Now They Call Me Infidel

by Nonie Darwish

  How can a religion be described as a “religion of peace” while its leaders order fatwas to kill those who criticize it? Islamic clerics are still teaching violence, jihad, and glorifying wars that happened in the seventh century as the example—literally—of what Muslims should do today. I am sure there are some radical views in Christianity and Judaism, but they have been reformed, reinterpreted, and are no longer the centerpiece of their religion. Today’s Muslim teachings and preaching is depressing, cruel, ruthless, and oppressive. When news of a woman being stoned to death in Iran reached the United States, my American friends said, “How could that happen?” But my Muslim friends said: “What has she done?”

  The American reaction is what I relate to. But sadly, I know how it could happen. There is no tolerance in modern-day Islamic society for differing views; you either submit or pretend. I couldn’t do either. I could only say to myself, Thank God I am now in America, because if I was back in Cairo, I don’t know what my life would become.

  Despite my tendency to be outspoken and my freedom here in America to speak my mind, it is not easy for me to say these things. It took me many years to actually know I am not a Muslim in today’s radical culture of Islam, never have been nor want to be. I do not want to convert, discriminate, hate, or do jihad against non-Muslims. I had to find an almost superhuman inner strength to actually extricate myself from feeling a sense of belonging to the culture of jihad, the culture that my father died for.

  My love for America, my chosen country, prevents me from belonging to any group that has an agenda against it, or who would love to see the U.S. Constitution replaced with the Koran and sharia law. I also love my personal freedom in America and never want to be shackled again with political Islam. Nor can I live a split personality—I cannot say one thing among Muslims and the opposite in the presence of Americans. I am one person, wherever I am and whomever I am with. Nor can I submit to the observing eyes of other Muslims who treat one another as police enforcers of Islamic law.

  I asked myself how could it be that people like me who escaped radical Islam and oppression of women were now facing the same threat right here in the bastion of freedom?

  Besides the turmoil I found myself in with the clash of cultures in the 1980s, between a radicalizing Muslim community and my newfound American values, my personal life was also experiencing some turmoil. In 1987 I filed for divorce because my marriage was falling apart. The responsibility for its failure was fifty-fifty, and I had to deal with my choices as best I could for the sake of my children and also for the sake of retaining a decent relationship with a man I once chose to be my husband. I have kept a good relationship with him and his family. The divorce decision was very difficult for me, but as soon as I made it, I felt a great relief. My main goal now was to be the best possible mother to my two children.

  My children and I went to family counseling to talk about our feelings. One day when I was alone with the counselor I began crying. When the counselor asked me what was wrong, I said, “My father died!” The counselor assumed my loss was recent. He said: “I am very sorry, when did he die?” He must have been surprised when I answered, “He died when I was eight years old.” The counselor asked me if my family and I had talked about it enough. I answered, “No.” I realized then that I had never really had the chance to properly grieve. I began talking about my history to the counselor. He was very understanding and sympathetic to what he described as my “fascinating” history and culture. I had never before considered my life, and all its twists and turns, to be unusual. As a matter of fact, I was hiding my history, afraid for people to know I was the daughter of the head of the fedayeen in Gaza. Now the floodgates opened, and I was able to begin talking about and dealing with my past. I put away the shame and pride.

  One year after my divorce, I met a neighbor who often played ball with my two children in front of the house. He asked us to attend a concert with him. We did. Later, he and I developed affection for one another and were married in 1991.

  My second husband, Howard, was born and raised in Berkeley, California, and came from a very liberal background. His family was distinguished in the university community. They were not religious, but an intact family—a mother, father, brother, and sisters, a lovely family who has accepted me and my children as part of their family and extended their love to all of us. It was remarkable how similar my husband and I were despite having been brought up in two completely different cultures.

  As my mother had done with me and my siblings, I sent my children to a Christian school because I wanted to give them the best education possible. I remembered my wonderful St. Clare College in Cairo, the Catholic nuns who were my teachers, and the peace I felt around them.

  When I looked at the neighborhood churches and synagogues in my Southern California community, I loved seeing the tradition of families—husbands, wives, and children—going together to worship and pray to God in the presence of their community of faith. I wished that Muslims in the Middle East and in America could experience this unity—going to mosques together as families—one husband, one wife, and their children, a beautiful picture of family unity in front of God. On Friday nights I saw Jews walking to their synagogues, whole families practicing their faith in peace together. The religious traditions that I saw among my Jewish friends were extremely powerful and full of messages of tolerance and compassion. I saw the same among the Christian families in my neighborhood. I felt a deep need to be around spiritual people who respected the traditions, democracy, and pluralism of this great nation, and who advocated tolerance, compassion, and peace. I yearned for a religion that uplifted my spirits. I didn’t want to belong to a religion of mujahadeen on yet another mission in a holy war against America.

  One Sunday morning I was watching television and began listening to a preacher. I heard him quote the following scripture: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” (Corinthians 13:4). I was amazed. My daughter walked by and I told her, “He is great!”

  She said, “Oh, Mom, that’s Dudley.”

  I said, “Dudley who?”

  “Dudley is our school pastor,” she answered casually, as if I was supposed to know. What a privilege to have a pastor like that teach my children, I thought to myself.

  That church was three miles from our home. The next week on Sunday morning I woke up the whole house early and announced to my husband, “Honey, let’s get dressed, we are going to church.” We entered the church and heard the music. They were singing a song with words, something to the effect “and I won’t be afraid.” People were standing up singing along, clapping and raising their hands up high to praise God. We sat near the front row and listened to a message of compassion, love, acceptance, tolerance, and prayer for all of humanity. That day—this made an indelible impression on me—there was some news of violence in the Middle East and the pastor prayed for everyone in the Middle East—Muslims, Jews, and Christians. It was a very different message from the prayers to “destroy the infidels” that I grew up with. My husband and I could barely hold back our tears. I was hungry to hear more. I wished every Egyptian and Muslim I knew could also hear this message of tolerance, something I had never in my life heard from a Muslim preacher. I learned the most important command in scripture was “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The pastor reminded us that as residents of Los Angeles we live in a very diverse community, a community that includes Jews, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, Latinos, and blacks. He said these are our neighbors and we should love them simply because they are our neighbors. Furthermore, a Christian is even commanded to love his or her enemies and to show them kindness. It is an ideal that every Christian must try to live up to. Again, what a sharp contrast to how Muslims are taught to regard “infidels.” I was fa
ced with a challenge, nothing less than the choice between love and hate.

  This experience was also a revolution in my American husband’s life, since he was not brought up with Christianity.

  Ever since that day our lives have been blessed. From that moment on I discovered I was truly free. I now know the true meaning of love and hope.

  I am grateful to the good people of America, Christians and Jews, who open their hearts, homes, churches, and synagogues for immigrants like me. I now know why this country is great. I am grateful to belong here in America, protected by a Constitution and Bill of Rights written by wise men who understood that it is the Creator who grants us our human rights, and it is our government’s role to protect those rights for everyone. Consequently, the citizens live with relative inner peace and confidence in their government. That is why the system is smooth, predictable, and dependable. This country allows me to practice any religion or no religion, and gives me human rights I could only dream of in my culture of origin. Americans often take these rights for granted. But if you have lived under tyranny as I have, you know how precious those rights are.

  I had also found a spiritual home, a community of worshipers where I felt I belonged. I realized what the role of religion should be. It should not be by force, but by convincing, explaining, and by setting an example. Fear, jihad, anger, and terrorism should not be advocated in any house of worship. The human mind, when filled with hate, anger, and envy, becomes paralyzed and cannot function productively. I have lived for thirty years with people who cheered their dictator as their “savior,” forgetting who their true savior was. In Islam it should be Allah. But they have surrendered to pride, shame, anger, and envy—all sins by any religion’s standards. They have given allegiance to tyrants instead of Allah, and to advocates of hate rather than to advocates of love.

  It was the love of God I was desperate for but was unable to find in my culture of origin. I lived half my life trying to practice Islam yet my soul remained empty. But in America I learned from Jews, Christians, blacks, Asians, and all God’s people to love humanity regardless of religion, race, or national origin. I am now more in tune with a humanitarian and tolerant outlook on faith. I beg my people to see faith the way it should be, as a source of bringing the world together. I long for the religion and culture of my origin to reject hatred and the jihad obligation to subdue, dominate, and control the world. In our mission to dominate we have suppressed our own humanity and love of life. I do not consider myself an ultra-religious person, but I need to feel the love of God. I truly believe that Islam can and one day will reform and be a partner among the world’s monotheistic religions to bring out the best in a person and in world civilization. In this church, that day, my soul was revived and nourished with the love of a tolerant and forgiving God.

  Many immigrants come to this great nation in search of material gain, which is fine; however, the biggest prize I gained was my religious freedom and learning to love. For me it was nothing short of cataclysmic. I had turned from a culture of hatred to one of love.

  Eight

  A Second Look After Twenty Years

  My third child, a healthy and beautiful girl, was born in 1994, when I was in my forties. I was blessed and happy. My family life was becoming more stable and settled. But two inescapable family tragedies were to impact me in the 1990s.

  The first was in 1993, when my younger sister was diagnosed with lung cancer at age forty-three. I was devastated by the news. She was a physician married to a prominent surgeon in Egypt. She had been a heavy smoker ever since she was a teenager—in Egypt many physicians smoke in spite of all the medical facts and statistics about smoking. She and her husband came to the United States for her treatment and stayed at my home for two months. Despite availing herself of the best medical treatment available, her condition was very serious and getting worse. During those two months, we were together almost all the time and became very close. We talked about our families and our childhood for the first time as adult women, opening up to each other and talking about the pain of our childhood, the loss of our father, our life in Gaza, and even the culture of jihad, hate, and indoctrination that we both experienced as children. I believe her heavy chain-smoking was her way to cope with that pain. We cried together and laughed together.

  My sister clearly understood and accepted the fact of her impending death. Leaving her children in the best condition possible was her top priority, and she formulated plans and told her husband what to do after she passed away. I was continually amazed by my sister’s courage, her hope, and her steadfast prayers. She became very close to God and drew strength from many hopeful verses in the Koran. She was preparing for everything, even paying back debts to anyone who ever did her a favor. After she left to return to Cairo, she sent me a check for some money she thought she owed me but that I did not even remember! As a physician, she understood her condition and was extremely brave. I, on the other hand, felt totally helpless. But I was grateful I had a chance to spend those two wonderful months with her.

  When I said good-bye to her as she left to return to Egypt, I knew it was the last time I would see her. As if mirroring my turmoil, the Northridge earthquake of January 17, 1994, hit a few days after she left my home. The armoire in the guest room she had occupied fell onto the bed where she had been sleeping only days earlier. I was grateful she did not have to experience the terrible earthquake in her condition. But while she had escaped the earthquake, she did not escape her fate with cancer. My beloved sister passed away in January of 1995 and left behind two boys, eleven and sixteen years of age. It was a tragedy.

  A few months after my sister’s death, my brother, who was forty-three years old, was working in Gaza for a short period of time representing the Egyptian government. It was his first visit to Gaza since he left it as a child at age four. He was very well received in Gaza, and, in fact, Yasser Arafat personally greeted him as the son of a hero of Gaza. My father’s name was still well known and appreciated in the Gaza community, and my brother received the same royal treatment I had when I visited Gaza as a teenager on a school trip. My brother told me that many people came to visit him and were very kind to him in honor of our father’s memory. Our former maid and the school principal who once punished me for not memorizing poems were among those who welcomed him to Gaza. The school and street in Gaza with my father’s name are still there.

  It seems that all these memories truly impacted my brother, and he began, perhaps for the first time, to actually think about the past. He had, after all, been with my father when the bomb that killed him exploded and had himself been injured in the blast. He may well have been reliving the trauma of those early experiences. One day he collapsed in his residence, and his maid called the Egyptian consulate in Gaza. My brother had suffered a severe life-threatening stroke. He was given only a 3 percent chance of survival.

  Since my brother was in Gaza without his family, the Egyptians around him had to make a quick decision as to where they should take him. The question was: Do we take him to a Cairo hospital or to Hadassah Hospital in Israel? The answer was unanimous. If you want him to live, they said, take him to Hadassah.

  I kept in daily contact by phone with his wife and my mother, who had flown to Jerusalem to be with him in the hospital where he lay unconscious for more than two and a half months. The doctors and nurses of Hadassah performed a miracle; my brother’s life was not only spared, but eventually he was able to walk and talk and function normally. After many long months of rehabilitation and therapy, he was able to resume a normal life.

  My mother told stories about her time in Israel that totally contradicted all that we had ever heard about Israel and Israelis. Both she and all the Egyptians who heard her talk about it were amazed at the dedication and professionalism of the Israeli doctors and nurses in their treatment of my brother. My mother spoke of how kind the Jewish people in Israel were and told of how many went out of their way to help her and my sister-in-law during that di
fficult time. Some Egyptian Jews who did not know my brother or mother before this incident visited them regularly in the hospital. They were relatives of Jewish Egyptian friends of my brother’s in Paris. My mother said she was amazed at such concern and kindness, especially coming from people who were treated as second-class citizens and expelled from Egypt in the 1950s. What also amazed my mother was that they harbored no anger or vindictiveness toward Egypt and spoke only of the good times and good memories. They remembered the food, the people, the music, and the neighborhoods, and never had a bad word to say.

  I myself was amazed at what my mother was telling me. That was totally contrary to what Arabs are told about Israel and the Jewish people. Arab countries spend a lot of energy, time, and money on anti-Israel propaganda. My eyes were opened about Israel and its moral standards. I felt very grateful to the State of Israel and the doctors and nurses of Hadassah for taking the higher moral ground and choosing to do the right thing. They did not make some exception for my brother. They regularly treat Arabs equal to Jews. They had saved my brother’s life, an Arab Muslim man and the son of a shahid.

  I later learned that Yasser Arafat personally insisted on paying my brother’s hospital bills in honor of my father’s memory.

  When Arabs experience for themselves the kindness, compassion, and competence of Israel, they are not often willing to acknowledge it. A few years after my brother’s stroke, the son of a former Egyptian high government official suffered a severe car accident and was also rushed to Israel for treatment. As with my brother, the official’s son’s life was saved. When the high-ranking Egyptian official was criticized by the media for sending his son to Israel for treatment, his answer was: “If saving my son’s life meant that I have to take him to the devil for treatment, then I will.” I later asked my brother about his feelings toward Israel. He said he has mixed feelings, but he, like many Egyptians, still regards Israel as the enemy. That is the gratitude Arabs give Israel for its good will and decency.