American friends, always listen to any Pakistani feminists, never argue, our experience in fighting patriarchy is more than yours, you don’t know about theocratic patriarchy- we know, NEVER DARE TO DEFEND ISLAM ON THIS SITE. What I am saying to you is that if you was living in a Muslim country, u would not have the rights you deserve, and this would be true to all women, not only ureself. And I say that hand on heart and encourage you to study how sisters are treated in Pakistan.
Now how would you feel, if you lived in one of our countries, and instead of supporting ure apsirations to live freely, to own ure own body, to have access to basic health care, family planning advice, to be able to own and explore ure own sexuality any way u want, to have intellectual autonomy, to be free to say u don’t want to believe in a male supremacist religion, that you don’t want to marry someone you don’t love, never met or just can’t feel any physical attraction for, people in the mightiest country on earth, who support the oppression on a huge level and have done with trillions of dollars over decades, come out, even in the most progressive sectors of the blogosphere and basically slap you in the face and tell you, “Hey, Islam is great, we love it, we wear the hijab and to hell with your experience cos we’re Americans and we know more.”
How would YOU feel as a Muslim woman from Pakistan? I think you would be angry, this is what I think. This is ure chance now to make a stand, u can come and join with us and we will embrace to you as our sister, or you join with American Muslims, agents of patriarchy, the same set up that would crush you if you was born in any place where they got the power. Please, don’t give them a chance, they wouldn’t give it to you, and they don’t give it to millions of Muslim girls in Pakistan, what we get, this is punch punch punch, kick kick kick, or worse. We ready to embrace you, will you do the same for us?
I just going to be honest cos I got no shame to tell, I applied to join the UK police and got sent to Hendon Police College for me interview, this was proudest day of me life cos I got treated like a animal when I was living in a Arab Muslim country that I don’t want to name, and not only me, all us Pakistanis were, males also, we got treated like we was all trash. If I tell you what was done, you will vomit. People even took their own lives where I was, u don’t know, and you don’t want to know also.
And that was for 8 years, the abuse i suffered on the streets, got me so sick I was unable to leave me bedroom and missed me schooling. I got back to UK in 1999, me age was 18. I done all me catch up studies and got to the police interview in 2004. I wanted to join the police, with all me heart, all me soul. Why can’t I be in the Police? Just cos I am of Pakistani heritage, no, I want to help people, do stuff, assist, get into desicion making, why have I got to be ghettoized or sent home to wear the hijab, i DON’T WANT. But Islam had one last stab in me back, cos I never really escpated it in me mind, this is I could not join up cos I got a history of mental illness, this was all the way back to age 15 in Country X, and with the meds I was on, no, they had to turn me down. And then things got worse when the one person who had stood by me got sent to Pakistan BY FORCE. BUt the question remains, why can’t I be in the police, I want to be someone, I was never no one, I want to be something and make a difference, and I know all what’s happening in me community also, girls are getting targetted, tricked into drugs, men are trapping them into sex work, so for me, I wanted then and still want now to FIGHT BACK, cos I was nearly one of those girls meself. Now what YOU see is a Paki, a downclass, someone who has no place doing anything except being a professional victim of the state, no, I got me own ideas, I want to influence the state, and we can, cos it’s not as hard as you think, if you stand up and say, “Hey, this is our country too.” And now us Pakistani girls in UK we are policing the Nazis, helping our own abuse victims, giving advice, spreading awareness that if you are in danger, don’t run blindly, get sheltered accomodation, and we are the ones protecting our community’s so it’s not just a situation where there’s a them and us mentality, no, and you can’t erase a woman cos she’s brown or black and wears a police uniform, how come, and if she’s white, SHE’S URE SISTER ALSO. Me, I am brown, proud of this, got no interest in being anything other than I am also, me only interest is to help others so they don’t end up like me, in rehab, scarred after a crack up at age 15 and a sucide attempt years after that, totally dependent on one or two people and unable to form normal relationships with the opposite sex, no, I don’t want that, we suffered enough, i want to break the cycle, that means getting involved, really involved, and if i can’t wear a police uniform then I will do it in another way. It’s racism to tell me I can’t do nothing, no way, I don’t accept, even now, I want to do something, one day I will, you’ll see.
when i was in me community support group, this is where I started to learn how to write, I first learned a word, one word, this word is “Patriarchy”. What is that? I did not know, even though I had lived under it all me life and even though I had been victimized by it. And little by little I started to piece the puzzle together, why was I assaulted, why was I denied mental health support in country X, why was me mum always afraid to leave the house, we did we live with bars on our windows, why was me friend ripped out me life and sent to Pakistan, why, why, why. And I followed all this reasoning and reflection and this brought me to feminism. I was standing on the gallows with a noose around me neck, feminism cut me down. Feminsim is the liberation of women from all what we suffered under patriarchy, it’s equality, an end to gender oppression and to achieve that, we got to tear down Islam, rip it down, claw it to shreds and trash it. There is no compromise. I found me window and it’s name is feminism. And then, no, it appears now as a dead end, diluted versions of what almost detroyed us appearing here and there, blocking our path to liberation, obstacles, deviation, appeasement, people ready to sell us out. Close this window on us and you forcing Pakistani feminists into a very desperate position. What you got to understand is this, we feel so strongly about the fight against gender oppression in our country, we are ready to give our lives and will fight any attempt to sabotage the womens’ movement in Muslim countries. If Muslim propoganda is brought here against us, you will have opened a door that will never close. You put that rope around our necks, we not going to sit down and take it this time.
Women who leave Islam in Pakistan are executed, burned alive and have been gang raped on the orders of religious councils. The sharia’ punishment is beheading. These issues are REAL. No member of any community in the United States suffers this degree of oppression, thankfully. If they did, we would support them without question, we would not betray you. So why by extending invitations to American Muslimah’s, apologists for this oppression are you out to insult and betray us? We done nothing to you.
Do you know that Islam, like filthy Christianty, like all male supremacist patriarchal religions, has ruthlessly exploited black women, in particular? American friends who do not know the world, it is not only Pakistani women who are terrorized under Islam, so too are our African sisters, THE ONES WHO DON’T HAVE US PASSPORTS TO HIDE BEHIND. Without ure rich American passports to protect you, American Muslimas, you will be beaten down with the stick just same like us. It is easy to be Muslima in New Jersey, Haarlem or Brooklyn, throw away ure American passport and come and be a Muslima in a Islamic society, we’ll come back in a few years and check on ure progress, if you even survive 3 weeks that is. If you are suffering under American system, HOW CAN YOU SURVIVE BEING RAPED, BEATEN, ACID THROWN IN URE FACE, UTTERLY ERASED AND TREATED AS HUMAN TRASH UNDER OURS? This is our lifes, our world, you never dreamed of what is going on. We are weak, we are oppressed, but don’t think u are better than us just cos you live in a RICH country. Most of what we are suffering under Islamic extremism is cos your powerful governments support for Islamic mysogonyst Jihadis. And now you planning to bring that support into feminism and spit on us? STOP INSULT TO PAKISTANI FEMINISTS- WE KNOW HOW TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST AMERICAN MUSLIMA COLLABORATORS.
What’s the position of me and african americans? There is no position, no more than there is one with white Americans, you got no special strategic significance other than you are part of America, a country that has meddled in our affairs for decades. White Americans running the CIA funded Jihadists and mysogonyst forces, we condemn it. Now we see a new threat, again, from America, this is women who know nothing about Islam, speaking out in its defence, white liberals also u got the same problem, same like neo cons, you all against us, but in different ways.
Now here we got on Islam defending women pretending to be feminists, this is fragmentation, worse, it’s a direct assault on the feminist movement in our countries cos you got infiltrated by agents of patriarchy, American society is SICK, so you contaminated the ideals of feminisn with this revisionist, appeasing back sliding. Why are some American women doing this? There are many reasons actually and you can believe what you want, of course, but main reason, at this social level represented here, it is reactionary, this is not progressive and it is a danger to us as it undercuts our arguments, when we need funding. You are getting involve with areas you got no idea, STAY OUT, Islam this is our world and our business, you got no right to supoort Fascist male supremacist gender tyranny, cos you’re not going to be its victims, are you? No, we are.
America is so conflicted about race it’s losing focus on the big picture and this in the country that is one of the most influential in the Muslim world, especially in those states where gender repression is most savage. This means alone means that the American feminist perspective would be of interest to progressive women in the Islamic world. What we find however is a tangled mess of race and class issues, that seem to turn even the basic tenets of feminism on it’s head, thus, feminists end up- to further their own agenda- supporting brown patriarchy, either in their own communities, or, much worse, in our countries. Issues like the hijab and support for Islam generally underscore this. Now Muslim Media Watch, do you think that is any kind of reflection of the reality of life under Islam for millions of women, u know that it isn’t, we suffer horribly, American reverts of whatever color don’t, and hence the disconnect. Feminists in the US ought to be able to solve this, to educate the Muslimas in the US about the male supremacist nature of Islam, but, of course they cant. Worse, as you said, white feminists and woc feminists have checkmated each other into silence. I will give you a historical parrael of when this happened before, in the 1930’s in the Spanish Civil War, when rather than fighting Franco’s pro Nazi forces, Communists and Socialists and Social Democrats, the left in other words, slaughtered each other, the Poum, the Cominterm, etc etc. Needless to say, the Fascists won in the end. White feminists and woc feminists in America, arguing when they should be allied on basic issues like wearing the hijab, polygamy, forced marriage, gang violence etc etc, they are committing the mistake all idealogue make, they end up losing site of their reason to exist. What is feminism? It can not co exist with racism, exploitation of women by gangs, drugs, porn, johns, bdsm, religion, low pay, police repression, mysogony. You can’t ally with anti social forces, practices degrading to women, or with Islam; What we are calling for now is a full debate on this, cos if there are feminists in the US who think you can, and still be a feminist, sorry, we need to inform you why you can not. Islamo-feminism is a contradiction, as is being a Nazi-feminist or a feminist in some freaky child abusing Christian cult, sorry, u just can’t be. You’re either a feminist, or you aren’t.
we need to start to talk openly about Islam and it’s relationship to American feminism (patriarchial religions in general actually, not only Islam), and with no particular racial group of American feminists in mind either either cos white liberals and woc feminists are both defending Islam, though they do so from different angles. this debate is well over due. We want to debate feminist support for the hijab. American comrades, do not be afraid of this debate. So if I making a official request then we can have our open, free and fair debate with the Pro Hijabis? Ok, then so i ready to do that.
we are totally desperate to get message across also. I hope u give me this chance to speak and not also be afraid of us and think we very much against u, cos we are not, just we want to speak and have a voice
