I know a woman from Iran who has gone through something similar. She came to Canada to study as a grad student. Brilliant woman! At first we were the enemy. She wore the hijab, maintained links with home and didn't socialize.I think having adult male students treat her like Canadians generally treat teachers really threw her for a loop! Gradually she started making friends and connecting with colleagues. Eventually the hijab was tossed in the bin and she seemed essentially Western. She also completely cut off contact with her family and is still apt to spout off angrily if Iran is even mentioned. Her family's worst fears were made manifest. She was seduced and corrupted by Western devils. She is probably an embarrassment to them, but a distant one.

This is the scary thing. For many women, the price of freedom in the West is losing their home and family forever. I've seen other equally brilliant women in similar circumstances maintain their walls throughout their studies and disappear back home never to be heard from again. For them, the price of freedom is too high. I can't imagine what it must be like to face such a choice.

-----------------

Edit: While some would say this is a social issue that doesn't belong on HN, these women are potentially your coworkers or employees. I would argue that they have special needs which may be important to understand. Specifically, if your workplace is full of people who don't socialize with each other outside work hours, the odds of these women going back home, possibly without much warning, probably increase significantly.

Iran is in a specific situation right now. Unlike Saudi Arabia or Lennon, Islam practices are mandatory in public. Things like wearing hijab. As you might or might not expect, this have reverse effect in practice. It also lowered islam's repetitation in our culture. I would say more than half of Iranian yought do not believe in Islam. As a result you will see less violence against women from Iranian people. it's hard to find young Iranian in the USA or Canada that still practices Islam. It peobably means that person is from a family with strong religious belifes. It's hard to deal with both your family and enjoying your freedom. I appreciate your understanding on this.

It can't be said often enough: Islam does not have an exclusive license for religious nutjobbery.

What it shares with other groups known for nutjobbery, such as Fundamentalist Baptist churches or ultraorthodox Judaism is the fact that Islam does not have an established hierarchy with established public figures: anyone can hang out their shingle, call himself Imam and open up a mosque in part of a rented warehouse, just as anyone can call himself Pastor and set up their church with their band of dedicated followers.

The public eye is a strong force for good.

One of my best friends in high school grew up in a conservative Christian household, and her life was a strikingly similar (if less extreme) version of what's stated here.

She's 17 and doesn't have a key to her house. Her parents read and question her about her texts, Facebook account, and internet history. In middle school, she read popular fiction (Harry Potter, Inkspell, etc.) in class because only Christian-themed books were allowed at home. Her parents usually refused the permission slips on PG and PG-13 movies. She's not permitted to ride in a car unless the driver is a relative or adult friend of the family (which seriously impedes social life in a quiet suburb). Shortly after her 17th birthday she was granted permission to date, then bowed to her parents' pressure to break up with one of our mutual friends because she liked him but it wasn't going to result in marriage. Before that magical threshold, she wasn't allowed to be alone with me (or any other male friend), even in a public place. Her parents expect straight As. The only exception was the test on evolution in freshmen biology. That one, she was required to fail.

She is occasionally upset by her parents inteference, but is on the whole a firm believer in piety, strict parenting and plentiful spanking. She instinctively rejects any suggestion that a parent's judgement could ever be wrong (like when friends complain about their parents), or that any of what was taken from her could be considered a right. The Saudi Arabian Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice (morality police) came up in the news one day, and that struck her (to my horror) not as Orwellian, but as a brilliant idea and something we need here.

And now, having been trusted with exactly 0 important decisions in her life, she's moving away to college this fall (secular, fortunately). I hope she has a moment like Marwa's. I hope she realizes the signficance of the fact that she has keys to her room, the password to her computer, and the PIN to her phone. I hope she realizes that she can Google and text and email without fear of retribution, that no one will tell her that her 15 minutes of internet time are up or demand to know why she checked out that book or called that boy. But if I had to put money on it, I'd say she'll raise her children the same way.

Aggressively protecting the sexual and religious purity of daughters isn't unique to the Muslim world. Some would call it responsible parenting. But I think it's important, before we write this off as a "those people" problem, that not-otherwise-outwardly-crazy Christians do it too.

Is it naive to say that any change in terms of discrimination will have to come from within? What are effective ways we can improve the situation, globally? The imperial solution is right out, it causes a lot of harm and probably flat out does not work. Think global act local, and work on getting rid of discrimination of women and others in our own societies? Lean on governments to legislate societal change or at least stop legislating the status quo? Cut economic ties to punish discrimination, or increase them in the hope that this will, somehow, lead to a globalization of our attitude?

I'm sure many people here will stress the positive effect easy communication can have on the issue; global communication gives people a glimpse into other, less discriminatory regimes, local communication brings together people who might feel isolated otherwise and lets them organise. I suppose the cell phone has done a lot to improve the situation, in its way; even if she had to hide her (male) contacts under female pseudonyms, it offered her a way of communicating in a clandestine manner, that feature not being limited to talking to guys, obviously.

> What are effective ways we can improve the situation, globally?

In many ways, we've already done it, and are doing it, and it just takes a long time to take effect. It takes generations, and, as you said, trying to do it more quickly (that is, the imperial solution) is likely to not only fail, but backfire and result in a real solution taking longer and being uglier in the end.

This is a great, moving piece, broadly reflective of a lot of issues I feel strongly about, and I was thrilled to read it.

But I also don't think political stories like this belong on HN, even when those politics overlap mine almost entirely. I can't imagine how HN will find a way to disagree with itself on this article, and dread any discussion we might have about it.

I flagged this and hope others will too.

Outside the obvious use case of sexting, Snapchat's value proposition might seem unclear. Until you consider the suburban teenager whose parents gave her an iPhone but might at any point demand to read her texts and Facebook messages.

The parenting styles, social mores, and politics of the people who use the things hackers make determine how that technology will affect people's lives, and is pretty important to consider.

Marwa demonstrates the symbolism of having keys to your home. I think I first got keys when I was 12. Let's say Lockitron becomes mainstream. Will you buy your 12-year-old an iPhone? If not, will it affect his identity to be unable to enter his own house without your permission/intervention? It did for Marwa.

I understand that it seems purely political at first glance, but there is some interesting technology->politics interaction in that article.

I don't dispute that there's a way to connect this story back to HN, I simply think you can do that with virtually any story.

It is all politics: snowden, positive discrimination, global warming, women in it, starving children in africa.

Yet somehow womens rights in muslim countries are not even tolerated for discusion.

All of those stories should be flagged too.

Lebanon is not a Muslim country. There is a difference between a discussion on women's rights in Muslim countries and an "Ex-Muslim's" rant on a certain religion.

54% Lebanese are muslims. Do word count on "muslim", only a few times. Most of her "rant" is about not being able to walk on streets and abuse from her family. I really do not get how this is religion related.

I sugest we should not write about rape cases in India either, it would be just a rant.

This is a question of whether the post is relative to HN, not whether it is related to Islam or not. Rape and Anti Islam are all good, just not this specific rant. You are doing exactly what the OP does, hasty generalizations.

i must say, it is very easy for such a post to fall under controversial categories. i believe well informed individuals on HN will flag this as an attempt to go viral by being controversial.

there is lot of unrelated junk on HN. Nobody cares to flag socialism vs kapitalism discussion. So why flaging this post?

Is this not of interest to hackers? Or is it too off topic?

What human interest story isn't of interest to hackers? Hackers are human beings.

The title conflicts with the Disclaimer, also with the OP's twitter description "Ex-Muslim". Seems like a rant against a certain religion/culture after recently converting/migrating. I agree the quality of this post is not subjective enough to be on HN.

To the author's credit, though, she seems to be communicating from her subjective experience as a former Muslim. As in, "X" was what her life was like in Lebanon, and "Y" was what her life was like in the USA.

I found it an interesting window into her psychology - going from one culture to a radically different one.

i see it as a person ranting about their x religion, be it islam, judaism, christianity, or even atheism. Not HN material. This is good material for people who think Lebanon is a Muslim country for instance.

This is not crititicism of islam, there are many muslims, who do not lock up their doughters.