This is wonderful and moving:

What it is like to be a muslim woman and why we know waht freedom is (and you may not)

Excerpt from that post:

I have keys.

When I first moved to the United States eleven months ago, it took me several weeks to grasp this bit of information.

I have keys.

I have keys to my own front door and I can open this front door and walk down the street whenever I want to.

I can walk down the street without being watched through the windows and without anyone calling my parents and telling them I am roaming loose on the street.

I can walk down the street, sit down on a bench under a tree, and eat an iced cream cone. Then I can stand up and walk back home.

There will be nobody waiting for me at my house to ask me where I have been, refuse to let me in, call me a liar, and use my walk as renewed incentive to rifle through all of my possessions for proof that I am doing something wrong.

Continued here: http://aveilandadarkplace.com/2013/07/01/what-it-is-like-to-be-a-muslim-woman-and-why-we-know-what-freedom-is/

This paragraph touched me particularly for some reason, DC

And all this while, and even now, it sometimes feels like I am another person living a distant dream. A phantom woman. A woman who is only pretending to do things and be things that were never hers.

I can't help wondering what she means by the disclaimer

Disclaimer: This is clearly not meant to be reflective of the experiences of all or even necessarily most women who are Muslim or have been raised in Muslim-majority countries or households. This is meant to further understanding of what it is in fact like for many women. This particular blog post is also not making any argument as to how, why, or whether Islam as a religion, doctrine, or ideology in any or all of its forms contributes to the oppression described in this post. That goes beyond the scope of this piece, but I will address it in future pieces.

I hope she does explain further, because it's not really clear what she is trying to say here. Is she referencing the fact that women in particular are often required to conform to certain expectations, and are negatively judged when they do not. Or is there some other interpretation of this disclaimer?

Doubtdispelled wrote:
I hope she does explain further, because it's not really clear what she is trying to say here. Is she referencing the fact that women in particular are often required to conform to certain expectations, and are negatively judged when they do not. Or is there some other interpretation of this disclaimer?

What she appears to be saying is that her experience may not be representative of muslim women as a whole, and any conclusions that might be drawn from her specific experience about the impact of Islamic doctrine on the oppression of women may not be valid or universally applicable.

She's surely treading carefully, perhaps a little voice inside her wants not too deride Islam too much incase of reprisals.

Very moving.

iamthereforeithink wrote:

Doubtdispelled wrote:
I hope she does explain further, because it's not really clear what she is trying to say here. Is she referencing the fact that women in particular are often required to conform to certain expectations, and are negatively judged when they do not. Or is there some other interpretation of this disclaimer?

What she appears to be saying is that her experience may not be representative of muslim women as a whole, and any conclusions that might be drawn from her specific experience about the impact of Islamic doctrine on the oppression of women may not be valid or universally applicable.

I would think it was this, DD, i.e. that it may not be representative of Muslim women as a whole. However I also think that your point is valid as well, especially after spending time with my 91 year old mother, who still rails at the lopsided treatment of boys vs girls when she was growing up.

@Ironclad, I wouldn't want to speak for her. But I suspect she might be more worried about other Muslim women saying "who are you to speak for all of us, I never felt this", especially as she is likely to have met such women who have grown up in the US.

Nora_Leonard wrote:

iamthereforeithink wrote:

Doubtdispelled wrote:
I hope she does explain further, because it's not really clear what she is trying to say here. Is she referencing the fact that women in particular are often required to conform to certain expectations, and are negatively judged when they do not. Or is there some other interpretation of this disclaimer?

What she appears to be saying is that her experience may not be representative of muslim women as a whole, and any conclusions that might be drawn from her specific experience about the impact of Islamic doctrine on the oppression of women may not be valid or universally applicable.

I would think it was this, DD, i.e. that it may not be representative of Muslim women as a whole.

Yes, that makes sense, perhaps more than my reading of it!

Nora_Leonard wrote:
@Ironclad, I wouldn't want to speak for her. But I suspect she might be more worried about other Muslim women saying "who are you to speak for all of us, I never felt this", especially as she is likely to have met such women who have grown up in the US.

I had to go back and read the article again, and find that I had completely missed the significance of the part where she briefly switches from talking about 'I' and 'me' to 'we' and 'us'. So yes, the disclaimer makes a bit more sense in that light.

Nora_Leonard wrote:@Ironclad, I wouldn't want to speak for her. But I suspect she might be more worried about other Muslim women saying "who are you to speak for all of us, I never felt this", especially as she is likely to have met such women who have grown up in the US.

More likely, she's just covering her back in case the Islamists catch up with her. Now she'll just be flogged if they do, rather than being killed if she hadn't disclaimed any intention to defame Islam.

Oeditor wrote:

Nora_Leonard wrote:@Ironclad, I wouldn't want to speak for her. But I suspect she might be more worried about other Muslim women saying "who are you to speak for all of us, I never felt this", especially as she is likely to have met such women who have grown up in the US.

More likely, she's just covering her back in case the Islamists catch up with her. Now she'll just be flogged if they do, rather than being killed if she hadn't disclaimed any intention to defame Islam.

And how many floggings of Muslims in the US have there been lately?

Why would she add that she wasn't speaking for all Muslim women if she was worried about getting in trouble for speaking out against Islam? Presumably if she is going to be 'flogged' she'll be flogged for what she says, not for speaking for all women...unless it is angry "Islamist" women who intend to do the flogging? What do you think the odds of that are?

Nora_Leonard wrote:And how many floggings of Muslims in the US have there been lately?

Not as many, admittedly, as there have been killings.

Oeditor wrote:

Nora_Leonard wrote:And how many floggings of Muslims in the US have there been lately?

Not as many, admittedly, as there have been killings.

Public killings of Muslim women for speaking out against Islam?

Not usually public but muslim women are regularly killed in the west for not obeying the rules and defying their parents.

Scarlett wrote:Not usually public but muslim women are regularly killed in the west for not obeying the rules and defying their parents.

A nice drop of acid maybe!

No honour killings dont happen in the west do they?

She says she's an atheist, not a Muslim, though.

http://www.wluml.org/

WHAT IS WOMEN LIVING UNDER MUSLIM LAWS?

Women Living Under Muslim Laws is an international solidarity network that provides information, support and a collective space for women whose lives are shaped, conditioned or governed by laws and customs said to derive from Islam.

For more than two decades WLUML has linked individual women and organisations. It now extends to more than 70 countries ranging from South Africa to Uzbekistan, Senegal to Indonesia and Brazil to France. It links:

HOW DID WLUML START?

WLUML was formed in 1984 in response to three cases in Muslim countries and communities in which women were being denied rights by reference to laws said to be ‘Muslim’ requiring urgent action. Nine women from Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Iran, Mauritius, Tanzania, Bangladesh and Pakistan came together and formed the Action Committee of Women Living Under Muslim Laws in support of local women’s struggles. This evolved into the present network in 1986.

It always seems bizarre to me that people are moved by (relatively benign) accounts of personal testimony but seem less moved by the thousands of women killed every year by the same culture.

Similar to Malala, who survived her attack, yet the dozens of girls who have been killed in similar attacks remain nameless to most and somehow fail to inspire in the same manner.

It seems more to represent a cautionary tale about the manner in which emotional attachment to different experiences are formed.

HomerJay wrote:
It always seems bizarre to me that people are moved by (relatively benign) accounts of personal testimony but seem less moved by the thousands of women killed every year by the same culture.

Similar to Malala, who survived her attack, yet the dozens of girls who have been killed in similar attacks remain nameless to most and somehow fail to inspire in the same manner.

It seems more to represent a cautionary tale about the manner in which emotional attachment to different experiences are formed.

I do agree with you that people seem to be more able to take on these personal accounts and note that they are moved by them, although I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to say in that last sentence? (Not a criticism, I honestly couldn't tell.)

Without really knowing that, I guess I'd just add that it is hard to take on (in the sense of empathise with) vast suffering, that perhaps for most of us it is easier to focus on single, representative examples. I'm not saying that's true all the time, but just most of the time.

Oh, and thanks for pointing out that she is an atheist, because it made me actually look at the stuff on her blog, which I hadn't before. I made the comment in response to Ironclad (i.e. that I thought she was speaking to Muslim women when she said that she wasn't pretending her experience was the same as theirs) because of the 'history' of Muslim women getting pissed off when Western women try to speak on their behalf. To say (as Oeditor did) that she was "covering her back", seems quite dismissive of just how complex she appears to be and how brave she is for writing what she does, even if it is under a pseudonym. But hell, how many people here write under their own name?

I was also struck by her poetic post about missing many of the aspects of Ramadan, not that it was anything particularly insightful, but rather that it countered some of the very negative things said about people who fast. In addition it chimed with my feeling that many intelligent people stay religious because of social/cultural/community aspects. Which she didn't, obviously, but I know people who do remain 'in the faith' (so to speak) at the same time as no longer really believing in it. And surely not all of them do so out of fear.

Nora_Leonard wrote:Oh, and thanks for pointing out that she is an atheist, because it made me actually look at the stuff on her blog, which I hadn't before. I made the comment in response to Ironclad (i.e. that I thought she was speaking to Muslim women when she said that she wasn't pretending her experience was the same as theirs) because of the 'history' of Muslim women getting pissed off when Western women try to speak on their behalf. To say (as Oeditor did) that she was "covering her back", seems quite dismissive of just how complex she appears to be and how brave she is for writing what she does, even if it is under a pseudonym.

I wasn't being dismissive of her complexity, I was being dismissive of the hell-hounds who would no doubt like to get their hands on her. Especially not that I too have looked at her blog.

I am an ex-Muslim, an apostate, an atheist,

No amount of disclaimers will make any difference, it's her neck they'll be after.

What is so sad about that disclaimer is that it is almost de riguer

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.
You Can't Read This Book argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech - religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states - are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.

This is not an account of interesting but trivial disputes about freedom of speech: the rights and wrongs of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, of playing heavy metal at 3 am in a built-up area or articulating extremist ideas in a school or university. Rather, this is a story that starts with the cataclysmic reaction of the Left and Right to the publication and denunciation of the Satanic Verses in 1988 that saw them jump into bed with radical extremists. It ends at the juncture where even in the transgressive, liberated West, where so much blood had been spilt for Freedom, where rebellion is the conformist style and playing the dissenter the smart career move in the arts and media, you can write a book and end up destroyed or dead.

Nick Cohen from Amazon