The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Muslim women like Samira would make sure to prepare their own children for a life in modern society. These women would plan their family with a chosen partner. This planning reduces the chances for dropouts among their children. They value education and would emphasize its importance for their children. They value work and aspire to make contribution to the economy. They would provide the graying European economy with the human resources it needs instead of adding to its social welfare rolls.

  The children of successful Muslim women are more likely to have a positive attitude toward the societies in which they live. They will learn at an early age to appreciate the freedom and prosperity they live in and perhaps even understand how vulnerable these freedoms are and defend them.

  WHY ARE EUROPEAN leaders so slow to appreciate the great role Muslim women can play in a successful integration of immigrants in the European Union? Some blame can be attributed to the passivity of universities and nongovernmental organizations in addressing immigrant women’s rights. The academic community unanimously condemns violence against women, whether it is committed by family or the state, but it has been negligent in investigating and providing the necessary legal framework and data to help policy makers make women’s rights a priority. The classic argument of professors that universities are not political arenas seems disingenuous, since many faculties and colleges across Europe indulge in all sorts of ideological and political practices. For instance, Oxford University has just given a chair to Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Muslim ideologist seen by some as a moderate voice propounding the assimilation of Muslims into European society by “psychological integration” and by some Americans and Europeans as a radical. He was hired in the summer of 2005 by the University of Notre Dame in the United States to teach Islamic philosophy and ethics at its Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice, but he was denied entry into the country, his visa revoked just days before he was to begin working there. Ultimately, he resigned from the post, since he could not get there to teach. His hiring by Oxford appears to be not solely because of his outstanding academic record but because he is seen as buffer against radical Islam.

  Yet, in spite of having Arab and Islam faculties, most universities in Europe serve as activist centers to further the Palestinian cause, instead of research and teaching centers for Muslim students. There is as yet no chair, no study, no course on the subjugation of Muslim women and how that affects Europe and the future of this major population of European Muslims. There are no researchers gathering facts and figures on the intensity of violence faced by Muslim women, how that violence hinders them in their daily lives, and how that prevents Muslims from integrating successfully into European society.

  Nongovernmental organizations are embarrassingly silent on this fight for human rights. Oh, yes, there is one in Norway that pays attention, Human Rights Watch, run by a brave, determined woman, Hege Storhaus. But in the bigger countries, no NGO yet monitors the number of times an honor killing is committed in a member state, or the number of times a girl is circumcised, or the number of times a girl is removed from school and forced into a life of virtual slavery.

  However, there is room for some optimism. Awareness is growing in Europe about the breadth and persistence of violence against Muslim women and girls, justified by culture and religion, committed by family. Some governments have acknowledged that they should take action to fight against this and all types of violence against women. Yet we are a long way away from conditions where girls like Samira can lead a life without fear.

  What a waste that Europe is blind to this golden opportunity that lies at her feet.

  Seventeen

  A Call for Clear Thinking

  After the carnage of the terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005, Tony Blair defined the situation as a battle of ideas. “Our values will long outlast theirs,” he said, to the silent acquiescence of the world leaders who stood alongside him. “Whatever [the terrorists] do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world.”

  By defining this as a battle of values, Blair raised the question, Which values are at stake? Those who love freedom know that the open society relies on a few key shared concepts. They believe that all humans are born free, are endowed with reason, and have inalienable rights. These governments are checked by the rule of law, so that civil liberties are protected. They ensure freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, and ensure that men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, are entitled to equal treatment and protection under the law. And these governments have free-trade practices and an open market, and people may spend their recreational time as they wish.

  The terrorists, and the Shari’a-based societies to which they aspire, have an entirely different philosophical point of view. Societies that espouse the following of Shari’a law, which is a code derived from a literalist reading of the Koran, are fundamentalist Islamists. They believe that people are born to serve Allah through a series of obligations that are prescribed in an ancient body of writings. These edicts vary from rituals of birth and funeral rites to the most intimate details of human life; they descend to the point of absurdity in matters such as how to blow your nose and with what foot to step into a bathroom. Humans in this philosophy must kill those among them who leave their faith, and are required to be hostile to people of other religions and ways of life. In their hostility, they are even sanctioned in the murder of innocent people. The edicts make no distinction between civilians and the military—anyone who does not share this faith is an infidel and can be marked for murder.

  In this Shari’a society, women are subordinate to men. They must be confined to their houses, beaten if found disobedient, forced into marriage, and hidden behind the veil. The hands of thieves are cut off and capital punishment is performed on crowded public squares in front of cheering crowds. The terrorists seek to impose this way of life not only in Islamic countries, but, as Blair said, on Western societies too.

  The central figure in this struggle is not Bin Laden, or Khomeini, or Hassan al-Banna, or Sayyid Qutb, but Muhammad. A pre-medieval figure to whom these four men—along with all faithful Muslims in our modern world—look for guidance, Muhammad and his teachings offer a fundamental challenge to the West. Faithful Muslims—all faithful Muslims—believe that they must emulate this man, in principle and practical matters, under all circumstances. And so, before we embark on a battle of ideas, we will need to take a look at this figure, and his presence in the daily lives and homes of faithful Muslims today.

  On reading the Koran and the traditional writings, it is apparent that Muhammad’s life not only provides rules for the daily lives of Muslims, it also demonstrates the means by which his values can be imposed. Yet remnants from some of the earliest Korans in existence, dating from the seventh and eighth centuries, show small aberrations from the text that is now considered the standard Koran. Nonetheless, just as some fundamentalist Christians cannot understand that the Bible went through numerous changes, interpretations, and translations before it became the contemporary text now widely used, and consider it inerrant, many fundamentalist Muslims consider the Koran a perfect, timeless representation of the unchanging word of God.

  To spread his visions and teachings, which he believed to be from God, and to consolidate his secular power, Muhammad built the House of Islam using military tactics that included mass killing, torture, targeted assassination, lying, and the indiscriminate destruction of productive goods. This may be embarrassing, and even painful, for moderate Muslims to admit and to consider, but it is historical fact. And a close look at the propaganda produced by the terrorists reveals constant quotation of Muhammad’s deeds and edicts to justify their actions and to call on other Muslims to support their cause.

  In their thinking about radical Muslim terrorism, most politicians, journalists, intellectuals, and other commentators have avoided the core issue of the debate, which is Muhamm
ad’s example. In order to win the hearts and minds of those millions of undecided Muslims, it is crucial to engage them in a process of clear thinking on how to evaluate the moral guidance of the man whose compass they follow. The advantage of this rational process is that it provides an alternative to the utopia as well as the hell promised by the terrorists. Indeed, the threat of hell is the single most effective menace that the fundamentalists hold over the heads of young men and women in order to indoctrinate and intimidate them into violent action. Yet the literal translation of utopia is “not [a] place,” from the Greek “ou,” meaning not, or no, plus topos, meaning place. The dictionary defines a utopia as “an imaginary and indefinitely remote place.” The true alternative to such an impossible place is the open society, democracy, which has already been empirically proven to work. The open society gives Muslims, as it gives Christians and Jews, the opportunity to liberate themselves from the ever-present menace of hell. The extremists tell the young people that they must defend their faith, avenge insults against Muhammad and the holy word of God, the Koran. What is it exactly that they think they are defending?

  A call for clear thought on this important question should not be offensive, or hurtful, to Muslims. And yet many people in the West flinch from doing so. The communis opinio seems to hold that questioning or criticizing a holy figure is not polite behavior, somehow not done. This movement for cultural relativism within Western society betrays the basic values on which our open society is constructed. As thinking human beings, we should never censor our analytic thoughts; we should never censor our reason.

  Along these lines, I would argue that Prime Minister Blair should rethink his bill against blasphemy. Years ago, some British Muslims unsuccessfully called for Salman Rushdie to be tried under Britain’s blasphemy law after the publication of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. But the law only recognized blasphemy against the Church of England, Britain’s dominant, official religion. But in June 2005, the British parliament approved government plans to outlaw incitement to religious hatred. This bill was aimed primarily at preventing racism against Muslims in Britain. Even though the home secretary argued that the bill wasn’t about stopping people from making jokes about religion—which would be a tragedy in the land that gave birth to Monty Python—or stopping people from having robust debates about religion, it is unclear why this bill was necessary. Inciting religious hatred is already against the law. And as the head of a civil rights group in Britain said, “In a democracy there is no right not to be offended.” He added that religion is related to a body of ideas and people have the right to debate and criticize other people’s ideas. Another activist fighting the bill averred, “The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas—even if they are sincerely held beliefs—is one of the fundamental freedoms of society.” As of this writing, the House of Lords has returned the bill to the House of Commons, saying it is a bad bill.

  Muslims in Europe and across the world may be seen as roughly dividing into three groups. Most visible are the terrorists, who resort to violence (and their allies, the fundamentalists, who do not kill or maim, but provide the terrorists with material and nonmaterial or psychological assistance). Second, their polar opposite is group of people (and although tiny, it is growing) who may be characterized by its questioning of the relevance and moral soundness of Muhammad’s example. They may one day provide an intellectual counterweight to the terrorists and their supporters. I, who was born and bred a Muslim, count myself among them. We in this group have embraced the open society as a true alternative to a society based on the laws of Muhammad—a better way to build a framework for human life. We could call this group the reformers.

  The terrorists have far more power and resources than the reformers, but both groups vie to influence the thinking of the vast majority of Muslims. The reformers use only nonviolent means, like writing, to draw attention to debates over core values. The terrorists and fundamentalists, however, use force, the threat of force, appeals to pity (“look at what the West is doing to Islam and Muslims”), and ad hominem smears to evoke a knee-jerk community to withdraw into self-defense. In the West, these tactics give rise to moral relativists who defend so-called victims of Islamophobia; meanwhile, the reformists are shunned by their families and communities and live under the constant fear of assassination. In short, the core of the debate is made taboo, and the fundamentalists attain a near-monopoly on the hearts and minds of the third and largest group of Muslims, the undecided.

  Who are these “undecided” Muslims? They are the group to which Tony Blair refers when he says, “The vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people.” They live in Edgware Road and Bradford, and in Amsterdam and Saint Denis; they are not fervent observers of every ritual of Islam, but they count themselves as believers. They are immigrants and second-generation youths who have come to the West to enjoy the benefits of the open society, in which they have a vested interest. But they do not question the infallibility of Muhammad and the soundness of his moral example. They know that Muhammad calls for slaughter of infidels; they know that the open society rightly condemns the slaughter of innocents. They are caught in a mental cramp of cognitive dissonance, and it is up to the West to support the reformists in trying to ease them out of that painful contradiction. The established Muslim organizations, which operate on government subsidy, offer no more than a cosmetic approach to eradicating terrorism inspired by the prophet Muhammad—“peace be upon Him,” naturally.

  The first victims of Muhammad are the minds of Muslims themselves. They are imprisoned in the fear of hell and so also fear the very natural pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. There is as yet no consensus in the West on whether to support the side of the radical reformers. The present-day attitude of Western cultural relativists, who flinch from criticizing Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims, allow Western Muslims to hide from reviewing their own moral values. This attitude also betrays the tiny majority of Muslim reformers who desperately require the support—and even the physical protection—of their natural allies in the West.

  Muslims must review and reform their approach to Muhammad’s teachings if those who love freedom and the open society are to coexist peacefully with them. The terrorists and their allies the fundamentalists should not dictate to us Westerners the rules of the game. We must maintain and proclaim our core values of free and open debate, of rational thinking, and the rule of law not religion. In this, the resolve of the British people to preserve civil rights is brave, and should be an example to all of us. The use of torture and the denial of legal rights to suspects of terrorism will serve only to corrupt Western systems and views of the West as a model of openness. Such actions also provide the terrorists with facts that serve as ammunition to prove their specious argument that the West is hypocritical and morally confused.

  Notes

  CHAPTER ONE

  1 It is therefore not surprising: NRC Handelsblad, July 8, 2002.

  2 Beating is degrading: in the same article in the NRC Handelsblad, July 8, 2002.

  3 In a June 2002 interview: in the NRC Handelsblad, July 8, 2002.

  CHAPTER TWO

  4 Neither the Islam and Citizenship Society: Stichting Islam en Burgerschap.

  5 Only aid organizations: Riagg.

  6 The Child Welfare Council: Raad voor de Kinderbescherming.

  CHAPTER THREE

  7 The three main shortcomings: listed in the United Nations’ 2002–2003 Arab Human Development Report.

  8 Only about 330 foreign books: Stichting Speurwerk, Titelproductiestatistiek, 1997.

  9 The United Nations reports: Trouw, October 2, 2003.

  10 “Stay quietly in your homes”: Koran, Surah 33, verse 33 (Abdullah Yusuf Ali, translator).

  11 “And say to the believing women”: Surah 24, verse 31.

  12 “Oh Prophet!”: Surah 33, verse 59.

  13 The eleventh-century imam: in his book Wie luidt de doodsklok over de Ar
abieren? (Who Tolls the Bell for the Arabs?), Marcel Kurpershoek.

  14 According to the Koran: Koran, Surah 4, verse 34.

  15 Customs and Morals in Islam: Gewoontes en zeden in de Islam.

  16 Guide to Islamic Upbringing: Gids tot de islamitische opvoeding.

  17 A Glimpse of Hell: Een glimp van de hel.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  18 Nobody who has been following the debates: The original version of this article appeared in the “Letter & Spirit” section of Trouw newspaper on March 16, 2002. Also published in De zoontjesfabriek (2002).

  19 The writer Leon de Winter: In an article of November 10 in the “Letter & Spirit” section of Trouw newspaper.

  20 In addition, Muslims in Europe: Marcel Kurpershoek (NRC Handelsblad, November 3).

  21 In the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe: Afshin Ellian.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  22 This is “religion as a culture-forming factor”: T. von der Dunk, “De West en de Rest: over de gelijkwaardigheid van culturen [“The West and the Rest: On the Equality of Cultures”], in Socialisme en Democratie, vol. 58 no. 9, September 2001, pp. 391–399.

  23 In the year 2000 these Dutch communities: All figures taken from Integratie in het perspectief van immigratie [Integration from the perspective of immigration]. Government Report, January 18, 2002, p. 66.

  24 Muslims now form the biggest ideological category: Netherlands Scientific Council of Government Policy, Nederland als immigratiesamenleying [The Netherlands as an immigration society]. Reports for the government no. 60, The Hague, 2001.