A Muslim woman defends Maher and Harris

See her letter to Ben Affleck. A few edited excerpts follow:

"I am writing to you today as a woman who was born and raised in Islam. I saw your discussion with Bill Maher and Sam Harris, and I must say you did me a great disservice that day. Your heart was in the right place [but...] what you really did though, perhaps inadvertently, was silence a conversation that never gets started.[...] Why are Muslims being ‘preserved’ in some time capsule of centuries gone by? Why is it okay that we continue to live in a world where our women are compared to candy waiting to be consumed? Why is it okay for women of the rest of the world to fight for freedom and equality while we are told to cover our shameful bodies?"


"Noble liberals like yourself always stand up for the misrepresented Muslims and stand against the Islamophobes, which is great but who stands in my corner and for the others who feel oppressed by the religion? Every time we raise our voices, one of us is killed or threatened.[...] I want the freedom to express myself without the very real fear that I might be killed for it. Is that too much to ask? [...] Since that project [writing a book defending homosexual love] I have been declared an ‘enemy of God’ and deemed worthy of death. [...] Please do not defend people who think this way, and let me tell you Ben, many ‘good’ Muslims do think this way."

"What you did by screaming ‘racist!’ was shut down a conversation that many of us have been waiting to have. You helped those who wish to deny there are issues, deny them.[...] In the interest of being politically correct and ‘liberal’, we silence the voices of millions [...] liberals who betray us in the name of multiculturalism."

"In your culture you have the luxury of calling such literalists 'crazies'[....] In my culture, such values are upheld by more people than we realise. Many will try to deny it, but please hear me when I say that these are not fringe values. It is apparent in the lacking numbers of Muslims willing to speak out against the archaic Shariah law. The punishment for blasphemy and apostasy, etc, are tools of oppression."