Meeting the French Female Laurence of Arabia

In the name of the one with the 99 names, the compassionate,

I was sitting in the sun on a terras when suddenly someone mentioned that a French lady who formerly had worn a burka and was a radical Muslim wanted to meet me, the Avant Garde Imam.

He explained to me that she was Muslim for more then 40 years and only recently took off the veil and left her religion. I had only a few days left in Paris. I would leave on the last day of the month of Hadj, so I said that if she wanted to meet me that it would have to be today. And so it happened.

When I met her I couldn't find anything about her that would indicate that she was a radical Muslim with a burka. Her eyes were blue and curious and she had a dynamic aura around her. She looked like an adventure lady. And when she started talking about her life she didn't disappoint. 

As a young woman she went on a journey to Africa, alone!

She visited one African country after another, until she ended up in Togo, married the village imam and flew over to Asia with him. There she found herself right in the middle of Afghanistan during the war with Russia. She became a nurse and took care of the wounded mujahideen who came back from battle. Her first marriage didn't work out so she married an Arab. In that place and time a woman had to be married, living alone was not an option and so she accepted the proposal. In the hospital she had seen it all. In that time the Taliban were seen as hero's. She had to wear a burka, but she did it without any hesitation, because it protected her. In that place it was not safe for a Western woman with blue eyes like her to be recognisable on the street. She could easily end up kidnapped. 

But she wore the burka only during her stay in the land of the Taliban. Once she came back, after decades of traveling in Muslim lands, she started to reflect on the religion. She never really did that and at a certain point her ideas had become quite radical. "I wanted to follow Islam literally." So she wanted to do everything that was written in the Quran and the Hadieth literally. Violence included.

Once she started reflecting she realised that this was wrong, and so she eventually took the bold decision to leave Islam altogether and to go back to her French way of life. Her life as a Muslim was without joy. She wore dark long garments and her life was dedicated to the afterlife. She couldn't have any fun. So she claimed back her life, but not without scars. Her own children who are still Muslims didn't want anything to do with her now that she left Islam.

Her eyes had the happiness of a caged bird that had finally been set free. But her freedom had a price. She was cut off from her life of more then 40 years.

I told her that she met the wrong representatives of Islam. Islam had always been about joy for me. About compassion, respect, love. You cannot read the Quran and the Hadieth without a deeper understanding of the context in which they were written. Even if you want to apply Islam literally, you cannot do that, because Islam came in a language, a time and a culture that is not ours. If we want to live according to the Quran, we will have to grasp its message first. And the message was not violence or oppression! The message of the Quran was and still is compassion. But for the former burka lady it was too late to hear about a humanist Islam. She associated Islam with a heartless set of rules and she was not digging that anymore. Her only way out was to leave the religion.

She was happy now. 

I couldn't help but think that if she had met someone like me a long time ago when she started to learn about Islam, that she would still be a Muslim and a happy one too. But I am glad she is happy, because in the end Allah IS joy.
There are many roads that lead to Allah and today I had learned that sometimes the best way to find Allah is by letting go of what our conception is of Allah and to simply follow our heart and common sense, like this lady did.

We sat at the water line of the Seine and ate mussles with fries. The sun was setting.