Thursday, October 16, 2008

"Infidel"

I have just read "Infidel," the autobiography of Aayan Hirsi Ali, and I found it gripping. She writes about her experiences growing up in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya and the way Islam is practiced in each. The reason she moved around so much was that her father was in one of the opposition groups to the Somali dictator Siad Barre, and after a stint in jail he left the country and helped run the armed opposition from outside.
Under Islam, which means "submission," she was taught to absolutely obey her father and other menfolk, and at the age of 5 was "excised," i.e. had her clitoris removed by a primitive operation with a scissors on the kitchen table, held down by several aunts, and then she was sewn up, all without anesthetic, so that when a scar formed, her vagina would be almost closed, so that they could tell when she was married that she was an intact virgin. Female genital mutilation is common in most of the Muslim world, particularly in Africa. Although it is strictly speaking not mandated by the Koran, it has been adoped as a religious practice by millions of Muslims.
Although her father started out as a "democrat," he was a clan elder, so that when Siad Barre was finally defeated in 1991, each of the major clans started fighting for control of Somalia, and that was why it descended into a vicious civil war that has left Somalia a failed state. As her father moved around from country to country under Islam he took another wife in each and had more children, and he largely abandoned the former wives and children. He had one wife in Somalia, one in Kenya and one in Ethiopia. While to us this seems absurd, under Islam it is quite acceptable. Aayan was the second child of his second wife. When law and order began to break down in Mogadishu he moved them first to Saudi Arabia, then to Ethiopia, where he was supported by the Government, but because her mother did not want to live in an "infidel" country, then to Kenya. Although the majority of the population is Christian, at least in Kenya there was a large minority of Somalis. For Aayan it was good to live in Nairobi because she learnt English, and later as a refugee she was able to gain experience in social work. But, although she became religious for a while, wearing a completely covering black burka and following the Muslim Brotherhood, eventually she became disillusioned with her teachers and her father. She asked too many difficult questions.
Things came to a head when her absent father visited and announced that at the age of 23 he had decided to marry her off to a distant cousin living in Canada, who was a complete stranger to her. She refused, but as a compromise it was agreed that she would travel to Toronto to see how wonderful it was there and then she would get married (there was no possibility that she could actually refuse, since that would mean her death). But, en route in Germany, although being carefully watched, she managed to slip away and take a train to Holland and there ask for political asylum. In order not to be traced she altered her surname from Magan to Ali, and although this might seem like a minor point, it had trememdous repercussions later.
In Holland, she was lucky because she spoke fluent English and was able to learn Dutch, which most of the Somali refugees from the civil war did not, and so she was able to get a job as an official translator and earn money. She was also able to interact with the Dutch and make good friends. She was granted asylum in Holland and became a Dutch citizen, but thru her experiences as a translator she learnt a lot about what was actually going on in the refugee camps and homes of refugees in Holland. Her family did trace her, but eventually they gave up trying to persuade her to return voluntarily.
She wrote, Holland "..was an infidel country, whose way of life we Muslims were supposed to oppose and reject. Why was it then, so much better run, better led, and made for such better lives than the places we came from? Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshipped and his laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor and at war?" (p.222)
She took various courses, and was accepted at prestigious Leiden University to study political science. As she progressed she met many people and was offered a job as a researcher for the Dutch Labor Party. However, her experiences and opinions clashed with some of theirs. Particularly, she saw that giving Govt. funds to support Muslim schools in Holland, that was considered a multicultural approach, was only enabling the Muslims to remain in their own restricted world, and in those schools they were teaching against the values of the liberal, democratic Dutch society. In other words, a separate culture was fluourishing within the general society which had values and goals quite at odds with it, there was little integration.
Many politicans did not want to hear this kind of thing, and Aayan's articles and speeches became controversial. The Liberal Party, more conservative than Labor, offered her a position on their list in the next election, and she stood as a candidate and won. So she became a member of the Dutch Parliament after only 10 years in Holland. She made many good friends who had helped her and she was struck by the incongruity of quotes of Osama bin Laden from the Koran: "You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as friends, they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them." (p. 271)
Although bogged down in administrative issues and constrained by her party policies, she still became a controversial and famous figure in Holland, because, although she herself was a Muslim, she spoke out against the harsh treatment of Muslim women and children in Holland. At one point she insisted that "honor killings" of young women be listed separately by the police, and although opposed by her party, the police agreed to try to do this in two provinces, and when they found that 11 young women had been murdered in one year in two small provinces, the whole of Holland was shocked. Also, the women's shelters were swamped with beaten and battered Muslim women, who were automatically returned to their abusive husbands because they had no independent status as refugees. She campaigned that all women refugees be given separate status from their husbands so that if they did leave their husbands they could be treated as separate individuals, and again she won.
She wrote, "I am convinced that this is the largest and most important issue that our society and our planet will face in this century. Every society that is still in the rigid grip of Islam oppresses women and also lags behind in development. Most of these societies are poor; many are full of conflict and war. Societies that respect the rights of women and their freedom are wealthy and peaceful" (p. 296) and "what matters is that atrocities against women and children are being carried out in Europe. What matters is that governments and societies must stop hiding behind a hollow pretense of tolerance so that they can recognise and deal with this problem." (p. 310).
At this point she declared that she no longer considered herself a Muslim. As a result various Muslim groups threatened her life and she was given protection as an MP by the Dutch security services. One of the many people she met was Theo van Gogh, who was a left-wing film maker. They decided to make a short movie together about the treatment of women under Islam, and it was completed in 2004 and was called "Submission." Although it lasted only 10 mins it caused rioting in Holland and death threats were issued against her and Theo van Gogh. Unfortunately, he ignored the threats and on Nov. 2, 2004 he was stabbed and shot in broad daylight in Amsterdam by a Moroccan man, who was captured. This was a major event in Dutch history and resulted in major changes in Dutch society and attitudes.
Aayan herself was given major security protection and since Holland is such a small country, she was even flown to Massachusetts and kept almost like a prisoner in a motel in a small industrial town. She returned to Holland after a few weeks but was not allowed to attend the funeral of Theo van Gogh. She decided that she could not stand this treatment, and at the same time, because she had many enemies, questions were being asked about her background and it was discovered that she had lied on her asylum form, putting her name as "Ali" instead of "Magan." This was considered a breach of law, and her "friend" the Interior Minister revoked her Dutch citizenship. This caused a furore in Holland and Aayan admitted this "mistake" and announced her resignation from Parliament. However, she retained a lawyer, who argued that since in Somalia there are no such things as real surnames and people simply took the name of a famous clan ancestor, it so happened that she had substituted "Ali" which was the actual name of her great-great-grandfather, who was a famous fighter given the title Magan meaning "warrior" in Somali. So under Somali law it was quite legitimate for her to use this name, and the Dutch courts accepted her substitution. As a result the Minister of the Interior was forced to resign, and so was the PM, and so the Dutch Govt. fell because of Aayan Hirsi Ali/Magan.
She wrote, "Life is better in Europe than in the Muslim countries because human relations are better, and one reason why human relations are better is that in the West life on earth is valued in the here and now, and individuals enjoy rights that are recognized and protected by the state....When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance and freedom, I look at reality and I see that it simply isn't so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically for fear of being called racist." (p. 348-9)
So Aayan received back her Dutch citizenship, but then quit Dutch politics and now works at a Think Tank in Washington DC dealing with issues of Islam and its impact on the West.

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