From Islam to America

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  For Muslims to stay united, however, Islam needs an enemy, conspiracy theories, and a rival creed. Jews are the best of scapegoats, for the conspiracy theory that claims they control the world is believed by many. I have heard a Muslim theologian in Holland preach that all evil has been brought to humanity by the Jews. According to him these evils are communism, capitalism, and individualism. He pointed out that Karl Marx was a Jew, Milton Friedman was a Jew, and Sigmund Freud was a Jew. Marxism is an atheist creed and therefore an enemy of Islam. Free enterprise is a distraction from prayer; it involves the ungodly pursuit of earthly wealth and a system of lending and borrowing with interest (usury), which is forbidden by Islam. So capitalism too is an enemy of Islam. Acknowledging individual urges, dreams, consciousness, and layers of subconsciousness replaces a focus on the hereafter; virtues and vices are not seen as tensions between following the straight path of Allah and that of Satan but as the result of natural and psychological causes. Thus Freud and his followers are also enemies of Islam.

  Islam is not just a belief; it is a way of life, a violent way of life. Islam is imbued with violence, and it encourages violence.

  Muslim children all over the world are taught the way I was: taught with violence, taught to perpetrate violence, taught to wish for violence against the infidel, the Jew, the American Satan.

  I belong to a small group of lucky people who have escaped the permanent closure of my mind through education. I have learned to drop the prejudices that were ingrained in me. In school and in university it was hard sometimes when I learned things that were contrary to the teachings of Islam. I was always aware of a nagging sense of guilt and sin. Reading political theory in Leiden, I felt as if I had been transported to Sodom and Gomorrah. Everything seemed to contradict the political theory of Muhammad. But slowly I learned the new rules of a free society, new ideas that have replaced the old set of values that my parents gave me. The crucial question is whether or not there is a way to help many more young people achieve this opening of the Muslim mind.

  Time and again in the past few years I have been asked by Americans who have heard my warnings about the increasingly dangerous impacts of Islam on Western societies: What can be done? Is there anything can we do? It is now time to address the all-important question of remedies.

  PART IV

  REMEDIES

  CHAPTER 14

  Opening the Muslim Mind

  An Enlightenment Project

  The Muslim mind needs to be opened. Above all, the uncritical Muslim attitude toward the Quran urgently needs to change, for it is a direct threat to world peace. Today 1.57 billion people identify themselves as Muslims. Although they certainly have 1.57 billion different minds, they share a dominant cultural trend: the Muslim mind today seems to be in the grip of jihad. A nebula of movements with al Qaeda-like approaches to Islamic precepts has enmeshed itself in small and large ways into many parts of Muslim community life, including in the West. They spread a creed of violence, mobilizing people on the basis that their identity, which rests in Islam, is under attack.

  A person with a mind that has been closed unquestioningly listens to and absorbs the teachings of the fanatics who claim that it is God’s law that Muslims should join the struggle. A person with an open mind—one that is empowered, that has shaken off the fear of hell—can tell the agents of al Qaeda Yes, it is true that what you say is in the Quran, but I disagree with it. Yes, you ask me to follow the example of the Prophet, but I believe that parts of his example are no longer valid. A person with an open mind is not immune, but he is armed.

  I believe that it is possible for the Muslim mind to be opened and that it is crucial that the closing of so many young minds in the name of Islam should be prevented. But I think there is a much easier and more direct way of opening the Muslim mind than by reinterpreting the Quran so as to tone it down, and that is by a campaign of enlightenment.

  The intellectual tradition of the European Enlightenment, which began in the seventeenth century and produced its greatest works in the eighteenth, is based on critical reasoning. It employs facts instead of faith, evidence instead of tradition. Morality in this worldview is determined by human beings, not by an outside force. It is a worldview that came into being mainly in reaction to a particular religion, Christianity, and a particular institution of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church. The process of reaction was very arduous, and actually began centuries before the Enlightenment, when the Catholic Church did not just excommunicate people who disagreed with its worldview but persecuted them, banished them from their homes and communities, threatened them with death, and sometimes killed them.

  The Muslim mind is not a monolith, but Muslims share common ideas and reactions that, in the age of jihad, are indispensible to know. For instance, I’m intrigued by the fact that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Muslims felt compelled to protest against a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. Regardless of where they are born, what language they speak, whether they are male or female, rich or poor, Muslims very often refer back to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. The reason most often given by the agents of radical Islam to mobilize the Muslim masses is It is in the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad said it.

  There is an enormously important scholarly movement under way to explore the nature of the historical Quran. How did the Quran come to us? When was it written, and who wrote it? What is the origin of the stories, the legends, the principles in the Quran? How do we determine its authenticity? This movement, which is largely an enterprise by secular, non-Muslim academics, seeks factual answers. Their project is not to discredit or attack Islam, or even to enlighten Muslims. These scholars have no political or religious agenda, only a classical academic approach, just like the one that has long applied historical analysis to the Old and New Testaments. Some of them fear for their lives, however, and have to write under pseudonyms. Their work is vital because, if the Muslim mind can be opened to the idea that the Quran was written by a committee of men over the two hundred years that followed Muhammad’s death, the read-only lock on the Holy Book can be opened. If Muslims can allow themselves to perceive the possibility that a holy book was needed to justify the Arabs’ conquests, every kind of inquiry and cultural shift is possible.

  If the Muslim mind is opened, will there still be religious practice—prayer, pilgrimage, dietary laws, a fasting month? Quite possibly. There might even be anti-Semitism, veils, and domestic abuse. Tradition and habit are powerful forces. But behind the veils and beards would be minds asking questions. The possibility of legitimate, individual, critical review of Islamic dogma would at long last exist.

  This can be an uncomfortable and painful possibility. Personally, I felt a sense of intense relief when I accepted the possibility that there is no life after death, no hell, no punishment, no burning, no sin. But for others, this insight can lead to misery and emptiness. My sister Haweya and my friend Tahera, whom I knew in the Netherlands, lost their fear of guilt and sin and the terror of everlasting punishment. But their sense of doom in the afterlife seemed to transfer itself into their own lives right here on Earth. I too still sometimes feel this pain of separation from my family and from the simplicity of Islam. It is like the pain of growing from childhood to adolescence or the pain of letting go of parents when they age and die. It is the pain of standing on your own two feet. It is not easy to adapt, or to make good choices; it can be a harsh, harrowing business. Enlightenment thinking will not necessarily bring happiness and ecstasy to the Muslim mind. But it will put the individual firmly in control of his or her own life. Each of us will be free to navigate our way through life, make our own wrong choices, recalculate, and choose again. We will make mistakes, but we will have a chance of overcoming them rather than just fatalistically succumbing to them as Allah’s inscrutable will. Muslims will become true individuals: free, and responsible for their own beliefs and acts.

  Let us imagine two teenage friends, Amina and Jane. We meet them just after the Mumbai
attacks in November 2008, when Pakistani fundamentalists killed almost two hundred people.

  JANE: You are a Muslim. What do you think of the men who killed people in the Taj Hotel in Mumbai? It was a hotel, people were having dinner, they were happy and innocent of wrongdoing.

  AMINA: Why are you asking me this question?

  JANE: The killers were Muslim and they called out “Allah is great!” when they attacked. They obviously thought they were doing this for Islam. You’re a Muslim too.

  AMINA: What has that got to do with anything?

  JANE: It is your God.

  AMINA: People kill in the name of your God too.

  JANE: Yeah, hundreds of years ago.

  AMINA: No, now, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq and in Chechnya.

  JANE: That’s not being done in the name of Christianity. Maybe Christians support those wars and maybe they don’t, but they’re not being fought in the name of the Bible.

  AMINA: Yes they are. George Bush is a Christian. It says on the dollar “In God We Trust.” The American military prays before they go on a mission. All of this is done in the name of Christ, it is a Christian war against Islam.

  JANE: But these Muslim men who killed in the name of Islam in India, they did not distinguish between military and civilians. Their victims were just tourists, they were having dinner.

  AMINA: Indians are killing Muslims in the name of their Hindu religion.

  JANE: Would you kill for your God? Would you kill me, your friend?

  AMINA: What a weird question. Why do you ask?

  JANE: Because you say Christianity makes people do this, Hinduism makes people do that, Muslims defend themselves in the name of Islam, whatever. Would you kill me? If a Muslim wanted to kill members of my family, would you stop him?

  AMINA: I don’t like where this conversation is going. I want to stop talking about this.

  JANE: Would you kill me? Would you stop a Muslim from killing me or my family?

  AMINA: Would you stop a Christian killing me in the name of Christianity?

  JANE: Well, yes, actually. In a nanosecond. And you know, I’m not a Christian. I don’t believe that we should take orders from an outside force. Life is my religion.

  AMINA: I really don’t want to talk about this.

  JANE: You don’t want to talk about it because you would not save my life or because …

  AMINA: (close to tears) I don’t know. I want to do what is right. Allah tells me what is right. I just want to be a good Muslim, I don’t want to kill people, I don’t want people to be killed, I just want to be a good Muslim.

  JANE: Are you sure you want to be a good Muslim? Here! (She takes the Quran out of her bag and puts it on Amina’s lap.) Have you read the Quran? Do you know what it says? Look on this page: It says “Kill the infidels.” Look, here it promises eternal punishment for all unbelievers, here, I marked it for you. And here it says “Beat the disobedient wife.” Here, turn this page, look, it says “Flog the adulterer.” Are you sure that you want to do what Allah wants you to do? Are you sure?

  AMINA: (now in tears, desperately crying) I really don’t want to talk about this.

  Faced with this imaginary scenario, one group of people would say that Jane is too cruel, too insensitive, that she seeks to drive poor helpless Amina over the edge. It’s not Amina’s fault that some Muslims act badly in the name of their shared religion. Amina needs to protect her identity and her traditions; Jane should be more tolerant, more polite. Muslim organizations would charge Jane with Islamophobia. On all sides there would arise a chorus of pity, treating Amina as a victim.

  But this is exactly how minds are opened: through honest, frank dialogue. Tears may be shed, but not blood. Amina’s feelings may be hurt, she may be upset or confused, but perhaps she will begin thinking, questioning her unspoken assumptions in the light of her own, real experience. It is a myth to think that people’s minds will be opened by their government or some higher authority; even teachers in school are not as effective as peers. Classmates like Amina and Jane ask each other questions in the schoolyard. Colleagues confront each other on the work floor, neighbors in each other’s kitchens.

  My first encounter with the Enlightenment as a movement, a coherent set of ideas by philosophers who have enthusiastic supporters as well as passionate enemies, was in 1996. I was then twenty-six years old, attending the University of Leiden, one of the first great beacons of the Age of Reason. I was living among students for whom these values and ideas were so familiar that they were unaware of them. My own naive discovery of them made people react to me with a mixture of surprise, amusement, and even alarm.

  The first value of the Enlightenment was one I had already encountered in the Netherlands and had taken to immediately: encouragement and reward for asking questions. The adults in my life (my mother and grandmother, other relatives, and teachers) had systematically rejected and punished inquisitive behavior as insolence toward authority. In Holland I was permitted to question authority and was entitled to an answer. This very simple attitude was to me a revelation. It reflected an attitude in which all problems had physical causes and possible solutions. Afflictions of all kinds were not simply handed down by Allah as a curse for unknowable reasons that could be lifted only by prayer. If the causes were not known, then it was a noble exercise to pursue knowledge of them; inquiry was not a blasphemous or insolent act.

  I secretly used to watch a children’s TV program called Willem Wever, presented by a man of that name. Children would write in questions on issues they were curious about. (This was before Google.) Their parents would assist them—assist them!—in posing the question in a clear way. Two or three questions would be selected every week, and the children would be invited onto the show to elaborate on what they wanted to learn. Then they would go on a journey to find the answer. Why do fireflies have lights in their body? Why do planets move clockwise around the sun? Why do people in England drive on the wrong side of the road? Mr. Wever and the child would visit experts and build models and put together the pieces of the puzzle; the riddle would finally be solved.

  When some of my friends found out that I actually stayed at home to watch this, they treated me as if I were a child in an adult’s body. But to me it was a revelation. By asking questions, you got not a scolding but answers!

  This brings me to a second value of the Enlightenment that was new to me: learning is a life-long experience and it is for everyone. Acquiring knowledge is not reserved for adults only, or men only, or a certain clan or class only; everyone is assumed to be capable of acquiring knowledge.

  The third value, individual freedom, is related to the second. If you assume that everyone, regardless of descent, sex, ethnicity, or religion, can increase his knowledge via the simple process of asking questions and seeking answers, then you have already accepted that individuals are free, because this freedom is inseparable from a life of curiosity. If the rest of the group does not like your questions, or the answers that you found, or what you did with those answers, or if you develop the annoying habit of posing more questions and chasing their answers, no matter how annoying or disrespectful they are, you run no risk of being punished.

  Nobody in Leiden understood why I found this so odd, so new, so revolutionary.

  A few years later, because of my research (asking questions) and my statements about Islam (the answers that I had found), I was threatened by Islamic fundamentalists. Many people, some of them the same professors and fellow students I had known in Leiden, were just as surprised then as they had been when I was a student. How could this be happening? How could it happen anywhere in the world, but especially in Holland? Surely this reactionary, violent attitude was from the Middle Ages?

  It is hard for Westerners today, inheritors of the legacy of rational thought, to comprehend the phenomenon of group thinking, the claims and constraints that groups lay on their members’ conscience, time, money, sexuality, loyalty, and even life. For the fourth value of the Enlightenme
nt (though it was not quite so clearly formulated until Max Weber put it this way in the late nineteenth century) is that the state has the monopoly on violence in society. If individuals are free to seek answers to any question, they may come up with answers that are unacceptable to some of the members of the society to which they belong. These groups may attempt to silence the questioners. They may even use violence. It is the state’s responsibility to deal with outside aggression and also with cases of violence between citizens. Checks and balances bind the state to rules that counter the potential for abuse of its enormous power. If a church wants to silence a believer, the Enlightenment state stands by the individual believer, for articulate and well-educated adults may say and do what they please, so long as they bring no harm to others. Thus the thinkers of the Enlightenment devised a dynamic framework of legal and community instruments to help people resolve conflict without resorting to violence.

  A fifth appeal of the Enlightenment is the idea of property rights as the foundation of both civil society and the political system. As a child, if you succeed in working your way out of a miserable parental environment, succeed in making money and buying property, the rule of law will protect you and your property.

  So this, in a nutshell, was my Enlightenment: free inquiry, universal education, individual freedom, the outlawing of private violence, and the protection of individual property rights. It did not take me long to see that the very novelty of these concepts made me treat them with much more respect than many of the people living around me in the Netherlands, who took them entirely for granted.