https://x.com/realMaalouf/status/1829240648647528780

Dr. Maalouf is an ex-Muslim turned Islamic critic. Here he comments about a Muslim woman's sentiments towards white women, but he focuses more on the racial aspect and doesn't do a deep dive into cults and patriarchy. I'll do that in a second.

Muslim woman expresses her disdain for white women: “White women think we only exist to please them and make them feel good about themselves.” Meanwhile, she's enjoying her freedom in the West thanks to white women who fought for their rights!

A couple of things- she's not really enjoying her freedom. She's getting more than she legally might in her home country, but again, not really, and I'll talk about that in a minute.

What she doesn't understand is that white women don't think nearly as much about her as she does about them. We largely don't think Muslim women exist to please us because most of us haven't really had much interaction with Muslim women until recently. We mostly don't even now.

And this might not go over well, but the majority of non-Muslims look at Muslim women's garb and think "no thanks." If everybody loved that, they'd be converting, but they're not. White women included. We don't look at a woman in a hijab and "feel good." At best, we have a "not my business" attitude. We also don't "feel good about ourselves" because we don't really measure ourselves by Muslim women. We're not doing this constant comparison chart in our head, tallying every difference.

In short, we're oblivious most of the time.

Now, I disagree with Dr. Maalouf that this woman somehow owes me gratitude for having fought for her rights. We were fighting for our rights, women's rights, long before there was a notable Muslim community in the West. I'm happy to share the largesse with her because I believe in universal rights for all women. If I had my way, every country would have them.

I also think she is going through the dynamic that a lot of high-demand groups have. In order to keep members for just going mainstream, the group teaches their followers to haaaaaaaate mainstream outsiders. In her case, mainstream outsiders are white women. She doesn't feel better about any non-Muslim woman, really, but she knows she'll be stopped if she pushes that. (As has recently happened among Palestinian activists). White women, however, she can vent about.

People in high-demand groups are taught to believe that mainstream outsiders are depraved, cruel, degenerate, shallow, stupid, and out to get members of the high-demand group. The high-demand group develops a persecution complex, paranoia, and a form of narcissism where they obsess about the mainstream outsiders. It helps the group believe that the mainstream outsiders are the source of their misery, not their own group's demands on them.

I recently saw a woman in a full niqab, heavily pregnant. It's a humid heat wave where I am, and her husband was comfortably in a t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. It's not a dry desert heat here, it's like walking in a giant bowl of soup. I felt really bad for her- I've been summer pregnant and let. me. tell. YOU. It's no picnic. This wasn't good for her health, and her husband's comfort was taken care of while she had to be miserable.

The thing is, though, I didn't make it that way. I'm not interested in "tricking" her in going to hell through the temptation of Wal-Mart tank tops.

Women in high-demand groups are especially taught to hate mainstream outside women. At the very least, view them as immoral and dirty. This isn't unique to Islam. Amish women also have to wear uncomfortable, impractical clothing, as do Hasidic women and others. If they interact with too many mainstream outsiders and see that we're actually fine and happy, they'll start to wonder why they're doing all this. But if they are taught to essentially hate us, they'll comply.

"Oh, we're not taught to hate, though, we don't HATE! What an awful word! Our scripture teaches us the opposite of hate!"

Does it, though?

When you're in a high-demand group, you have over-the-top and preposterous beliefs about mainstream outsiders. You believe wildly insulting things about others. Ex-Scientologists usually explain that that was one of the reasons it took so long to leave- they were scared of the regular world.

Meanwhile, when you're in a high-demand group, you are usually expressing cruel and toxic behavior yourselves, that you believe are either just or you should not be held accountable for. Even if the mainstream outsiders are negatively affected by your crap, as is the town of Clearwater, Florida. You continue this bad behavior because you don't respect or like the mainstream outsiders, and if they're suffering because of you- GOOD!

Now, because this woman has been encouraged to vocalize her hatred of mainstream outsiders, mainstream outsiders hate her right back. You can see it in the comments. They have no desire to be friendly with her, and this seals any cracks that might form exit points. They'll continue to not think about her later- they still don't form this narcissism where they do constant imaginary tally marks. She'll continue to assume they do.

She's been trained to focus on mainstream outside women rather than men, because her fellow women are the biggest hint that maybe her high-demand group is full of shit. After all, she's a woman, so she naturally relates to us anyway. If she sees more and more in common with us, that's a bigger and bigger risk that she'll leave. If she's been brainwashed to hate us more than white men, she doesn't have to make that emotional and psychological leap. It's never a fun thing, coming to the realization that your religion is bollocks.

High-demand religious groups, for all that they are patriarchal, need women to keep working. Men are less loyal to religion, and they certainly put less effort into packing up the kids to take them to services. Where willing-conversion is low, growing the religion requires women to produce as many babies as possible.

If a high-demand group wants continued compliance out of women, they need them to hate women who are happy without all the high demands.

So in short: I don't think this woman exists to "please me." I don't feel good about myself. I don't like her beliefs and practices, the way I don't like many religious things that harm women. Her behavior is obnoxious but I'm forgiving of that, since I know how she got there. So I don't hate her either. I wish she could have the humility and the courage to see past her own nose, and see that I am not the enemy. Outside women are not the source of her misery. She'd be happier if she could leave her religion. Well, maybe not, who knows, but she'd have more clarity.

So sisters, when you see women acting this way, just keep in mind, there's definitely a mechanism in place.

Any hyper religious women lurking here.....hopefully this fills in some blanks, if you've acted this way and sometimes wondered "why, though?"