This interview with Turkish-German lawyer, Seyran Ates, first appeared in the land of the fjords, the land of oil, the home of the political correctniks who choose and bestow the Nobel Peace Prize. I am talking about Norway, where my friend and colleague, the American author Bruce Bawer, also lives. Bruce has written a number of important books such as While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying The West From Within and Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity.
Bruce (who currently has a piece featured on Pajamas) is the one who translates my work into Norwegian. Two far-sighted women, Rita Karlsen and Helge Storhaug, publish Human Rights Service as an online journal in both English and Norwegian.
I first “met” Seyran Ates when I was researching my book about Islamic gender apartheid and its penetration of the West. Thus, I quoted her twice in The Death of Feminism. I recently met Seyran for the first time in person in Rome at the G8 conference; I wrote about it for PJM here. We bonded. But, we really met when Seyran came to stay with me in New York City.
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Seyran Ates' latest book: "Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution"
By Phyllis Chesler for Human Rights Service
This past week, my home and my life were graced by a very heroic houseguest. I am talking about Seyran Ates, the Turkish-German lawyer, author, and freedom fighter who flew to New York City to spend six days with me, to talk, laugh, dream, strategize, hang out, hide out.
Yes, hide out.
Seyran’s fourth book Islam braucht eine sexuelle Revolution has just appeared in Germany. Its title: “Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution” has, apparently, led to more than the usual number of death threats. Seyran temporarily cancelled her tour to promote the book and came to visit me instead.
Seyran is no stranger to serious trouble.
In 1984, as a 21 year-old law student, Seyran was working at a Women’s Center in Berlin where mainly Turkish and Kurdish girls and women came for counseling. Seyran was sitting with her client, a fifteen year old battered Turkish Muslim girl. All around them, other women were giving and receiving advice, shelter, legal services. A quiet man quietly entered. Politely, but firmly, one of the women said: “Sir, there are no men allowed here.”
Expressionless, the man in the trench coat assured her that “What I have to do will take no time at all.”
Quickly, smoothly, he shot and killed the fifteen year old. He also pumped three bullets into Seyran’s neck and shoulder; she was not expected to live since the shooter had punctured a major artery. Against all odds Seyran recovered but her rehabilitation would take six years.
The shooter calmly walked out of the Women’s Center.
Yes, he was finally found and jailed for six months but no, he was never convicted. Although six Turkish and non-Turkish women identified him, the police made so many procedural errors that the judge felt there was enough reasonable doubt and could not convict him. In Seyran’s expert opinion, the problem was that the victims were women—and Turkish women at that. It was a Turkish-on-Turkish, Muslim-on-Muslim crime—perhaps the fate of Turkish-German women was not yet seen as a priority on the multi-culti German agenda.
A lesser mortal might have given up. Seyran, however, completed law school. She went on to specialize in defending battered, mainly Muslim immigrant girls and women, including those who are the intended targets of honor killing.
However, Seyran was a rebel long before this incident. When she was 18 years old, she ran away from home. She could no longer bear being “treated as her father’s and elder brother’s slave and servant.” She wrote a book about it but under a pseudonym. She titled it: Wo gehören wir hin? (Where Do We Belong?) and it was a cri de coeur about immigrant identity. When I asked her how she found the strength to do this, she told me this:
“My parents, who were farmers, first came to Berlin in 1968 as guest workers. Berlin was undergoing a political and sexual revolution. I have no idea what they made of it all. Anyway, I arrived here in 1969 when I was six years old. I was the only Turkish girl in school. Everyone spoke German. Me too. I became completely integrated. There were no separate or parallel facilities, no parallel universe to impede my integration.”
Seyran wanted the same freedoms that German girls and women had. Now, in retrospect, she realizes that, as the only daughter, her mother really needed her help. (Seyran has reconciled completely with her family. In fact, they all live together in the same building in different apartments and support Seyran’s decision to be a single mother.)
Here, in the West, a non-Muslim divorce lawyer who represents a non-Muslim battered woman client might well be sued by her client’s ex-husband; she might have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend herself. I know many American women lawyers who have faced this. But a lawyer like Seyran risks her life, faces death, each day she defends a battered Muslim woman, each time she helps her flee from an intended honor killing.
So many heroic Muslim and ex-Muslim feminists and dissidents have received death threats. Some write under pseudonyms, live in exile, often require bodyguards and/or serious police protection. Here, I am thinking about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Magdi Allam, Lubna Hussein (the brave, trouser-wearing journalist who just fled Sudan), Ibn Warraq, Irshad Manji, Taslima Nasrin, Asra Nomani, Wafa Sultan. Those of us who share their views and who write about them in the West, are usually called “racist Islamophobes.”
Seyran made me laugh when she said, in all sincerity, “Phyllis, they call me a racist and an Islamophobe too—and I am a religious Muslim.” Indeed, Seyran has a plan to open a mosque where no hijab, headscarf, will be allowed, a mosque that will be as friendly to women as to men.
I wonder: Will each truth-teller, beginning with the Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, require a personal bodyguard? Will we all simply have to get used to living with death threats? Will we each run up enormous legal expenses as well, as Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld did in her influential “libel tourism” (a deceased Saudi billionaire sued her for libel in London) case, which led to Rachel’s Law in New York State [which protects New Yorkers against libel judgments in countries whose laws are inconsistent with the freedom of speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution – ed.]? Indeed, both Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz have established legal defense funds to help in such cases.
How much, exactly, will this truth-telling about Islam end up costing the West? What is our alternative to paying this new kind of dhimmi tax?
And now, here is an interview which I conducted with Seyran over a period of many days. Yes, we also took our photos together but agreed it would not be wise to publish any photos at this time.
Phyllis Chesler (PC): When you ran away from home at seventeen, where did you go?
Seyran Ates (SA) I had some friends helping me. A teacher helped me, someone who was one of the 1968 students – I could live there without paying rent. Then, I had a German boyfriend, so I moved in with him. The boyfriend came after I ran away. True, I was in love before but he was not the reason I ran away. I wanted freedom.
PC: Did your family know where you were?
SA: They tried to get me back. The state chased after me because I was not yet 18. For awhile, I lived in a shelter for children. I tried to live at home again, once, for three weeks but then I ran away for good. My father asked me for one last chance. I give it to him, thinking maybe he could change, but after 3 weeks I decided he would take too long for me to wait.
But now we’re all living together, and they’ve changed. They are wonderful and I love them for how they have changed.
A German television program did a documentary about me and my life – also in Turkish –and they interviewed my parents also. On camera, they say, we are guilty, we feel guilty, because we did so many wrong things when Seyran was with us. We should have trusted her more and we shouldn’t have listened to people around us. They cried and asked for my forgiveness.
Bourgeois-shmourgeois! If marriage is too bourgeois for some people, they don’t have to do it. On the other hand, since marriage exists for heterosexuals, it should also exist for homosexuals.
The asymmetry is a political statement that one doesn’t want to make.
The United States was conceived in liberty. Allowing gays to marry is an expansion of liberty. Besides, gay marriage doesn’t hurt a soul in the world.
What inspirational heroism. We in the West do not value the freedom we have, that it must be cherished and guarded.
1963. Quite the year. JFK and C.S. Lewis depart, as well as others, and Seyran Ates, myself and others, arrive on the scene.
When it comes to marriage, I see that Seyran’s views are like Ayn Rand’s, but other than that I can worth work with her, so that the West does
not succumb to those who tread the path trod by Yassir Arafat’s uncle who was the Mufti of Jerusalem during the Second World War.
PART I
Happy she fights for ISLAM and for ISLAMIC women and for their Rights, not necessarely considering the West, who cares, but doing it IN THE WEST and THANKS TO THE WEST, otherwise, since “who cares of the West”, she could do it in her beloved ISLAMIC Countries, among her beloved ISLAMIC Communities, talking between ISLAMIC people only (and about the Westerners: who cares? They are – and their World – just wallpaper and ornaments. And uselsess ones. Western Values are not Western Values: they are universal Values, adoptable by Islamic people and world, too, as soon as they want and wish. The West itself, is Nothing and, above all, it is basically useless. Democracy exists without the West, universal human Rights exist without the West, children’s Rights’ Chart exists without the West, women’s Rights’ movements exist without the West, anti Slavery’s movements exist without the West, everything good and moral, modern and evolved, exist without the West – it simply falls down from the Sky, where the Ruler is Allah, of course, and its most loved created Being is Muhammed “I love XXX”, of course).
About no marriage and extended families insted I just wonder: does she support the kidnapping of children from their Non-islamic mothers, by their ISLAMIC fathers (helped by their beloved ISLAMIC Community), who are brought in ISLAMIC Countries and Communities, living in their father’s extended family, without being able too see her Non-islamic mother anymore, or even listen to her (because “their” beloved extended ISLAMIC family forbit it to them, maybe telling them “your mother is dead”, while the mother is completely alive, but she’s going to die for the Pain caused by the kidnapping of her children, by gruesome/sadist/selfish/… “extended ISLAMIC family” with hypertrophic Ego, in the name of ISLAM, its God and his/its most loved Being, where “marriage with a foreigner” isn’t best wished – but Racism there doesn’t exist. I mean, in Islamic Countries and in Islamic Communties. Racism is a typical Western bad Quality only, which has to be pointed out as “Western” and/or “made in the West”. Right? -.
PART II
It happens I knew one of these women/mother, and the fact that “a lot praised” Seyran Ates “fighting for ISLAMIC women’s Rights” and “for Islam” and “for extended families” and for “universal (non Western at all) Values”, living in the West and from the West, almost makes me angry instead of an admirer of her!
Like other Islamic women (or allegedly Ex-islamic women) who call themselves a human Right Activist, and a women’s Rights Activist, she just fight for ISLAMIC (people’s) Rights, she disregards the West and its Culture, its Values, its Struggles, its Achievements, but there she lives and from there she fights her (personal 100% Islamic) fight. I find all of that little laudable: sorry if I care about the West … and … why not … about Western women, too.
Sorry because I think that Islam has nothing good to sexually teach to others, neither to Christianity. I think Wafa Sultan is one who really well exposed the bad sexual behaviour of ISLAMIC “prophet” whom, on the other hand and appearently, Seyrant Ates appreciates so much: she appreciates him and his XXX teachings.
If ISLAM is a Threat to ISLAMIC women, it is even a greater Threat to Non-islamic (i.e. Western) women and … people in general.
HOW COMES NO ONE (AMONG ISLAMIC “HUMAN RIGHT/WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS”) SEEMS TO WORRY ABOUT “THE REST OF THE WORLD”, THE NON-ISLAMIC ONE (AND THE REST OF THE WOMEN)?
I’m controversing and you know, this has to do with:
. the whole Islamic/Islamist problem worldwide in general (where “the vast Majoritiy” of “Peace loving” people remains deafening silent about);
. the Swiss citizens’ ban of Islamic phallocratic Symbols, which has been harshly criticized by Eurabians and Islamic/Islamist people and Communities – maybe by so called (Islamic) Moderates and Reformists, too?
I START THINKING THAT WHEN IT COMES TO ISLAM, AND ISLAMIC/ISLAMIST PEOPLE, EVERYTHING ONE DOES, HE/SHE DOES IT FOR HIM/HERSELF AND HIS/HER COMMUNITY, PERIOD. OTHERS ARE THERE JUST TO BE EXPLOITED [WESTERN WOMEN FIRST].
While I fundamentally disagree with Ms. Ates views on marriage, I think her contentions about multiculturalism and feminism have merit. Overturning thousands of years of history is a little too Hegelian/Marxist for me to buy into.
One problem I see with many Islamic feminists is that since many or even most of them are unable are unable to be feminists in Islamic countries, they try to be Islamic feminists in Western countries and that’s just not possible.
Before Islamic countries can be expected to respect basic rights such as life & liberty, we must have Western countries that do so and we do not. Not that Westerners do not have these rights but that they do not think EVERYONE deserves them. Or wants them…whichever. Until Western governments and feminists stop selling out to left-wing nihilism, nothing will change anywhere else in the world and Islamic feminists will be whistling into the wind. If we do not BELIEVE in inalienable rights, why should anyone else?
Not to fill the last refuge of freedom with anything is our most holy duty (Klevius 2004)! This (negative) human right stays in sharp opposition to ALL forms of islam. Islam/Koran incites to racist “infidel” hatred. Islam is a collective/totalitarian, not a personal “faith”, using mob/gang/political etc. power manipulation, hence violating the individuals Negative Human Rights outlined in U.N.’s 1948 declaration. Ask muslims if they think infidels are equals to them! Islam hides behind West’s human rights (which it aims to destroy when not needed anymore) while OIC (57 islamic states) does everything (via UN etc)to criminalize criticism against islam & has introduced its own Sharia “human rights” (Cairo Declaration 1990) in which Western human rights given to both men & women, are limited for girls/women in accordance with Sharia “duties” & “responsibilities”.
What many seem to forget is the simple fact that the only feasible explanation to islam’s initial success was a sex & booty jihad moralized via “infidel” racism & reproduced via rapetivism (segregation of girls/women for securing as many islamic pregnancies as possible & the kids made muslim under the threat of Sharia & apostasy ban).
Part 1)
7. Slveryder: I agree with you on many issues. About marriage I wanted to remember that Seyran Ates illogically claims that Islam is better when it comes to Sex (compared to “the West” or to “Christianity”), that she doesn’t believe in Marriage, and that Islam (allegerdly is better because) allows Sex just within Marriage (“which is better, of course”) – just mentioning that there are two little (sort of unimportant and maybe even laudable) options called Concubinage and Poligamy [*].
Therefore: is she in favour of Marriage or not? What about her Concept of “better Sexuality” (for both males and females?) in Islam (compared to other “Philosophies”): is it freer or imprisoning? Freer Sexuality is better than imprisoning one? What exactely about the Concept of Responsibility when it comes to sexual Intercourses: is it important or not? Is it more/less valued in freer or in more imprisoning Sexuality? Which is the Role of Marriage when it comes to Responsibility? How she likes Islamic freer Sexuality, she rejects Marriage, but she can islamically make Sex just within Marriage? Is Marriage taken in a responsible Way or not – has it to be taken in a responsible Way or not: has it Sense to altogether keep this Insititution (Marriage) alive, or not? [Yes for Sex, no for else? If so: does it - feministically and humanly - make any Sense at all?].
[*] I mean: a Feminist, and Activist for women’s Rights, doesn’t realize the – bad – implication of Concubinage for the woman? Doesn’t she think that Islamic Marriage and sexual Rules are simply another way to advantage men and disadvantage women, and therefore definitely rejectable?
I actually “logged in” to ask the following:
is it Right that – from “Extremists” to “Moderates”, from Misogynists to Feminists, from Islamic/Islamist people to alleged “Ex-muslims”, their “Logic” is -:
Part 2)
if there is something Clever/Good/Beautiful (on Earth, in Life, …), the West has nothing to do with it;
if there is something Illogical/Evil/Ugly (on Earth, in Life, …), Islam has nothing to do with it?
According to this “Logic” I wonder how can actually the West “fight back” and how can the West “never give in”. I wonder, I really wonder. [What do they want from the West? Islam immigrated there causing enormous problems
(about women's matters we have been sent back to centuries ago; about human Rights there is a Cairo Declaration which clearly shows Islam refuses to respect anything which is Non-islamic/islamist - I saw no Riots against this discriminating Declaration; many Resources we could use for Invalids, Elderlies, Refugees, Poverty, had to be spent for "Islamic/Islamist matters"; ...)
but this should allegedly not be a problem (on the other hand, "the Right" should be, "Geert Wilders" should be, "Western" Feminists should be, "Western" Left should be - yes, how weird: both "Western" Right and Left should be the problem -. Not Islam/Islamism, not Islamic/Islamist Immigration, not Islamic/Islamist Communities, never).
The West exists not. It wellcomes them (them), it gives them a platform where to speak and drive their Campaigns (everything pro Islam, pro Islamic Immigration, pro Islamic women, pro Islamic Communities - no one else), ... but the West exists not. It has no merits.
Mercì. Danke. Shokran, thank you, gracias, grazie, ....
[I now wonder: this - veiled or not - Hate or Disregard for "the West" ... hasn't it maybe to do with former Cold war? Hasn't it maybe to do with an Islamic Alliance with former Soviet Block? Hasn't it maybe to do with a more and more tight Relation between Islamic/Islamist world and Russia? I wonder. I'm really wondering.]
In Islam, marriage is 13th century, like purchasing a wife. You can have up to four and divorce them at will. You can get a short-term marriage to sleep with a prostitute and then divorce them. The women has to ask permission from her husband about everything – its not like he can write a check or sign a contract. She can be jailed and beaten for being out without her husbands permission. So given how negative marriage is for Islamic women, that likely helps explain her view – its not exactly I Love Lucy.
Anyway great to see people standing up for what’s right – rare but inspiring. I think many people are scared to speak out for a variety of reasons.
“Allowing gays to marry is an expansion of liberty. Besides, gay marriage doesn’t hurt a soul in the world.”
Classic propaganda. A fact followed by the Big Lie.
It’s nice to see a professional at work.
Gay marriage would legitimize what is deviant, anti-social behavior. Homosexuality is a CHOICE, NOT a civil right. Arson is closer to homosexuality then race, religion, gender or color. If homosexuals have the right to screw like rabid weasels, then don’t arsonists have the right to burn down verything in sight? Both actions are based on ‘it feels good so do it’ theory of life. Hedonism is the technical term.
I would consider the millions that have died from AIDs/HIV to have been harmed.
Then there is the yet to be explored connection between serial murders and homosexuality. Or would you have people believe that it is a co-ink-see-dink that 9 out of 10 serial killers are homosexual? How about the young boys that are seduced then raped by older men? Normal people would consider them as having been harmed.
We won’t even get into the social effects of having employees promoted on their willingness to perform casual sex in a broom closet instead of merit. A classic example of that would be FNMA. One homosexual in Human Resources and in a year or two, the bathrooms are full of 4 legged employees, who aren’t doing the work they are being paid for.
Business do not survive when the profit motive is replaced by getting your nut.
Rights of any sort belong to those strong enough to fight for and hold them.
Blacks in America are not slaves because about 600,000 White Males died for their freedom. Blacks were not strong enough to win it themselves. Blacks ARE strong enough to keep what those 600,00 white males died to give them.
Females have rights because of the males that fought alongside them to gain those rights. They keep those rights because they have the strength to.
It’s a sad fact that in the real world, right makes right.
Civilized people pretend that moral value outweighs a strong arm. The fact is it doesn’t.
Nazi Germany did not stop murdering Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and undermench because they suddenly had a moment of moral clarity. The Allies bombed their cities to rubble, destroyed their industry and killed enough Germans to go in and shut down the death camps.
Without the might that made right, those death camps would still be working.
The Islamic world isn’t going to recognize Human Rights just because it is the ‘right’ thing to do. In their mind it isn’t the right thing to do, that if Human Rights was needed, Allah would have said something about it to Ol’ Mo the goat roper.
Muslim have NO CHANCE of beating the West in a fight. So eventually the West will get tired of fooling around with Islam and either exterminate all Muslims or force them to convert to some other religion. Which is about the same thing. Not for a while yet. Another couple of centuries.
In the meantime, all we need from the Islamic crescent is OIL. What with Brazil slowly coming on line, and the Shale OIL available in America and China, it will be possible by 2040 or so to tell the Muslims to pound sand and embargo the entire religion. No contact either way. Let them eat their OIL.
If a woman is truly a feminist, she can not logically be a practicing Moslem. It is contradictory. How any woman would willing choose to adhere to this radical and misogynist political philosophy, masquerading as a religion, is beyond me. I say this because having lived and travelled in the Middle East, I saw first-hand how women are treated. A “moderate” Moslem former colleague used to joke at the office that when his pregnant wife complained too much, all he had to do was repeat “I divorce you” several times and he would be free to marry more than one woman. (except me) What I found to be even scarier that his comments, was the level of laughter coming from the sexist morons that I worked with.
I do not trust Ms. Ates who speaks as if one can be a Muslim and at the same time deny the words and deeds of the founder of Islam and the Allah that is worshiped by the people at the mosques.
Denying that women are less value than men their testimony worth half, denying that women are the main occupiers of Hell, denying that woman should be used like a field or domestic animal, denying that women can be struck, denying that woman will be sexual slaves in paradise would be denying the words of Mohammad and Allah. That would be a denial of Islam.
Allah and Mohammad also commands that Muslims will fight the Jews until the end of time where Allah will cause the rocks and trees to cry out “Here is a Jew!”, “Here is a Jew!”, “Come and kill the Jew!” To deny that command would be to deny Mohammad, Allah and Islam.
I don’t trust her words because she talks double speak against and for at the same time, therefore I don’t trust her.
Without a doubt the future of what is Presently the Islamic World depends largely on the future of its women. She Who is Needed is Muslima Lysistrada. -S-
The truth shall set us free….
NEVER should truth seekers be intimidated by the jackals at our throats. In fact, the MORE fear we show, the MORE they come after everything which resembles civilized society.
Kudos to this brave woman and all those who follow in her footsteps!!
As we say in Judaism, from strength to strength….
From Israel (Jewish State) comes a comment saying that Swiss vote against the building of minarets is the worst thing happening after Holocaust [even if the banning of Islamification's bayonets could be a Jews-friendly vote and even if some Islamic Clerics which call for another Holocaust against Jews, therefore there is little need for Jews to fight for Islamification of Europe, to defame Swiss vote against Islamic bayonets, to compare Jews situation during worldwide hitlerian Nazism with Islamic bayonets' situation during Swiss Democracy in Switzerland];
from Islamo-Turkey (Seyran’s native Country) comes a call to all (Islamo-)Turkish people living in Switzerland, suggesting them to move all their bank accounts away from Switzerland and to Turkey [even if many of them benefited of Swiss Socialwelfare in the past or still do so] – I am aware of the fact that Russians have very good Relations with alleged moderate Islamic world/Countries, and I wonder if this Islamo-Turkish statement isn’t influenced by Russian anti Western (see: neverending Cold War) feeling (or agenda), considered that there already is a very Islamo-Turkish anti Western Culture agenda.
Or: is that all happening according to an hidden Eurabian plan (damaged by the 60% Swiss’ vote against Islamic bayonets)? Or has it to do with Bilderberg Club’s decisions (and the Swiss’ vote destabilizes them)?
What can/must Feminists (which hope the West never gives in) do against (or for!) the anti 60% Swiss citizens’ vote plot?