Stop Labeling us Muslims!
By Mina Ahadi
07 Jun, 2007
I would like to talk about a campaign that been influential in
Germany over the past several weeks. I have lived in Germany for
11 years; I was first interviewed on stoning by national German TV
seven years ago. When at home, I watched the interview and saw
that they had introduced me as ‘Mina Ahadi, a Muslim woman’. I
immediately called to complain. I asked if a German politician or
spokesperson was interviewed on your TV programme, would you label
her a ‘Christian woman’? Not only myself - but three and a half
million people from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on, have been
given one label – Muslim.
Another time, during the uproar over the Mohammad caricatures, I
saw a bearded man saying in an interview that 3 and a half million
Muslims in Germany were offended by the caricatures. In Germany,
the Islamic organisations see themselves as the representative of
3 and a half million Muslims, of which I am one, and the
government recognises them as such too.
I have stood up against the policies of the German government and
Islamic organisations and carried out many campaigns; the media
and politicians know of us. But after a while I realised that a
campaign was needed that would take into consideration all the
various issues I have been campaigning for. I went into the centre
of society and said: I am not a Muslim. I called on those who
wanted to provocatively show their opposition to Islam and the
German government’s policies to say ‘I have turned away from
religion’ with their photographs. In 1971 there was a campaign of
pro abortion rights where women who had had abortions came forward
with their pictures and said: I have had an abortion. There are
now 300 of us with our photos saying: we have turned away from
religion. The news of our coming together exploded in German
society. At our press conference, 110 media outlet representatives
attended, including Reuters, BBC, CNN and others. At the press
conference we said that we are representing another policy. We are
against the division of the world into Islamic and non-Islamic
countries.
We are against the label that all those who have left
Islam-stricken countries are Muslim or that being Muslim is their
most important characteristic. At the press conference, I said
they have put so many labels on us; I in turn would like to put a
label on Islamic organisations – out of date.
Today I have come to say our campaign has received unprecedented
support from innumerable people. I receive 250-300 letters daily –
most of which congratulate me and calling me brave. 3% say they
will kill me with god’s poison. 3 hours after my picture and
interview was published In Focus where I said I was born into a
Muslim family by accident and that I was 14 when I turned away
from Islam, the German police were at the door of my home saying I
had to be protected because the Islamists had threatened to kill
me. The political Islamic movement is an international movement
and assassination is one of the important means they use.
People ask me if I am not afraid to speak out against the
Islamists. I say I know this movement very well. We have brought
the leaders of this movement in Iran to their knees. 28 years ago
I was given an execution sentence by Khomeini and the Islamic
regime’s leaders. But today I say if we stay silent, they will
stone women in the streets of Germany and England in a few years.
Governments compromise with Islamic groups – the German, British
and European governments. They organise conferences with terrorist
organisations about how to integrate people like us in society.
When they label us as Muslims and put us all in one sack, they
make the leaders of Islamic organisations our leaders and leave it
up to them to ‘integrate us’.
In politics in Europe you hear only two versions of the veil –
either that of the politicians or the Islamic groups. We have
risen up and now want to do something so that Maryam Namazie is
heard instead. This is another politics. We are for the
universality of human rights. We say that religious affiliation is
not the main identification of anyone in this century. All have
the right to be free, prosperous, love and be loved in the 21
century. We will not allow governments, hand in hand with
Islamists, to violate the rights of the children, women and men
who have fled Islam-stricken countries.
We represent a new renaissance in Europe. We defend secularism. We
defend freedom of expression and speech. In Germany, they cancel a
theatre because of its criticism of Islam. In these two weeks I
have seen that the vast support we have received is an
international movement. Hand in hand with people across the world,
we are saying stop. Enough is enough.
Against political Islam, against the policies of tolerance and
multiculturalism of Western governments, against the attempts to
portray political Islam and its inhuman policies as people’s
culture. We defend the universality of human rights.
I hope that this type of organisation is begun in various
countries and that this becomes international in order to push
political Islam back.
Source: http://maryamnamazie.blogspot.com/
Mina Ahadi is founder of Central Council of Ex-Muslims and
Political Bureau member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran. The
above is her speech at a March 8 seminar on Women’s Rights, the
Veil and Islamic and religious laws in London. Other speakers were
Sonja Eggerickx: President of the International Humanist and
Ethical Union; Ann Harrison: Researcher, Middle East and North
Africa Department of Amnesty International’s International
Secretariat; Maryam Namazie: Director of the Worker-communist
Party of Iran’s International Relations Committee, 2005 National
Secular Society’s Secularist of the Year Award Winner and producer
of International TV; and Taslima Nasrin: Physician, writer,
radical feminist, human rights activist and secular humanist.