Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Mass Migration, Culture, and the Undermining of Women’s Rights

Immigration is normally mentioned when it comes to border safety, nationwide sovereignty, wages, jobs, and generally even the setting. Nonetheless, in her newest e-book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Ladies’s Rights, Hoover Establishment analysis fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, addresses the damaging affect of mass migration – particularly from the Muslim world to Europe – on the rights and dignity of girls, and the hypocritical and cowardly refusal of Western elites and all too many feminists to guard them.

The Creator

Hirsi Ali was born within the African nation of Somalia and raised Muslim, however fled to the Netherlands, the place she obtained asylum, within the early Nineties to keep away from a compelled marriage. There, she labored as a translator for Somali refugee ladies, and served within the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006. As her Hoover Establishment bio states, “in 2004 Ayaan gained worldwide consideration following the homicide of Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had directed her brief movie Submission, a movie in regards to the oppression of girls underneath Islam. The murderer, a radical Muslim, left a loss of life menace for her pinned to Van Gogh’s chest.” In 2006, “disillusioned with the Netherlands,” Hirsi Ali got here to the USA, however even right here “has to reside with round the clock safety, as her willingness to talk out and her abandonment of the Muslim religion have made her a goal for violence by Islamic extremists.”

The Disaster

The creator of Prey isn’t any opponent of
immigration or granting asylum. She does, nonetheless, strongly imagine that
migrants and refugees should combine into their host societies and respect
their values – and that the host nationwide governments ought to push them to do
so. The issue, she argues, is that neither of these issues appear to be
taking place, which, in flip, is jeopardizing the freedoms and rights of girls.

A living proof: the sharp improve in sexual assaults
towards women and girls in Western European nations following the 2015 wave of
asylum-seekers/migrants from Muslim-majority nations. In her solidly-researched
monograph, Hirsi Ali proves that this rise in sexual violence towards ladies is
largely and straight attributable to the sudden inflow of males from Muslim
societies.

Hirsi Ali describes story after confirmed story of migrants from Islamic-majority nations – predominantly younger males, however older ones additionally taking part – hanging round Western European cities in massive teams harassing, groping, and even raping ladies in public locations. After all, loads of instances of “lone wolf” sexual assault additionally occurred, however many took the type of so-called “rape video games” (taharrush gamea in Arabic) during which massive teams of males encircled ladies and tried to assault them. Lots of the victims had been native-born, though immigrants or vacationers had been focused as nicely. (Asylum facilities had been additionally rife with migrant-on-migrant violence).

The Cultural Roots of the Drawback

The issue, Prey argues, boils all the way down to
tradition, or moderately the conflict of diametrically reverse cultures – a Western liberal
one which values particular person freedom and feminine autonomy versus a collectivistic
Islamic one that always oppresses ladies and views them as inferior. Hirsi Ali
emphasizes that the difficulty just isn’t race or ethnicity – the perpetrators come from
many alternative ethnic and racial teams – however moderately certainly one of being raised in
Islamic societies the place polygamy is regularly practiced and girls are considered
as subordinate commodities. Ladies thought of “conceited” – which might imply
one thing as innocuous as strolling in public and not using a veil or male chaperone –
can simply be deemed “honest sport” for harassment, or worse.

This identical misogynistic angle was all too usually
projected onto European ladies, each by migrants coming as a part of the post-2015
wave, in addition to immigrants who got here from Muslim-majority nations earlier. European
ladies, particularly in the event that they freely moved round in public, and not using a male
companion, and in the event that they wearing an allegedly revealing method, had been considered as
“asking for it.” Furthermore, as Hirsi Ali emphasizes, “spiritual teachings from
the twelfth century, nonetheless cited in mosques at the moment, distinguish some ladies as
virtuous and chaste by nature and others as licentious.”

Why the European Elites Don’t Appear to Care

With nice frustration, Hirsi Ali notes that the
response of the European elites – together with mainstream politicians,
journalists, teachers, and police management – to the post-2015 sexual assault
wave was a mixture of denial, cover-ups, apathy, cultural relativism, and even
blaming the victims. All too many migrant rapists and harassers acquired slaps
on the wrist – in the event that they had been caught in any respect – whereas ladies had been instructed by authorities
or media figures to cowl up, keep away from sure public locations, purchase pepper spray,
and so on. Some ladies had been even accused of “xenophobia,” “racism,” or “Islamophobia,”
whereas some legal professionals and activists fought exhausting to make sure that migrant criminals
and rapists aren’t deported (only a few are eliminated anyway). As a classical liberal
feminist, the creator is especially dissatisfied with many Western feminists
who, within the age of #MeToo, have chosen to look the opposite method.

Why did the European elites stick their heads within the
sand? An enormous chunk of the puzzle is solely Western guilt and the need to atone
for the sins of the previous, similar to racism or colonialism. In Germany’s case, the
drive to lastly overcome the legacy of Hitler and the Holocaust was a significant
motive in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s determination to open her nation’s borders to
a mass inflow of Center Jap migrants and asylum-seekers. The irony is that
this not solely led to elevated sexual assault towards ladies but in addition extra
assaults towards Jews. The European elites additionally most well-liked to maintain quiet about migrant
sexual assault, lest it profit so-called “anti-immigration” events. Middle-left
events, having misplaced many working-class voters, “have embraced the concept that
rising numbers of Muslim immigrants are the brand new proletariat,” and thus choose
to eschew any accusations of “Islamophobia.” And the acute left even welcomed
the migrant disaster as “a chance to ‘deal a loss of life blow to capitalism’ and
enthusiastically adopted refugee rights as an instrument of their ‘undertaking of
common liberation.’ Certainly, some have embraced the concept of open borders as
an nearly revolutionary undertaking.” The dignity of girls might thus not be
allowed to get in the way in which of mass migration and was sacrificed on the altar of
the above interlocking ideological agendas.

Hirsi Ali states that it was a “passionate need to protect” Western civilization, with out which the e-book “would don’t have any which means,” and which “permits for liberties and freedoms not like another civilization,” that drove her to jot down the e-book. To avoid wasting the West, she proposes basically reforming asylum and immigration, permitting entry totally on the idea of “how far they [immigrants and asylees]are more likely to abide by the legal guidelines and undertake the values of their host society.” Above all, Prey is a much-needed reminder of how essential tradition is – or needs to be – to the immigration debate.