The courage of former Spanish Muslims: “We defend our right to secularism, to apostatize from Islam”

Many women are repudiated and ostracized for not submitting to the precepts of Islam. For the first time in Spain, they take to the streets publicly to claim their right not to believe in any god or prophet. NIUS has interviewed two of them. “We do not want any girl to have to live what we suffer”Sukaina Fares is 30 years old, Mimunt Hamido 60. Three decades separate them, but they are united by similar experiences. Both were born into a Muslim family, both rebelled against the unwritten rules of Islam and were disowned, both had to leave their homes very young. They both fight for the same thing. “For defending our right not to believe in Allah, not to wear a hijab (veil), so that religion does not have to be part of our lives, neither legally nor socially,” she tells NIUS Mimunt. The two are part of the feminist consciousness movement, which brings together Spanish women who come from different Islamic backgrounds and who are beginning to come forward publicly “We are more and more, although many continue to fight anonymously out of fear, because when we stand up we receive threats , insults, they even send us videos of beheadings on social media,” Sukaina denounces. “But the fact that there are so many of us makes us feel safer and has encouraged us to give our demands a public voice.” For the first time they take to the streets this Saturday, October 22. “There has never been a demonstration in Spain or in all of Europe about our right to secularism and to apostatize from Islam,” explains the young woman. At 12:00, in Barcelona, ​​they defend the human rights of women. “The veil is the symbol of Islamic ideology, that is why veils are being burned in Iran, because when symbols fall, ideologies fall. When the Third Reich ended, the first thing people did was burn Nazi flags, because this is similar. Scarves are burned because they are the greatest symbol of Islam. How does Islamist ideology manage to be present on the street? Through its women, because you see the men and you don’t know if they are Muslim or not. They go in jeans and a T-shirt, but if a girl wears a hijab, you know she’s Muslim. It’s the way to show the world that Islam is present in society,” explains Mimunt. “In Spain there are seven-year-old girls whose families force them to wear a hijab to school and nobody says anything,” she warns. “I do not understand that we tear our clothes because in Iran they have to put it on while nobody moves a finger here? How have they managed to get a sexist and misogynist symbol to be accepted in Europe? Disguising it as a culture, so they force us to respect it, “he says. “But it is not culture, it is religion. Culture is music, literature, painting, gastronomy, culture is even a regional costume, but a hijab is not culture, because it is something that you cannot take off except in front of of the men in your family and those closest to you, that is, brothers, husband and father, nothing more. That is not culture, that is oppression,” denounces Mimunt, who has brought together all these ideas in his book They will not cover us ( Akal), published last year. In it she denounces that the institutions of our country are leaving these girls alone. “The right considers them Moors, and as such part of the problem of Islam, which they understand as a global threat, and a good part of the left whitewashes their situation on the wings of a misunderstood diversity,” she blurts out. “The result, a silence and an abandonment that violates the rights of the little ones,” she laments. Is religion above human rights? Is religion above the law? That is the debate we need to have. but raising it at this point, in the 21st century, in a democratic country, is crazy.” “Those who are paying for it are the girls, who suffer violations of their rights on a daily basis,” adds Sukaina. “Many Spanish girls from families Muslim women never learn to swim because they are not allowed to go to the swimming pool, they cannot wear short skirts or straps, they cannot go on school excursions, or to camps, or attend birthdays, or stay overnight at someone’s house. friend, sometimes not even have friends. I suffered from it 15 years ago, that’s why I ran away from home, but it’s still happening today. In the 21st century and in this country, many girls are not allowed to have a life as a girl, “she denounces.” It is assumed that if you suffer this repression at home you can report it, “continues Sukaina.” But it really is very complicated. How to ask a 15 or 16 year old girl to report her parents? Doing so means cutting everything off, staying alone in the world. Give up your family, your environment, your comfort zone, absolutely everything. I still did it and the consequences were tremendous. I had to spend two years in a juvenile center, until I turned 18, and I was rejected by everyone, condemned to the most absolute ostracism, because the Islamic patriarchy acts in circles: family, community, neighborhood… if you break up, you do it with everything,” he says. “The neighbors came to spit on me in the street.” “And it also has effects on your family, on my mother fell the responsibility for not knowing how to raise me within Islamic values. They stopped inviting her to weddings, to communions, they totally voided her because she was the mother of the Sukaina whore. Bitch? I was just a normal girl, a very good student, with honors, I helped at home… but my parents didn’t care because I wasn’t Muslim enough or didn’t represent it as such from the outside. The only thing I wanted was to decide for myself, without submitting to any dogma of faith, “she recalls. Sukaina grew up with two wounds:” And both are equally sharp. One is the racism that I suffered here in the West for being a North African immigrant and the other is the one that the Muslim community inflicted on me for renouncing the faith.” However, she managed to get ahead and has decided to help others in the same situation. “I began to talk about these issues on my Instagram account, the voice of the infidel. To write about virginity, sexual freedom, Ramadan…”. Based on her experience and readings of great feminists such as Nawal El Saadawi, Gerda Lener or Wassyla Tamzali. “Little by little I was sharing it with people, I discovered other women with the same interests and we ended up creating a national network with many girls, we will be around 300, although many remain anonymous because they are still under the Islamic yoke,” she laments. “Every day we get messages of solidarity from other girls whose freedoms are being taken away on social networks. We don’t want what has happened to us to happen to anyone again,” adds Mimant. “We are raising a generation of girls who have no idea of ​​their history, where they come from, what their culture is, because they are being sold that religion is their culture, that these restrictive norms are their culture, that the hijab is their culture, and it’s not like that, that’s radical Islam. “The problem we have in Europe is that, for example in Spain, there is an official Islamic commission, which I don’t know who has chosen it, because we Muslims have not voted for it, and that Islamic commission is the government’s interlocutor for the community. Muslim, because they classify us as a Muslim community, without asking us if we believe or not,” says Mimant. “And the institutions are feeding their power. There are already Spanish City Councils that make the day of the hijab, which is amazing. Is the day of an element of oppression against women celebrated? We are going crazy.” Both acknowledge that their path Getting to where they are has not been easy. “Too many resignations. That is why things have to change, why should we give up everything for being atheists or agnostics? It is urgent to go out into the streets to claim our right to secularism. We just want no god, no prophet, to be above than we believe. We just want to be a little freer”, they conclude.