Imagine living in a closed society your whole life. Imagine life without freedom of speech, freedom of religion, independent media, pluralism, the right to redress, legitimate elections, women's rights, and the small things we never realize we take for granted like freely walking down the street holding hands with a man or woman who isn't related to us. Imagine life in a culture where writing a blog critical of religion or the government could earn you a death sentence. Now imagine you are a 13 year old Iraqi girl riding a bus with your mother when al Qaeda stops your bus to discuss your mother's hair. They have beaten your mother in public for not wearing a scarf on her head that is customary in a religion she does not subscribe to.
Now imagine that you grow up to follow in your mom's footsteps. She was a mechanical engineer. You're studying chemical engineering in Iraq where she raised you, first with the abusive husband and then as a single mother. You and your siblings have watched your mother survive through the lazy husband who beat her and the threats and beatings from Sunni jihadists and Shia militiamen. You watched her get a professional demotion for refusing to join Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party. Eventually the Ba'athist government and al Qaeda checkpoints are gone from Baghdad but the al Mahdi militia is still there. Now you are a grown woman and your hair is an issue just like your mother.
23 year old Lubna doesn't need to imagine any of this because it is her life. Lubna is an attractive bookish young woman, bespectacled with her exposed hair worn short and clothes you would expect a university science student to wear in London or New Brunswick. Her fellow students do not understand why she doesn't dress like the other girls. Nobody understands why she does not wear the hijab. When this young woman walks down the street carrying books that contain no mention of archangels or jin, it causes quite a stir. The militiaman who slaps her face can't square the sight of this woman, sans hijab, with the images of 7th century culture afloat in the chaotic mist of toxic vapor where his brain would have been.
When I ask her what she wants to do with her life besides chemical engineering she is terse with her answer, and Lubna always has a good answer. She says "I will think." Lubna says it is important to think and I can't help but agree with her. Dogmatism is all around us, whether we live in Baghdad or Atlanta. Lubna knows this better than most of the 23 year olds I've known. She is not a know-it-all, but she knows quite a bit. Her attitude is oddly upbeat considering her story, which has been making the rounds on the internet since she posted it on movements.org. People are finding it inspiring that this young rebel is surrounded by caged minds and yet her curious mind is free.
I try to tell her that the west is full of all sorts of dogmatism, tribalism and closed mindedness, but it seems trivial when I think of how radical sitting in Iraq reading Hitchens must be. I am not the only one ensorcelled by this scrappy feminist. She has no like minded peers in Iraq, but in our little Global Humanist Resistance corner of the internet, she has made friends with magna carta liberals, cultural libertarians, science nerd gamers, liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims who share a passion for intellectual honesty, enlightenment ideals and civilization itself. I ask her if she had other examples for a life as a defiant dissident: "no, only my mother."
It is not difficult for me to imagine having no atheist, liberal or intellectual examples in Florida growing up in the 1990's because there were none around, but this is a completely open society (for now) and I had punk rock bands and comedians I could emulate. In high school I would wear my anti-theism emblazoned on my chest and it didn't cause me any headaches. If a teenaged atheist in Florida can go to prom with a cheerleader then Lubna should be free to think for herself and wear anything she wants without fear of violence. The victims of theocracy and closed society should have our solidarity. Lubna disappears from Facebook messenger for a few minutes due to another power outage.
Lubna lives in a world that is brutalizing for young women. Iraq might not be as bad for women as Iran or Saudi Arabia or other theocratic closed societies, but it is the one we can see into and keep somewhat open. In her lifetime, her country has been the property of a putrescent dictator with a fetish for burying things, liberated in a noble but maladroit western intervention, beset by the anthropomorphised swill of mankind in al Qaeda, almost functional for a few halcyon years, and then torn asunder by the necrotic cocktail of western neglect, asinine cult tribalism, and the return of the mangled man-shaped ordure now known as the Islamic State. Lubna thinks she is bothering me when she asks me for help writing her story. I want her to stop apologi.....and her power is out again.
I don't remember exactly how I met Lubna, but we were fast friends. I was worried about her immediately. There was no obvious way for me to help her. She is not used to people wanting to help and what is the help she needs anyway? What can we westerners do for the women, liberals, atheists, Jews, gays or journalists living in these gangrenous medieval circumstances? If you aren't familiar, movements.org is a website which serves as a bulletin board of sorts for people who are living in closed society, theocracies, and countries that have institutional and/or cultural oppression of minority groups and especially people with an unpopular religious worldview. In cases where free speech is restricted and intellectual oppression is standard practice it is journalists, bloggers, students, and especially young women who are walking targets for a state, church or mob incident. Kafkaesque prison sentences, Putin style murder, and sexual assault is what you get if you write or say the wrong thing, or if you just combine two X chromosomes and some bad fortune. It is common in Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia for women to be beaten just for being accused of something. Solidarity.
Lubna is witty, bright and as full of life as any young person I know. I am delighted to call her my friend. She has been severely depressed and hopeless at times, but she is strong. Solidarity.
She is a tough minded rebel with an insatiable appetite for new ideas. She has been physically attacked in public for her adorable, short and uncovered hair. Solidarity. She has spirit and intestinal fortitude. She's got guts. She is a woman and she is in danger every day of her life. Solidarity.
There are people just like you and me who are subjected to violence, harassment, draconian state and community policies, and the defective ideology which fetishizes homogeny, chauvinism and dogmatism. There are human beings in these places who need you to be their ally. They are ordinary and exceptional people with great minds, nice smiles, awkward laughs, crooked teeth, social anxiety, bad jokes, amazing artistic talent, kind and loving personalities, and precious dreams for the future. They are all victims, in a sense, and as a matter of principle you should take their side. You could use more friends anyway. Get it happening. Solidarity.
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