Susan Carland, the wife of celebrity Muslim Waleed Aly has pledged to give $1 to charity for every “hate filled tweet” she receives. According to Fairfax Media, Ms Carland has been forced to donate over $1,000 in only a couple of weeks.
I admire Carland’s move to respond to negative comments with charitable giving. But I wonder whether she might consider, rather than donating to the bloated bureaucracy of UNICEF, giving money directly to help groups who experience some of the worst acts of violence and bigotry across the world – women and girls living in Islamic nations and societies.
Unlike Susan Carland who grew up in Australia and was free to change her religion when she married Aly, for most of her Muslim sisters around the world this is virtually impossible. This is true in even “progressive” Islamic nations such as Malaysia.
Worse than the serious legal impediments in Islamic cultures for citizens to leave Islam, women are quite likely to be killed by their family should they even try.
I’m sure that Carland is delighted that as a Muslim woman in Australia, she is not only allowed to be educated,
but can also hold an academic post. In many Islamic societies, girls and women are threatened with acid attacks if they dare to undertake secular or western education; and may be kidnapped, raped and sold as sex slaves, should they fall under the influence of Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which, if you didn’t already know translates to “Western education forbidden.”
And finally, perhaps Carland could also speak out and assist girls and women who every day have their genitals mutilated under Islamic edict; Muslim girls representing the overwhelming number of victims of this practice. As many as 140 million women are alive today who have had their genitals mutilated, with 3 million other girls at risk of this heinous crime each year. Worse this practice is growing in Australia, as today – a nurse and a mother were found guilty for carrying out this barbaric practice.
I commend Susan Carland for her generous step to combat hate, but suggest to her that she might want to begin to address the victims of hate and bigotry, in particular her Muslims sisters who suffer under Islam (let alone Christian women!). You see, it is for the most part, from Islam and not redneck westerners, that Muslim women are subjected to hate, violence and bigotry.
Certainly, there are some unsavory and hateful people out there who have posted hurtful messaged on Carland’s Twitter account. And that, I roundly condemn. But there are perhaps many more frightened and poorly expressed people who simply don’t want to see the kind of hate and bigotry that is mete out to women under Islamic societies come and make a home in Australia.
