The Liberation Paradox: Why So Many Who Flee Tyranny Carry it with Them

 

 

By Wahab Raofi

Mass demonstrations in solidarity with Muslims have taken place across the United States and Europe in support of Gaza’s residents. People exercised their right to protest — and rightly so.

But a troubling question follows. As Gerard Baker of The Wall Street Journal asks: “Where are the protests in the West for other persecuted Muslims? Where are the defenders of the downtrodden victims of brutally repressive states? Where are the crowds in New York, London, Sydney and Rome demanding justice and freedom for Muslims imprisoned, beaten or silenced in Iran, Afghanistan, China and elsewhere?”

As one who was born into a Muslim family, I believe that many of us who left our homelands because of cultural, religious and political tyranny still carry within us a relic of what we were taught. In our subconscious there remains a reflex we struggle to unlearn: to excuse any wrongdoing committed by “our side,” and to condemn others even when they are right. We escape physically, but part of the old logic travels with us.

I once believed that by fleeing our ancestral countries, we shattered the shackles that bound us. I thought we had escaped the tyrants — the iron grip of totalitarianism and the grinding weight of what society imposed on us. We pleaded our cases: we were persecuted and deprived of unalienable rights. We sold our belongings — houses, jewelry, heirlooms — to escape. We crossed violent seas on makeshift boats, clung to cargo planes and walked through deserts, all in the desperate hope of reaching a free world.

And yet, upon arrival, many among us soon forget.

Our bodies are here, but in parts of our communities, minds remain relics of what was escaped. Culture becomes not memory or heritage, but a fortress — demanding exemption from criticism, immunity from scrutiny. Too often, immigrants from repressive societies ask for the benefits of universal citizenship while resisting its responsibilities. They want to use the freeways and institutions of a modern society and be treated as individuals, not by tribal affiliation — yet recoil when asked to accept that we are now citizens of a country that has embraced us — to see ourselves as members of our adopted land and to pledge allegiance to its laws. Faith does not confer special privilege.

This is not an argument against faith, memory or tradition. It is an argument against turning inherited belief into a shield against moral accountability. Too often, in parts of our communities, tolerance is confused with surrender, respect with silence.

In some mosques, clerics preach hatred toward non-believers. In some households, daughters are told obedience matters more than education. We are in America, yet not fully of America. This is the liberation paradox: many flee the cage, but the bird remains inside.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes this as the “mental cage” — a prison carried within, where the mind has “internalized its imprisonment.” The body may cross borders, but habits of submission, fear and tribal loyalty cross with it. The mind can be cramped just as the body can be. Refugees enjoy institutions built over centuries, freedoms secured by blood and sacrifice, yet some take them for granted while demanding the right to preserve the very mindset that built the prisons they escaped.

So we must ask: What is this “culture” so desperately defended?

In its darkest form, it is the culture where badal trades a woman for a family’s crime; where bacha bazi exploits boys; where women are barred from work and school; where underage marriage is normalized and justified by ancient texts. It is the culture the Taliban claims to defend while banning women from distributing United Nations aid. When disaster strikes, those who resent the West do not appeal to heaven — they appeal to Western institutions.

In Iran, this contradiction is institutionalized. The Islamic state punishes women for a strand of hair escaping a hijab, dragging them into police vans in the name of “morality.” Yet the same system officially permits sigheh — temporary marriage — a religiously sanctioned contract that often functions as legalized prostitution. A woman may be beaten for immodesty in the street, while a man can purchase her body under clerical paperwork. This is the moral universe we are told to “respect” as culture: where symbolism is policed, but exploitation is sanctified.

The most sardonic question lingers: If this culture is so sacred, why did so many risk death to leave it? Why would anyone choose an American prison over returning to a homeland where such “traditions” can be practiced freely?

Because, in the deepest conscience, certain truths are already known. Mutilation, child brides, and honor violence are moral wrongs — not cultural heritage. Love, honesty and dignity are not Western inventions. Every refugee knows this the moment he steps onto a boat: Life matters. Dignity matters. No authority is sacred when it crushes the human soul.

Migration is not merely geographic — it is existential. It is a transformative experience that forces people to rework the fundamentals of who they are and what they value. The solution is not to live a double life — enjoying freedom while defending the habits of “unfreedom.” The path forward is to distinguish between the dead weight of oppressive customs and the universal dignity of human values.

Let the confusion end. Let children choose how to live. The foundation of identity should not be what ancestors did in a desert fourteen centuries ago, but the truth, love and honesty embedded in human conscience. The UN Charter merely names what refugees already feel in their bones: human rights, free speech, self-governance, equality before the law.

The silence that Gerard Baker observes is not accidental – it is the echo of that mental cage. It is easier to march against distant villains than to confront the habits of the unfreedom that we carried with us. Protest feels righteous when it costs nothing, but liberation demands something far harder: the courage to apply the same moral standards to “our side” as to anyone else.

If exile is to mean more than a change of address, it must become a change of conscience. Only when we defend every victim — whether in Gaza, Kabul, Tehran or Xinjiang — will we prove that we did not merely flee tyranny, but truly left it behind. That is true liberation.