i was out last night and i met a woman from an islamic country who is now living in europe and the u.s. she is from an extremely wealthy and powerful islamic family, and she ran away when she was 12 years old because she was so offended by her family’s fundamentalism, and she knew that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life being abused in the name of islam. when she ran away she went to an international-aid house in her country (which i’m not at liberty to name).
one of the aid workers contacted her family because there was a big reward for her capture. her brothers came to this aid-house with guns and she ran away across the roof tops, eventually ending up in europe.
now she’s in her early 30’s and she’s working and living in the u.s and europe. she gave up her inheritance(which was immense)for her freedom. and she considers herself to be a good and faithful muslim woman, although she lives a modern, western life. in talking to her i found that what was really interesting was getting her perspective on osama bin-laden.
she basically thinks of bin-laden as a spoiled brat, a rich kid who has emotional and personality issues who is hiding behind the veil of fundamentalism.
i wish i could tell you more about her and her story, but in the interest of protecting her security she kept a lot of details very sketchy. i’m sure i’ll never see her again, cos one of the reasons that she was comfortable telling me her story is that she left nyc today. but she did say that there is a lot of unrest among the women in the islamic world. according to her, women in most of the islamic world are second class citizens at best, and they’re becoming increasingly fed up with the patriarchy. and i did read that email that’s been circulating around which says that the best punishment for bin-laden would be to give him a sex change and send him to live as a woman in a conservative islamic country. that’s funny.
have a nice day,
moby