But the Imams say that it is right.

Her man, her life, her love, strapped a bomb to his chest and climbed aboard a bus full of old women and children. He blew himself up, and took the futures and pasts of others with him. This is good, in the eyes of the mosque. This is how a war is supposed to be fought. Put the children and mothers of the enemy in your sights, and pull the trigger. And kill yourself. For in heaven, you will be awarded sexual pleasures beyond imagining.

What about me? she thought. Is my husband enjoying virgins in heaven, waiting for me with love? Where is the devotion, where is the decency in this? Am I to believe the Imam, that this is what it means to be muslim? That my husband chose to live in paradise with his sexual slaves, instead of staying here with his wife, and his children? Is this the culmination of 10 years of marriage and 15 years of higher learning, Arab-style?

I will take my hate, my disapointment, and my feelings of betrayal to pen. I will divide them 95 ways. I will nail them to the door of the Kaaba in Mecca. That is all she must do. She can save a fifth of the world. But she won’t. She will take those parts of the truth that bring her respect. And she will cow down to the hatred that has gripped her world. She will accept the deaths of infants and old women, of stone-age sociology and primitive sexual superstitions, she will enjoy her role as widow and slave. She has no pride, no ambition, no energy. She will bring her children up to aspirations of martyrdom. That is all these people understand.

There will be no reformation.