On Blasphemy and Islamophobia – The Perspective of Child of a Muslim Immigrant

A recent discussion on Heterodox STEM expressed concern by a member about the article “On Blasphemy and Islamophobia” from Substack under the handle Social Impurity, specifically related to the passage:

…we can revisit our attitudes to Islam when it becomes as safe to proclaim that one is not a Muslim as it was for Bertrand Russel to proclaim that he was not a Christian. Only then, and no sooner.

After offering a brief response to the subject I was asked to elaborate with more detail on my perspective as the child of a Muslim immigrant. This is my attempt to distill a lifetime of experience down to a few pages.

I write from 55 years of life experience as the child of a Muslim immigrant from Iran who married an American woman whose family descended from Mennonite immigrants from the Upper Rhine region of Germany, France and Switzerland and has resided in the United States for many generations. My thoughts are first and foremost, however based on my background as a scientist whose first duty is to the truth about the world as one can observe and test the reality one sees rather than to ideological or faith-based belief systems typically identified with religion. As such, what I share is my objective assessment of actual life experiences and how they speak to the question raised in On Blasphemy and Islamophobia.

First, I must take issue with the term Islamophobia. A phobia is an IRRATIONAL fear of a particular thing. Arachnophobia is a fear of spiders. If the spiders are common non-poisonous species, the term arachnophobia correctly describes this unreasonable fear of harmless organisms. In a room full of black widow and brown recluse spiders, however, arachnophobia would not be the correct term for the very real fear anyone dealing with these poisonous species should take steps to act on. So…what about the term Islamophobia? Is fear of Islam unreasonable or is it a rational response, particularly for those who commit actions that are considered blasphemy under Islam? 

Sadly, I must state that Islamophobia does not exist because fear of Islam is NOT unreasonable, but clearly justified by the conduct of a significant part of the Muslim population and specifically that part of the population whose lives are most animated by the precepts of Islam as practiced by the warlord Mohammed in Arabia in the early 600’s CE. It is important to remember that Muslims put forth Mohammed as the ideal human that Muslims are inspired to emulate in their own lives. The actions Mohammed took in his life set the tone, no matter how compassionate or cruel, tolerant or bigoted, enlightened or barbaric. This is why some Muslims can point to parts of the Koran and Hadith and conclude that Islam is a religion of peace, while others can justify the most barbaric of acts based on other parts of these texts and the life of  Mohammed. I have seen this in my own life as a child of a Muslim immigrant father. Despite NOT being a particularly devout Muslim in some ways, his deepest core beliefs go back to the life and attitudes of his 1400-year-removed namesake.

My exposure to Islamic beliefs began with my father, an Iranian man who immigrated to the United States at the age many graduate students come from abroad, in his case in the 1950’s. As one of 8 children, he was given the chance to come to America NOT because he was the best and brightest of his family but because he caused problems at home. Sending him to America would relieve his family of the social issues he was causing and offer a possibility that he might be able to make money and provide an opportunity for others in the family from America. One of his sisters also was sent to America later after her arranged marriage to a man 50 years her senior failed and the shame of her divorce required she be sent away. (Incidentally, my father’s family was hardly unique in using America as a dumping ground for problem members, which does indeed challenge the myth many Americans hold about immigrants being inherently beneficial and desirable additions to our society. Sadly, many are outcasts whose conduct is detrimental to any society in which they find themselves.) Upon arriving in the US my father worked in various odd jobs and scammed his way through our academic system, getting his GED before getting a bachelor’s degree in audiovisual education. Even without the opportunities for plagiarism afforded by modern technology, my father was able to cheat his way through school by having sympathetic girlfriends do his assignments and prevailing upon the good will of faculty to help the “poor struggling foreign student” to evade the requirements for merit in his academic work. The assumption was he would be going back to his country and even a little education would be of benefit to the people “over there”. 

My father’s actions in America were very much influenced by the life story of his namesake Mohammed and the rules that the warlord incorporated into Islam. A relative once commented that Mohammed treats women the way a rancher treats his cattle. It was NOT intended as a compliment, but my father took it to be one given Islamic thinking. Under Islamic law, my father was entitled to 4 wives and he incorporated this structure into his life “business” plan in which he planned to marry 4 wives, 2 of which would work outside the home to bring in revenue while 2 would work on an in-home business such as a family day care center. The first wife, my mother, had to be an American to secure his legal status via green card and then naturalized citizenship. In a few short years he had already built the day care center on the lower floor of our new family home and was bringing in prospective second wives for site visits before my mother finally got fed up with the abuse she was enduring and left. If his life plan seems absurd, keep in mind that there is a market in the DC area for compounds with 4 equivalent homes so that wealthy Sharia-compliant Muslim men can set up each wife in her own equal home as the “law” requires. If you doubt this, ask any high-end realtor in northern Virginia about such properties. Later in his life my father sought to subdivide his land into 4 lots for such a subdivision. Imagine the branding opportunities…instead of the run-of-the-mill  “The Oaks” or “The Residences,” you could name it “The Harem”. 

By Sharia law, my father controlled the family finances including my mother’s own paycheck from her job as a nurse. As a woman, she was property and would be disciplined with physical and emotional abuse at will. The abuse would result from as simple an event as arriving home late due to inclement weather, on which occasion she would be accused of infidelity with an unnamed Jewish doctor from the hospital where she worked. Women were completely second-class citizens in his mind and were tasked with serving the men in their vicinity. For example, women were required to ride in the back seat of the car so the men could ride in the front even if the woman was older and had arthritis making such a seating arrangement difficult. If other men would dismiss the Islamist argument and simply give the front seat to the woman, she would beg him to please comply as SHE would be beaten later for the unknowing man’s attempt at common decency. 

My mother finally got fed up with the physical and mental abuse, all consistent with Koranic instructions on how one maintains discipline over one’s wives, and fled with her children to her parents’ home. Such conduct being unacceptable in Islam, my father then demanded the children be turned over to him and that his father in-law pay $200,000 to release his daughter from the marriage. My grandfather’s demonstration of his 2^nd Amendment rights put a stop to that attempt at blackmail but sadly did not avert years of legal harassment via the courts as my father made what we would now call DEI-style arguments for why he should have custody of his children. Sadly, some social workers beguiled by cultural relativism and embracing diversity actually argued that American children and an American mother should be subject to the cultural and religious requirements of the father, even when those beliefs contradicted American law! The prospect of we children being kidnapped and taken to Iran after the 1979 revolution was a very real threat we lived with on a daily basis. Other children in similar circumstances at that time were taken to Iran where mothers have no legal standing under Sharia law and the government of the Ayatollahs. The movie Not Without My Daughter portrays one such family whose life paralleled our own in many ways. 

It should be noted that Iranian society had made great strides toward integration with the modern world under the Shah prior to the Islamic Revolution. My mother made a bit of a stir when visiting by riding a bicycle wearing jeans, which was unusual for the early 1970’s but accepted. My father’s sister mentioned previously had been deported back to Iran prior to the revolution for overstaying her visa. She worked at a university library there, a job she was able to continue after the revolution before she eventually escaped back to the US. She showed me the work pictures of her and her coworkers from before and after the revolution. The 6 women of varying age and height were all dressed in the mini skirts and the questionable fashion of professional woman of the 1970’s, their smiling faces clearly showing in the pre-revolution picture. The same women portrayed after the revolution were in full hijab with only their hands and eyes visible. Without their varying heights and the 2 pictures for comparison, you could not have told who was who in the latter picture. Even today the Iranian government is so desperate to keep women under control in this manner that they actually have a division of their police that travel abroad on international flights to see which women remove their required coverings and dress “inappropriately” when out of the country. This information is kept until they return to Iran where they can be punished for violating Islamic law!

Another example of how the life of the warlord Mohammed guides behavior in Islam comes with the arranging of marriages. After my mother’s successful escape and ultimate divorce, my father doubled down on his attempts to secure his 4 wives. His standards, however, gave him difficulty in this regard as the perfect wife for him would not be considered legal for marriage in any US state. The warlord Mohammed married his favorite wife Aisha at 9. My father was a bit more conservative preferring a virgin from 12-17 in age despite him being in his 50’s, 60’s, 70’s etc. A marriage to an older American man with the promise of a green card to get out of a country like Iran may seem out of the question to people in the West, until you consider the situation young women in Islamic countries find themselves in. In one case, my father found a woman who was at risk of becoming an old maid at the venerable age of 18. The marriage was arranged and my father brought her to Switzerland en route to their new life together in the US. While there my father became convinced that his bride-to-be seemed too experienced to be a virgin. (The Islamic obsession with women’s virginity has made hymen restoration surgery a big business in countries like Iran.) When my father confronted her on the subject she refused to answer. He sent her home in the same way you would return a defective computer….with one difference. Under Islamic law a woman who has brought shame on her family in this way is at serious risk of an honor killing by her own family. When asked about what he had done and the woman’s fate, he commented that she was from a liberal family so they just took her back with no more concern than if one had sent back an improperly cooked steak. It would have made no difference if her fate had been tragic because Islamic law was more concerned with protecting the honor of the family and of men. Are women being Islamophobic in being wary of a society, which imposes such practices on its people? Is it bigotry on the part of Westerners to criticize such conduct as incompatible with human rights?

Scary as the status of women is under Islam, it is NOT the greatest cause for concern. In 1991 my father came to visit me on the campus of Syracuse University. I took him to the newly completed memorial outside the Hall of Languages that had been built by the university to commemorate the 35 Syracuse students who perished during the Libyan terrorist attack on PanAM 103. When I explained what the memorial was for, he replied that the students, my classmates, got what they deserved for America’s crimes in the world. The greatest of these crimes of course is American support for Israel and for Jews generally. My father would refer to America as the Great Satan and Israel as the Little Satan following the propaganda and ideological stance of the Islamic Republic and Islamist groups generally. The blatant anti-Semitism and paranoia of all things Jewish my father embraced goes back to the warlord Mohammed, who never forgave the Jews of Medina for rejecting him. One of my father’s favorite anti-Semitic sayings was, “Hitler was a great man because he knew what to do with the Jews. His only mistake was not to finish the job!” He would state this as easily as the media blames every nuance of the weather on climate change.

You will not be surprised to hear that my father’s response to the 9/11 attacks 10 years later was no different. Despite living in the US for over 40 years, my father sided with Bin Laden and the Islamist terrorists, arguing that America got what it deserved for its crimes in the world. When asked how he would have responded if the plane that hit the Pentagon had overshot its target and hit his own house in the Virginia suburbs, he replied that he would have sued the government for failing to protect his property!

My father retained these beliefs until the end of his life. Despite living in the US for nearly 70 years and being well-treated by a tolerant, open society, my father continued to live his life along the lines inspired by the warlord Mohammed 1400 years ago. No amount of exposure to American democracy and the moral system of Western civilization changed his conduct. Sadly, he represents many who were raised in the Islamic belief system. Groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS practice Islam much as the warlord Mohammed intended and would do with the technology of the 21^st century. That is the true Islam and all Muslims are subject to it so long as Islam fails to undergo a fundamental reform far deeper than any required of Judaism or Christianity to enter the modern world. Islam is a problem for a pluralistic, democratic society because its own tenets refute the ability to live in peace and tolerate other beliefs. It is not compatible with the freedom of religion in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which requires tolerance of other belief systems if it is to function.

I will end by reinforcing the statement that so roused my colleague to start this discussion in the first place, “we can revisit our attitudes to Islam when it becomes safe to proclaim that one is not a Muslim….” Despite my being a native-born American who was not raised in any particular faith, I must approach this question with caution because my father was a Shia Muslim. Despite his adherence to the rules of that belief system being far from exemplary, as a child of a Muslim man I am considered to be Muslim under Islamic law. For me to proclaim that I do NOT adhere to the precepts put down by Mohammed places me at personal risk of reprisal from Sharia-adherent Muslims because the Koran does indeed call on Muslims to severely punish those who “leave” the faith. Those charged with the crime of apostasy, renouncing Islam in this case, are given the opportunity to recant, but failure to return to the Muslim fold does bring a death sentence on the apostate with judgment enforced in this life by other Muslims. It is far better to be a Jew or Christian under Muslim rule and treated as a second-class citizen (dhimmi) than to be seen as an apostate Muslim. The dhimmi is offered at least some protection from religious violence provided they pay the jizya tax and suffer the humiliation of being a follower of a “lesser” faith under Islamic rule. The apostate faces the death penalty. As such, I write knowing that the risks of speaking truth on this subject aret far greater than the typical cancel culture response one might encounter for daring to question progressive woke ideology.

Does every Muslim practice Islam in this fashion? No, and not every Muslim should be judged as if they behaved in this way. Not all people raised in a religion truly adhere to all its components and each person should be judged as an individual. That said, for those living in a free society like one finds in Western countries, the decision to remain a Muslim, knowing the history of Islam and the commandments of its sacred texts with all the baggage that brings, does say something about the individual in question. It should be noted that none of the Muslim community around my father acted to object to or correct his behavior, with many including the pro-Hamas protesters on our campuses since October 7, 2023 and elected representatives like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minneapolis expressing nearly identical views. Those raised in a religion, who promote it as part of their culture, have the burden of proof to demonstrate that they do NOT adhere to its worst attributes revealing their true mind by their actions. Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party, but his actions allowed us to distinguish him as a righteous man from those who implemented the Holocaust. The belief system one adopts matters. A belief system that imposes violence on those who disagree and does not tolerate other belief systems does NOT warrant protection or tolerance from other belief systems. Is a belief system that requires those who stray from its religion to be killed worthy of toleration? My experience says no.