Are you serious? That's a crock of bull dung.
I've been there. I've seen it. That is crap.
Let's start with the Holy of Holies, Saudi Arabia.
I remember seeing men walking the hotel corridors with 4 little black things trailing them- -their wives. The black is the chador. With a veil, of course. Saudi has religious police in addition to civil police. They enforce sharia. They periodically raided the hotel I was in because it kept "forgetting" to enforce that veil bit.
Restaurants are divided into 2 sections- -families and men. Women can't eat in the men's section.
Women can't drive.
Women can't work in a business that even potentially might have male customers.
The buses have a partition halfway down their length. The back of the bus is for women.
Women do not have their own passports. Passports are family passports. If a woman is to leave Saudi alone, her husband must come to the airport with her and tell the immigration authorities he is allowing her to leave and give her the passport.
You see maybe 5% as many women on the streets in Saudi as you would in any Western nation. They are kept locked away.
When I was in Tunisia, I remember Arabs from other countries bitching because the Tunisian men "spoiled" their women. That meant they treated somewhat like a woman in Europe or the US would be treated. They were afraid that might spread and they might have to too.
Try this from the NYT:
November 9, 2002
Behind the Veil: A Muslim Woman Speaks Out
By MARLISE SIMONS
MSTERDAM — Ayaan Hirsi Ali had done well in the 10 years since she arrived in the Netherlands as a
young refugee from Somalia and, until a few months ago, she lived a quiet life in her adopted land. Never
did she intend to create a national commotion.
She studied Dutch, took on cleaning jobs, went to university and worked as a political scientist. She made a
name for herself pressing for the emancipation of Muslim women and documenting how thousands, living
even here, were subjected to beatings, incest and emotional and sexual abuse.
To the surprise of many, she became a leading voice condemning the government's support for
multiculturalism, programs costing millions of dollars a year that she considers misplaced because they help
keep Muslim women isolated from Dutch society.
Then Ms. Hirsi Ali, 32, began receiving hate mail, anonymous messages calling her a traitor to Islam and a
slut. On several Web sites, other Muslims said she deserved to be knifed and shot. Explicit death threats by
telephone soon followed. The police told her to change homes and the mayor of Amsterdam sent
bodyguards. She tried living in hiding. Finally, last month, she became a refugee again, fleeing the
Netherlands.
"I had to speak up," she said, in a telephone interview from her hiding place, "because most spokesmen for
Muslims are men and they deny or belittle the enormous problems of Muslim women locked up in their
Dutch homes."
Her ordeal has caused an outcry in the Netherlands, a country already uneasy with its recent waves of
immigrants and asylum seekers, now representing almost 10 percent of the population. Many Dutch see the
threats as an intolerable assault on the country's democratic principles. The threats have also intensified a
fierce debate — one that can be heard these days across Europe — about what moral values and rules of
behavior immigrants should be expected to share.
Though absent, Ms. Hirsi Ali seems very present here. Her portrait has appeared on magazine covers and
television and there have been indignant newspaper editorials and questions in Parliament. Some have called
her the Dutch Salman Rushdie. In paid advertisements, more than 100 Dutch writers have offered her
support.
"I've made people so angry because I'm talking from the inside, from direct knowledge," she said. "It's seen
as treason. I'm considered an apostate and that's worse than an atheist."
The theme of injustice toward women in Islamic countries has become common in the West, but it has
gained fresh currency through Ms. Hirsi Ali's European perspective, her study of Dutch immigrants and her
own life. Born in Mogadishu, she grew up a typical Muslim girl in Somalia. When she was 5, she underwent
the "cruel ritual," as she called it, of genital cutting. When her father, a Somali opposition politician, had to
flee the country's political troubles, the family went to Saudi Arabia, where, she said, she was kept veiled
and, much of the time, indoors.
At 22, her father forced her to marry a distant cousin, a man she had never seen. But a friend helped her to
escape and she finally obtained political asylum in the Netherlands.
She was shocked when, as a university student, she held a job as an interpreter for Dutch immigration and
social workers and discovered hidden "suffering on a terrible scale" among Muslim women even in the
Netherlands. She entered safe houses for women and girls, most of them Turkish and Moroccan
immigrants, who had run away from domestic violence or forced marriages. Many had secret abortions.
"Sexual abuse in the family causes the most pain because the trust is violated on all levels," she said. "The
father or the uncle say nothing, nor do the mother and the sisters. It happens regularly — the incest, the
beatings, the abortions. Girls commit suicide. But no one says anything. And social workers are sworn to
professional secrecy."
More than 100 women a year have surgery to "restore" their virginity, she estimates in her published work.
While only 10 percent of the population is non-Dutch, this group accounts for more than 60 percent of
abortions, "because the Muslim girls are kept ignorant," she said. Three out of five Moroccan-Dutch girls —
Moroccans are among the largest immigrant groups — are forced to marry young men from villages back
home, to keep them under control, she said.
A year or so ago, Ms. Hirsi Ali's case might not have attracted so much attention. But the mood in the
Netherlands, as in much of Europe, changed after Sept. 11, 2001. In the month that followed, there was an
unheard of backlash against the nearly one million Muslims living in the Netherlands, with more than 70
attacks against mosques. Sept. 11 also gave politicians licence to vent brewing animosities.
Among them was Pim Fortuyn, a maverick gay politician who was killed in May, apparently by an animal
rights activist. He said out loud what had long been considered racist and politically incorrect — for
example, that conservative Muslim clerics were undermining certain Dutch values like acceptance of
homosexuality and the equality of men and women.
What Mr. Fortuyn did on the right, Ms. Hirsi Ali has done on the left. Many in the Labor Party, where she
worked on immigration issues, were shocked when she told reporters that Mr. Fortuyn was right in calling
Islam "backward."
"At the very least Islam is facing backward and it has failed to provide a moral framework for our time," she
said in one conversation. "If the West wants to help modernize Islam, it should invest in women because
they educate the children."
To do this, she argues for drastic changes in Dutch immigration policy. The government, she says, should
impose Dutch law on men who beat their wives and daughters, even if the Muslim clergy say it is
permissible. It should also end teaching the immigrants in their own language and stop paying for the more
than 700 Islamic clubs, most of which, she said, "are run by deeply conservative men and they perpetuate
the segregation of women."
Her views, and the death threats, have divided Muslims, who account for most immigrants here. Almost 20
Muslim associations have condemned the threats, but at the same time faulted her for criticizing Islam. Hafid
Bouazza, a Dutch-Moroccan author who in the past has received letters saying he will burn in hell for his
writing, said the threats were shocking. "No criticism of Islam is accepted from women," he said. "Muslim
women are particularly vulnerable."
Others were bitter. Ali Eddaudi, a Moroccan writer and cleric living here, dismissed "all the fuss" over a
Muslim woman who "panders to the Dutch."
Ms. Hirsi Ali agrees that the criticism is so intense in part because she is a woman. "I am a Muslim woman
saying these things, and it has provoked a lot of hatred," she said.
One thing is certain: the death threats against Ms. Hirsi Ali have given more prominence to her ideas, which
have now become the subject of intense debate among Dutch policy makers. The Dutch Liberal Party has
invited her to become a candidate in the parliamentary elections next January.
She says she has accepted and hopes to return to the Netherlands, though she fears for her safety. "Either I
stop my work, or I learn to live with the feeling that I'm not safe," she said. "I'm not stopping."
nytimes.com |
