by Wafa Sultan
This struggle is most intensely exemplified in Muslims whose fate it is to live outside their homelands. In these people, this conflict has produced a form of depression and unhappi-ness that one notices immediately in all Muslims living in the West as soon as one gets to know them a little and begins to probe the depths of their psyche. This internal struggle has left these Muslims prey to questions for which they have no answers. They are torn between acceptance and rejection of life among people whom their beliefs do not allow them to trust or accept as friends or superiors at work: Islam categorically forbids Muslims to accept a job in a workplace where their boss will be a non-Muslim. Life in the West has improved the Muslim’s standard of living and guaranteed his children a brighter future than their peers in the Muslim world can expect, but at the same time it has exposed these children to a way of life that Muslim religious law finds unacceptable.
This conflict leaves Muslims with a sense of frustration. Whenever I noticed signs of this frustration I would engage the concerned individual in a discussion of the American way of life and the differences between Muslim and Western society. My attempts were not intended to produce any result, which would have been beyond my abilities. Rather, they stimulated these people and drew them into conversation, in the course of which I could uncover the secrets that lay hidden in the depths of their psyche. With time this frustration would give way to a terrible anger against everything around them in their new society
The editor of a Los Angeles Arabic-language newspaper once wrote in response to an article of mine: “America has dazzled her … Life in a morally impoverished society has blinded her,” and subsequently published a number of readers’ opinions in the same vein, all of which described American society as morally weak and the women who belong to it as a saleable commodity, and concluded that “Wafa Sultan appears to admire these women.” I had once met the wife of this editor, several years before he launched his attack on me. She told me that they had fled to the United States to escape the civil war in Lebanon after she had lost both her brother and sister in the conflict, and her husband, the editor, had lost several members of his family.
Of course, many people in the West may be unaware that the Lebanese civil war lasted for seventeen years, cutting down the young and devouring the elderly, and killing, maiming, and displacing over a million people in a country whose total population did not exceed 4 million. History has not witnessed a more squalid war than this one. Victims were selected on the basis of identity. Identity cards in Lebanon indicate not only a person’s religion, but also the specific denomination or community to which they belong. Those who had no identity card in their pocket were killed on the basis of their name, for in Lebanon, as in most Muslim countries, a person’s name indicates which religious community he or she belongs to.
The respected editor and his pregnant wife fled the country and sought refuge in America. His wife confessed that they had been living on welfare up until the time I met her. She told me alarming stories of how she and her family had been treated by members of the Arab diaspora here, and complained of the arguments these Arabs had brought with them from their countries of origin. Nonetheless, her husband spared no efforts in championing their morals, conventions, and traditions when he read my article defending my adoptive society, the opportunities it had allowed us, and the highly moral way with which it had welcomed and treated us. But this is always the Muslim attitude, which is encapsulated in the Arabic proverb: “Even though he sees it fly, he insists the duck is a goat,” or, in other words: “None so blind as those who will not see.”
However tightly they cling to life in their new society and no matter how comfortable and carefree their life under the protection of that society’s laws may be, they will still insist that Westerners are immoral, while Muslims are bound by moral habits and customs. If you ask them, “Why, then, do Muslim women apply to American courts in cases of divorce and child custody?” they reply, “This particular woman is an anomaly. She’s not representative of Muslim women as a whole.”
Muslim women living in the United States do not usually tolerate ill treatment at the hands of their husbands. Instead of accepting it submissively as they would in their homelands, they seek a divorce settlement in an American court. They use the laws of their adoptive society to wrest custody of their children away from their husbands and force them to pay child support. But this very same woman, were you to ask for her opinion of the moral climate of her adoptive society, would subject you to endless lectures vilifying American morals and praising Islamic law and morality as exemplified in Muslim society.
I once stopped for an oil change at an auto repair shop in Long Beach, California. The owner was a young Palestinian, and most of his workers were Arabic-speaking youngsters. While I was waiting my turn a car pulled up and a young man of Middle Eastern aspect alighted and tossed out a greeting in Arabic, to which the garage owner replied indignantly, “Why are you late? We’ve been waiting for you since morning.”
The young man replied, “I got my American citizenship this morning, and I’ve just got back from taking the oath of allegiance.”
I looked at him and said in Arabic, “Congratulations!” He gave me a contemptuous look and asked, “What are you congratulating me for? American citizenship is worth less than the sole of this shoe,” and he pointed to his foot.
I could not disguise my annoyance, and told him, “But you’ve just pledged your allegiance to this country and chosen to take its citizenship of your own free will!”
He asked me in bewilderment, “Are you a Muslim, sister?” “Is religion relevant to the issue?” I inquired. We went on arguing for over half an hour, until I found myself driving out of the garage like the wind, shaking with fury. About five months after this incident I heard that this man’s son had committed suicide in mysterious circumstances, at the age of twenty. His body was found in a public park with the pistol he had used to shoot himself lying beside him. He had left a letter for his parents in his office drawer. Rumors spread through the Arabic-speaking community to the effect that his father had been behind his suicide. He had forced him to live an austere life in accordance with the teachings of Islamic law, and the young man had fallen into a state of depression six months before he died by his own hand.
Muslims differ from the adherents of all other religions in both the quality and degree of their loyalty to their religion. I have no doubt that some of them have already freed themselves from the bonds imposed by Islam and have begun to enjoy a freer and more open lifestyle either in their homelands or in the countries to which they have emigrated. But no matter how different their individual lifestyles may be, these Muslims are united in their degree of loyalty to their religion. If you strike up a conversation with the most open of them and point out that some of the teachings of Islam contradict the most basic things about the life they are now leading, they will not hesitate for a moment to express the conviction that they themselves are at fault. The error lies, they will say, not in Muslim teachings, but in their own behavior, which differs so greatly from what these teachings impose.
This internal conflict has exacted a high price from Muslims. Exposure to modern life has disorientated them psychologically and left them with a sense of regret. They feel this regret because they are pursuing a lifestyle that contradicts the teachings of their religion at the most fundamental level, on the one hand, and because they have not followed these teachings to the letter on the other. They do not want to admit that the modern lives they lead are much better than their life under the laws of Islam, nor do they want to acknowledge that the teachings of that law are not compatible with a productive and efficient modern lifestyle. They do not know which to choose and continue to bestride two horses galloping in opposite directions.
Before oil was discovered in the Gulf States, Muslims lived a primitive existence. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, the modern world descended upon their campsites, disfigured their world with its palaces, high-r
ises, cars, and technology, and threatened the unchanging silence of their environment. Dubai lies at the heart of the desert where Islam was born. What was Dubai about thirty years ago but an arid desert with no trace of life? And what is it today? Today it is one of the world’s largest commercial centers. It costs seventy dollars just to walk into one of its hotels, let alone actually spend the night in one. I was told when I was there that a night in a Dubai hotel costs seven thousand dollars!
When people make an overnight transition from the Stone Age to the age of the airplane and the Internet, it is inevitable that they should undergo some kind of internal struggle in the process, and find themselves subject to depression and other psychological ills, especially when they continue to cling desperately to the teachings and social structure of their former environment. Muslims ran before they had learned how to crawl, and tried to climb a ladder they had not even reached.
The West imposed itself, its technology, and its culture upon Muslims by force. It neither respected their individuality nor appreciated their circumstances. At a conscious level, Muslims accepted what the West had to offer them, but deep in their unconscious they rejected it, and it was this vacillation between acceptance and refusal that precipitated the psychological conflict that has destroyed their mental health.
I recently visited Qatar, a small oil-rich Gulf State that is well on its way to becoming another Dubai. As you stroll through its streets you are reminded of California’s Palm Springs. You see the population of Qatar shopping in the public markets at all hours of the day, as if they had nothing else to do; the men in their traditional robes, the women veiled from head to toe. The woman walks a few paces behind the man, and she is followed by her servant, who escorts the small children. They proceed like a military convoy, with the utmost organization and precision, strictly according to rank. There are Starbucks cafés everywhere, and these broadcast recitations from the Koran over their loudspeakers. As I sipped my coffee, I heard the following verse: “And He has created horses, mules, and donkeys, for you to ride” (16:8). This verse is still recited even though there is not a single donkey or mule left in the whole of Qatar. The asses and the mules wrestle in the Muslim unconscious with the planes that the West has imposed mercilessly upon their conscious minds, and it is the Muslims themselves who are the victims of this struggle.
God placed donkeys and mules at Muslims’ disposal, while the West gave them mastery over new forms of transportation, but they cannot acknowledge the magnitude of the West’s attainments, because they regard them as a challenge to the achievements of God. In their conscious minds they have chosen the accomplishments of the West, but in their unconscious it is God’s deeds that take precedence and reign supreme. Muhammad could portray the magnitude of God’s power to his followers only by persuading them that he had placed the donkey and the mule at their service, so that they could ride on them. They thought about this and said to themselves: Were it not for the power of this God, mules and donkeys would not be able to carry us from place to place, and so they continued to be grateful to God.
When the legions of the West stormed the desert with their modern means of transportation, Muslims left their donkeys and mules to the mercies of the wilderness and accepted the gifts the West had to offer—with satisfaction, though never with gratitude. I know a Muslim woman who lives here in California. She has a strong personality and is renowned for her supreme self-confidence. She has lived all aspects of American life to the full, has been twice married and divorced, and has used the American justice system to ensure that both her former husbands give her everything she is entitled to under the law. I once saw her interviewed by an Arabian Gulf tele vision network. The program’s host asked her, “Why don’t you cover your head?”
Contrary to all my expectations she replied, “This is an issue that I agonize over, and I lie awake at night worrying about it. I acknowledge that I have acted wrongly with regard to my religion.” Then she added, “It is the society we live in that has made us stray from the true religion.” Saddam Hussein killed, massacred, and burned his people with chemical weapons and threw innocent people into jail to serve long sentences. He waged war on Iran for eight years, invaded Kuwait and set fire to its oil, and led his people to destruction—yet he never once expressed remorse for what he had done. From the dock he insisted repeatedly that he was Iraq’s legitimate leader and that those he had killed had deserved to die. Not a single Sunni clergyman has expressed any regret over what that criminal did to his country.
After Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in 1979 the mullahs of Iran destroyed one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East and brought its people to the brink of starvation, yet they still insisted that God had entrusted them with a mission to defend their religion. No Shiite clergyman has expressed regret for the crimes these criminals have committed against their country. Sunni Muslims criticize Shiite leaders, and Shiites criticize Sunni leaders, not because of any crimes these leaders may have committed, but because of their secret resentment toward the community to which they themselves do not belong.
The concepts of winning and losing have different meanings in the Muslim cultural lexicon than they do in the West. From our earliest youth we were taught that when someone else wins, we lose, and that we win when others lose. My mother was less concerned with my getting a perfect score in all my subjects at school than she was with what grade the neighbors’ daughters had gotten. We are not capable of building a spaceship, but I can still recall how we danced and shouted for joy when the American space shuttle Challenger disintegrated, killing its entire crew. The tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom were Muslims, yet some Muslim clergymen told us that the disaster was God’s way of punishing the unbelievers who filled the Indonesian nightclubs with prostitutes, and began to spread stories of a mosque that had remained standing, unaffected by the storm. The death of hundreds of thousands of people is no loss, so long as we have gained a mosque!
A Muslim friend told me the following joke, which exemplifies the Muslim concept of winning and losing: “God was walking along when he came across an American who was crying. When God asked him what was the matter, the American told him, ‘My neighbor’s got a Hummer and I haven’t.’ When God asked him, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ the American replied, ‘I want you to get me one, too.’ God went on his way and ran into a weeping Frenchman. He asked him what was wrong, and the Frenchman told him, ‘My neighbor’s got a house on the Champs Elysées and I haven’t.’ When God asked him what he would like him to do, the Frenchman replied, ‘I want you to get me one just like it.’ God continued on his way until he saw an Arab in tears and asked him what was wrong. ‘My neighbor’s got a camel and I haven’t,’ replied the Arab. When God asked him what he could do to help, the Arab told him, ‘Kill my neighbor’s camel!’ “
13.
Living in the “New” America
Thinking About Colin Powell and
President Barack Hussein Obama
ON CHRISTMAS 2008, I celebrated the twentieth anniversary of my freedom. Two decades had passed since my arrival in America, but I often felt as if I had never left Syria, and the pain was still etched deep in my unconscious.
I can still remember that day as if it were yesterday.
It was December 15, 1988, nighttime, and a fierce storm was beating down on Damascus from all sides. I left my sister’s home in that tumultuous city at nine o’clock in the evening, bound for the American embassy.
My sister’s husband was a high-ranking officer in the Syrian army, and my nephew refused to drive me all the way to the embassy in his father’s car, which had a military license plate, because he felt it would be disrespectful to his father’s honor as a soldier to do so; he made me get out of the car when we were about a mile away from the embassy.
I walked through the darkness, struggling to fight off the fear and cold that assailed me. My coat provided poor protection against the wild storm, but at that
moment the dream of freedom was stronger than all my sufferings.
I took my place in the long line of people that stretched in front of the embassy, wrapped myself in a tattered quilt I had brought with me from my sister’s house, and lay down on the ground to wait for daybreak: perhaps in the morning I would get the opportunity to meet the American official in charge.
In the morning the guard stood at the door of the embassy and shouted out: “Only the first twenty people registered can come in!”
When I realized that I was number eighteen I shouted, “Thank heavens! America’s only a stone’s throw away from me now!”
My night at the embassy door had not been wasted.
My turn came, and I was interviewed by the embassy official. After she had looked at my papers and listened to my replies she stamped the visa into my passport.
At that moment I felt as if I held the whole world in my grasp. Christians believe that Saint Peter has the key to the kingdom of heaven, but where I come from people believe that the officials of American embassies worldwide are the bearers of that key.
When I came out of the embassy I hardly knew which way to turn, then I saw that my younger sister had come to see how I was getting on and was waiting on the sidewalk on the other side of the road.
I danced and flourished my passport at her, crossed the road without looking, and narrowly escaped being run over by a car. One of the people gathered at the entrance to the embassy shouted, “Congratulations! Fate has saved your life twice—once by rescuing you from that car and once by giving you a visa for America.”
I cannot help but compare every moment of my life here with moments I lived through over there. These comparisons leave me alternately happy and sad, bold and frustrated, hopeful and despairing, as the present in all its beauty contends with the ugliness of the past.