WATCH. Muslims + Ex-Muslims Speaking Aloud
Create unprecedented video for Salman Rushdie and free speech
As news spread on Friday, August 12, that author Salman Rushdie had been brutally attacked, a group of eight Muslim and ex-Muslim women banded together to do something unprecedented: create a video, boldly reciting quotes from the book, Satanic Verses, that prompted the Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa, or religious ruling, in 1989 for Rushdie’s murder.
An author, a writer and a Muslim reformer, I am proud to speak aloud with them.
We have now released our video two weeks after the attack. Please watch it and share it. In a faith in which atheism also carries a death sentence among fundamentalist Muslims, it is a bold triumph of the spirit for Muslim reformers to work together with ex-Muslims in friendship, kinship and acceptance.
Our video is our act of defiance against an interpretation of Islam that each one of us fights. This video is just the latest statement of courage by women who have inspired me and should inspire the world. They are women who became accidental activists, shocked by interpretations of extremist Islam that deny women and girls fundamental human rights, such as the right to feel the wind in their hair in countries like Iran. For me, I became an activist when my colleague and friend, Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped and murdered in the name of Islam by militants in Pakistan in 2002. I made a commitment to fight against the extremism of a tyrannical ideology today called “Islamism,” or political Islam.
On this page, I would like to introduce you to the other women in this video so you can know some of the bravest women in the world. This project is supported by the Muslim Reform Movement, established in 2015, and a new initiative, the CLARiTY Coalition, just launched this month by Muslims, ex-Muslims, academics, scholars, authors, and activists who stand for peace, democracy, liberty and secular governance.
We reject the blasphemy laws that fomented a young Muslim man from New Jersey to take a knife to kill Rushdie for the alleged crime of his written word.
Free speech is NOT a crime
In the Muslim Reform Movement, we responded to the attack on Rushdie with this simple statement that shouldn’t have to be said in the 21st century:
The Muslim Reform Movement condemns the attack on author Salman Rushdie. Free speech is NOT a crime. We must all reject the extremist interpretation of Islam that puts a death sentence on innocents exercising free speech rights. May the power of the pen prevail.
Like Rushdie, we are pilloried by Muslim organizations, from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Council on American Islamic Relations, that support Islamic theocracy and ideas of Muslim supremacy. But we remain steadfast because the alternative is to lose our freedoms.
We invite you to support our efforts. We are like the Soviets who refused Communism, the Chinese who rejected the Cultural Revolution and people everywhere who have refused the yoke of tyranny.
As CLARiTY Coalition cofounder Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote in UnHerd: “[L]ast Friday, I was scared. I felt terrorised. I was urged to go into hiding and stay silent for my own safety. For a few hours, I let fear rule my life. But still I knew deep down that freedom is a choice — and that I would keep choosing to be free, to speak and write as I please. In this way, in writing this very piece, I defy the Islamists and all others who would silence me.”
Meet our band of eight Muslim and ex-Muslim women, speaking aloud — because free speech is allowed in a free society. Zudhi Jasser, a cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement and the CLARiTY Coalition, asks: “Is the West unsettled yet? Sir Salman Rushdie was attacked by an Islamist terrorist…All the questions freedom loving Americans should be asking. Why aren't we unsettled by the jihad against us?”
Meet 8 Muslim and Ex-Muslims Speaking Aloud
Asra Nomani @AsraNomani, born in India, is a journalist, and cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement. — “Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so, to make it true.” (Satanic Verses)
Aliya Abbas @Aliyadissents, raised in the U.S., was forced into marriage as a teenager in Pakistan and, as a survivor of child marriage and an ex-Muslim, today advocates against child marriage and religious fundamentalism. — “What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive?” (Satanic Verses)
W.S. chooses to remain anonymous for her safety. — “The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world?” (Satanic Verses)
Soraya Deen @SorayaMD, born in Sri Lanka, launched the Muslim Womens Speakers Movement and is a global activist for human rights and the dignity of women of faith. — “A poet's work: to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world. and stop it from going to sleep.” (Satanic Verses)
Yasmine Mohammed @YasMohammedxx is an Arab Canadian and ex-Muslim who advocates against religious fundamentalism. — “A people that has remained convinced of its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep or madness.” (Satanic Verses)
Raheel Raza @Raheel Raza, born in Pakistan, is an author and activist based in Toronto, Canada. — “Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts.” (Salman Rushdie)
Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih, born in Iran, is an activist and journalist for women’s rights and human rights in Iran, herself facing death threats. — “Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief. Doubt.” (Satanic Verses)
Dalia Al-Aqidi @DaliaAlAqidi, born in Iraq, is a political activist in the United States for secular democracy, writing about how the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence must be challenged. — “Enough, God, his unspoken words demanded; why must I die when I have not killed? Are you vengeance or are you love. And from the beginning, men used God to justify the unjustifiable.” (Satanic Verses)
Salman Rushdie closes from an interview clip: “We need stories. We need stories to understand ourselves.”
And we need brave narrators, like these women.
Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and a senior fellow in the practice of journalism at the Independent Women’s Network.
###
This kind of action takes incredible courage - the kind seemingly few have today. People like you keep others strong and fearless.
This is what true bravery and true feminism looks like. We should all take a page of this act of courage from these brave women who stand against middle ages brutality. Thank you for sharing and for your work.