Protecting and defending the rights of women

From the back matter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 2010 memoir, Nomad: From Islam to America:

The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation was set up in 2008¹ as a charitable organization to help protect and defend the rights of women in the West, especially in the United States, against militant² Islam and harmful tribal customs. Its aim is to investigate, inform, and influence against several types of crimes against women, including the denial of education for girls, genital mutilation, forced marriage, honor violence, and restrictions on girls' freedom of movement.
    The AHA Foundation seeks to raise awareness in America that some of these violent practices against women are increasingly carried out in the United States. The foundation also exists to provide girls and women in distress with information and assistance, by creating a database of people and institutions qualified to deal with cases of maltreatment and abuse. [p. 275]

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1. The AHA Foundation website gives 2007 as the year of foundation.
2. The use of "militant" here might be an attempt by the AHA Foundation to avoid the appearance of indicting Islam generally, but the tenor of Ms. Hirsi Ali's writings is that Islam generally promulgates values detrimental to women and personal freedom, due primarily to Islam's teaching that the Quran rules in all matters and that "Allah's laws" (including laws based on the practice of the Prophet Muhammad, who she said, "measured by our western standards, [was] a pervert") override all man-made laws. In other words, Islam, her writings seem to assert, is essentially totalitarian and therefore inimical to democracy, which would seem to raise some provocative questions about "freedom of religion" in America when it comes to Islam.

Believe all things, but hold on to none

On a walk through a nature preserve this morning with a friend, he told me that his aging cat had developed diabetes and his girlfriend was suggesting that he consult a cat psychic. I of course expressed some doubt about that, but he said he'd probably do it. "Who knows?" he asked rhetorically, "couldn't hurt."

Responding to my doubt, he added, "I tend to believe all things, but I hold on to none."

The first part of that reminded me of the little essay about charity, or love, in Saint Paul's letter to the Corinthians. "Charity believeth all things." I've often said that of myself. That is, that I believe all things, although I know that that might be hard for my readers to accept, having seen lately what a skeptic I've become.

But the second part of what my friend said, I liked that too. "Hold on to none." How unlike the man I saw later at Costco wearing a T-shirt to remind everyone that Jesus was nailed to the cross for us. This man may not believe all things, but he sure believes that. He holds on to it, counts on it.

But not my friend, and not me either. For in "hold on to none" I immediately recognized myself, although I'd never consciously practiced it, as my friend seems to. And I see this now as a way to understand my going from "blasted" to "buoyed by birdsong" over the last few days.

Let me try to explain that. My experience of being blasted resulted, I think, from pressing too hard to try to find something in religion that, damn it, I could hold on to. I became blasted from not finding any such thing anywhere I was turning.

But when a blog friend prompted me to tell her what, then, I would prefer to spend my time on, I easily and confidently said that I felt I was going to be okay. I would just relax, be my usual, morally upright self (love my neighbors and treat my enemies with respect but circumspection), and enjoy life. Exult in the sun and the wind, maybe write a lyric occasionally, interject some praise. Enjoy reading for interest the Qur'an, the Gnostic Gospels, Muhammad Asad's memoir, Ezra Pound's Cantos, John le Carré's novels.

And continue to tend to believe in angels, if it pleases me, believe that God exists, that Jesus was the son of God (and might even look a bit like Brad Pitt), that he died and rose again, that Muhammad was God's messenger...But now, especially after that walk in the woods this morning, I won't count on any of it.

"Bitter like death and hot like love"

Part of enjoying reading Muhammad Asad (not the Prophet Muhammad's) The Road to Mecca, the story of his encounter with Islam, is picking up many tidbits of "local color," such as this one:

...in Arabia coffee is freshly roasted for every pot. As soon as the beans are lightly tanned, he [his friend Zayd, his traveling companion in the 1920s] places them in a brass mortar and pounds them. Thereupon he pours some of the boiling water from the larger pot into the smaller, empties the ground coffee into it and places the pot near the fire to let it slowly simmer. When the brew is almost ready, he adds a few cardamon seeds to make it more bitter, for, as the saying goes in Arabia, coffee, in order to be good, must be "bitter like death and hot like love."

Mr. Asad is the author of a work I have mentioned: The Message of the Qur'an, a twelve-pound tome of almost 1,200 8.125" x 11.25" pages, which I am blessed by the good graces of a dear friend to have as a reference.