The repercussions are nightmarish. As we get more information about the December 31, 2015 attack by young male refugees on women in Cologne, Germany, the more disturbing the situation becomes.
A short recap for those not familiar with the story: organized groups of refuges, primarily from Arab and African areas, systematically groped, robbed and raped numerous young women on that night. Unrest had already been growing in Germany because of the large numbers of refugees that the country has generously welcomed.
But this is disastrous on so many levels. I doubt that any other act would do a better job in shutting doors to desperate refugees than this. It plays on so many fears.
About 10 days before these attacks, the New York Times ran an article about how Norway is working hard to help the Muslim male refugees become acculturated in an environment where women have much more freedom than they do in the refugee native countries.
Some quotes from the article:
A course manual sets out a simple rule that all asylum seekers need to learn and follow: “To force someone into sex is not permitted in Norway, even when you are married to that person.”
Many refugees “come from cultures that are not gender equal and where women are the property of men,” Mr. Isdal said. “We have to help them adapt to their new culture.”
Mr. Kelifa, the African asylum seeker, said he still had a hard time accepting that a wife could accuse her husband of sexual assault. But he added that he had learned how to read previously baffling signals from women who wear short skirts, smile or simply walk alone at night without an escort.
“Men have weaknesses and when they see someone smiling it is difficult to control,” Mr. Kelifa said, explaining that in his own country, Eritrea, “if someone wants a lady he can just take her and he will not be punished,” at least not by the police.
Yes, it this man did say, “he can just take her” if he sees a lady he wants.
I have spent the last several weeks reading books by Muslim feminists trying to get a better understanding of Muslim theology. I admit that I had a genuinely awful experience when visiting a Denton mosque in 2014. I was totally appalled at my treatment and by at the way women in general are treated.
I admit I know little about Islamic history, theology and practice, especially in comparison to the years I have systematically studied Christianity. From what I can glean, however, the founder of Islam, Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad, loved and respected women. He had multiple wives and apparently treated them all very well. Some indicate that women were equal partners in the earliest times of the development of the religion.
Just as there is in Christianity, multiple Islamic theologies have developed from its original core.
The two primary strands today, and they divided very early in Islamic history, are commonly known as Sunni and Shiite or Shia. A very loose summary:
The Sunni’s perhaps have a general correspondence to the Christian evangelicals and even fundamentalist movements with shades of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical restrictions: they are 100% male dominated, tend to a literalist reading of the Koran and women are extremely limited in leadership roles and in some places, even to visibility in public life.
The Shiites appear to be considerably more moderate. We might compare them to mainline Protestant Christianity. They take a broader approach to the Koran and women find greater welcome and freedom. As far as Sunni’s are concerned, Shiites are apostates.
Saudi Arabia, immensely rich, although losing money hand over fist with the crashing of oil prices, and the home to the sacred sites of the Muslim world, Mecca and Medina, is not just Sunni in theology, but an extreme type of Sunni called Wahhabism. It is from this militant, deeply legalistic, very much anti-modern and virulently anti-American religious understanding that we get Al Qaeda (the bin Laden family from which Osama bin Laden spring is a prominent one in Saudi Arabia), the Taliban and ultimately, the ISIS terrorist movement.
And they scare the **** out of me. More, it is their theology and ideology that informs much of the larger Muslim world.
Refugees are primarily Shiite, not Sunni and certainly not part of Wahhabism. However, their worldviews have been shaped by the more militant form of Islamic theology. And so have their views on women, i.e., “they are there for the taking.”
Most men in rigidly Sunni Islamic worlds have had no what we might call “normal” contact with females. The women are kept veiled, hidden, and silent. Marriages are arranged, and most women marry quite young. This is changing rapidly now as more Muslim women gain good education but is still the general rule.
And we have a mess on our hands when those men, and many of the refugees are males in their late teens coming without parents, come in contact with Western women.
We need to welcome the refuge, male and female, child and adult. But those seeking refuge must step up to the plate.
This article about Muslim students at Virginia Tech speaks to part of the issue of growing tensions with refugees and with the Wahhabi inspired terrorist world. One astute student noted:
“As a Muslim in America I feel like I have to keep one eye looking over my shoulder. Because I feel like I don’t know when a hateful attack could happen. However personally, and this might be a unique opinion to me, I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault except for ours. I think that we don’t go out enough. We don’t talk to people enough and we don’t show people who we really are. For example, you could see like almost any neighborhood church, they invite people in for meals. And they go out of their way to bring people in and we just sit tight, pray our five times a day, have a Koran gathering where we read it like bible study, together and we don’t really reach out to people so I think the onus is on us.”
I think this student has hit the core of the issue.
One of the commentators on that article said, “I’ll believe in these Muslims when I see them marching for the rights of women, gays and Christians in the Middle East.”
The Muslim seeking welcome and acceptance in a wider, more cosmopolitan world needs to meet us half way.
As it stands now, no non-Muslim may ever visit Mecca and observe or participate in the yearly pilgrimage to the Holy City. Yet, with the interesting exception of the Mormons whose passion for ritual secrecy certainly rivals the Islamic one, all Christian/Jewish/Buddhist/Hindu holy sites are open to all who wish to come, observe, participate and learn.
Most mosques at this point do not permit women even in the main worship area. All females, who are not especially encouraged anyway to participate in Muslim rituals, must sit in their own area, generally separated by a high wall from the men. Sight is nearly impossible, hearing greatly impaired. I can’t even begin to imagine the plight of gays or lesbians in their world. Free expressions of Christianity are not permitted in Arab/Muslim countries around the world.
I want to say again: we must welcome the refuge. But there’s got to be both give and take here. I do not want to become a Muslim, although there is much to admire about the basic tenets of Islamic life and faith. As a Christian, I do want to offer welcome. But if Muslims want welcome by a more Christian world filled with free women, it might be a good idea for them to practice welcome to women and Christianity as well.
And they need to teach their men to keep their hands off women. It’s the man’s job to develop self-control, not the woman’s job to stay hidden. This has to stop.
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