Why We Left Islam (5 page)

According to Clauses 33 and 91 of the law in respect,
qisas
(The Islamic Retribution Bill), and its boundaries, the value of a woman witness is considered only half as much as of a man. According to the Islamic Penal Law that is being practiced by the present regime of Iran, “a woman is worth half of a man.”

According to Clause 6 of the Law of Retribution and Punishment, “If a woman murders a man his family has the right to a sum paid to the next of kin as compensation for the slaughter of a relative. By contrast, if a man murders a woman, her murderer
must, before retribution, pay half the amount of a man’s blood money to her guardian.”

In 1991, the Prosecutor-General of Iran declared that “anyone who rejects the principle of
hijab
is an apostate and the punishment for an apostate under Islamic law is death.”

Girls condemned to the death penalty may not undergo the sentence as long as they are virgin. Thus they are systematically raped before the sentence is executed.

Meanwhile, a report of the Special Representative of the Commission of the Human Rights of the United Nations in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1992, stated:

To rape women prisoners, especially virgin girls, who are accused of being against the regime, is a normal and daily practice in the Islamic Republic’s prisons, and by doing so, the clergies declare that they adhere to the merits of the Islamic principles and laws, preventing a virgin girl to go to heaven.
Mullahs
believe that these are ungodly creatures and they do not deserve it, therefore they are raped to be sure they will be sent to hell.
⁸

Further evidence of the treatment of women is provided in article 115 of the Islamic Constitution that clearly states that the president of the country should be elected out of all God-fearing and dedicated men; this means a woman can neither be president nor possess the rank of
Valiat-e-Faghih
(the religious spiritual leader) or the position of leader of a Muslim nation.

Iranian women are prevented from marrying foreigners unless they obtain a written permission from the Ministry of the Interior. The Ministry of the Interior’s Director General for the Affairs of Foreign Citizens and Immigrants, Ahmad Hosseini, stated on March 30, 1991: “Marriages between Iranian women and foreign men will create many problems for these women and their children in the future, because the marriages are not legally recognized. Religious registrations of such marriages will not be considered as sufficient documentation to provide legal services to these families.” Also, “Married women are not allowed to travel abroad without presenting a written permission from their husbands.”

Additionally, the latest reports of the various international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nation’s
Human Rights Commission give a clear picture of the basic human rights violations that Iranian women, as well as Iranian men and children, are experiencing.

The only thing the Islamic Republic has brought to the Iranian people is poverty and misery. I just wonder why God discards them. At the time of the revolution Khomeini told people that God was on their side. If this is what we will get by having God on our side, I am so pleased to not have Khomeini’s so-called “God” on mine.

Parvin Darabi
President, Dr. Homa Darabi Foundation (
www.homa.org
)
Co-author of
Rage Against the Veil
, Prometheus Books, 1999

C
HAPTER
T
WO
WHY I LEFT ISLAM

“I remember one occasion in Bethlehem when all the viewers in a jam-packed theater clapped their hands with joy as we watched the movie
21 Days in Munich.
The moment we saw the Palestinians. . . killing the Israeli athletes, we. . . yelled,
‘Allahu akbar!’
A slogan of joy.”

O
NE OF THE MOST POWERFUL forces in the world is the testimony of a changed life. Like Parvin and Homa Darabi, Walid Shoebat knows the evils of terrorism because he once lived them—in fact, he practiced them. As a teenager, he bombed a bank in the Holy Land and took part in beating an Israeli soldier. When his Catholic wife later challenged him to study the Bible, his hardened heart began to soften as he studied the grace, reconciliation, and love offered in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Today, Walid speaks out about the need for religious tolerance and personal freedom. And his appeal is compelling, given his journey from terrorist to anti-terrorist.

Walid Shoebat’s story poignantly shows us what will happen to our own neighborhoods if we don’t stop Islamic terrorism. He left Islam for a specific reason: It produced violence. He fears that if we in the West don’t stand together now, we will face greater Islamic violence later. Only then, it won’t be overseas—it will be in our own communities.

Why I Left Islam

I was born and raised in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, in the West Bank, to a prominent family. My paternal grandfather was the
muhktar,
or chieftain, of the village. He was a friend of Haj-Ameen Al-Husseni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and notorious friend of Adolf Hitler. My maternal grandfather, F.W. Georgeson,
on the other hand, was a great friend of Winston Churchill, and a staunch supporter of the establishment of the state of Israel, though I did not become aware of this until much later in my life. I was born on one of Islam’s most holy days, the birthday of the Muslim Prophet Mohammad; this was a great honor to my father. To commemorate this great day, he named me Walid, which relates to the Arabic word
mauled,
meaning “the birth.” It was my father’s way of memorializing the fact that his son was born on the birthday of the last and greatest of all prophets.

My father was a Palestinian Muslim who taught English and Islamic studies in the Holy Land. My mother was an American who married my father in 1956 during his studies in the United States. Fearing the impact of the American way of life for their two children, while my mother was pregnant with me my parents left to live in Bethlehem, which at that time was part of Jordan. It was 1960. Shortly after my parents arrived in Bethlehem, I was born. As my father changed jobs, we moved to Saudi Arabia and then back to the Holy Land—this time to the lowest place on earth: Jericho. I grew up learning how to hate but was ultimately saved by the loving example of my American mother, who understood compassion, fairness, and freedom.

I cannot forget the first song I learned in school. It was titled “Arabs our Beloved and Jews our Dogs.” I was seven years old. I remember wondering at that time who the Jews were, but along with the rest of my classmates, I repeated the words without any real understanding as to their meaning.

As I grew up in the Holy Land, I lived through several battles between the Arabs and the Jews. The first battle, while we were still living in Jericho, was the Six Day War, when the Jews captured old Jerusalem and the rest of “Palestine.” It is hard to describe what an immense disappointment and great shame this was to the Arabs and Muslims worldwide.

The American Consul in Jerusalem came to our village just before the war to evacuate all the Americans in the area. Because my mother was an American, they offered us assistance, but my father refused any help from them, because he loved his country. I still remember many things during the war—the noise of the
bombing and shelling that went on day and night for six days, the looting of stores and houses by the Arabs in Jericho, people fleeing to cross the Jordan River for fear of the Israelis.

The war was so named because in a mere six days, the Israelis gained victory over a multi-national Arab force which mounted attacks from multiple fronts. On only the seventh day of this battle, Rabbi Shalom Goren, the chief chaplain of the Israeli Defense Forces, let loose a resounding note on the
shofar
, announcing the Jewish control of the Western Wall and the old city of Jerusalem. Many Jews pointed out the obvious parallels of this event to the biblical account of Joshua and the Israelites when they took Jericho. Joshua and the Israelites circled the walls of Jericho for six days, and then on the seventh day, they circled the wall seven times. The priests blew the
shofars
as all the Israelites shouted with one voice. The walls fell and the Israelites took the city.

After the war, to my father in Jericho, it seemed as if the walls had crumbled on him directly. During the war he would sit glued to the radio listening to the Jordanian news station. He used to say that the Arabs were winning the war—but he was listening to the wrong station. The Israeli station was announcing the truth of their imminent victory. Instead my father chose to believe the Arabs who claimed that the Israelis were—as always—lying, promoting false propaganda. How many of us today remember Saddam’s information minister, popularly known as “Baghdad Bob,” and all of the wild claims and false reports that he was spouting in the few days leading up to the fall of Baghdad? In the Islamic world, it seems as though some things never change.

Later, we moved back to Bethlehem, where my father enrolled us in an Anglican-Lutheran school to take advantage of the superior English courses. My brother, sister, and I were the only Muslims in the school. The three of us were hated. Not so much because we were Muslims, but because we were half American. Although it was a Christian school, it still bore the traits of the Islamicized form of Christianity that infects so many of the Palestinian Christians to this day. In order to get along—and sometimes simply to survive—many Christians in Islamic-dominated countries adopt the hateful attitudes of the Muslims
around them towards Israel, America, and the West. Because we were half American, the teachers often beat us while the Christian students laughed.

Eventually, my father transferred me to the government school where I began to grow strong in the faith of Islam. I was taught that one day the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy by the Muslim Prophet Mohammad would come to pass. This prophecy foretold a battle in which the Holy Land would be recaptured for Islam and the elimination of the Jews would take place in a massive final slaughter. This prophecy is found in some of the most sacred books of Islamic traditions known as the
Sahih Hadith
. This particular tradition reads as follows and is in the mindset of all radical Islamists:

[Mohammad said:] The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews. (
Sahih Muslim Book 041, Number 6985
)

When asked where this slaughter would take place, tradition states that it would be “in Jerusalem and the surrounding area.”

During my youth, like my father, I was always attuned to Islam and whatever our Muslim teachers taught us. I, like so many of my classmates, was deeply inspired by Mohammad’s dark and bloody vision. I offered my life to
jihad,
or holy war, in order to help fulfill this prophecy. I wanted to be part of the unfolding of Mohammad’s grand plan, when Islam would gain the final victory over the Jews and finally—without any further obstacles—rule the world. This was the ideology of my mentors, and while I have left this school of fanaticism behind, millions of people in the Middle East still believe it, and they still fight to make it a reality.

During my early teenage years, there were often riots at school against what we called the Israeli occupation. Whenever I could, I assumed the role of agitator and instigator. I vowed to fight my Jewish enemy, believing that in doing so, I was doing God’s will on the earth. I remained true to those vows as I raged
against the Israeli army in every riot I could. I used any means available to inflict maximum damage and harm. I rioted in school, on the streets, and even on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Throughout high school, I was one of the leading activists for the cause of Islam. I would prepare speeches, slogans, and write anti-Israeli graffiti in an effort to provoke other students to throw rocks at the armed Israeli soldiers. The thundering echoes of our dark chants still reverberate in my memory:

No peace or negotiations with the enemy!

Our blood and our souls we sacrifice to Arafat!

Our blood and our souls we sacrifice to Palestine!

Death to the Zionists!

My dream was to die as a
shaheed
, a martyr for Islam. At demonstrations I would open my shirt hoping to be shot, but because the Israelis would never shoot at the body, I never succeeded. When school pictures were taken, I would purposefully pose with a grim face anticipating that it was my turn to be in the paper as the next martyr. Many times I came close to being killed during youth protests and clashes with the Israeli army. My heart was resolute; nothing could take away my drive—my hatred and anger—other than a miracle. I was one of those young men that you might have seen on CNN hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails during the days of the
Intifada
or “the uprising.” At the time, I would have resented the label; but the simple truth is that I was a young budding terrorist. The Islamo-Nazi brainwashing of my teachers and
imams
—of my entire culture—was having its desired effect.

What I now know is that I was not only terrorizing others, but in many ways, I was terrorizing myself by what I believed. My ultimate fight was to gain enough merit—to build up a solid track record of terror—in order to earn Allah’s favor. I lived in fear of judgment and hell and thought that only by behaving as I did would I ever have a chance at making it into
janna
(paradise, or heaven). I was never confident that my “good deeds” would outweigh my bad deeds on the scale on the Day of Judgment. I was driven by not only anger and hatred, but also spiritual insecurity and fear. I believed what I was taught: the surest way to
ease Allah’s anger towards my sins was to die fighting the Jews. Perhaps, if I were successful, I would even be rewarded with a special place in heaven where beautiful wide-eyed women would fulfill my most intimate desires.