Table of Contents
Copyright 2012 Freedom Press Canada Inc.
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Unveiled
A Canadian Muslim Womans Struggle against Misogyny, Sharia, and Jihad
Farzana Hassan
The book needs to be read by anyone who has become exasperated by the Muslim question, be they Muslim or not. If the book upsets you, then good, Farzana Hassan has done her job and the book has played its part in making one think and question. Imagine, if only a few more Muslims would question, just question, instead of parroting solutions offered in medieval times. Imagine.
Tarek Fatah, author, broadcaster and freedom activist
The daily chronicle of crimes and horrors committed in the name of Islam makes for depressing reading. Then along comes Farzana Hassan. This new book confirms what some of us already knew: that the author gives a life-line to hope and courage. Brave, resolute, informed, and essential reading.
Michael Coren , author, broadcaster and speaker
Few debates have gripped us with as much passion and confusion as the one surrounding the rise of Islamist extremism around the world. Farzana Hassan takes on this difficult discussion in her new book, a deeply personal, frank and brave exploration of Islam, Democratic values, Muslims, Islamists and the gaps that divide them.
Natasha Fatah , Toronto-based journalist and documentary producer
Farzana is one of the most original (and bravest) women writing about religion today.
Danielle Crittendon , blog editor Huffington Post Canada
Farzana Hassan writings and struggles to extract Muslims out of the radical interpretations of Islam that lead to demands for Sharia Laws in Western societies, entrenchment of misogyny in the Muslim world, and bloodshed in the name of Islam are the need of our times.
Munir Pervaiz , Director Progressive Writers Association Canada
Also by Farzana Hassan:
Echoes from the Abyss
Islam, Women, and the Challenges of Today
Prophecy and the Fundamentalist Quest
For
my sons,
staunch advocates of human rights
and my hope for an enlightened generation of Muslim men
Contents
Acknowledgments i
Foreword iii
Preface v
Part One
Foundations 1
Terror over Blue Skies 3
The Sixties were Peaceful 11
What Changed my Religious Outlook 21
Tales of Honour-Based Violence 33
Part Two
Discussions 41
Honour Killings: Causes and Solutions 43
The Sharia Debate 51
The Burka Debate 63
A Decade Opposing Jihadism 75
Addressing the Muslim Anti-Western Narrative 89
An Association of Jews and Muslims 97
Why are Muslims Intolerant? 105
Islam and Music: a Conflict Within 111
Part Three
Reflections 117
The Contemporary Muslim world 119
Muslims in Canada 123
How Islamists are Changing Canada 131
Modernizing Islam 137
Glossary 144
Notes 146
Bibliography 148
Acknowledgments
Above all, I would like to acknowledge the efforts of countless Muslims like young Malala Yousufzai who have worked fearlessly to oppose the most retrogressive forces within Islam amid great danger and oppression. Such courageous individuals have given me the inspiration to write this book and lend them support in their continuing struggle.
I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of family and friends who have contributed their time to support me in my quest for reform in Muslim societies. In particular, I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend Peter Joyce for providing information on the Wests interaction with Muslims.
Writing a book is an onerous task. It demands commitment, time and effort. But this task is made easier when one is surrounded by well-informed people who can shape ones opinions. The influences one imbibes from such interaction are sometimes powerful and compelling. I have met many cultivated and intelligent people during my journey as a reformist Muslim. Feminist authors like Phyllis Chesler, activists like Salma Siddiqui, brave writers like Tarek Fatah, indefatigable crusaders for reform like Munir Pervaiz and revolutionary thinkers like Zuhdi Jasser and Tahir Gora have often offered original and compelling perspectives. To them I offer my profound thanks.
Foreword
T he journey Farzana Hassan has embarked upon is a long and lonely expedition in which the certainty of success is as dim as the chance of sunrise on an arctic winter morning. Yet she labours on with a smile that can barely conceal the pain of perseverance. Not only is her path uphill, but it is also strewn with obstacles that alone would make the hardiest of warriors alter course.
Farzana is out to show the Islamic world a mirror that few Muslims wish to see. This book is one they will find difficult to dodge. Her naysayers will try to ridicule her as the epitome of a non-existent self-imagined Islamophobia and dismiss her views of a lightweight who has had no training in Islamic thought.
However, these are the tactics of the Islamist propaganda hate machine whose interests lie in life after death, not the betterment of Muslim hopes and aspirations on this earth of ours. Make no mistake, under her charming smile and friendly demeanour lies the steely foundation of a scholar who knows her religion and the purveyors who employ it to bring death and destruction to this world so as to go to imaginary heavens where pleasures denied on our planet will be aplenty.
I have been on a similar path for the last forty-five years and have had many comrades who have come and gone, abandoned the struggle or intellectualized their abandonment of the fight citing justifiable reasons as they headed for cover, afraid of the not merely physical threats, but just the hint of social ostracizing. But not Farzana, not her.
Our paths met in the mid-2000s in the aftermath of 9/11, as I set out to recruit the dirty dozen who could take on the multi-million dollar Islamist enterprise working as a fifth column, aided by guilt-ridden, bleeding heart white liberals, eager to please the so called victims of American imperialism inside America and the West.
All of a sudden the most racist, right-wing misogynist and homophobic elements of western societyIslamistsput on the mask of Dr. Kings legacy and were able to convince the liberal-left in US and Canada that they were the true inheritors of the civil rights movement. Few people, let alone Muslims, were able to see through this act of deception carried out in the name of multiculturalism, interfaith pluralism and basic human rights. Farzana Hassan is among the few who could, and this book is one that should open the eyes of the folks Lenin referred to as useful idiots and I call sharia-Bolsheviks. In Unveiled , Farzana Hassan opens up her life growing up in Pakistan in a family of educated and enlightened Muslims, the product of the golden years of Islam, the late-1800s to the 1950s. Unveiled also lifts the curtain on the steep decline of Muslim critical thought since the end of European colonial occupation of India and the Arab world.
