.Islamists? You Weren’t Here. You Don’t Know.
My friends who went to Syria and Dubai during the bad years in Iraq have started coming back in the last four or five months.
They were wearing shorter skirts and tighter-fitting shirts than those of us who stayed here in the last few years. In the summer they were wearing modern cut cap-sleeved blouse with bare arms.
I do not mind but when we met once in a restaurant and one of my friends was wearing something like that I told her: “You can’t go out wearing fashion like this.”
“Why?” she asked, with astonishment. I told her “because no one will accept it.”
She said: “Abeer you know me, we used to wear such clothes in college.” I told her: “Things are very different now.” Then I showed her a picture on my mobile phone of me wearing an abaya. She was shocked and said: “I heard about it, but I can’t believe it, I never imagined things would go this way.”
We have got a gap inside the Iraqi community. A gap between people of the same generation, I mean between those who fled the violence and traveled out of Iraq after 2003, and these who stayed in the country.
The people who left Iraq cannot imagine what happened, they only have the barest idea, and they have not seen and lived the Islamist style of life.
At that restaurant meeting where I met a group of my friends we chatted and talked about many things, including the provincial elections next month. All of them, even the religious ones, agreed that they would not vote for an Islamist, of any kind. “Even if he was blessed by Ayatollah Sistani and got Sistani’s signature beside his name,” one of them said.
But my friend who had lived outside had an extremely different opinion. She said: “Why not, if they are good?”
I told her: “You did not live the Islamic experience we lived in during the last five years, there was no freedom, no democracy, and no ambition for women, because Islamic movements do not allow women to work and mix with men.”
I explained to her “I am an engineer. I was working for a mobile phone company and I was threatened many times because radical Islamic thought believes it is not permissible for a woman to go to sites and climb towers and mix with men. Their charge against me was: ‘You are working with the Americans, you are a spy. You are wearing big sunglasses and a big watch, only Americans do that.’
“So do you still want to elect an Islamic politician?” I asked my friend.
She was still not convinced, even though she is secular.
It is because of the gap.
Baghdad Bureau
This should give Will a smile. Tenters
They were wearing shorter skirts and tighter-fitting shirts than those of us who stayed here in the last few years. In the summer they were wearing modern cut cap-sleeved blouse with bare arms.
I do not mind but when we met once in a restaurant and one of my friends was wearing something like that I told her: “You can’t go out wearing fashion like this.”
“Why?” she asked, with astonishment. I told her “because no one will accept it.”
She said: “Abeer you know me, we used to wear such clothes in college.” I told her: “Things are very different now.” Then I showed her a picture on my mobile phone of me wearing an abaya. She was shocked and said: “I heard about it, but I can’t believe it, I never imagined things would go this way.”
We have got a gap inside the Iraqi community. A gap between people of the same generation, I mean between those who fled the violence and traveled out of Iraq after 2003, and these who stayed in the country.
The people who left Iraq cannot imagine what happened, they only have the barest idea, and they have not seen and lived the Islamist style of life.
At that restaurant meeting where I met a group of my friends we chatted and talked about many things, including the provincial elections next month. All of them, even the religious ones, agreed that they would not vote for an Islamist, of any kind. “Even if he was blessed by Ayatollah Sistani and got Sistani’s signature beside his name,” one of them said.
But my friend who had lived outside had an extremely different opinion. She said: “Why not, if they are good?”
I told her: “You did not live the Islamic experience we lived in during the last five years, there was no freedom, no democracy, and no ambition for women, because Islamic movements do not allow women to work and mix with men.”
I explained to her “I am an engineer. I was working for a mobile phone company and I was threatened many times because radical Islamic thought believes it is not permissible for a woman to go to sites and climb towers and mix with men. Their charge against me was: ‘You are working with the Americans, you are a spy. You are wearing big sunglasses and a big watch, only Americans do that.’
“So do you still want to elect an Islamic politician?” I asked my friend.
She was still not convinced, even though she is secular.
It is because of the gap.
Baghdad Bureau
This should give Will a smile. Tenters
posted by madtom at 9:03 PM
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