Reflection V
One of the delusions Muslim children are being taught very early on in their Islamic upbringing is the binary distinction between ending up in an idealistic paradise or hell. The effect such a claim has on the human brain is not the subject of my writings for this part, instead, I will focus on the idea of a paradise or hell formed differently in my brain as someone who grew up with this claim. After dying in this materialistic world, the soul is supposed to travel to paradise or hell as a final destination. From there on, it will start its infinite existence in the spiritual hereafter. There is an exception: someone who ends up in hell can enter paradise after being forgiven for burning enough for his/her sins. In this case, everyone who enters hell first, and then paradise, will have a mark on the forehead, symbolizing having passed through hell first. There are many kinds of descriptions like this about the hereafter in Islam that depict a hierarchy in paradise too, which sounds very human to me, but I would like to dedicate this post to how God's promises affect one's fantasies. Thus I would like to tell you more about my old personal fantasies about how I would want my part of paradise to be, if I were 'deserving enough' to enter paradise in the first place.
Allah gifting faithful men numerous maiden women in paradise
One of my first hard pills to swallow in Islam was when I learned at a young age that Allah would gift faithful men in paradise many maiden women with whom they can have as much pleasure as they want. After I heard this claim, I had the feeling that Allah was not really pure as a God with His female human creation. Hearing the idea that men would be 'gifted' 'maiden women' made me feel worthless as a woman, like a second being after men. The thought of God creating another version of women as thoughtless objects only to satisfy males in the hereafter was doing things with my self-image as a Muslim girl. Teaching this specification of what will happen in paradise to children automatically screams male privilege in our subconsciousness, which leaves its trace throughout the lives of all Muslims. For men, it gives them the delusion that they really deserve such a thing and for women, it only makes them believe they are worthless outside the spectrum of sexual performance, next to other sexist problems in Islam.
Furthermore, some Muslim scholars explain details such as how these maiden women will always be young, thus they do not age, and about how white and fertile they are. This chapter in Islam is so sociological in a way that Muslims themselves hardly realize that it reflects the sexual suppression of Muslim men in their daily lives and the marriage of Mohamed with Aisha. When Muslim scholars focus on the preciousness of these maiden women by specifying their white skin and fertility, doesn't it ring the bells of a paedophilic and racist approach to what the most beautiful women are because this is what God offers in paradise? Why is Allah's gift to faithful men many maiden women with white skin? And what age range comes to mind when we hear about (sex objects) maiden women who do not 'age' and who are fertile? Let's not forget to take into account that this promise of 'God' automatically makes us believe that He actually accepts His male creation to be paedophilic and racist.
In this question, we can think about our answer by also reminding ourselves that Prophet Mohamed's wife Aisha was six years old when he married her, for which I truly am disrespecting children and women by calling Mohamed's act 'a marriage'. Mohamed was 'patient' when he waited for Aisha to be nine years old to have 'sexual intercourse' with her, which nowadays can not be called 'sexual intercourse' anymore. That would immediately be defined as rape. Children are prone to be manipulated very easily in such a way that they do not even know what manipulation is. A mature person can sometimes hardly make the difference between a neutral and manipulative statement, so let's not start the discussion by defending Mohamed's act by claiming Aisha was not raped. Even if Aisha would have said 'yes' to Mohamed's requests, it would not count as consent. Her age will never count as a decent way of consenting to sex.
Considering these facts, my thoughts on why Allah would promise such a thing to faithful men become clear now that I am not Muslim anymore. We can immediately scrap 'Allah' in this reasoning: these fantasies about maiden women in paradise can only be words that are coming out of the mouths of men. It's very tragic that they made themselves believe God would create over 70 specific maiden women for each of them in the hereafter. If I were God and saw how men treated my creation on earth, that is women, I would have not only forbidden them to see women in paradise, I would just have created different paradises for men and women. I wouldn't further care whether they were bored or were starting a war without women. As a God, I would call myself a clown for creating 'an even more beautiful specimen of women' for men.
Allah disappointed me, but I loved Him: I created my own paradise
After briefly clarifying with only one reason why the approach of paradise in Islam is so problematic on many levels, I would like to make the reader understand why as an ex-Muslim, who couldn't escape Islam mentally, I started to create and yearn for my own idealistic paradise. When I was in my early twenties, I started to explore and understand God in my own way, because deep inside, my mind and body knew there were many controversies in Islam from which I slowly began to escape in my head and started to create my own version of the rules in the religion. I stopped reading the same repetitive verses to pray to God, but instead, they were replaced by requests I made to God for changes in His rules... After praying or reading a prayer to God, I would ask Him not to perform something specific that He would do, such as giving faithful men over 70 maiden women in paradise. As I was at an age where I would slowly be open for romantic partners, I started to listen to the voice in me and realized how this approach was just so wrong. Instead of asking why He would do such a thing, to which I would probably get the silent treatment (for a good reason), I would still 'respect' His authority and rather ask if He could just not give the man I will love in the future over 70 maiden women. This is only one example of how I mentally started to rebel softly during prayers, but it's not the only thing I asked Him not to do. Now that I think of it, it is hilarious of me to dare ask God not to do something that He is supposed to do because He decided so. This only is enough to show how problematic Islam was for me. I was mostly asking for changes instead of favors.
My own paradise as an introvert: a human-free nature with animals
A true faithful Muslim man can say how controlling my prayer to God is for my future man not to have any maiden woman after death without asking his 'permission' to interfere with his eternal life in paradise. In the end, that is what most Muslim men dream of. One thing I will do is to voice my wants, but the other thing I will not do as an introvert is to control whether my request is being realized or not. It is the reason why I would pray to God for such a request, but I didn't want to know whether God would realize it or not, which is ultimately the reason why I also prayed not to have my future lover in my paradise. I preferred not to see him at all rather than having the risk of seeing him with maiden women and knowing God didn't accept my prayer. Above all, in this life, but also in the eternal afterlife, I put peace of mind above anything else, even if it is choosing not to see my future lover after death because I would forever be trapped in a situation that would be humiliating to my identity as a woman. Thus, my personality includes choosing some sort of harmony above a type of love that will hurt me. Some can call this being a rational person, others can call it being egoistic. I don't know which one it is, but I know that I choose what's best for me. These words I express about my wish for paradise can sound childish or dramatic for some, but that is fine because I too was gaslighting myself for being immature for asking such a request as a woman to God. No one's opinion will beat the true disappointment I felt for this detail that would be so decisive in my afterlife. God was supposed to be the one who'd understand me without me having to express it. The more I knew about God, the more I lowered my expectations of what a God is supposed to do or promise. I started to accept that God was more of a 'something' that didn't understand women. Instead of questioning the figure of Allah who sounded and promised things that were in accordance with most men's fantasies, I accepted that He was just the Universal God and He knew better than all of us.
My personality and wishes reflected my relationship with God
I hope to be clear on why I sought a human-free space in paradise and replaced any possible human connection with my love for animals and nature. Possessing a quite fragile inner world, I prayed for a space in paradise in which I wouldn't be disappointed at all by, for example, having to face something I did not accept: my future lover sharing me with many maiden women. I ended up choosing not to understand the complete nature of God in the context of giving men weird promises. I didn't want to know or understand why He was like that. All I would ask Him, in return for my suppressed disappointment towards Him (that He surely must have realized hypothetically because He is God, right?), was to keep me away from having a miserable afterlife with something He promised men but that I did not want to see. Questioning Allah is a never-ending vicious circle where one can not get healthy satisfactory answers. I couldn't get out of that vicious circle when I tried to understand God's intentions and I'm glad I don't have to undergo the distressing mental exercise to make it rational, which never worked.
Now that I understand myself better, I can confirm that I was actually rebelling against the lack of Allah's consent in asking his female creation to give something to her partner male creation. It was all about the lack of respect from the beginning and the fact that I didn't have the power in front of God to change that.
Visualizing my paradise
I started to fantasize about a paradise that would be human-free, only to escape mostly the idea of seeing my future lover enjoying other women, which is a hilarious and radical decision. My wish would only come true if Allah also didn't have plans to implant in women some sort of forced acceptance that would feel natural in the hereafter for gifting His male creations maiden women. Now comes the visualization of my idealistic paradise. The way I wanted my space in paradise to be was, most importantly, to have my favourite animals around me. I would be in a beautiful vintage house trapped inside nature and a garden whose plants overgrew and covered the outside of the house in a beautiful green palette.
In my garden, I would have flowers of all sorts on which some of my cats would sit, hang around, or even pluck some to bring them to me. There would also be fountains all around the garden where birds can drink and splash water on themselves. My favourite seasons are autumn, winter and spring. The Sun would not dry or cause discomfort for any of us as I wouldn't ever live during summer. The warmth during spring would be enough for me. When I would walk a bit outside the zone of my garden, there would be a river with the beautiful sound of water, and not so far from it, the waterfall could be heard and seen. A handful of colourful butterflies would fly around, but my friends that would always be with me would be cats, owls and crows. The reason why I also would want to have crows is related to their loyal traits. Owls are very interesting, cute and calm animals to have around. Looking at my style and fantasies, no wonder why later on, when I discovered Studio Ghibli, I loved their vibes, because it just aligned with what I liked to see: human and animal friendship in the beautiful landscapes of nature.
Of course, when I yearn for such an English garden, I can not escape the senses in my DNA from my Turkish ancestors. I would like to live in a landscape like the one from the city I originate from my Turkish parents, which is a landscape with mountains like those in Bolu. As animals, I also yearn for one of the best friend animals of the Turks, which is a horse. I could have a whole zone of nature for a couple of horses I wanted to have. All of this was the perfect idealization of my paradise for my personal introverted experience: an eternity of low stimulation peaceful life, and high peace of mind with my animal friends in my independent world with zero disturbance from the outside. I could exist for eternity in this deep experience of serenity, hoping that my lover is not enjoying maiden women and even if he does, I wouldn’t have a clue about it. During my experience in my own version of paradise, I would thus not seek the broad experience like most extroverted people would. To understand the difference between deep experience and broad experience, I would say we can look at it quantitatively. A deep experience doesn't need much stimulation and focuses on the depth of a single or minimal experience. A broad experience symbolizes 'many' experiences in which different events are involved with large and different crowds and many external energy-consuming moments.
Conclusion: shaking off the fairy tales
When I woke up from the delusion of the Quran being the so-called 'word of God', having lost this fantasy of an idealistic paradise was not sombre at all, compared to the loss of the many other controversies in the Quran, Mohamed's acts and words that didn't make sense at all. This post was about how God's promises affected my fantasy and how I imagined paradise when I was a Muslim: not questioning why Allah would reflect male fantasies but instead, adapting my wish to fit the narrative. If I had to idealize paradise by adjusting it to my actual state of mind now, the image would look a bit different. The first thing I would add to the picture would be the ones I love, but my introverted side still wouldn't allow too much traffic either.
As I expressed in my first reflection on this blog, the loss of a delusion, in this case, a fantasy of an idealistic paradise, is only a wake-up call to reality and as a realist (that I thought I was), I couldn't be happier to be an even more complete realist after my para dies.
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