Sarah Haider: Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique (AHA Conference 2015)

[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)