Darya Safai MP@SafaiDarya
When I was detained in Tehran in 1999 in the ayatollahs' prison,
I could never have imagined that one could also be imprisoned in the West for the same reason.
The day before yesterday, it was announced in the United States that they have a comprehensive plan to fight Islamophobia.
What might this national plan entail?
Criminalising "Islamophobia" and making it punishable?
Here in Belgium too, UNIA wants to do the same and as a member of parliament, I have been trying to stop this for years with debates in parliament. More and more people are trying to silence people who criticise Islam.
However, it is a fundamental right to be able to criticise religions and political views.
When I was detained in a prison of Ayatollah Khamenei in 1999 at 23 for criticising the way I was marginalised as a woman by Islam as a second-rate gender, I never imagined that I could ever face a prison sentence in the West because of the same criticism.
Why should I not be allowed to say that many aspects in Islamic law violate human dignity and fundamental rights? Will I be prosecuted for Islamophobia because of that? Where would that leave my civil rights and freedoms? I did not flee an Islamic country only to lose my freedom of speech in this country, because of such a thoughtless proposal.
Islam is a religion that has not yet experienced enlightenment and many discriminatory rules from thousands of years ago, institutionalised in this religion, are still in force.
Moreover, Islamism is a pernicious ideology that wants to conquer the world.
In the Muslim world, there are many critics who openly criticise it, even if they have to pay with their lives, because Sharia law is not tolerant.
In the West, under the guise of religious freedom, the radical Muslims try to further perpetuate their discriminatory views, especially against women. And anyone who criticises them is called polarising, stigmatising and Islamophobic.
And sometimes they can get right with some "progressives", who themselves, in the not so distant past, stood up against certain rules of another religion.
But now, suddenly, they are no longer critics of gender inequality or so many other discriminatory rules of Islam.
Because of their cultural relativism, they are abandoning millions of women and young girls, including here with us.
While Western civilisation waits for "enlightened" Islam and it is believed that the change must come from the Muslims themselves, some of them abandon the reforming critical eyes and silence them because it is allegedly "stigmatising".
Maybe they believe in miracles, but all I see in this way is an evolution towards a dark future.
The West urgently needs a wake-up call to ensure the future of our posterity.
That should be our mission.
The left picture is a picture of me in Iran. The right photo is who I am today, free from the yoke of Islamic oppression.
