if your family really loved you.” Of course they love us. That’s why they’re so adamant in making sure we never go to hellfire. It’s out of love that they’re so concerned for our wellbeing after this life. It seems like such a narrow-minded perspective, people just aren’t thinking about it in a nuanced way.
Robert: So you actually think you can live this way for another 5 years?
Arwa: I’m just taking it day-by-day. I can’t think about the future, because I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Somebody may overhear me, or go through my computer, or somehow find out accidentally—then my life will be in danger and I will have to do something.
I know things will get harder in the next few years, because of the expectation that I will get married. The idea of being married to a devout Muslim man…it’s not going to happen. If they let me live with them as an unmarried Muslim woman, then fair enough. But if they try to manipulate me into it, I will think about leaving.
Bushra: There’s probably going to be some pressures and questions asked after a certain point. That’s going to be tough and I really sympathize.
Robert: There was a lot of pressure for you to have an arranged marriage, right?
Bushra: Of course, that was the only way to do it. That was the only future I had, to have an arranged marriage and children. I realized at a very young age that that wasn’t the life for me, and I was really fortunate that my parent’s got divorced and that my mother was more liberal in general. Because of that, I was able to escape at least one side of my family and I still have my mother’s side, at least.
But I’m still very much estranged from my father’s side. That’s the inevitable outcome—that they disown you at least, because we live in a Western society where they’re not likely to come after you. But I basically don’t have any communication with my father anymore.
Arwa: Have you actually come out to your family?
Bushra: I never said it explicitly, because that’s terrifying. It was so gradual and so self-evident that I suppose nobody asked any questions. It was a sort of de-facto disowning, but I never told him outright.
He did give me an ultimatum when I was 18 and going off to University, which was very important to me. I had my big dreams and I wasn’t going to be held down by any of that. He said that if I went off to university, then I can consider myself not his daughter anymore. I took that as my opportunity, unfortunately. It was him or me, and I chose me.
Arwa: It’s a good thing that you did.
Bushra: Yes, my life is much better now. I have no regrets. Like you mentioned before, when I came to those realizations early on in my life, a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. But then the rest of that weight was totally lifted off my shoulders when I decided, “fine, the hell with it—I don’t need a father if he’s going to treat me this way.”
Bushra: Yes, of course. It’s a complicated situation, it’s not black or white. I don’t hate this man, I understand how his religion colors his treatment towards me, and there’s some element of forgiveness that I have, and sympathy even. But at the end of the day, I’m choosing myself.
Arwa: That’s a very mature way of thinking about it. I feel like so many of the ex-Muslims I’ve spoken to have so much hatred towards Islam and Muslims. I understand their point of view, because of how much they’ve had to go through because of the religion.
Robert: Beyond your family, what would you miss if you did follow through and leave the faith?
Arwa: I miss the spiritual aspect at times. I miss the idea of having some higher power up there who is bothered enough to listen to whatever’s going on in my mind. But that’s only because I’m doing something wrong and want someone to forgive me when I can’t forgive myself.
I also feel like I’m losing a culture. Half of my identity, at least, has been taken away. What will I celebrate later in life? Will I celebrate Eid? If I get married, will it just be a civil ceremony?
Bushra: That’s one of the things I’ve missed most. When I decided to leave the faith and do my own thing, I left behind all the people involved in that community, as well, and the culture alongside it. There’s a real struggle to understand who I am because I don’t have typical, white American culture either. So I’m left with a half identity. Islam is such a deep part of me that I still think of myself in relationship to the faith, just that I’ve left it. It’s an interesting struggle and a sacrifice, certainly.
I definitely hold onto those cultural elements much more strongly now. I have such affection for the food and music—which I wasn’t allowed to listen to. I take such pride in those things now, but I took them for granted when they were so intermingled with the religion.
Arwa: Me, too. I need to feel like I belong somewhere. I feel like if I come out, it’s going to suck because then I’ll have nothing. I’m just a brown person living in a white society who has left everything that attached me to my childhood memories and the things that make me who I am.
They seem to be speaking out of both sides of their mouth. They’re claiming that the hijab is something that, historically, it’s never been and in doing so erasing the plight of women who have no choice, who are not wearing this as a symbol of expression and are being made to wear it to desexualize themselves.
How do we address these particular types of Muslims who are washing over the struggles of less privileged women in less privileged countries?
Arwa: Wake the fuck up. It’s really sad to see, and it happens here quite a lot, as well. They refuse to acknowledge that, yes, there are women who are forced into the hijab.
I know a woman who comes from a very conservative background, and wears Western clothing when she’s not around her family. She was forced into her hijab, and takes it off when she’s not around her family. Even she now refuses to acknowledge that women are forced into the hijab.,.
Bushra: I don’t understand this…
Arwa: No, I don’t either…
Bushra: It’s so infuriating, too, because Western liberals take that person’s side, not our side. They say, “it’s true, it’s just a symbol of expression,” liberation even! That’s such a twisting…it’s just topsy-turvy, up is down. I don’t even know how to address it…
Arwa: Me neither. Yes, if you wear the hijab because you want society to take you seriously and judge you for who you are and not the way you look, that’s fine…
Bushra: Of course that’s fine. But it comes from a position of privilege. They can say that because they live in a free society that these other women do not—because of the liberal values that have been granted to them by living in a Western country, not a Muslim one, coincidentally.
Arwa: They don’t only fail to acknowledge all the women being forced into it, but also the younger girls. All the time, I see younger girls forced into wearing the hijabs and they’re not allowed to take them off.
You can’t even talk about the fact that people are forced to do things religiously. When I first started having these doubts, I messaged the girl I mentioned earlier and said, “Because you’re a liberal Muslim, I really want to hear your perspective on Islam. How do you reconcile your beliefs in LGBT rights and women’s freedom?” She messaged me back saying, “I’m not a liberal Muslim, I’m just a Muslim,” and that was it. She refused to talk to me. She was my last hope.
Bushra: It’s very frustrating. People who should be on the side of ex-Muslims take the side of the liberal, feminist Muslims who make no sense whatsoever. The only reason I get so upset is because it’s really is harmful and denies the struggles of so many women who don’t have these options and privileges.
Robert: It’s something we encounter all the time with very well-meaning, Western, progressive people…
We really are on the same side here, or at least we should be.
Robert: Looking into the future, where can we find hope? There are brave ex-Muslims and Muslim reformers, of course, but their voices sound so small. Their stories seem squashed within their community and ignored outside of it…
Arwa: It’s hard to say. But as someone who still lives in the closet and wears a niqab, people often ask me why I wear it and I can’t tell them the truth. I just sit there and lie to them and say “because I want to please my God.”
I find it humiliating as an adult that I have to talk about this. I don’t want to see pity in their eyes, so I just lie. And I know if I tell the truth, I will be harshly criticized by other Muslims because I have given others a bad impression of Islam.
