The PoliticallyIncorrect Guide to Islam{and the Crusades:of rese arch at the mini stry of rel igio us affa irs, from wher e she need les
the government. When her bosses issued a white paper last year updating
religi ous Laws, she wrote a 170 -pagecritiq ue that annoye d them andthe
conservatives."
Mulia was not alwa ys such a gadfl y. She is the "gra ndda ughte r of a
cleric, went to an Islamic hoarding school and grew up in a strict
environment." She offers one stinging memory of her childhood: "I could
notlau gh har d. My par ent s did not all ow me to bef rie nd non-
Mus lim s, If Idid , the y ord ere d me to sho wer aft erwa rds-" But the n
she tra vele d to"o th er Mus li m nat io ns" and re ali ze d tha t "Is la m had
man y fac es ", Itopened my eyes. Some of what my grandf ather and the
ulema (cleri cs)had taught me wasright butthe rest was myth."
N e w s f l a s h : I s l a m a s
Muslims live it is false Islam!
So what led to her transformation? It turns out that her parents, her grand-
fath er, the cleri cs, everyone had Isla m all wron g, and she, Mulia , had
gotten hold of the real Isla m: "The more she stud ied Isla m, the more
shefound it modem and radical,"
So the hijab, the burka, the chador, the polygamy, the divorce that the
man achie ves by utter ing a phras e three times, the unequa l inher itanc e
law s, the ina bil ity of wom en in man y Mus lim cou ntr ies to lea ve the
house witho ut a male relat ive as escort, the ban in some Musli m coun-
trie s on women even driv ing—all this is now, acco rdin g to Muli a, un-
Islamic. After all, Islam, she says, "had liberated women1,400years ago
well ahead of the West."
The cla im tha t Muh amm ad act ual ly imp rov ed the lot of wom en is
curiou s. It is based on the allega tion that women in pagan Arab societ y
were treated terribly. But did those conditions really improve with the