Eleven years ago, I was shown a beautiful vision of human society, which could be (and according to Muslims, should be) the template for all of humanity. It was called Islam. I fell in love with it and dedicated my life to understanding it and searching for it. Unfortunately, that version is only posssible with a heavy editing of the Qur’an, hadith (secondary oral history written down a couple centuries later), and seerah (history of Muhammad’s life). This fantast version of Islamic society is also nowhere to be found in modern Muslim societies and it never existed in the past. Muslims love to blame Europeans (and sometimes Jews) for the failure of their religion and societies, but in examining modern Muslim societies and studying history, I don’t believe this.

I believed that Islam offered dignity and liberation for women, but it doesn’t do that. Again, I was presented with a fantasy version that sounds beautiful to Western ears, but in the texts and in practice, that version doesn’t exist. For example, forced child marriage, sex slavery, and wife beating are all permitted in every Islamic school of jurisprudence. Modern Western Muslim scholars can say you shouldn’t, but there are no textual grounds for forbidding any of them. They are all expressly permitted in both the Qur’an and Hadith.

Women are also required to wear complete covering in order to be considered “true and pure women.” This covering explicitly defines our bodies as objects of lust and danger for men, and this disempowers and endangers women across the Muslim world. The supposed “protection” it provides is false and does not hold true in practice. Muslim women and girls are raped at the same or higher rate as women in non-Muslim countries (except in Muslim societies being raped is more shameful than to be a rapist), and the “hijab” does nothing to protect them.

I’ve heard everything Muslims have to say about the hijab, and I believe it’s false. It hurts women more than helps us and defining our bodies in terms of men’s lust, while putting the burden of their lusts on women, is neither liberating nor empowering. Women’s bodies don’t need to be defined in terms of men at all, because our bodies are OURS. We are not the objects of men. In countries where women are not required to cover, women are respected and honored more, and men are not “out of control” in the face of women’s beauty.