by MARYAM NAMAZIE
PHOTO/BODYPAINTING/Victoria Gugenheim
In the above photo, Maryam Nawazie is seen tearing off the Saudi Arabian flag which reads: “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.“ PHOTO/BODYPAINTING/Victoria Gugenheim
Commemorating 8 March, International Women’s Day
Islam, like all religions, despises women.
Islamism and its Sharia laws are obsessed with controlling and restricting women.
Under their rule, the “perfect” woman knows “her place”: veiled, segregated, erased from the public space. She is the “disappeared”. Bound and gagged. Not seen or heard.
For the Islamists, being a free woman is the greatest crime.
So yes I am a free woman. I am a Kafir. Je Suis Charlie, Neda, Avijit, Salwa, Sadiq, Sameera, Rafiq, Monir, Katia*… the innumerable slaughtered over many decades in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.
But still I rise.
I am, we are, Islamism’s greatest threat – a women’s liberation movement that will bring them – from ISIS to the Saudi and Iranian regimes – to their knees.
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* In January 2015, Islamists attacked Left satirical publication Charlie Hebdo for their caricatures of Mohammad, Islam’s prophet, killing 17 in Paris, including at a Kosher supermarket.
* In June 2009, Neda Agha-Soltan, 26, was shot dead by the Islamic regime of Iran at a mass demonstration in Tehran and became an icon of the protest movement.
* In February 2015, atheist Avijit Roy, 42, was hacked to death in Bangladesh because of writings critical of Islam.
* In June 2014, Libyan rights activist Salwa Bugaighis, 51, was shot dead in Benghazi for opposing the Islamists.
* In September 1992, Sadiq Abdul-Karim Malallah was publicly beheaded in al-Qatif for apostasy and blasphemy.
* In September 2014, women’s rights activist Samira Salih al-Nuaimi, 54, was seized from her home by ISIS after her messages on Facebook criticising the destruction of religious sites in Mosul and publicly executed for apostasy.
* In November 2011, Azerbaijani writer and journalist Rafiq Tagi, 61, was assassinated by Islamists in Baku. He had a death fatwa against him for his writings deemed critical of Islam and Mohammad, Islam’s prophet.
* In August 1983, Monir Hashemi, 29, a communist political activist, was executed in Iran along with her husband, Javad Ghaedi and her brother-in-law Sadegh Ghaedi.
* In February 1994, Islamists ambushed and killed Katia Bengana, 17, as she left school in Algeria. She had been warned to wear the hijab and had refused.