A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Islam

by Wafa Sultan

  In addition to his fear of dying from hunger or thirst, a man in the Arabian Desert faced fear of another kind, a fear of which women were the source. He feared the disgrace he would suffer should she fall victim to another man. A woman, as far as a man of that time and place was concerned, was a constant reminder of his own failure and shame because he might fail in his attempts to defend her when his tribe was raided. Disgrace would fall on him, if she fell into the embrace of another man. His attitude toward her stemmed from his own feelings of inadequacy because of his possible inability to protect her. His hatred was not directed against the real wrongdoer responsible for his disgrace because he himself might one day be in the position of the raider, defeating another man and taking his women. Rather, his hatred was directed at a woman who might be his mother, his sister, or his wife. Since then there has been only one criterion by which Muslim male honor is measured: how well he protects the area between a woman’s knees and her navel. He holds her responsible for this burden; subjected to shame, he is dishonored, and his treatment of her takes on the cast of a twisted sort of revenge.

  Islam was born into an environment that sanctioned the capture and rape of women, holding them—not the man committing the crime—responsible. Islam did not proscribe what was already permissible. On the contrary, it legalized it and enshrined it in canonical law. Man’s need to take his revenge on women because he considered them a source of disgrace was a pressing one, and his ogre legislated for him to satisfy that need. A large number of verses concerning women were revealed to its Prophet. These enormous boulders came down from the mountain to smash the heads of women, distorting their human form. Anyone who reads the Arabic literature, which describes the Prophet Muhammad’s raids and how he distributed the booty and captives, will understand the nature of the trap into which Muslim men and their wives fell. Muhammad provides the example that Muslim men are supposed to imitate while Muslim women are supposed to take their example from his wives.

  For fourteen centuries Muslim men have been unable to free themselves from the domination of their Prophet, and Muslim women have not managed to do better than his wives. Muhammad legalized for himself and his men the rape of the women captured in the course of their raids in a verse that tumbled down from the top of the mountain and fell into Muhammad’s lap. The Koranic verse says: “Marry women who seem good to you: two, three or four of them. But if you fear you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only” (4:3). Women who seem good to you? Men viewed marriage as nothing more than a response to their desires, without reference to the woman’s feelings regarding the marriage. And men did not curb these desires, satisfying them with any woman he was able to acquire, just like so much chattel.

  A man’s wealth alone limited the number of women he was able to marry. The Koran distinguishes between two classes of woman: the free woman and the slave. The slave woman has no rights to freedom. Islam limits the number of free women a man may marry to four, if he can treat them all equally, and, if he cannot—to one. A slave woman does not enjoy the same rights as a free woman, and so a man may marry them as he pleases, so long as he can afford to buy them. What does Islam mean by equally? Equality in this case, in the Islamic sense of the word, means that the man must divide his sperm and his wealth equally among his four wives. If he cannot do this, he must take only one wife. How equitable the ogre is in what he accords to men and their oh-so-fortunate wives!

  What have Muslim men and women got out of this complex “equitable” worldview that allows men to give free rein to their desires and turns women into a commodity to be bought in accordance with the requirements of those desires? Where is the concept of “family” or “children” in this dictionary that is so hard to read? Does either word have a definition in the Islamic lexicon? And what are the responsibilities of a man whose desires produce a whole army of children, as is the case with the family of Osama bin Laden, a man with innumerable brothers and sisters and a father who has had more wives than anyone can count?

  Even if a Muslim man is able to give each of his four wives—and any other women he may have acquired—the same proportion of his property and his sperm, how can he divide his time and energies among the children who come into this world as the result of his unbridled desires? What price have we, as Muslim men and women, paid for this boulder that tumbled down from the top of that mountain? It has shattered us and torn a whole nation limb from limb, leaving the true concepts of “marriage” and “family” in ruins.

  A Muslim man can see himself only in terms of his ability to pump out money and sperm. The Muslim woman, for her part, sees herself only as an incubator for his sperm and as a piece of furniture he has bought and paid for with his money. The man alone decides when to take possession of this object and when to deposit his sperm in it dictating a relationship in which human feelings have no value.

  Because of a relationship that devalues true human feeling, the Muslim family is experiencing a crisis of love with children as its first victims. When my father courted my mother he was already a married man with five children, four girls and a boy. His excuse was that his wife was suffering from incurable tuberculosis. My grandfather agreed to the marriage without considering the feelings of my mother, who was only sixteen years old at the time. My father was forty. He argued that my father was a prosperous man of good reputation from a well-known family, and so he paid no attention to the opinion of my mother and grandmother. Women, he believed, should not be asked for their opinions in the same way one would not ask one’s furniture for the answer to a question.

  My father’s first wife is said to have died neglected and forgotten in a hospital far out of town where tuberculosis sufferers were kept in isolation. My mother moved in to live with my father and his five children. His eldest daughter was one year older than my mother. In this vortex my mother lost her equilibrium and no longer knew if she were a wife, a mother of five, or one of his children, who looked on her as if she were one of their peers.

  In the course of ten years she bore eight children. Although my father was by nature a peaceable and calm man who treated my mother well, I never saw my mother happy for so much as a day. She was not good at controlling life inside the home and the quarrels between her and her four stepdaughters continued day and night.

  In that clamorous and teeming household I was born and lived the early years of my childhood. The nature of the relationship between my four half-sisters and my mother was a source of torment to me, as I was torn between the two opposing sides. My sisters got married to escape the way my mother treated them. A year after my youngest half-sister got married, just as our life seemed to be getting calmer, my father died suddenly as a result of a car accident and my mother lost what was left of her reason.

  I never met my father’s first wife—even my mother never saw her—and so I don’t know why her memory wrings my heart. I don’t know where she is buried, nor do I recall any of her children ever visiting her. Neither my father nor any of her children ever talked about her. But I used to hear my paternal uncle’s wife telling my mother her story and recounting how she had spent her two final years in isolation far from her children in a hospital in the capital, a long way away from the town where we lived.

  At an early age I read the story of the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to one of his wives and how he was on the point of going to bed with her when he discovered white marks on the skin of her abdomen and dismissed her. In my young mind this story of the Prophet’s marriage became connected with my father’s abandonment of his ailing wife, who died alone after two years during which she never saw her children. I harbored feelings of hatred toward my father, though not toward the Prophet, because—you see—the ogre had taken me prisoner, as well.

  The boulders continue to descend centuries after Muhammad’s death. It is now Saudi sheikhs who bombard us every day with hundreds of fatwas. A large number of Koranic verses deal with women, yet not one of them moderates the severity of the crisis caused b
y the verses and stories we’ve talked about already. One verse reads: “Your women are your fields: go, then, into your fields as you please” (2:223). According to Al-Jalalayn’s commentary on the Koran,* this expression means that woman is where you plant your children and do so, as you please. According to this same commentary this verse means that a man can sow his sperm in any position he may wish the woman to assume during the “planting process.” A woman, therefore, is like the land—the dirt—while the man is the farmer who plows that land and casts his seed into it. The dirt cannot protest as the farmer furrows it, nor can it determine the time or place of planting. The whole operation takes place under the man’s control and is carried out in accordance with his wishes. Can the dirt protest? Can the dirt decide how it is plowed and planted? For fourteen centuries Muslim women have been the dirt of Islam that Muslim men have trod on and “planted” in their role as the farmer.

  A woman may not step beyond the limitations of her role while the man permits no infringement of his. This stilted relationship has created untold generations born without the benefit of a loving relationship between the men and women who created them. A healthy and loving relationship between a man and a woman in no way resembles the relationship between a farmer and his land. Relationships that are not based on an equal respect for each other’s feelings cannot produce a generation sound in mind, spirit, and emotion. A woman is not just a plot of land for a man to cleave with his plow. A woman is a human being with a mind, a soul, and feelings and a man should not be modeled as a sort of farmer who uses a woman as he pleases.

  What kind of deity is it whose limited powers of imagination dictates that the relationship between a man and a woman should be similar to that between a farmer and his land? For me, that deity is nothing but a failed poet whose verses we can well do without. That deity is nothing but a puny village ogre who puts men and women on unequal footing as far as their rights and obligations are concerned. Why? The men of the Arabian Desert created their ogre as a way of dealing with their fears. And so this ogre rejected equality in order to punish women for being one of the sources of his fear of failure and disgrace.

  When I began to learn to read, the Koran was the first book I opened. I can never remember anyone explaining these verses to me in a more merciful and tolerant way than I understand them today. Today most Muslims attack me unmercifully. They accuse me of picking out from the Koran those verses which serve my purposes, just as I would pick the best cherries out of a boxful. Naturally, I like this simile, and cannot see anything in it that reflects badly on my reliability. The box that God reveals is not supposed to have any spoiled cherries in it. If God does exist, then the most basic moral principle is that this God should be utter perfection. As far as I am concerned, any impairment of perfection diminishes the authenticity of a God. A God who subjugates women in the ugliest ways possible cannot possibly possess the necessary quality of perfection. If I can pick out spoiled cherries from a box that is supposed to have come down from God, then I have every right to cause you to doubt the authenticity of that God.

  The status of women in Muslim countries is a human catastrophe that the world has ignored for centuries and for which it is now paying a high price for ignoring. An oppressed and subjugated woman cannot give birth to an emotionally and mentally well-balanced man. The invisible Muslim woman has been and continues to be the hen who incubates the eggs of terrorism and provides them with the necessary warmth to hatch the terrorists. The woman who stands before the television camera and tells the world, “Three of my sons were martyrs and I hope the fourth becomes one, too,” is a woman who has been deprived of her motherhood. And when she continues, “My sons are now celebrating their marriage with their virgins in paradise,” we must conclude that she has been deprived of sense and conscience, too! Who has deprived this woman of her motherhood, her mind, and her conscience? People, both men and women, fall into the trap laid for them by those who educate them in the first years of their lives. People are what they are told to be. A person takes on an identity and defines the characteristics of that identity in accordance with the beliefs that prevail in the environment into which he or she has been born. Unconsciously he or she tries to establish the validity of this identity and these characteristics.

  It is difficult, if not impossible, to change one’s beliefs about oneself later in life, especially if one continues to live in the environment that helped form those beliefs. I read of a curious experiment conducted by a psychologist who adopted a female chimpanzee from the moment she was born and took her to live at home with his wife and children as one of the family. The chimpanzee did the same things that the rest of the family did, and everyone treated her as if she was one of them. When she reached maturity, the psychologist gave her a collection of pictures and asked her to classify them into two groups, the first of which would contain only pictures of nonhumans—such as a book, a cap, a flower, or a bird—while the second would contain pictures of human beings. The pictures the psychologist gave her included one of the chimp herself. The chimpanzee began to sort through the pictures, and she placed the photograph of herself in the group that contained pictures of human beings, for she considered herself to be human. Why? Because she had been treated like a human being since she was born. Women in Muslim countries have fallen into the same trap as that chimpanzee, and can no longer perceive themselves other than as society treats them: as inferior to men and lacking men’s mental capacities. They have become convinced that they are inferior beings, and even begin to defend their classification as such.

  Muslim education has stunted women to the point of depriving them of their mind and their conscience. This education has had a profound effect on the minds of Muslim men and women alike. It is no longer just men who are responsible for the situation women are in; women themselves have begun to defend the situation. Women have seen themselves relegated to the status of men’s animals. They accepted this status and can now no longer escape it.

  The Koranic verses and prophetic traditions we’ve talked about—together with the fatwas, interpretations, and exegeses that accrued to them—were enough to distort women’s self-image and persuade them that this distorted image was sacred. Islam views women as defective beings, and, because of the education they have received, women have become convinced of their defectiveness and have indeed sanctified that defectiveness as divine decree. The problem is no longer simply one of Islamic education. It is being perpetuated by women who defend this education. No situation can be changed unless those living within it are aware of its shortcomings and strive for change.

  A worm lives out its life glued to the ground, frequently crushed underfoot. As it is unaware of the reality it lives in, it does not rebel. Women in Muslim countries live like worms, trampled under men’s feet. They believe that they were created to follow that way of life, and so cannot be expected to reject it. The prophetic traditions I have quoted stigmatized women as intellectually and morally defective. Muhammad in a hadith told his followers: “Oh ye women, you are the majority of those who dwell in hell, for when you receive you express no thanks, when afflicted you show no patience, and when I keep aloof from you, you complain.” Just imagine for a moment how it must feel to hear this over and over again, having it drummed into your head until it becomes part of your very being. According to Muslim belief, women are incapable of gratitude or patience and like to grumble and complain. What kind of woman is this brainwashed female who agrees to descend to the level of these accusations?

  Women in Islam have not just become the hostages of their own debilitating beliefs about themselves. They are also at men’s beck and call and, thus, their hostages, as well. Muhammad said in another hadith: “A woman must not feed anyone without her husband’s permission, unless the food is about to spoil. If she feeds anyone with his consent, her recompense is the same as his, but if she feeds anyone without his permission, he receives the recompense, while she will bear the responsibility for the sin.” What k
ind of woman is this brainwashed female who does not have the right to dispose of so much as a loaf of bread in her own home, and who, if she gives it to a destitute person with her husband’s permission, only then gets her recompense from his God? These teachings have not just helped to canonize women’s bondage, they have enshrined male arrogance.

  The Muslim male is conceited. His ogre has appointed him as his deputy and has conferred absolute power upon him. This power knows no bounds and has no respect for women’s intelligence or emotions. Even where something as private and personal as having sex with one’s spouse is concerned, Islam gives women no choice in the matter. Muhammad: says in another hadith “If a man summons his wife to his bed and she refuses, the angels will curse her until the morning.” Who is this God who asks his angels to devote their attention to cursing women who refuse to go to bed with their husbands? Is he not an ogre? When there is a conflict between obeying her husband and obeying God, a woman owes her first obedience to her husband. This means that she is not allowed to fast or pray unless her husband agrees, as laid down by the words of the Prophet of Islam in a hadith: “A woman shall neither fast nor pray without her husband’s authorization.”

  Muslim women live as men’s slaves and will remain so until they release themselves from this mistaken conviction. Can you imagine how enslaved a woman must be if she believes this hadith from her Prophet: “A man has the right to expect his wife, if his nose runs with blood, mucus or pus, to lick it up with her tongue.” Can you imagine the conceit of a man who believes that his God has entitled him to such a position that his wife must lick up the filth that comes out of his nose?

  During my last visit to Syria in 2005, a childhood friend of mine invited me to lunch at her home in a Damascus suburb. Around the table with me were my friend and her family and a friend of hers called Halima. My friend’s friend was a woman in her forties. The story of her life was eloquently and clearly expressed in her face, a face filled with sorrow. “When I heard you’d been invited to Reema’s,” she said, “I called her and asked her to arrange for me to meet you at any cost. I’ve read you, and I know perfectly well who you are and what you can and can’t do. I don’t want anything from you. I ask only that you listen to my story because no one else here seems to believe that I have a story worth telling.”