my happy ending by avril lavigne
- •
- •
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from enquiry.” - Thomas Paine, Letter Addressed to the Addressers
- •
Act I: learn
- •
i was born muslim. i spent nine years in islamic schools. and i came out hating the religion i was supposed to spend those years learning to love.
- •
“makanya belajar agama yang bener, ke ahlinya.”
- •
bitch what do you think i was doing.
- •
which part did i misunderstand? tell me. because a lot of the time, you explain it, i still reject it, and somehow that means i didn’t understand the explanation. what would understanding it and disagreeing with it look like to you? is that even allowed?
- •
i fucking hate “you would be muslim if you truly understood islam.” you already picked the destination. then you call everyone who doesn’t arrive there lost.
- •
nine years doesn’t make me right about everything. but if i’m wrong, point to something. a passage i misread. a reason i haven’t considered. you can’t keep pointing at the fact that i left.
- •
i’m talking about what’s in the books. the scriptures, the hadith, the teachings people ask me to trust. if your beliefs are different, tell me how. but that doesn’t make the text disappear.
- •
and if you reject a teaching too, okay. then why are we arguing about whether i’m allowed to reject it?
- •
anyway. let’s read.
- •
- •
Act II: private texts
- •
words weigh a lot.
- •
Bukhari reports that Aisha was six when Muhammad married her and nine when the marriage was consummated. another report describes her playing with dolls and her friends in his presence. Bukhari 5134, 6130.
- •
an adult having sex with a nine-year-old. that is what the first account describes. and this mf is supposed to be a moral example?
- •
the Qur’an calls him an “excellent example” and tells believers to follow him. a hadith also instructs those who live after him to follow his sunnah. so yes, there is a basis for asking why someone held up for continuing guidance is being defended with “it was a different time.” Qur’an 33:21, 3:31–32, Abu Dawud 4607.
- •
what does that answer achieve? i want you to actually ask yourself.
- •
even if it was accepted then, why should i accept it now? if this part belongs to its time, say so. but then explain how you decide which parts of his example i’m supposed to follow.
- •
because i’m not defending an adult having sex with a child to keep that example spotless. fuck that. police be upon him.
- •
then there’s wa-idribuhunna in 4:34. i’ve seen people translate it as leaving space for women. in boarding school, i learned memukul: hit, strike. now suddenly we’re talking about traveling and setting forth examples.
- •
okay. look at the sentence.
- •
daraba fi al-ard is used for traveling through the land. daraba mathalan is setting forth an example. here, -hunna, “them,” refers to the women and is the verb’s object. those constructions aren’t interchangeable just because they share a root. Quranic Arabic Corpus: root uses, 4:34 grammar.
- •
i know the root has other meanings. show me why those meanings fit this sentence, with this object. listing every meaning in a dictionary doesn’t answer that.
- •
Ibn Kathir reads it physically too, while putting limits on the severity. i still object to giving a husband that permission. “not severely” doesn’t explain why he gets to hit her. Ibn Kathir on 4:34.
- •
and the discrimination goes beyond the household. 9:29 commands fighting people from among the people of the book until they pay jizya in submission. why should their religion put them in that position? why am i supposed to admire this arrangement? Qur’an 9:29.
- •
then there’s 9:5. yes, i read the surrounding verses. 9:4 says to honor treaties with those who kept them. 9:6 says to protect a polytheist who asks for protection, let them hear the message, and escort them to safety. it doesn’t require conversion before that safe passage. Qur’an 9:4–6.
- •
but 9:5 still names repentance, prayer, and almsgiving as grounds for release from the violence it commands. why are religious observances part of that? if the issue is aggression or broken treaties, why does religious compliance enter the answer?
- •
yes, i read the exceptions. i am objecting to the rule with the exceptions included.
- •
and then there’s what happens when someone wants to leave.
- •
Bukhari includes an instruction to kill someone who changes their religion. IslamQA’s ruling says an apostate should first be asked to repent and have their doubts addressed. then: “If he persists in his apostasy after that, he is to be put to death.” Bukhari 3017, IslamQA.
- •
oh. so there’s a discussion first.
- •
what the fuck is a discussion worth when one answer gets you killed?
- •
i want muslims to reject that ruling. i’m glad when they do. but it exists, the text being cited exists, and “i don’t believe that” doesn’t answer why somebody else is being threatened with it.
- •
these are the things i’m thinking about when somebody tells me how beautiful it is to raise a child in this religion.
- •
- •
Act III: Point (0, 0)
- •
i see a little kid doing sujud beside their dad and i feel bad. they’re learning the movements. they’re learning what makes the adults happy. how much of what comes with it could they possibly understand yet?
- •
“they can choose later.”
- •
a lot has already happened by later. a lot.
- •
they know what the family does. what makes their parents proud. they can learn which questions get an answer and which ones change the mood, long before anyone explicitly tells them what they’re allowed to believe.
- •
i never understood the LGBTQ “sin” shit, even in islamic elementary school. and then i still went to an islamic boarding school for middle school.
- •
that’s what feels acidic. i could already see something wrong. that didn’t stop the next few years from happening.
- •
so when people talk about choosing later, i want to know what that choice actually looks like. can the child say “i don’t believe this” and still be safe? can they stop practicing without becoming the family’s new problem?
- •
in some families, that’s where the threats begin. religious boarding school. ruqyah. “therapy.” disowning. losing money, education, somewhere to live. sometimes a child only has to watch what happens to somebody else to know what to keep quiet.
- •
and even without a threat, your parents are your first examples of how to be a person. you watch what they do. you want their approval. “we never forced them” leaves a lot unanswered when disagreement might cost them that approval.
- •
i’m not expecting parents to disappear from their children’s lives. i’m asking why a child owes your religion loyalty before they can examine it. why is preserving their freedom to disagree less urgent than making sure they grow up believing?
- •
“but the parents sincerely think they’re helping.”
- •
helping them become what?
- •
if you’re upset that your child is gay, what has actually gone wrong with your child? they haven’t hurt someone. they haven’t failed at being a person. they’ve failed to match what you expected.
- •
you’re afraid they’ll go to hell? then that belief needs examining. being frightened by what you were taught doesn’t make your child responsible for fixing it. they don’t owe you a different sexuality, or years spent comforting you about the one they have.
- •
and “we respect gay people, we just condemn gay sex” is still harmful. you’re still asking them to treat a consensual relationship as something shameful. what kind of acceptance requires them to agree that this part of their life is wrong?
- •
that’s what bothers me about calling it a sin. you’re claiming that the god of the universe condemns it. “they need guidance, not hate” still means you think there’s something that needs correcting.
- •
apparently that’s the progressive answer. what the fuck.
- •
a parent can feel useful, righteous, successful while doing this. those feelings don’t establish that the child benefits. i care about whether the child has room to become someone their parents didn’t plan for.
- •
i keep picturing a fly in a jar, decorating its cage. getting comfortable with what it was given.
- •
playing Celeste made some of this hit even harder. iykyk. there are things i’m not spelling out here, especially with college colleagues potentially reading (hey vro why you here).
- •
but i can say that i feel fucking betrayed. and i hate hearing people call this love without asking what it demands from the person being loved.
- •
- •
Act IV: not all men
- •
if a government tried to force you out of islam, you would call that persecution. so would i.
- •
if someone tries to force me back into it, why does the word suddenly become guidance?
- •
i don’t want muslims punished for being muslim. i want that same protection when i’m not one anymore.
- •
try Rawls’s veil of ignorance here: choose the rules before you know who you’ll be living under them. you don’t get to guarantee that you’ll belong to the favored religion, agree with your parents, or be the person deciding what counts as sin. would you still give those people that much power over you? Rawls, A Theory of Justice, excerpt.
- •
this is also why “islamophobia” frustrates me. i know the word is used for anti-muslim discrimination. i oppose that discrimination. but when it gets used to treat criticism of islam as an attack on muslims, what am i supposed to do with ACT II?
- •
i want LGBTQ rights in indonesia. i want punishments for consensual same-sex relationships abolished. i want nobody executed for leaving a religion. i can want all of that and still defend somebody’s right to stay.
- •
and i fucking hate “this is not islam btw” as the first response under a post about the Taliban.
- •
it’s like “not all men” under a woman talking about sexual assault. why is clearing the name the first thing you need to do? somebody is describing what happened to them. can you stay with that for a fucking minute?
- •
girls in Afghanistan remain barred from education beyond grade six, and women from universities. Taliban restrictions also prohibit women’s singing in public. actual years of people’s lives are being taken up by this shit. UNICEF, Human Rights Watch.
- •
if you reject the religious arguments being used, explain why. that could help. but “not islam” by itself leaves the argument untouched and the women exactly where they were.
- •
the same question applies when people defend a woman’s choice to cover. i want that choice respected. will you defend her tomorrow if she removes it? will you still call it her choice when you hate the decision?
- •
women aren’t free until all women are free. including the women whose decisions embarrass your community.
- •
and yes, this applies to palestine too.
- •
“palestinians will kill gay people” turns an entire people into one accusation. i’m not accepting that. their right to live doesn’t depend on whether i agree with their beliefs. free palestine.
- •
but “queer palestinians are being bombed too” cannot be where concern for them ends. if someone is describing anti-queer abuse, answer that too. they shouldn’t have to keep quiet because someone else might exploit what happened to them.
- •
i want queer palestinians alive, safe, and able to live openly. all of that. i don’t want them brought into the conversation just long enough to win it.
- •
somebody can exploit a real harm for propaganda. the harm is still real. challenge the person exploiting it without abandoning the people it happened to.
- •
belonging to a persecuted group doesn’t make someone incapable of hurting another person. protecting that group has to leave room to say so.
- •
- •
Act V: GET OUT!!
- •
i still ask why people keep the name.
- •
if you reject these teachings, reject the punishments, reject the demand to obey, what are you defending when you defend the religion? what does the book get to decide anymore?
- •
i understand keeping something from your past. i struggle more with the expectation that everyone should keep praising the thing it came from.
- •
the name matters too. what sounds like home to one person might be the word another person heard while being told to submit. i’m not going to demand they hear it affectionately.
- •
but a name won’t tell me everything about the person carrying it.
- •
someone might openly disagree with a teaching and still believe. someone else might reject almost all of it and be unable to say so. i can argue with what the first person defends. i’m not asking the second to put themselves in danger to make their public identity satisfy me.
- •
i’m closed about a lot of what i think. understanding your position doesn’t magically make it safe to announce.
- •
there’s housing. education. money. the people you would call if something went wrong. you can stop believing long before you can afford to tell anyone.
- •
so when somebody says “you can leave,” i want to know where the person leaving is supposed to sleep.
- •
if you threaten to withdraw their support over disbelief, you’re making that choice harder on purpose. you don’t get to create the cost and then treat their reluctance to pay it as evidence that they want to stay.
- •
and even without those threats, there’s the attachment. familiar prayers. familiar routines. knowing what happens next.
- •
nostalgia can fuck with that. the comforting parts become easier to remember, and suddenly you’re wondering if it was really that bad. but a good memory doesn’t cancel what happened around it. a place can feel like home because you spent years there. that alone doesn’t tell you whether it was good for you.
- •
i can miss something and still want it nowhere near my future. i don’t have to make every memory ugly to justify leaving.
- •
i also don’t have to let the warm parts talk me into defending the rest.
- •
familiar isn’t much of a defense anyway. children can get used to all kinds of shit they should never have had to get used to.
- •
so yes, i’ll question somebody who freely defends the book as a moral authority. i want an answer about what it contains.
- •
but when someone is trying to get out, i want them to have somewhere to go. i don’t need a brave announcement from somebody who still depends on the people they’re announcing it to.
- •
“you can leave” means very little if leaving costs everything that would help you survive it.
- •
if you mean it, let someone disagree without taking their life apart.
- •
- •
Act VI: my happy ending, for now, and probably forever
- •
i am an agnostic atheist and an anti-theist.
- •
i don’t believe in a god. i don’t claim to have proved that no god could exist. i oppose giving religious claims authority over people’s lives just because they’re religious, and teaching children to owe those claims loyalty before they can examine them.
- •
that’s my position. “agnostic” doesn’t mean i’m halfway back.
- •
i don’t need every question about the universe answered before i can reject a rule that says someone like me should be killed for leaving. i don’t need a complete theory of morality before i can object to an adult having sex with a child.
- •
and when i ask why a teaching is justified, answer the question. don’t mistake it for an invitation to bring me home.
- •
i can correct a quotation. give up an argument that doesn’t work. change my mind when there’s a reason. i’ve corrected things in this article. none of that requires me to treat leaving as a mistake i haven’t understood yet.
- •
i’m allowed to reach a conclusion and live by it. you do.
- •
nine years was not a guarantee that i would be right. it was not a promise that i would stay.
- •
if you tell me i haven’t learned enough, identify something i missed. give me a reason to change my mind. don’t make agreement the only evidence you’ll accept that i have thought at all.
- •
i learned. i thought about it. i rejected it.
- •
you can challenge my reasons. you don’t get to pretend i never had any.
- •