I am tired of the media’s shoddy reporting on how ‘repressed’ Muslim women are ever since the Archbishops comments and I am amused by their demonisation of Sharia law with respect to women.

I am a Muslim woman who lives by the Sharia law and this law gave me the right to inherit, the right to vote, the right to divorce, the right to marry whom I please centuries before women’s rights groups, in the West, such as the suffragettes started campaigning for women’s rights.

My family lives under the Sharia law and they don’t force me to wear a scarf, they don’t force me to dress modestly. It is something that I myself choose to do. My family cannot force me to get married since Sharia law forbids them from doing so, they cannot perform a so-called honour killing because sharia law forbids it. They won’t condone female genital mutilation since this is forbidden by Sharia law. They know this because they are educated in their religion and they are educated in Sharia law. It is not the laws of this country that stop my family from a heinous crime towards me because if it were the laws of this country then we still wouldn’t be hearing of families involved in acts such as forced marriages etc. Islam is the only thing which stands in the way of my family committing a serious grievance against me.

If other Muslim women feel like they are not getting their rights then I would say that they don’t know their rights, they haven’t been educated in their rights. If their families condone honour killings, forced marriages and genital mutilation then they are not educated about Islam. They know nothing about Islam. They are just cultural ignorants which is what one becomes when emptied of morals.

If my family tried to force me into marriage, the first place I would turn to is the Sharia court because Islam is the only religion who allowed me the right of choice. Not the English court where there would be a danger of being stuck up in the media as an example of a 'repressed' Muslim woman, my family, myself and my religion exploited, demonised and ridiculed with the result of becoming estranged and ending up in some sort of womens right 'asylum' still waiting for my rights to be acknowledged and my family to be held accountable and accept me. Nor would I go to the crappy Sharia courts who claim to be going by ‘Sharia’ law and then don’t give a woman her God given right. No I would go to a Sharia court who gives me my right and if they are not giving me my rights I will know and I will hold them to account because I too have access to the Quran. I too have access to my religion. I have read it and I know all the rights it has given me and I'm tired of everyone, be it ignorant Imams, journalists or politicians who try to take my rights away from me or who try and make out that Islam hasn’t given me any rights especially since they have no knowledge of Islam in the first place. The beauty of Islam, is that it is accessible to all. It is not hidden and it upholds the notion of ‘accountability’ and I deplore those Muslims who don’t uphold this notion, who put ignorant Islamic scholars on high pedestals in the name of ‘religiosity’, allowing Islam to be demonised so effectively.

As for those women who are crying out for their rights, Islam has already given you your rights if you were to educate yourself. You don’t need to go any further then a true Islamic scholar, educated in the correct Sharia law and who sits in an educated Sharia court and believe me these scholars are plentiful too. Muslim women are not so ‘victimised’ and ‘repressed’ as the western media likes to make them out to be in order to sell their stories. It’s about time we started to acknowledge the rights that Islam has given us instead of being caught up in a culturally ignorant whirlpool because this is why Muslim women end up being repressed. Hold those accountable who are using culture to subjugate you and use Islam to fight them back.

I ask all you politicians, journalists and ignorant scholars out there, don’t speak for me. I can speak for myself.

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