The infidel

SOMALIA-born author, feminist and former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about Western apologists, why moderate Muslims don’t speak out and the spread of Saudi-style Islam.

Greg Callaghan: You were a pious Muslim in your teens. You even once supported the fatwa on writer Salman Rushdie. What, more than anything, was the catalyst for your dramatic change of opinion on Islam?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: For years I met Muslim women in very difficult circumstances, victims of terrible domestic violence, forced into miserable marriages, but I sought to avoid connecting the dots, blinding myself to the link between the indoctrination of the religion and the oppression of women and lack of individual, free choice. My five years at the University of Leiden [in the Netherlands], enjoying a democratic culture, walking around in a society where men and women are equal, started to change my perspective. The events of September 11 cemented it. I later became the face of Muslim women who had sought freedom in Holland. Unlike white commentators, hamstrung by the fear of being labelled racists, I could voice my criticisms of the feudal and religious mechanisms that were holding Muslim women back.

It’s been six years since you wrote the script for the controversial film Submission and film-maker Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic extremist. Are you still living under heavy security?
I’m sorry, but I really can’t talk about my security arrangements.

In your new book, Nomad, you say that liberals in the West are far more uncomfortable condemning the ill treatment of women under Islam than conservatives. Why do you think this is so?
Liberals tend to think collectively about ethnicities, cultural groups and religion. Freedom of the individual tends to be a lesser notion. Thus a liberal might be more reluctant to interfere in the case of a Muslim father physically abusing his daughter out of some misplaced respect for cultural difference. A conservative, being more concerned with individual rights – and perhaps less subject to political correctness – would be more inclined to speak out against the wrongdoing. Liberals too often fall back on the notion that governments can solve all problems and “rescue” people who have been told they are victims of the system. Rather than speak out against totalitarian practices under Islam, they shuffle their feet.

Isn’t it also the case that journalists, usually to the left of politics, happily criticise Christianity for its abuses while letting Islam off the hook?
The term “Islamophobic” has been invented to slam anyone who dares to criticise the religion. It’s nonsense, a convenient way of avoiding honest, critical scrutiny. If I criticise George Washington, I am not defaming Americans, for example. This non-critical, morally empty attitude towards Islam helps no-one, least of all its own believers. Those who insist on a black-and-white view of Islam conveniently overlook the variations within the faith itself, between Sunni and Shia, for example. The Saudis spend over $2 billion annually on their public relations machine, hiring some of the best PR firms and lawyers to protect their ideology. People in the US and Europe are taken to court for criticising Islam, and this makes the media more cautious. It is a process of muzzling free speech.

Why don’t moderate Muslims in the West speak out more often? We don’t see them forming mass demonstrations against terror attacks in their own homelands – the US or the UK – when they occur.
Most Muslims are instinctively appalled by the violence committed in the name of Islam. But as to why they don’t demonstrate in the streets when a terrorist strike in their home country – the US, Britain, Spain – occurs, this isn’t an easy question to answer. Whenever a terrorist strike happens, the local Muslim communities suffer a backlash. Radicals like to present this as Islam under threat, of course, when it is no such thing. It’s not always easy for young Muslims to speak out. People who do this face a lot of rejection from their families and their communities. But yes, one of the best things they could do to defend the image of Islam would be to demonstrate against terrorist attacks. This would be a big shock to al-Qa’ida.

Following the republication of the Danish cartoons of Mohammed, a group of demonstrators in London recently held up signs saying “F… Democracy” and “Save Islam”…
It is a fallacy that Islam is under siege. The zealots and extremists love instilling this in the minds of young Muslims to unite them in anger, to make them feel victims of discrimination, to be more aggressive in their demands. Most of their parents fled to Europe, the US or Australia to escape hardship and discrimination in their homeland, often sacrificing everything to carve out a better life for their children. In the West they have been offered free health care, programs to learn English, get jobs, and a culture that encourages tolerance, and allows them to express their viewpoints. Most of these young Muslims in the West have no idea what it is to live under an Islamic dictatorship. Zealots tell them to “fight” but they have no real idea what they’re fighting for.

Islam seems to be rising in Europe, while Christianity appears to be in serious decline. What implications for Europe, if any, do you see this having over the longer term?
The decline of Christianity in Europe has created a vacuum. Christian missionary work missed a historic opportunity among the immigrant populations across the Continent in the postwar period. But what Europeans should take enormous pride in now is their great secular traditions. The European Enlightenment of the 18th century gave birth to schools and universities run on principles of critical thinking. The Enlightenment emancipated Europe from the terrible dogmas of the past and opened the way for a public education system geared towards outward-looking citizens, not those driven by the separateness of tribe. Today, however, many schools and campuses in the West have opted to be more respectful of the faith, customs, and habits of other cultures. This would be fine except it has been used to gloss over fundamentally unjust practices or belief systems. When well-meaning Westerners ignore things like forced marriage or domestic violence in order to “stop society from stigmatising” Muslims they are denying the rights of Muslim girls. They should cast off these self-imposed blinkers.

In Nomad you write of being disappointed by educated young Muslim women in the West. “If they lived in Saudi Arabia,” you write, “these college girls in their pretty scarves wouldn’t be free to study, to work, to drive, to walk around.” Why aren’t they more conscious of their oppressed sisters?
I think more young Muslim women in the West are waking up to practices like enforced marriage, honour killings and genital mutilations simply because so much publicity has been given to these things. But there are schools across the US, Europe and no doubt Australia where girls are taught all day to believe in male superiority, to lower their eyes, to veil themselves and walk softly into the mosque by a back door. It’s important to remember that Muslim schools are different from so-called regular Christian or Jewish schools. By “regular” I mean schools that are Christian or Jewish in identity but have secular curricula. Muslim schools, by contrast, emphasise religion more than anything else. Veiled schoolgirls are one very evident marker of the rise of revivalist, purist Islam, and their numbers are visibly growing. The subjection of women within Islam is the biggest obstacle to the progress of Muslim communities in the West.

So the West needs to be less apologist?
Absolutely. A culture that considers women to be masters of their own lives is better than one that mutilates girls’ genitals and confines them behind walls and veils them or flogs them for falling in love with the wrong person. A culture that appoints a woman to the Supreme Court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a women is worth half that of a man. The West should not fall into the trap of tolerating intolerance.

It’s been reported that Saudi-funded mosques and religious schools are spreading a more conservative brand of Islam through the West, and in Muslim-dominated countries in Africa and Asia, including Indonesia. Is this accurate?
Probably half the mosques in America have received Saudi money, and many – perhaps most – teachers and preachers of Islam have been supported by Saudi charities such as the Muslim World League. Saudi Arabia sees Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim nation – as fertile ground for a far stricter version of Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood was established there back in the 1950s but the country is moving towards a much more conservative interpretation of Islam. Many more women are now wearing a veil and the spread of Shari’a-based laws is also very worrisome. What happens in Indonesia could herald what happens in other moderate Muslim countries. You see a similar trend in Turkey, in which the Islam-inspired government recently arrested 30 members of the military, fervent supporters of a secular state, as well as professors and editors. More and more Turks are looking and behaving like Saudis.

What do you think of the recent French move to ban the type of Islamic veil that covers the entire face – burqas and niqabs?
The face-covering is like a mask. What’s the point of having CCTV cameras for security if your face can’t be recognised? People say that it will cause a backlash but the argument is weak. Remember, it’s only a ban on the face-covering veil, not the veil itself.

Do you feel any optimism about the fledgling democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan surviving after Western troops withdraw?
I passionately hope their democracies survive. Iran and al-Qa’ida are doing mischief in Iraq and there are powerful groups who want to turn the country into an Islamic state. After the surge in troop numbers there was a stabilisation in law and order but once the troops withdraw the secular forces might be more vulnerable. Regardless of all the bad news streaming out of Afghanistan, girls are going back to school and health care for women has improved. Anything is an improvement after the Taliban. I am actually most optimistic about Iran – despite having a leader who believes the 12th imam is about to return to Earth, young people are tired of living under an Islamic dictatorship and the country has a tradition of vigorous debate and healthy criticism of the government.

Is that what Islam needs, too?
Yes. The Muslim mind needs to be opened. And the first way to do that is to encourage and reward those who ask questions. People need to be free to speak their minds and stand up against abuses.

Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilisations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Fourth Estate, $35) is published in Australia on June 1. She will have speaking engagements in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne from July 22.