blog post immediately preceding this one<\/a>.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry \u2013 I\u2019ll wait.\u00a0 I\u2019ll sit here and sip my coffee while some Cooking TV program murmurs in the background.<\/p>\nOkay, back?\u00a0 So, you read the article.\u00a0 Hopefully that gives you an idea of where I\u2019m coming from.\u00a0 As is my usual habit, I posted this article to my Facebook wall and then the comments started coming in.\u00a0 For the most part, all the ladies were in general on the same page as I was:\u00a0 People need to raise their kids with good morals, the boys are totally at fault for what they did, and despite her bad judgment at drinking and partying, no women deserves to get raped.<\/p>\n
This requires emphasis:\u00a0 NO WOMAN DESERVES TO GET RAPED<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Full stop.\u00a0 Bold Face.\u00a0 Italics.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s no \u201cbut\u201d in that sentence.\u00a0 No wishy-washy \u201cWell, sure, no woman deserves to get raped, but<\/em>\u2026\u201d.\u00a0 In that \u201cbut\u201d lie all the excuses and outs that society gives to men who rape.\u00a0 Poor guy with the raging testosterone.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t help himself.\u00a0 She was flirting.\u00a0 She was dressed like a slut.\u00a0 She was drunk.\u00a0 She was asking for it.\u00a0 She should have known better.<\/p>\nNo woman deserves to get raped.\u00a0 I would think that at least all us women would agree, but there were a few Muslim women who were quick to throw this sixteen year old girl on the rubbish heap:<\/p>\n
\u201call im saying is we live in a society that even at the age of sixteen casual sex is considered \u201cthe norm\u201d so seriously what one more \u2026 *shrugs* but i am surprised at the compassion you \u201cukhtis\u201d have for this kaffirah but remain silent when its known that the us soldier go overseas and rsape virgin women or women whose only lept with one man (their husband!!!) lol smh\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nSo, according to this Muslimah, simply by dint of the fact that you are not Muslim, you are not worthy of sympathy.\u00a0 If you are a \u201ckaffirah\u201d (a loaded word used by Muslims to refer to a non-Muslim in a disparaging manner), since\u00a0 you live in a sex-soaked society and it\u2019s your habit to fornicate like bunnies while Obama is off killing Muslims overseas, well to hell with you.<\/p>\n
I am here to tell you rape is wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s wrong when it is done as an act of war in Congo or Iraq, it\u2019s wrong when done at a party in Steubenville Ohio.\u00a0 And yes, I will have compassion for this non-Muslim girl because I am a human being and she is a fellow human being.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember reading anything in the Qur\u2019an that tells me I have to have contempt for non-Muslims.\u00a0 I believe that in many places in our scripture we are told to be of high moral character, to serve as role models, and to teach other people about the beauty of belief in One God and the freedom and peace of obeying Him.\u00a0 And having compassion for her does not lessen my compassion for my Muslim sisters around the world who suffer the same affront.\u00a0 I quail under the burden of the agony of my Muslim sisters and all my fellow human beings.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there\u2019s plenty of misery to go around.<\/p>\n
I know that in the case of this girl in Ohio, the saying in my title above, \u201cThere but for the Grace of God go I\u201d, could not be more apt.\u00a0 I could EASILY have been her.\u00a0 At age sixteen I was running around with my friends, going camping on weekends all over the states of Texas and Oklahoma with scores of grownups, drinking, though usually only in \u201csocial\u201d amounts, and otherwise living my life unfettered by adult supervision.\u00a0 My parents divorced when I was fourteen and they were busy losing themselves in various ways and didn\u2019t seem to have much interest in completing the job of raising their kids.\u00a0 My older sister was able to make her way a bit more than I since she was seventeen and near adult status; I did not have that luxury.\u00a0 I stayed with one, then the other, pretty much doing my own thing, and then eventually I moved in with friends.\u00a0 Grownup friends.\u00a0 Yeah, and me fifteen years old.\u00a0 Totally dysfunctional, but when you\u2019re in the midst of it, you\u2019re not thinking how weird it is that your parents don\u2019t really want you.\u00a0 You\u2019re busy thinking how cool it is that you are hanging out with all the adults!<\/p>\n
So, yeah, a whole lot could have gone wrong for me.\u00a0 Allah saved me from myself, though, and surrounded me with some of the kindest, most nurturing people I\u2019ve ever come across in my life.\u00a0 I was free to do what I want, but never ever pressured to take a step I wasn\u2019t ready for, and since it was not in my nature to use drugs or be promiscuous, I just did my thing, spent time with my friends, went camping, and beat on people with swords.\u00a0 And threw spears, and learned how to make medieval armor, and got into archery, and heraldry.\u00a0 Sounds weird?\u00a0 Well, maybe to an outsider, but to me, this group, this club called the Society for Creative Anachronism<\/a>, SCA for short, was my family.\u00a0 They saved me from so much wrong so that when I was older and not so stupid, I could recognize the beauty of Islam and claim it for my own.<\/p>\nSo, what if I had gotten involved with a faster crowd?\u00a0 What if, on one night when camping in a remote encampment in the backwoods of Texas, some guy had plied me with mulled wine and had raped me?\u00a0 Would it have been \u201cmy fault\u201d?\u00a0 Should I have known better than to go camping with mixed groups of lusty lads and lasses?\u00a0 Should I have known better than to drink while underage?\u00a0 Would I have just got what was coming to me?\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0 I was not a useless \u201ckaafir\u201d unworthy of compassion back then.\u00a0 I was a non-Muslim.\u00a0 I was a kid floundering along trying to make my way in the world several years before I was supposed to have to.\u00a0 I was making mistakes based on lack of knowledge and lack of support, lack of nurturing at home and fear of being on my own.\u00a0 I can\u2019t even write about it without the fear of having been abandoned by my parents constricting my throat.\u00a0 Perhaps Allah had mercy on me, saving me from a bad scenario, because He was already testing me with the breakup of my family.\u00a0 But if I had become a victim of rape, I tell you that I would not have deserved it.\u00a0 No women deserves it.\u00a0 If you believe that women deserve to be raped, then there\u2019s the door.\u00a0 Don\u2019t let it hit you in the ass on the way out.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got a little upset the other day after I wrote a blog post about the Steubenville rape trial.\u00a0 I wrote a pretty long post.\u00a0 I felt that I set out my opinion clearly, and I put responsibility where it lay:\u00a0 The boys should not have raped, the girl should not have been drinking and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam-2"],"yoast_head":"\n
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