The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (17 page)

When you register yourself in your new place of residence, ask to speak to a special civil servant (in the United States, someone from the local department of social services) who is familiar with the predicament of a girl like you, who has known of or helped other girls who want to set up on their own and are terrified of being hunted down by their brothers, husbands, or fathers. It is vital that your address remain secret. Go to the police and report your situation. In Holland, you can use your registration form to encode your tax number, insurance, and other administrative details, as well as personal details required by the local council. Find out how to get legal help in case you need it.

Make sure that your flatmates, colleagues, and friends are informed of the potential danger you are in. You are on the run, and they must be vigilant on your behalf. It is important that no one give away your address.

Make arrangements for how you will have income before leaving. If you want to go to college, apply for a student scholarship on time. Give a temporary address—a friend’s, for example—if you have not found a place of your own yet. If you do not intend to go to college, apply for social security benefits in the place you are moving to. Doing this will oblige you to find a job, or to follow a citizenship course and explore the job market. You must not delay with any of this. While you are still at home, acquaint yourself with the (part-time) job market in your future hometown. Put your name down for (part-time) jobs and avoid taking loans and accumulating debts as much as you can.

The most important thing is to be sensible with money; there are courses that can teach you how to draw up a budget and stick to it. The local social service department will be able to point you in the right direction.

It is good to have a part-time job, but make sure that you pass your school exams. You can come up with all kinds of excuses to miss lectures, but try not to let this happen all the time. A diploma in your pocket opens the door to long-term independence. Try to broaden your opportunities for learning new things as much as you can. Your course may require you to do a practical training. Make the best possible use of this: organize your placement in advance; negotiate how your expenses are going to be paid, how many hours you will be working per day, and how many credit points you will receive at the end of your training.

If you struggle with your workload, go to your study supervisor or mentor, who can show you study techniques, how to cram for exams and write papers. In order to get your degree, you need to have self-discipline: organize your time efficiently, go to bed on time, and plan the tasks ahead.

As a student, you will also learn how to socialize with people from outside your own religious circuit: you will need to learn what they might expect from you, as well as the unwritten rules of social etiquette. Join a student organization, go on drink dates, or to parties (you do not have to drink alcohol).

You cannot take all your belongings with you when you leave: your imminent departure has to remain a secret, so you cannot take any large or bulky objects with you, such as your bed, a table, a chair, or the whole of your wardrobe. You will have to be selective and take only things you will really need. Remember to take a few precious photos and your wallet or savings, bankbook, checkbook, piggy bank, or moneybox. Do not forget your passport. You must smuggle these things out of your home piecemeal: if you are spotted leaving the house with heavy bags, or your closet is suddenly half empty, you will draw attention.

You will have to furnish your new dwelling yourself, so find out where the best secondhand shops are.

Leaving is a big challenge. You feel strong, you are looking forward to the moment, but at the same time you are very vulnerable. You will experience a dip in your emotional high and feel lonely; not everybody will be understanding, and that includes some of your new friends. The person in whom you have put your trust can help you strengthen your inner resilience. Remember that, even with all the help from others, you remain on your own, you are responsible for yourself. Expect there to be good and bad days, do not talk yourself down, and do not feel sorry for yourself. You will want to contact your family because you miss the warmth, the cousins, and the familiarity. Every family has its important moments: birthdays, funerals, Eid, and so on. You will feel extra lonely on these days. But bear in mind that getting in touch with your family can have serious consequences. Calls and letters can be traced.

There are consolations, though. Plenty of women like you have managed to reestablish good contact with their families. But this often takes years. You absolutely must wait until you are self-reliant financially and emotionally. You must have found a job to be able to keep yourself strong so that you can resist their complaints and urgings that you should come home. You need to be able to stop your ears against the emotional blackmail they may try on you.

You have taken care of everything. You are still certain you are doing the right thing. You have good friends who are ready to help you. You believe in yourself, your friends, and the future. You have an address, an income, and you have enrolled yourself as a student. Perhaps you are still at school or halfway through college. You have secretly smuggled your most valued possessions out of the house. You are sure no one has noticed. Your behavior has been exemplary, and the day of your departure has finally come. The weather is fine, or perhaps it is raining. Tonight you will sleep at your new address—your room or whatever—for the very first time. But wait: how are you actually going to leave? Are you simply going to walk out and pull the door behind you without so much as a good-bye?

Yes, you are, because you must avoid drawing attention to yourself.

A
ND THEN YOU
are gone.

What happens next?

Your parents do not know where you are and will be worried. They will need to be reassured that you left of your own accord. Before you go, write them a letter in which you explain that you love them, but that your plans for your life differ from theirs; that you respect the way they live but want to go your own way. You can mail it immediately when you leave so it can’t be traced to your new location.

Call them, eventually. You will want to get in touch with them from time to time, but make sure your number cannot be traced: call from a public phone or somewhere without number recognition. It can be good to call from a public place with plenty of people around you. That way you can keep the conversation short and to the point.

You will now have to learn how to function in society. In spite of all the negative aspects of your upbringing, it has taught you some valuable skills: you are capable of adjusting to others; you are trained at doing domestic chores. You have also learned to survive under difficult circumstances and are used to the fact that things often do not go your way. Unlike many men, you are not spoiled. But there is still much that you can learn: do not resist making the effort. It will be worth it.

T
his is a transcript of the original document that I took to Theo van Gogh, which he read and proposed that we make into a movie. It was first broadcast on Dutch television in August 2004. On November 2, 2004, Theo van Gogh was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam.

Submission
is about God and the individual. I did not write this script to provoke anyone. As I mentioned in the preface of this book, I wrote it to show the abolutism with which the individual Muslim woman is expected to totally submit herself to God’s will and God’s word as written in the Koran. I wanted to introduce a shift in the relationship between the individual and God, and I wanted this shift to move us from a relationship of total submission to one of dialogue. I chose the structure of the prayer because Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day. That’s why there are five different women praying in five different ways. The sense of the film is of these faithful women who have submitted themselves to God’s will and who are continuing to pray under terrible circumstances as they try to elicit a response from God. They are saying, Look, God, I’ve submitted completely to you, but everything is going wrong. Yet, you, God, remain silent.

This transcript is called
Part I
because I
will
write more parts. Again, I will not do this out of any desire to insult or provoke. But I feel that reasonable people and reasonable people of faith must confront Allah with the dilemmas He places us in and requires us to face on earth. Our dilemmas—the dilemmas that men and women face every day—arise directly out of His commands.

Part II
will be about four men who have trouble following God’s commands and, like the women of
Part I,
confront God during prayer with their demands.

In
Part III,
God will answer.

1. INTRODUCTION

Amina is a dedicated Muslim woman who dutifully adheres to the rules of the Shari’a. She is surrounded by women who are treated cruelly in the name of Allah: they suffer abuse, marital rape, incest, and corporal punishment. These acts of cruelty are justified by verses from the Koran. Amina feels sorry for the victims and identifies with their fate. Every day she turns to Allah and prays fervently for an improvement in their circumstances, but Allah remains silent and the cruelties continue.

One day Amina does something surprising. She does not adhere to the fixed routine of the prayer ritual. After reading the compulsory opening chapter to the Koran she launches into a spontaneous “dialogue” with Allah, instead of subjecting herself to him.

Location:
Islamistan [an imaginary country where the majority of the population is Muslim, and where the legal system is the Shari’a].