[Sarah Haider: Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique]
(Moderator) Hi everybody and welcome to this next presentation entitled
"Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique".
I'd like to welcome Sarah Haider, who is one of the co-founders
of the Ex Muslims of North America group.
So, please join me in welcoming Sarah.
(Applause)
(Sarah Haider) Hi, everyone.
I'm Sarah, and for the last two years, I have worked for an organization about
non theist ex-Muslims, those who once identified themselves with Islam,
and now call themselves Atheists, Agnostics or Deists.
And the organization is called Ex-Muslims of North America.
We are a relatively new organization but we are growing quickly
and we now have communities of ex-Muslims in over 15 cities.
As you can imagine, it is notoriously difficult for ex-Muslims
to find others like ourselves, trying to build friendships among people
who are often under siege and deep in the closet is incredibly difficult.
In the first place, how do you even find people who are often deliberately
doing their best to stay under cover?
As an organization, we work to provide ex-Muslims with much needed support,
support to free themselves from the shackles of religion
and to be themselves; to learn about each other's suffering
and, above all else, endure.
We are in a peculiar situation, my colleagues and I,
we are intimately connected with more godless ex-Muslims
than likely anyone else in the world.
I have heard thousands of stories from hundreds of people
about their experiences with Islam.
Some luck few were able to leave the faith with little consequence.
Their relationships with their families and friends and communities
remained intact.
But for most, this was not the case.
Our journeys have seen tremendous struggles.
For some, the cost was only social: loss of friends and families.
For others, they risk their health and mental well-being
from being locked into psychiatric wards to enduring physical violence
from all family members.
Ex-Muslims, arguably more than any other group,
are deeply familiar with the problems entrenched within Muslim communities
and inherent within Islamic scriptures.
As most of us happen to be both people of color
and first- or second-generation immigrants, we are doubly affected
both by hatred and violence from Muslims, but also bigotry and xenophobia
from the broader American public.
Despite all this, my experience over the last two years
has made me wary of speaking up, even to an audience such as this.
I always expected feeling unwelcome from Muslim audiences,
but I didn't anticipate an equal amount of hostility
from my allies on the Left.
For example, when I first published a piece, Fact-checking Reza Haslan,
who is a prominent Muslim scholar,
on his dismissal of female genital mutilation
as only an African problem, not a Muslim one,
I got many responses from people unhappy with what I wrote,
almost all of whom questioned my motives, rather than addressing my claims.
To my surprise, most of my critics were not Muslims.
Rather, they identified as Liberals, and even sometimes as Atheists.
Some darkly alluded to my agenda and others claimed that, as a former Muslim,
there was no way I could be trusted with "fair criticism".
Now remember: I published a fact check.
It seems to me that it would be easy to verify my claims:
fact-check the fact-check, so to speak.
But instead, Muslims and some people on the Left
preferred to throw all-round suspicions about my character and my intelligence.
Those who oppose Christian authoritarianism
will find that the broad majority of Liberals, religious or non-religious,
side with them and will offer their support
in the fight to push religious morals out of our politics and public life.
Even religious Liberals sometimes look upon
the politically-charged religious right with distaste
and some work with secularists to keep them out of our politics.
The executive director of Americans United for Church and State, for instance,
is an ordained minister.
Atheists and Secularists can feel secure in the knowledge
that their allies in the Liberal Left will stand with them
when their target is the Far-right Christians.
It makes sense: Liberals don't share much -- many common values
with the religious Right.
But when the same scrutiny is applied to Islam
you find that, inexplicably, some people on the Left will start to align instead
with the Islamic religious Right.
The consistent exceptions have been the secular and Atheist communities.
When luminaries of disbelief movement, like Harris and Dawkins, speak about
the horrors of Christianity and write books condemning it, they are cheered,
their works lionized, their presence sought at events and conferences.
But when they turn the same critical gaze towards the religion of my family,
they are told to cease such offensive talk,
to refrain from criticizing the same oppressive forces
that they criticized in the past.
There is an instinct to pigeon-hole anyone who says something negative
about Islam, to broadly label them in such a way that nearly guarantees
that most on the Left will ignore what they have to say.
The first method, I found, of people dismissing my claims has been that
since I as a brown person, I can easily be painted as bigot,
is that I must be pro-war or broadly support the Far-right agenda in some way.
This is not true.
Sometimes, I'm called an Uncle Tom or a House Arab. (5:58)