In Germany in the 1930s, most people, including many Christians, looked the other way and said and did nothing while Jews were being mistreated, abused, shipped off to death camps, and killed. Because nobody said anything or did anything to stop the terrible things that were being done, they continued and the seriousness escalated.
Today, in the name of religious freedom, people, including Christians, are looking the other way while Muslim women are being treated abominably. We don't want anyone to tell us how to "practice" our religion and so we tread very lightly on any subject that looks as if it is religion-based.
The Imam's Daughter by Hannah Shah is very aptly subtitled My Desperate Flight to Freedom. In this book the author tells how her father's practice of his "religion" led to her own emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. They lived in a tight community where appearances were more important than truth, where honor (of the family, the community, the religion) was more important than the life, to say nothing of the safety, of an individual.
Hannah tells a heart-breaking story of ten years of abuse. She tells of her desire to please and earn the love and approval of her father. She tells of the beatings and other "punishment" she received instead of the love she desired. She tells of the ignorance, prejudice, and hatred that fueled the abuse she received. She tells how her father's anger seeped into the rest of the family. She tells of the isolation she experienced and the disbelief she felt during the rare times when she visited the homes of her non-Muslim friends and saw there kindness, gentleness, laughter, and openness that were completely foreign to her because she had never seen them in her own home.
As a bright young girl she began to see inconsistencies between what her father told her the outside world was like and what she saw for herself when she ventured out into it. Hannah wanted to have lives like her friends but she could not. So she developed a dream world where she could go in her mind to get away from the drudgery of her home life. She also spent as much time as possible at school, dreading going home in the evenings and wishing there was no such thing as a school holiday.
Then came the evening when she overheard her father talking on the phone about taking her to Pakistan and forcing her to marry a cousin. Hannah was determined this would not be her fate. She put a few extra things in her backpack the next day when she was going to school, determined to run away and never return to her parents' home.
Hannah tells of the efforts of her family to shame her into coming home. She tells of the threats they made when she refused. She tells of her time of frequent moves and hiding in order to be safe. She tells how she came to know a loving GOD who is as different as night and day from the angry, hate-filled god of her father.
This book tells a simple (though horrible), straight forward story of one girl and how she escaped the abuse of Islam. It is an eye-opening story; a true story that should open our eyes to the abuse that takes place in the name of religion. Have you been wondering if we should interfere in the lives of Islamic families or if they should be left to practice their religion as they see fit? Read The Imam's Daughter for an inside look at what some Islamic homes are like.
We must not close our eyes, for the sake of religious freedom, to the abuse that is happening daily in the name of religious freedom. We must be willing to take a stand and say "You cannot do this and call it 'religion'; not in this country." Otherwise, we may find ourselves with as much to account for as the Germans who turned their eyes and hearts and voices in the 1930s, to all that happened to their neighbors, the Jews.
Somehow, Happy Reading just doesn't seem to apply here. So, this time I'll end with ...
Blessings to you :-)
