No to Darwish: speaker clouds understanding of Islam

No to Darwish: speaker clouds understanding of Islam

By 
Hajer Al-Faham


Published: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Updated: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Reading through my e-mails, I was shocked to find an advertisement for Nonie Darwish on campus. This was the “avid women’s rights speaker” from the Middle East?

This self-proclaimed “former Muslim” is notorious for her baseless assertions, ranging from “Muslim student organizations on every college campus are spreading radical Islam,” to “a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 [sic] years old.”

Apparently, the International Studies Department (in coalition with CAMERA) has decided to join Nonie Darwish in her crusade to liberate the “freedom-hungry” Muslims and Arabs.

All that aside, I want to focus on Nonie Darwish and ask how the author of “Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law” and “Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror” is qualified to give an informational speech on “human rights and Islam?” Admittedly, she runs Web sites titled “Former Muslims United” and “Arabs for Israel,” but that does not change the fact that she has absolutely no professional or educational background in Islamic jurisprudence.

I suppose one could argue that her limited personal experiences are a source of knowledge, but that doesn’t justify her intentional distortion of Islamic law in order to appeal to the anti-Muslim hysteria in our country. Additionally, I would like to refute the e-mail for her event because it mentioned her claim that Sharia requires Muslim women to have “four male witnesses” to “make a case” for rape.

This is false. The Quran states that accusations of adultery require four witnesses. Accusations require four witnesses to assure that people cannot make false claims. I’m going to assume that the organizers of this event were sloppy and did not have time to check their facts because they were in a hurry to liberate Muslim women.

I am also troubled by the fact that Darwish treats Islam as the cause for “why Arabs are oppressed under their government.” Once again, I need to ask if I should attribute this falsehood to her lack of knowledge of Middle Eastern history or her devious plan to bash Muslims while pretending to be an objective scholar.

In conclusion, I would like to inform everyone that I am a Muslim and Iraqi-American woman. The goal of my response is not to infringe upon free-speech rights. I was compelled to take a stand because I am quite familiar with Darwish; her purpose is to amplify hatred towards people like me, who have the “misfortune” of being Arab or Muslim in post-9/11 America.

Unlike my peers, I do not have the privilege of observing this issue from a neutral distance. Physical assault, job discrimination and public humiliation are among the hardships I deal with as a result of the hate rhetoric that is espoused by Darwish and her counterparts.

I hope the organizers of this event take this into consideration next time they have the benevolence to create an event to help people “understand” Islam and the Middle East.


Hajer Al-Faham
Political Science/Women Studies Major