| Submission and Suicide by Fire A beautiful Somalia-born black woman with sparkling blue eyes visited Toronto in August of 2005. The media did not talk much about her visit. Perhaps it was because she came accompanied by another of those inconvenient truths, or should I say allegations since very little is known about what goes on behind these closed doors. Little is known because it is dangerous to talk about it, even in Canada. That hasn't stop 37 year-old former Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, although serious security precautions were taken when she appeared before an audience of about 150 at the University of Toronto Earth Sciences Centre with her 11-minute film Submission Part I (she was surrounded by 15 RCMP police officers). Her film Submission, which she co-produced with the late acclaimed Dutch director Theo Van Gogh (he was stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street by a Muslim man who claimed Submission insulted Islam) is about abuse and atrocities suffered by Muslim women behind closed doors. The narrator, a woman, is no apostate. She addresses Allah, in whom she clearly believes, reporting atrocities (which the film shows) against women. They are flayed for losing their virginity, forced to marry men they hate, expected to accept male brutality as routine. "I feel, at least once a week, the strength of my husband's fist on my face," a woman cries. How can Allah let this happen? The film embodies faith in its most frustrated, baffled form. National Post, August, 15, 2005 Hirsi Ali, the apostate, was in Toronto not only to show and talk about Submission but also, along with female Muslim activists Irshad Manji, the author of The Trouble with Islam, and Homa Arjomad, who runs the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada, to protest a renewed interest in establishing Sharia Tribunals in Ontario. The Sharia Islamic law) is based on the Koran and the Prophet’ sayings and example. The Sharia will not ordinarily punish a man for beating his wife given the wide discretion allowed by Allah to do so. 4:34 Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them excel the others, and because they spend some of their wealth. Hence righteous women are obedient, guarding the unseen which Allah has guarded. And those of them that you fear might rebel, admonish them and abandon them in their beds and beat them. Should they obey you, do not seek a way of harming them; for Allah is Sublime and Great! What has become generally as the "wife-beating verse" in and of itself is a cause for concern but when you combine verse 4:34 and verse 2:223, which denies a woman the right to refuse her husband's request for intimacy you not only dramatically increase the potential for battery but sexual battery. 2:223 Your women are a tillage for you. So get to your tillage whenever you like. Do good for yourselves, fear Allah and know that you shall meet Him. And give good news to the believers. To avoid being beaten the Prophet encouraged wives to submit to being raped, warning them that if they refuse their husband's request for sex they will burn in hell for an eternity, the standard punishment for those who are cursed by Allah or His angels. “if a husband invites his wife to have intimate relations with him, but the wife rejects him and he becomes angry all night long – for this his wife will be cursed by an angel until morning.” (Bukhari, 86, hadith number 5193) Allah and His Messenger approval of rape, if it's your wives your rapping, is probably responsible for much of the violence that Ali claims Muslim women are subjected to behind closed doors. The wives who suffer the most are undoubtedly the child brides. Girls as young as 9 years old who are married off in arrange marriages where the primary consideration is what benefits in wealth and influence will accrue to the contracting parties i.e. the families of the bride and groom are often expected, by equally ignorant partners, not only to be accomplished homemakers but a houri in bed, even when they have never been with a man before. Another reason she may be deserving of a beating. It is perhaps not surprising that according to the German based Medica Mondiale, which conducted a survey into a rash of suicides in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of these child and teenage brides kill themselves every year by dowsing themselves with kerosene and setting themselves on fire. Death by fire is the method most often used in this form of self-immolation because, according to Medica Mondiale, it is the fuel most commonly found in the homes in which these girls are confined. The primary reason for these suicide, again according to Medica Mondiale, is despair. Despair brought about mainly by coerced marriages or engagements, often as children, domestic violence, rape and polygamy. Bernard Payeur, March 5, 2007
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