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By Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

The Caged Virgin: an Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam
Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a highly controversial figure in Europe. Born in Somalia, Hirsi Ali, the daughter of one of the key figures in the resistance against the Siad Barre regime, Hirsi Magan Isse, is a Dutch citizen, a feminist deeply engaged in work on behalf of Muslim women immigrants in Europe, a former member of the Dutch Parliament and an outspoken critic of Islam who has been forced to live in hiding due to threats of violence and death from Muslims outraged by her words and actions.

The Caged Virgin is a collection of Hirsi Ali’s writings on the subject of Islam, and includes the script of the short film “Submission” which she made in collaboration with Theo Van Gogh (who was assassinated for his role in making the film). Much of her writing, like the film script, focuses on the experiences of women within Islam.

Her autobiography, Infidel, explores her experiences growing up as a Muslim, in Somalia, her homeland, in Saudi Arabia, where her father sought refuge for a while, and in Kenya where her mother chose to settle among the Somali refugee community while her father continued his involvement in the increasingly fractured and violent political landscape of Somalia from his faction’s base in Ethiopia. Hirsi Ali’s childhood and adolescence overlapped the time period in which the highly fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic thought expounded by Sayyid Qutb and the Islamic Brotherhood spread through Islamic communities in North Africa (thinks to funding from Saudi Arabia) – she herself notes that when she was a child in Somalia, very few women wore any form of covering, even a head scarf, but that by the time she returned in mid adolescence, hidjab, chadour and other forms of extreme covering were seen everywhere in Mogadishu.

Both books find their primary focus in examining the lives of women in Saudi and North African Islamic societies, and in North African immigrant communities in Holland. Hirsi Ali unflinchingly describes both her own experiences, and those of friends, family members, and the women she meets in Holland, first while living in the refugee community and later while working as an official interpreter for Somali refugees in Holland – experiences which range from genital mutilation and honour killings to forced marriages, marital rape, the isolation and disenfranchisement of women in the Islamic communities she has known, and the limitations placed on women that hold them back from both personal expression and civil life.

It is Hirsi Ali’s thesis that Islam as a religion, moreso than other religions like Christianity, is inherently violent, misogynistic and detrimental to intellectual curiosity among individuals and to the development of Islamic societies. In addressing Hirsi Ali’s central argument – that Islam is inherently “worse” than other religions – I first have to make my own perspective on the issue clear, because it influences how I read Hirsi Ali’s argument.

As an animist, I do not believe in any divine being separate from myself or any other person, place or thing in the universe – and it is my observation that a belief in an all-powerful deity and in the separation of the self, both from the divine and from other aspects of material existence, makes it easier for human beings to accept the authority of others – human or divine – in place of one’s own personal responsibility to determine how to behave rightfully toward the universe and all that it comprises.

Thus, I am not easily persuaded that the submission to Allah demanded by Islam is any more inherently detrimental to intellectual independence and critical thought than the demands of any other theist religion to obey the laws of a deity as expressed by the people who believe themselves to be the interpreters of a divine will.

As for Hirsi Ali’s belief that Islam is inherently more violent and more misogynistic, I can find a great deal of textual and historical evidence in other religions – and particularly in Christianity – to suggest that this argument is debatable.

In my opinion, the difference between the Islam that Hirsi Ali knows all too well and the Christianity she encounters in Holland (and compares Islam to) is more a matter of place and time than of an inherently greater capacity for warlike behaviour, abuse of women and denial of intellectual and ethical curiosity. Seven hundred years ago, it was Islamic culture that was intellectually open, tolerant of other religious beliefs, scientifically advanced and peaceful except when attacked from without, while Christian nations were scientifically backward, intolerant of diversity, and prone to internal violence. What has happened since is that Christianity has lived through the Reformation and the Enlightenment, while the Islamic nations have experienced the ravages of colonisation and imperialism. Christianity – particularly in Northern Europe – has become increasingly secular, while many in Islamic nations, with so much of their traditional culture shattered by colonialism, have increasingly been drawn to a fundamentalist interpretation (which many moderate scholars of the Qu’ran argue is not so much an interpretation as a distortion) of Islam in order to reforge a cultural identity.

I find myself wondering if Hirsi Ali has been exposed to modern fundamentalism in Christianity, which certainly has its share of intolerance of independent thought, extreme misogyny and violence against those who challenge its rigid reading of the Christian Bible. I also find myself wondering why Hirsi Ali so casually rejects the argument that colonialism has had a profound affect on the cultural and economic advancement of the Islamic countries of the Middle East and northern Africa. In her books, she notes that this is a common assertion among liberal and leftist circles in the West, but she does not really engage the argument, but rather dismisses it as an example of Western cultural relativism that fears to acknowledge Islam as a dangerous religion in and of itself.

Hirsi Ali does agree at least in part with other feminist critics of Islam, like Irshad Manji, who argue that Islam needs its own Enlightenment – that in order to meet the needs of Muslims in the modern world, it must become more open to change and to individual questioning and interpretation, and recognise the equality of women.

Hirsi Ali’s writing – regardless of what one thinks about her essential analysis of Islam – is a powerful indictment of the treatment of women and of those who question religious authority in many Islamic communities today. Particularly, her autobiography is a testament to the courage and determination of a woman who is determined to live her life on her own terms, guided by her own judgement, and on that level it is profoundly inspiring.

Her willingness to expose the extent of the misogyny and violence against women that she has seen and experienced raises some serious issues for consideration by Western (and primarily white) feminists. Where and how does one reconcile cultural relativism with feminist action that aims to improve the lives of women around the world? How does one respond to profoundly misogynist practices such as FGM and spousal abuse when they are argued to be linked to the cultural and religious traditions of others – which we are told we must respect? Are we attempting to impose Western values on the women of other cultures when we insist that FGM, forced marriage and other abuses are a violation of human rights that transcend cultural norms. If spousal abuse is wrong in north America, isn’t it also wrong in Saudi Arabia or Somalia?

I certainly don’t have a definitive answer on how to work for women’s rights without being just another white colonist who knows what’s best for people of colour, but it seems to me that the first step is listening to, learning from, and supporting the women from other cultures who are voicing their own feminist/womanist critiques and creating their own movements for social change. And in speaking up about the abuse of women in Islamic communities from her position as a woman who has been raised in those communities, Hirsi Ali is doing that, and deserves our attention.