Sibel Kekilli Has Left Instagram Over Harrassment, Mainly From Muslims

Sibel Kekilli: “You don’t accept other people, especially not women or people of other beliefs”

The popular German actress Sibel Kekilli (born in Germany in 1980 as the daughter of immigrants), known to an international audience as ‘Shae’ in Game of Thrones, has left Instagram over harrassment mainly by Muslims.

Bild quote her saying:

“This is the first and the last time that I will speak to the people who hate me, most of them are Turks, unfortunately.
I will no longer tolerate threats, insults and disgusting sex photos that you send me. You are full of hate and jealousy. You call yourselves Muslims, yet you don’t accept other people, especially not women or people of other beliefs. You are full of sh**… Honestly, I feel sorry for you. Stop following me. I will say goodbye for a little while.”

Sibel’s own experience as growing up as a girl in a “relatively modern” Muslim family in Germany, not being allowed to go to college, or to partake in school field trips, led her to break away from her family and champion womens’ rights.

She caused a “scandal” in 2006, when, in a speech in Berlin addressing domestic violence, she said:

“I have experienced for myself that both physical and psychological abuse are regarded as normal in a Muslim family. Sadly, violence belongs to the culture of Islam.”

Part of the audience booed her, one man interrupted her speech and yelled: “Islam has got nothing to do with violence. You humiliate our people!”, and the Turkish consul general got up and left in protest.

In a speech on behalf of Terre des Femmes on International Women’s Day, 2015, Kekilli called Islamic culture “merciless”. She said women like herself were treated “worse than murderers”, which inflicted psychological damage upon women, and asked Muslim men to let women live their lives in peace.

Dear Mr. President, 
dear Ms. Schaad, 
dear guests 
Sorry, I’m quite nervous. 

I love my culture. But I lost a big part of it on my way to freedom. I paid a lot for this [my] way. My way was long, painful and self-destructive. But my vision was always the freedom, and for this I also got carried away / got on the wrong track sometimes. 

Nevertheless, I was and I am willing to get and go through this [carry this burden]. To go my own way still costs me a lot of courage and power. Every day. This culture I was born into is full of treasures, full of wonders and she can be merciless. 

Every day I try, in spite of hostile and prejudice, to go my way heads held high. I never committed a capital crime, regardless of this get people like I treated – by some people – like a murderer. To the men of this culture I’d like to say today, this is to fathers, brothers and husbands: ‘I respect your culture, your religion/faith, live, like you think it’s right. 

Tolerance means, to let every person free space that everyone needs to live a self-reliant life. This means: I would live my life in a way that I think it’s the right way without any restrictions or death threat from your side. Because fear and threats have nothing to do with love, understanding or even freedom. 

Do you want, that I stay without because of fear? Servile, trapped and unhappy? Like a lot of women, whose fear is bigger than their courage and power to free themselves up from these constraints. Why are you expelling me? 

Why do I have to go away, when I don’t want to go the path full of rules, which you had chosen for me? Why do you want me to wear this tight corset of rules and obligations and string it tighter and tighter, although that I’m not able to breath under this circumstances? 

Why you are not able to accept freedom as a value for everyone? You don’t have to understand me and my wishes, but respect it. I am an individual. Why the heck is the public image more important to you than a happy life of your daughter, sister or wife? 

How would you like to live a life as you demand from us to live it? With constraints, provisions, suppressed emotions, white lies and fears. 

What is so threatening on a free woman? Why is she kept small from her own family and the Muslim community? Why are you scared from a self-confident woman? Why do you don’t understand that freedom is nothing threatening? That Freedom doesn’t harm but is an option of self-development/personal growth. 

How can you demand tolerance, when you are not able to be tolerant by yourself? I don’t do you anything. But as more as you drive me into a corner, as more I’ll try to defend myself. Or I atrophy and shrink (?) because I don’t have the power to defense myself against you and a whole culture. Because, the Muslim culture can be merciless. 

If a human is an outsider once, he’ll be an outsider forever. Yes I know, your motivation is the public image, what should the others think about us? What are they talking about us? I’ll aks you: How do I have to act as a woman, that the others don’t let me down? 

I do understand your dilemma. If a member of the family is different, follow her dreams, go her own ways, she transfers this stigma to the whole family. As a possible consequence, maybe her brother doesn’t get a woman to merry, because his family is fallen. 

The way out of this dilemma should be to threaten or even kill the own daughter? Is this still connected to tradition? Or with religion? This crude idea of culture paired with a traditional mindset has an incredible destructive power. 

The family is mighty. The tradition is even mightier. People who have the courage to fight against all these resistances and unsnap from all this has, as a consequence, not only lost his family but also the public respect and has to live a life in the society without protection. 

Is it worth it? To exchange the own ident, the family and the culture for a life in freedom? Because that it’s exactly what it means. To strip off the identity you had so far. This questioning itself is schizophrenic. 

People who move between these two worlds suffer of an unbelievable pressure. It makes you crooked, sad, depressive. I don’t want to lie to others or myself, do everything hided just to have the change that the community hopefully accepts me. 

I want to live a self-determined life without explain myself or ostracized by the society.