The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  In the Netherlands, Muslims claim they are demonized by the press, which drives them into the arms of terrorism.

  Nobody is forced by journalists to do anything they don’t want. Does your head belong to someone else rather than to you? Everything you do here in the free West is your choice. For heaven’s sake, grow up! Take responsibility for yourself. That is the crux of the matter with the Muslims; they have never been good at taking responsibility for themselves. At the madrassas [Koran lessons] we have it hammered into us that Islam is superior. Historically, the Koran was conceived after the Jewish Torah, and therefore it is thought to contain God’s final word. This is a dangerous viewpoint because it condones anything that is done in the name of Islam, even if it seems wrong. No Muslim, not even a well-educated and moderate one, can safely raise any issues related to his faith. Simply and solely because we have never learned to ask a single question about the Koran.

  Muslims in the Netherlands are quick to accuse anyone critical of Islam of racism.

  I find this terribly hypocritical. The kind of racism Muslims have to put up with in the West is nothing compared to the treatment non-Arabs in the Arabian world suffer. Nobody here is putting the slightest obstacle in the way of the Muslims. On the contrary: people are careful not to take too firm a line against female circumcision because that is part of “their culture.” Surely, culture is not a reason to tolerate human suffering. Why are the police not allowed to intervene when a father threatens to kill his daughter if she does not want to be circumcised? The standard reply is that Western women are just as much manipulated by the ideals of beauty that dominate their culture. They feel under pressure to have plastic surgery. But there is a big difference: I have never heard of a situation in which parents disowned their daughter because she refused to have her breasts enlarged. But I am aware of such cases if the daughter did not want to be circumcised or enter into an arranged marriage. The worst thing is that this worry about discrimination pushes Muslim women even further down into the pit. Whom do you help by saying nothing? It’s selfish not to want to appear racist.

  I read somewhere on the Web that you have been dubbed Bin Laden’s nightmare.

  I am openly lesbian. Muslims are forced to regard this as a sin. We have held this view for hundreds of years, they say. Is that a valid argument for rejecting homosexuals? Because you have been doing it for such a long time? The Koran states that the diversity of nature is a blessing. That should shut them up.

  Nine

  Freedom Requires

  Constant Vigilance

  At times I end up in an unfamiliar situation that will lead me in a new direction. This has happened a few times recently. I became a politician, for instance; and, stranger still, I joined the conservative liberal VVD Party [People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy]. Now, who would have expected that? Certainly not me.

  In 2002, I was having lunch in at a restaurant in the basement of the Dutch house of representatives. Here journalists can have a drink with politicians in a relaxed atmosphere and ask them questions off the record. As I was sitting there, a nice, charming gentleman came up to my table and asked if I would be willing to say a few words on May 4 (Memorial Day in memory of World War II victims) about freedom of speech.

  The charming gentleman in question was Caspar Becx, the newly appointed chairman of the Nieuwspoort International Press Centre. He said he found it strange that I had been threatened in the Netherlands as a consequence of using my right to say what I think. Is it not strange to be a member of parliament and not to be able to go anywhere without bodyguards?

  He has a point, I thought. And so, on the spur of the moment, I agreed to Mr. Becx’s request.

  It was not until later, when I was preparing my speech, that I realized I had to say something on the occasion of May 4, Memorial Day, the most politically sensitive and emotional day in the year. Memorial Day is a symbol of the most gruesome period in Dutch and European history. In the Netherlands alone, 240,000 people were killed, among them more than 100,000 Jews. What had I let myself in for when I said yes? What could I, born in Somalia and having lived scarcely ten years in the Netherlands, possibly contribute to such an important and serious day? Could Mr. Becx not have found someone else to do justice to the symbolism of May 4? A member of the Resistance, for example? Or perhaps a relative of such a person? After all, some 25,000 people were actively involved in the Dutch resistance movement during World War II. The fact that I do my work as a member of parliament surrounded by bodyguards does not really warrant my making a speech in defense of freedom of speech. About 1,200 illegal news pamphlets were published during the war; there are people in the Netherlands who put their lives at risk to produce and circulate these pamphlets. Without the added luxury of bodyguards. Why had they not been invited to say something?

  TODAY IS MAY 4, and I find myself in the peculiar situation in which you, dear guests, expect me to make a meaningful speech. But what can an immigrant add to May 4 [Memorial Day] or May 5 [Liberation Day]? Do I share the collective memory of the Dutch or, for that matter, the European war generation? And why should I commemorate their dead, when in my own country and continent of origin, there are countless people who die every day and will be completely forgotten.

  But perhaps, on second thought, the idea to invite an immigrant to speak today is not that strange after all. The war ended fifty-eight years ago, and the majority of the Dutch population feels that it is genuinely a thing of the past. Formally the country has made its peace with Germany. The younger, postwar generations are feeling increasingly far removed from it. Freedom, and freedom of speech, have become a common experience in the Netherlands. In present-day Europe words can still have a strong impact. They touch, hurt, and offend people. But rarely does this lead to prosecution or threats. We undervalue freedom of speech. Maybe we shouldn’t always take it for granted.

  Many immigrants have experienced extreme pressure and constraint. I wonder if this might be a useful experience to help turn Memorial Day into more than just a ritual that loses its true meaning as time goes by. The culture of free speech is shaping whole generations of immigrants and forces many to rethink and sometimes dismiss old customs. But it also allows them to ask questions about the collective memory as it developed over the years in the Netherlands, a memory that is resistant to many questions. Some of these were officially acknowledged for the first time when Queen Beatrix made an official speech for the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war: “For an objective account of what happened we must not conceal the fact that the occupier encountered the heroic resistance of some, as well as the passive acceptance and active support of others.”

  Indeed, it is true that the Netherlands is still struggling with its colonial past. What is more, if you look at it from an immigrant’s point of view, it was the Europeans who colonized parts of Africa and refused to let go of these colonies even after World War II. And did the Dutch not go on the rampage in Indonesia almost immediately after they themselves had been liberated from the Germans? I still struggle to understand this behavior.

  The arrival of immigrants has revived an intense discussion about freedom, safety, and especially freedom of speech. A number of minor as well as major conflicts are going on between Europeans and immigrants from countries where the events of World War II are seen in a different light. And virtually all of these conflicts trigger some association with World War II for native Europeans: statements and political programs of extreme right-wing parties remind us of Hitler’s raids: never again must we repeat Auschwitz. Yet third-generation Arabs, who identify with so-called Arabs in Palestine and march in demonstrations at Amsterdam’s Dam Square, chant enthusiastically: “Hamas, hamas, Jews to the gas!”

  Every immigrant struggles with a divided sense of loyalty between his native country, his family and past, on the one hand, and his country of the present and future on the other. As a child I used to hear nothing but negative comments about Jews. My earliest memo
ry dates from the time we lived in Saudi Arabia in the midseventies. Sometimes we would have no running water. I remember hearing my mother wholeheartedly agreeing with our neighbor that the Jews had been pernicious again. Those Jews hate Muslims so much that they’ll do anything to dehydrate us. “Jew” is the worst term of abuse in both Somali and Arabic. Later, when I was a teenager and living in Somalia and Kenya, from the mid-eighties onward, every prayer we said contained a request for the extermination of the Jews. Just imagine that: five times a day. We were passionately praying for their destruction but had never actually met one. With that background experience, and my loyalty to the political, cultural, and religious variant of Islam, which I (and millions with me) inherited from my childhood, I arrived in the Netherlands. Here I came into contact with an entirely different view of the Jews: they are human beings before anything else. But what upset me more was learning about the immense injustice that had been done to the people labeled “Jews.” The Holocaust and the anti-Semitism that led to it cannot be compared to any other form of ethnic cleansing. This makes the history of the Jews in Europe unique.

  More understandable is the motivation and determination with which people commit genocide. The Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda, and the Serbians against Muslims in the former Yugoslavia are proof of how hatred can organize people and bring them to act hatefully. Such eruptions of aggression are often preceded by oppression and a lack of freedom, sometimes enforced by the government and sometimes—more and more, in fact—because there is no government to take charge. Much time and deliberation is invested beforehand in the process of cultivating and organizing the hatred that gives rise to hostile actions. Dissidents who are aware of the destructive nature of plans try to resist them; they warn others and attempt to dissuade them from joining in. For this, you need a climate with institutions that will guarantee freedom of speech.

  I am not the only immigrant who has come to the Netherlands, Europe, or the West in search of freedom. There are millions like me. They come on planes through the mediation of people traffickers, having sold all their possessions to pay for the journey. Immigrants from countries with no freedom escape on trucks, walk for days on end, or float across the sea in fragile little boats. Thousands of people have died on their way to Europe.

  What Europe has managed to do in the last fifty-eight years, through remembering the dead and celebrating its freedom, is to realize that freedom and the peace that comes with it demand constant effort to maintain. The enjoyment of personal identity and the acceptance of pluralism are only really possible when the rights of individuals are guaranteed. The realization that civil society means living with conflict; that to do this you need words. And that therefore the word—freedom of speech—is the key to a stable society.

  It is here in Europe that immigrants like me can explore the reality of free speech without risking serious repercussions, such as banishment, imprisonment, book burning, censorship, or decapitation. Every day I discover the effect that words can have—this is painful at times. They can be hurtful and offensive, and may cause misunderstandings. But they can also clarify, explain, and generally relieve suffering. For immigrants from countries where there is no freedom of speech it will be difficult to know how to handle this freedom. Difficult but necessary.

  We need words to understand the present times. We need words to come to terms with our past. Words to express that clash of loyalties we experience when we move to a new country; that feeling of being torn between two worlds. Words to describe our insights into our culture and religion, which are part of the reason we left our hearth and home.

  As an immigrant who has settled in Europe, I am in a position to compare the way of life in my native country with that of my future country. In order to share my observations with other immigrants who find it difficult to adjust, I need words. I need words so that I can say that maybe the standards and values our parents brought us up with, and their religion, are not as wonderful as we always imagined.

  As I said at the beginning, lately I have found myself in unfamiliar situations that have turned my life upside down. But I will never forget where that life began: at the Digfeer Hospital, in Mogadishu, now severely damaged by warfare. And I will never cease to ask myself, How many children who were born there at the same time I was have had a good life?

  Ten

  Four Women’s Lives

  In 1992, I escaped to the Netherlands, fleeing the marriage my father arranged for me to a fellow clan member in Canada. Despite my fierce protestations, my father refused to change his mind. On my way to Canada, in Germany, I seized the opportunity to run away from my family and escaped to Holland, where I was taken to the Center for Asylum Seekers. I was the only one there who could tell my fellow seekers’ story in English. Two Somali girls, who were living in the same bungalow as I was, asked if I would come with them to the refugee worker and help explain their situation. Soon I was asked to go everywhere with them. They had lice, so we had to go to the medical services. I went with them to the registration office for foreigners; to the office for legal help; to various institutions responsible for social welfare. Other asylum seekers from Somalia found out about me. After a while, refugee workers advised me to take up interpreting professionally. I was doing it as a favor, and professional interpreters are paid a decent fee. At first my Dutch was not good enough. I translated from Somali into English, but they said they were not allowed to pay me for that. The refugee workers helped me out: “Just start in Dutch and if you get stuck, we’ll carry on in English.”

  In 1993 I left the shelter for asylum seekers and applied to the Netherlands Center for Interpreters. Although I scored well in the tests, they said I would have to wait until I had been resident in the Netherlands for at least three years. When I realized that more and more Somali people were moving to the Netherlands, I knocked on the door of the immigration and naturalization services. They added me to their list of on-call interpreters, and from then on I got plenty of work. I worked as an interpreter from 1995 to 2001. I saw dozens of men and women who had contracted sexually transmitted diseases (AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, et cetera), and many women who had gotten pregnant by accident. There is a much higher incidence of unwanted pregnancies among newcomers from third-world countries, where anything remotely sexual is still heavily taboo, than among native Westerners, who have a more liberal attitude to sex.

  Here are four experiences from the time I worked as an interpreter.

  “I AM NOT PREGNANT; I AM A VIRGIN”

  A nineteen-year-old Somali girl goes to the Medical Services at the Refugee Center in ’s-Gravendeel and complains of not feeling well. One of the doctors examines her urine and concludes she is pregnant. The doctor wants to tell her this and asks me to be an interpreter over the telephone.

  Shocked, the girl breaks down in tears. I can hear her crying over the phone but cannot make out what she says. She seems utterly desperate. It gives me the shivers even to remember it.

  Then she says, “But that is impossible, I am a virgin, I can’t be pregnant.” She continues to deny it. She says she can prove that she is a virgin: “I was stitched.” She can’t have done it with a boy, because the stitches are all intact.

  The doctor tries to calm her down and promises he will test her urine a second time.

  Not long after this I receive another phone call from the same girl and listen to the same story. The doctor tells the Somali girl that he has tested her urine again and that she really is pregnant. He asks whether she has had any sexual education. She answers: “Why should I? I didn’t need any: I was going to remain a virgin until marriage.”

  She tells the doctor she has been in the Netherlands only a month. A Somali boy, who has been in the Netherlands much longer and speaks Dutch, has helped her with everything. Each time she had to see her solicitor he came with her. One day he invited her and two other Somali girls to his home in Dordrecht. There he made a pass at her. He took her up to his bedroom while t
he two other girls remained in the sitting room. He wanted to go to bed with her and took off her clothes. He promised he would not make her lose her virginity. He kept saying that he had helped her, and that now it was her turn to do something for him.

  The doctor has to drag the story out of her. She tells him that the boy did not insert his penis inside her, but merely rubbed it against her. He did ejaculate while he was on top of her, but the stitches had remained intact. They had both been convinced she was still a virgin.

  The doctor explains that in order to become pregnant you need a man and a woman; that some women are more fertile than others; and that there are certain times when you are more fertile than others, depending on where you are in your menstrual cycle. She seems to have had the misfortune of being particularly fertile at that moment, which has allowed her to become pregnant, possibly through a single drop of semen.

  Her reaction shows that she hasn’t a clue about sexual intercourse or reproduction.

  The doctor explains that she can choose from a number of options: she can keep the baby, she can have an abortion, or she can give it up for adoption.

  The girl is in a complete muddle. “I’ve only been here a month,” she cries hysterically. “I can’t do this. My family set aside so much money to allow me to travel to the Netherlands, and this is how I thank them. I have disgraced them beyond belief. I can’t let this happen. I must hide.”

  When the doctor asks if she wants an abortion—after all, the fetus is still very early in its development—she says, “No, no, no, I have disgraced myself with my family, I’m not going to disgrace myself with Allah as well, by murdering my baby.” She categorically refuses to have an abortion. It is beyond discussion. “I would end up in hell.”