Muslim women and Islam: a nikah made in Hell, Part 1

I’m just very surprised that these are still reoccurring and I’m disappointed that it’s actually happening.

These are the words of Fahima Muhammed, a purported psychologist, therapist and relationship counsellor in the UK, spoken during an interview on The Muslim mum YouTube channel. The interview was prompted by the latest crisis to hit the beleaguered ummah, brought on by none other than its larger-than-life "Lion of Da'wah", Mohamed Hijab, a particularly obnoxious narcissist who fancies himself a cross between a sage and Benito Mussolini, and who already has the June 2020 holes-in-the-narrative crisis to his name. This time, our Oxford graduate, political philosopher and academic set the da'wah world on fire when his sexual and emotional abuse of a single-mother da'i (Islamic propagandist; pl. du'at) emerged.

Mohamed Hijab's expertise in these matters is such that other du'at consult him on which categories of women are most likely to be amenable to easy sex, all Shari'a-compliant, of course. Opined Hijab, "The women who take it the best are the revert sisters" — a "revert" is a convert to Islam, since we are all born Muslim, anyway. Get it? Yes, dear reader, "revert sisters" have a reputation amongst the beard-and-waders Abduls as easy-lays. But it also gets us back to Fahima Muhammed's frustration quoted at the top of this essay. It is still happening, dear sister Fahima, because your da'wah brothers keep it going, in this case, the very Mohamed Hijab that you and Muslim mum so exposed yourselves by defending.

Apart from preying on vulnerable female du'at, illegal marriages, i.e., polygamy and secret marriages, are rife in the da'wah scene. According to our resident authority, Hijab, 85% of du'at have multiple illegal marriages:

Most of the big names of Da'wah have at least done polygamy once. Most of them, if not all of them, every person you can think of, all the big names and people you wouldn't expect. Some people have twenty kids. I know one da'i whom I won't mention, very famous da'i, he's got thirty kids.

That could amount to thousands of abused women suffering in silence and it's all going on right now, in 2025, to the surprise and disappointment of Fahima, a purported counsellor in the field of failed Muslim relationships. When Muslim mum alleges that the "anti-Islam people" are pouncing on this latest Mohamed Hijab scandal as a "gotcha moment," she is quite mistaken. Are we meant to understand that Fahima Muhammed and Muslim mum are unaware of the multiple rape charges brought against erstwhile Oxford University Professor Tariq Ramadan in 2017, by five women in France and Switzerland? Du'at don't come more famous than this. The allegations rocked the ummah to its core, and Muslim women then, just like Fahima and Muslim mum now, rushed to Ramadan's defence. That was eight years ago. Ramadan was found guilty of rape in Geneva in September 2024, and his trial in Paris is set for 2-20 March 2026.

Henda Ayari, the first victim to bring charges, was a da'i when Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, groomed her with holy talk and eventually raped her in a hotel room. Recalls Ayari:

He was someone I admired and trusted completely, "like a big brother or an imam," she said, describing the alleged encounter. "All of a sudden, his behaviour changed. He became very violent towards me." Ayari further said: "I thought I was going to die that night, because he choked me and slapped me," alleging that Ramadan had said to her: "This is what you are asking for because you don't wear the hijab." {MEMRI, 7 April 2018)

The Muslim response to Ayari was vicious, forcing her to go into hiding following multiple death threats. But the Ayari case is far from the worst. "Christelle" was another of Ramadan's accusers. Her case is especially egregious both for the fact that she is disabled, and for the particularly depraved physical abuse she alleges he subjected her to. In Switzerland, the allegations were brought by one or two women who were at school at the time of the alleged offences.

The current Mohamed Hijab scandal has many levels. Right down in the sordid details, the brother saw his chance for some easy sex with a single-mum da'i. Background: In Muslim society, a divorced woman or a single mother has practically no chance of finding an unmarried man to marry, given that she is "soiled goods." Her options are: become a married man's second, third, or fourth wife; enter into a secret marriage in which neither party has any obligations (misyar marriage); marry for an agreed period and an agreed fee (mut'a); marry an old widower; remain unmarried, which will at least get easier as she gets older. Of course a single mother has unfulfilled needs and might also be financially vulnerable. This is the beat that married men, such as Hijab and Ramadan, prowl.

Hijab had led the single mum, "Aisha," to believe that he wanted to marry her properly and openly, as in wife #2 (or #3, or #4), but such a marriage comes with obligations that the predatory da'i does not care for. What Hijab had in mind, without telling her, was a misyar (secret) marriage. It has to be kept in mind that Mohamed Hijab is a world-famous da'i of high religious standing. Hijab made all sorts of excuses for why Aisha's family could not be involved and the marriage was, indeed, conducted in secret. She had given him the benefit of the doubt, after all, he was who he was and she is who she is. When he had tired of her, he turned nasty, VERY nasty, revealing that the marriage had been a misyar marriage all along. Had she known this up front, she would not have married him.

Needless to say, Aisha was a devastated, and the more she tried to talk to him, the more he rebuffed her and the more abusive and manipulative he became. Of course he was not interested in compensating her in any way. Eventually, with nowhere else to turn, she sought advice from someone outside their immediate circle. This is how the scandal broke.

Enter: Fahima Muhammed and The Muslim mum, Islam's damage limitation squad. These two ladies are Shari'a bruisers, the Western equivalent of the women who arrested Mahsa Amini, and they zeroed straight in on Aisha's sin: “If it is done in secret, keep it in secret.”

BS! Even in an open, public, celebrated wedding, an older woman lectures the wife to be on her expected conduct in marriage. “Always obey your husband,” is one instruction, but more to the point, “if you have troubles, keep it in the bedroom.” How many times do we not hear of mothers urging, nagging, imploring their daughters in failed marriages to return to their violent, abusive husbands and make it right, and above all, not to cause a scandal in the community. In other words, keep the trouble secret, even if the wedding was not done in secret. The injunction, “If it is done in secret, keep it in secret,” is a pretext. And to see what it is a pretext for, we need to briefly delve into Shari'a (the following excerpts are all from the Shari'a manual Reliance of the Traveller):

"Slander (ghiba) means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike" (Book R2.2); "Slander and talebearing... are unlawful, by the consensus of Muslims" (Book R2.4); "All of the Muslim is inviolable to his fellow Muslim: his reputation, his property, his blood" (Book R2.6(3)) (My emphasis)

Its being unlawful to slander, i.e., "mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike," means that it is obligatory to keep it secret. This is one of the instances where one has to admire the ingenuity of Shari'a as a system of social engineering. The obligations, prohibitions and punishments of Shari'a are so barbaric that if every Muslim were to adhere to all of it to the letter, society would quickly collapse under its weight. Obligating secrecy engenders a system of hypocrisy in which everyone knows that everyone sins, but everyone pretends that everyone is pious, thus avoiding both freedom and societal collapse. It is the Muslim who pays the price for this, though, for upon his or her psyche now rest both the guilt of his or her own transgressions and the burden of keeping the secrets of others. The psychologist Fahima Muhammed is herself the clearest example of how Islam messes with the psyche of Muslims.

Of course, Mohamed Hijab has abundantly slandered Aisha and for that alone, even leaving aside the marriage, he has acted unlawfully many times over, according to Shari'a. But Shari'a also says, immediately before the line about the inviolability of reputation, "The Muslim... does not... hang back from coming to [another Muslim's] aid." The only one slandered here is Aisha, but to come to Aisha's aid would be to slander Hijab. So which Muslim, Hijab or Aisha, shall the relationship counsellor and the Muslim mum rush to aid? It is a no-brainer: the single mum, even though she is the one slandered, has no reputation. The slanderer, Mohamed Hijab, has huge reputation amongst the Muslims. The only way they could get around this, or so they thought, was by reprimanding her for violating the secrecy of the marriage, thereby slandering her again, even if the reprimand were sound, which it is not. But “If it is done in secret, keep it in secret” was all they had, so they ran with it.

Ultimately, there is the holy word of their prophet that a woman is deficient in intelligence, which is why two of them are needed to provide the testimony of one in court, and these ladies amply prove the wisdom of the Prophet of Allah. These women are vacuous, painfully vacuous, and make up for their lack of substance with verbosity. This can work if cleverly done, but clever they ain't, forcing the viewer to endure their excruciating diction. The following is a sample of the counsellor's professional advise/analysis/opinion:

The only reason is there’s a lot of people that have an amazing public, sort of, you know, space where they have these followers. They are, you know, sort of, you know, kind of, followed to an extent where I think they are given a status and a pedestal which is not deserving, because we shouldn’t do that, first and foremost, because of that.

They had clearly agreed before the interview that they were not going to slander Mohamed Hijab, but they had no idea how to structure an argument and ended up simply running their mouths. That they, especially Fahima, was lost showed in how frequently she had to remind viewers of her professional credentials. The Muslim mum was a little smarter, and so more restrained. Whenever she was speaking about Hijab, she made a point of prefacing with, "We are speaking generally."

Fahima, however, before she could stop herself, had descended into slandering Aisha with abandon, even blaming Aisha for what had happened to her and implying that Aisha fell short as a single mother, only to then remember that she was herself a single mother. In an amateurish attempt to recover, she launched into a very long lecture on how a single mother has to deal with being single, especially when it comes to choosing a partner, and ends up saying that it is a woman's responsibility to ensure that they don't get duped, thereby extending the woman’s responsibility to ensure that men are not tempted by her body.

One might wonder why Muslims are satisfied to consult people who are clearly not qualified for what they purport to profess. Here again, Shari'a throws some light. The most important, sometimes the sole, qualification for anything is that the person be a Muslim. Even a bad ruler must be obeyed if the ruler is a Muslim. Hence Fahima, the relationship counsellor. Her and the Muslim mum's sole brief is to protect the image of Islam, and Mohamed Hijab is the image of Islam:

The Qur'an and Islam is perfect, but humans are not.

These women are not only protecting one particular, and particularly egregious, abuser, they are protecting every abuser, the entire abusive institution of Islamic marriage (nikah), the ummah, the Qur’an, Shari’a, their prophet and Islam itself. Every single one of these levels stands condemned not only by countless stories like this, but by every single woman's protection of this system. This is where we approach the real tragedy.

We condemn Fahima Muhammed and The Muslim mum for protecting Mohamed Hijab, but do not condemn them for protecting Shari'a, the very system that engenders, nurtures and sustains men like Hijab, men like Ramadan. Not condemning them for protecting Shari'a is to proclaim, along with them, "The Qur'an and Islam is perfect, but humans are not." Hijab's iniquities are our iniquities. The Qur'an and Islam are perfect, but humans are not, says that any one of us could have done it. Cut him some slack.

The real tragedy is that even their victims cling to the axiom that the Qur'an and Islam are perfect, but humans are not. Henda Ayari, Tariq Ramadan's rape victim, despite everything, maintains:

I think that there is a real problem. Why do the French fear Islam? Because of those Islamists, who use Islam in order to control and imprison women, and in order to accomplish political goals. I denounce this. I remain a Muslim and am proud of my Islam. (MEMRI, 7 April 2018)

And so, too, unfortunately, will Aisha, who will console herself that she is a better Muslim than Hijab, and draw strength from Islam being perfect, exactly as female du'at involved with such scandals, such as Fahima and Muslim mum, as well as women far removed from such scandals, such as Irshad Manji, who in 2003 published the propaganda hit piece, The Trouble with Islam Today.

Manji, like Ayari, claims Islam as her own and herself truer to it than Arabs, or in Ayari's case, Islamists. "As the Arab mind has become addled, so has the Muslim mind – as if all Muslims must walk (or hobble) in lockstep with the initial followers of the faith," (p136). She recalls Arab Muslims attempting to intimidate her.

People of... all three religions, and of no religion, packed the lecture hall. Only one cluster came organized. The Muslim Students Association sent a battalion of members to line the perimeter of the room. They all remained standing, so that whenever I'd look up from my notes, whatever direction I'd be facing, I wouldn't fail to see the unamused, authentic visage of Islam. (p134)

These Muslims were doing exactly what Manji was doing, protecting Islam. Only, they were protecting Islam from her. She is dissenting, and for that reason is a traitor to Islam. In the same book, just a couple of pages further, Maji quotes Dr Eyad Sarraj, a rare specimen amongst Palestinians for his honesty:

"I know we have a lot of psychopathology. It's a male-dominated society, there is no role for women, there is no freedom of expression, there is a heavy atmosphere of intimidation. ... This is a tribal structure in which dissent is seen as treason. We have not yet developed a state of citizenry, within all the Arab countries, in which people are equal before the law. This is very serious." (p137) (My emphasis)

Manji fails to see that this describes Muslims and Islam exactly. It does so because Islam is the imperial projection of Arab tribal culture, while every Muslim suffers a psychopathology. It is no use complaining, "The trouble with Islam today is Muslims," as Manji does in a debate with Mehdi Hassan at the Oxford Union. "We have allowed tribal culture to colonise the faith of Islam." This is ahistorical twaddle. Tribal culture is the faith of Islam. Fahima Muhammed insists that no matter how bad Muslims get, Islam remains perfect. Irshad Manji says Muslim laxness makes Islam a troubled religion.

The theme emerging from all this is whether you are a victim or a defender of Islam, whether you hold Islam to be troubled or pristine, if you are a Muslim woman, you are inseparably wedded to Islam.

It is easy to lose sight of the fact that protecting Islam is far from just protecting a religion and its barbaric, tribal, legal system, it is also protecting every Mohamed Hijab and every Tariq Ramadan being barbaric and tribal all over the world, plus all of them going back well over a thousand years. This is the horror that goes by the name Islam, and it is a horror that weighs cripplingly on animals, dhimmis, slaves, children and women, to none of which Muslim men give the slightest regard. These are but some observations:

So the women who had come to see the pir [saint] that day had to wait, and they were squatting like chickens in his courtyard in the sun. They were peasant women, serf women, chattel of their landlords and their husbands, unprotected by law, custom or religion. They lived with cruelty and their minds had half gone.

The above is what V S Naipaul, a Trinidadian writer in his Beyond Belief: Islamic excursions among the converted peoples, travelling in Pakistan, observed about Muslim women at the very bottom of the pile. And according to Iranian Marxist, Mansoor Hekmat, in his Islam and De-Islamisation interview with Negah:

In Islam, …the individual has no rights or dignity. In Islam, the woman is a slave. In Islam, the child is on par with animals. In Islam, freethinking is a sin deserving of punishment. Music is corrupt. Sex without permission and religious certification, is the greatest of sins. This is the religion of death. In reality, all religions are such but most religions have been restrained by freethinking and freedom-loving humanity over hundreds of years. This one was never restrained or controlled. With every move, it brings abominations and misery.

Fahima Muhammed and Muslim mum abase themselves to protect this abomination and misery. They want this for women, despite knowing that it is wrong. They can live with such knowledge only if other women acquiesce in this abomination and misery. It is true that they are protecting Islam, but fundamentally, they have no choice but to protect Islam, if they are to protect their own sense of self and the emotional commitment and investment they have made in Islam, the greatest of all frauds. Being of as little substance as they have demonstrated themselves to be, they cannot leave Islam, ever, and must constantly remind themselves that they are proud to be Muslim. Primarily, their hijabs serve to deny to themselves their own revulsion and disgust with Islam.

To Muslim men, the plight of women in Islam is indeed a joke. They find it extremely hard not to laugh when a "sister," in all naïvety, seeks answers from a sheikh. Islam's sexual mores, designed by barbarian men for barbarian men, stand aloof from all other consideration. “It’s allowed in Islam” is the standard refrain that silences all objections. It is as if the "sisters" will never realise that this game is rigged.

Sisters, you do not have to put up with this s**t! You do not have to remain a Muslim. The only thing that keeps you there while these repulsive scoundrels mock your misery, with Islam backing them, is you. If you grew up in the West, then you have absolutely no excuse whatsoever to continue putting up with this. Your grandmother and your mother had no choice but to tell themselves it was good to be a Muslim woman, else they would never have coped. But you have choices. For a start, unlike them, you know there is a better life for women outside Islam and you can get there. You, not the Mohamed Hijab's of this world, keep this whole scam going.

It is Muslim women who have their little daughters’ clitorises cut off and their labia sewn up. It is Muslim women who put their little daughters in hijabs. It is Muslim women who marry off their daughters as soon as they can “before they bring scandal”. It is Muslim women who order their sons to murder their daughters for being “too Western”. It is Muslim women who accept that they must be paid for. It is Muslim women who instruct brides to obey their husbands, that their husbands are always right, even if he beats them, and never to make their marital troubles public. It is Muslim women who accept husbands with multiple wives. It is Muslim women who accept that a man may marry and have sex with “an infant in the cradle”. It is Muslim women who accept on-the-spot divorce. It is divorced Muslim women who accept reconciliation by obligatory pimping (nikah halala). They may not like any of this, but they either accept it or they acquiesce in it. It is inconceivable to such women that a different life is possible.

Only two reasons ensure Muslim men can abuse you in this way: one, Islam backs them up; and two, you are in Islam. The minute you put yourself beyond their reach, outside of Islam, the law of the land takes over and backs you, and even your custody of your children. Do not try to resort to secular law while remaining Muslim, because you’ll only pile humiliation upon humiliation for something that is definitely not worth saving: being a Muslim. Leave Islam, and all this goes away.

When Muhammad said, “Women are deficient in intelligence,” it is exactly women like these that he had in mind. What he meant was, "Muslim women are deficient in intelligence." I have presented my evidence that he was right and now challenge any "sister" to prove me wrong.

Acknowledgement: I wrote this essay in one day, which would not have been possible without Abdullah Sameer's comprehensive summary of this scandal.

Picture credits:

Screenshots from https://www.memri.org/tv/french-author-henda-ayari-accused-tareq-ramadan-rape-recounts-i-thought-i-was-going-to-die

Screenshot from https://youtu.be/m2SVmLkp9KY

Screenshot from https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/09/10/tariq-ramadan-convicted-of-rape-on-appeal-in-switzerland_6725456_4.html