Seif
08-08-05, 14:21
Sacred freedom
By Ian Buruma
Published: August 5 2005 11:07 | Last updated: August 5 2005 11:07
Having lunch with Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not a straightforward affair. Apart from being a Dutch parliamentarian for the VVD (liberal/conservatives), the young Somali-born politician is an activist for women’s rights, especially of Muslim women who are the victims of customs and “honour” codes that Hirsi Ali would like to see abolished. She wrote the script for the polemical short film Submission, directed by Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in November last year by an Islamist fanatic who was sentenced to life in prison last month. Hirsi Ali, Muslim-born and raised and openly critical of the Prophet (”a pervert”), would have been the killer’s preferred target, but since she had been under police protection since 2002, Van Gogh, who refused bodyguards, was probably killed, as it were, faute de mieux.
Hirsi Ali cannot take a step without an entourage of large, sharp-eyed men in sunglasses and suits. When we met in Paris, at the Brasserie de Bourbon - opposite the French parliament where she had just delivered a speech about immigration and integration - some of these men kept an eye on us from outside and some sat down at another table, scanning the joint over bottles of mineral water.
Hirsi Ali, beautiful, slim, black, dressed in a dark skirt and an elegant pink-and-cream jacket, complained about the lack of international co-ordination in security matters. She had to bring her own guards, she said, who didn’t speak French and were not allowed to carry their guns into the parliament building. Long and tedious negotiations were required to get round this “stupid rule - not the best way to fight terrorism”. Few things annoy her more than stupid rules: rules that make the world less safe, rules that stifle enterprise, rules that oppress women.
The other factor that made our lunch less than straightforward was Hirsi Ali’s love of sunlight; we had to keep changing tables and venues. “Oh no,” muttered one of the guards, “not another cafe.” But she was so delighted to be able to walk the streets and sit in cafes - something she cannot do in Holland - that our lunch turned into a moveable feast, ending, appropriately enough, at Hemmingway’s old Left Bank haunt, cafe Les Deux Magots.
Ordering mid-morning coffees, I ask her why Theo van Gogh refused protection. “Theo,” she replies, “was a free spirit and had no high regard for the Dutch police.” Does she? Since her life depends on the men at the next table, this is perhaps an impertinent question. But her answer would not have bothered them. “At the street level, they are very good, but they are underpaid and underappreciated. The top guys, on the other hand, are overpaid, overappreciated and closed to the rest of the world.”
Shivering a little in the morning chill and looking for a sunnier spot, she tells me how lower-ranking Dutch policemen have to prove their diligence by the number of tasks accomplished. It is much easier to hand out parking tickets than, say, to take care of domestic violence in Muslim households, and you get the same pay for it. Bureaucratic hurdles are also daunting; one mistake and you can lose your job. Underpaid, harassed and resentful of their bosses, “it is these kinds of people who end up leaving the big cities. One day people will wake up and say, `Oh, my God, the whole city is black.’ And what’s happening in Amsterdam and Rotterdam will happen to the whole country.”
On this note, Hirsi Ali suggests we repair to a warmer spot inside. The men in suits jump up and quickly case the establishment. Hirsi Ali smiles into the noonday sun. We are both Dutch citizens. She moved to The Netherlands 13 years ago, at the age of 22, to escape from an arranged marriage in Canada. I live in New York. Her grandparents were Somali nomads. Mine were from various parts of Europe. We are sitting in a French cafe and for the sake of this article we speak mostly in English, although her Dutch is fluent. A perfect picture of our multicultural world.
I urge her to order something to eat. She says she can’t face a thing yet and orders a second bottle of water. She talks about a Colombian woman in The Hague who started a little neighbourhood restaurant. It was all fine, but for one irritating flaw. When Hirsi Ali ordered a glass of wine, the lady said she couldn’t serve wine. Why ever not? Because she only had one toilet. To serve alcohol you have to have two. That is the rule. Hirsi Ali sighs: “This woman had gone through all the government-sponsored citizenship courses to learn how to become an entrepreneur. And then she has to face these silly rules and regulations. That is why so many Somalis move to the UK, where there are fewer restrictions. They flourish there.”
How about in the US, where she has recently spent time? “I feel more and more at home in New York. You see people of all colours. So many people of colour are successful there. You realise that it is nothing genetic.”
Hirsi Ali finally orders something to eat, a succulent quiche lorraine. We return to the subject of Muslim immigrants and their difficulties in finding their place in European societies. Her own case - from cleaning lady in an asylum shelter to world famous politician in 13 years - is exceptional. Having lived 11 years in Kenya, she spoke perfect English. She was a well-educated young woman when she boarded the train from Germany to The Netherlands. She craved freedom, and lapped it up when she found it. “The way Dutch women talked openly to each other about sex, in great detail. This was extraordinary to me.” She picks at her quiche and observes that Moroccans and Turks stay within their own circles. She doesn’t suffer from that kind of peer pressure. “I have nobody to accuse me of being decadent, westernised, a traitor, a... slut. There’s no one to remind me of my roots all the time. This is good for one’s mindset.”
There are plenty of people who do accuse her of those things and some have even tried to kill her. But they are strangers. Hirsi Ali fought for her place in Dutch society by letting go of her past. This is why she hates people explaining (and sometimes dismissing) her strong views on Islam by referring to her background: her circumcision in Somalia, her family’s exile in Saudi Arabia, her run-ins with Muslim teachers, her forced marriage. These things, she says, “are irrelevant to my argument”. What enrages her is not her private history but the fact that Muslim women “cannot exercise their freedoms in Holland, because their own families continue to practise their cultures and Dutch authorities encourage this by telling people to stick to their own ways”.
The sunlight has shifted. We change tables. The guards take up new positions. The half-eaten quiche is pushed away. Coffees are ordered.
When she was much younger, she was a devout Muslim, who believed that Salman Rushdie deserved to die for insulting the Prophet. Then, at Leyden University, where she read political science, she discovered Karl Popper on the open society, Spinoza on free thinking and Hayek on individualism. As her Muslim beliefs faded, she became an activist. Islam, she often says, needs its own Voltaire. The script she wrote for Theo van Gogh’s film, which features projections of Koranic texts on to the half-naked bodies of veiled women, was conceived in this spirit.
Hirsi Ali’s parents are still devout. Her father, a former politician who was jailed for his opposition to dictatorship in Somalia, still prays for his daughter’s return to the faith. Both her parents support her struggle for women’s rights but they do not believe that female oppression is rooted in Islam. Hirsi Ali disagrees: “If you read the Koran and the Hadith, you see the oppression of women in the text. That was a shock even to me.” Since so much about traditional Islam is incompatible, in her view, with secular, liberal society, drastic measures must be taken. Religious schools should be abolished. The Dutch constitution, which makes provisions for state-funded religious education, should be rewritten. The Dutch state must defend its secularism, like the French Republic. Islam must be reformed.
Before getting into a discussion about the finer points of religious reform, we debate the merits of moving to a pastry shop nearby. Hirsi Ali is basking in the sunlight, like a contented cat. “I feel safer outside Holland,” she says. “Different people, different languages. A false sense of security, I’m sure.”
So how can the faith be reformed? Hirsi Ali has given this a lot of thought. “First of all, we must agree on what is right, what is friendly to human beings. Then you see what is not and you modify everything. On relations between men and women, we must consider the circumstances when the laws were invented and then move on,” she says.
This is all reasonable, which may be part of the problem. Too much reason can reform a faith away, which would be fine with Hirsi Ali, who regards herself as an atheist. “My opponents will say that with my ideas Islam will be like what they have in the west. Sure, I say, but we drive western cars, so why not borrow western ideas. Universal rights were invented here, but are not unique to the west. That is why they are universal.”
With that we decide to move on for a pastry. “Another cafe?” asks the bodyguard. Ayaan Hirsi Ali smiles, delighted with the mere fact of being alive.
Brasserie de Bourbon and Les Deux Magots, Paris
1 x orange presse
2 x water
2 x double espresso
1 x milk coffee
1 x quiche lorraine
1 x glass white wine
Total: E59.30
Bron: Financial Times (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/73ea88c8-0489-11da-a775-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=2.html)
By Ian Buruma
Published: August 5 2005 11:07 | Last updated: August 5 2005 11:07
Having lunch with Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not a straightforward affair. Apart from being a Dutch parliamentarian for the VVD (liberal/conservatives), the young Somali-born politician is an activist for women’s rights, especially of Muslim women who are the victims of customs and “honour” codes that Hirsi Ali would like to see abolished. She wrote the script for the polemical short film Submission, directed by Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in November last year by an Islamist fanatic who was sentenced to life in prison last month. Hirsi Ali, Muslim-born and raised and openly critical of the Prophet (”a pervert”), would have been the killer’s preferred target, but since she had been under police protection since 2002, Van Gogh, who refused bodyguards, was probably killed, as it were, faute de mieux.
Hirsi Ali cannot take a step without an entourage of large, sharp-eyed men in sunglasses and suits. When we met in Paris, at the Brasserie de Bourbon - opposite the French parliament where she had just delivered a speech about immigration and integration - some of these men kept an eye on us from outside and some sat down at another table, scanning the joint over bottles of mineral water.
Hirsi Ali, beautiful, slim, black, dressed in a dark skirt and an elegant pink-and-cream jacket, complained about the lack of international co-ordination in security matters. She had to bring her own guards, she said, who didn’t speak French and were not allowed to carry their guns into the parliament building. Long and tedious negotiations were required to get round this “stupid rule - not the best way to fight terrorism”. Few things annoy her more than stupid rules: rules that make the world less safe, rules that stifle enterprise, rules that oppress women.
The other factor that made our lunch less than straightforward was Hirsi Ali’s love of sunlight; we had to keep changing tables and venues. “Oh no,” muttered one of the guards, “not another cafe.” But she was so delighted to be able to walk the streets and sit in cafes - something she cannot do in Holland - that our lunch turned into a moveable feast, ending, appropriately enough, at Hemmingway’s old Left Bank haunt, cafe Les Deux Magots.
Ordering mid-morning coffees, I ask her why Theo van Gogh refused protection. “Theo,” she replies, “was a free spirit and had no high regard for the Dutch police.” Does she? Since her life depends on the men at the next table, this is perhaps an impertinent question. But her answer would not have bothered them. “At the street level, they are very good, but they are underpaid and underappreciated. The top guys, on the other hand, are overpaid, overappreciated and closed to the rest of the world.”
Shivering a little in the morning chill and looking for a sunnier spot, she tells me how lower-ranking Dutch policemen have to prove their diligence by the number of tasks accomplished. It is much easier to hand out parking tickets than, say, to take care of domestic violence in Muslim households, and you get the same pay for it. Bureaucratic hurdles are also daunting; one mistake and you can lose your job. Underpaid, harassed and resentful of their bosses, “it is these kinds of people who end up leaving the big cities. One day people will wake up and say, `Oh, my God, the whole city is black.’ And what’s happening in Amsterdam and Rotterdam will happen to the whole country.”
On this note, Hirsi Ali suggests we repair to a warmer spot inside. The men in suits jump up and quickly case the establishment. Hirsi Ali smiles into the noonday sun. We are both Dutch citizens. She moved to The Netherlands 13 years ago, at the age of 22, to escape from an arranged marriage in Canada. I live in New York. Her grandparents were Somali nomads. Mine were from various parts of Europe. We are sitting in a French cafe and for the sake of this article we speak mostly in English, although her Dutch is fluent. A perfect picture of our multicultural world.
I urge her to order something to eat. She says she can’t face a thing yet and orders a second bottle of water. She talks about a Colombian woman in The Hague who started a little neighbourhood restaurant. It was all fine, but for one irritating flaw. When Hirsi Ali ordered a glass of wine, the lady said she couldn’t serve wine. Why ever not? Because she only had one toilet. To serve alcohol you have to have two. That is the rule. Hirsi Ali sighs: “This woman had gone through all the government-sponsored citizenship courses to learn how to become an entrepreneur. And then she has to face these silly rules and regulations. That is why so many Somalis move to the UK, where there are fewer restrictions. They flourish there.”
How about in the US, where she has recently spent time? “I feel more and more at home in New York. You see people of all colours. So many people of colour are successful there. You realise that it is nothing genetic.”
Hirsi Ali finally orders something to eat, a succulent quiche lorraine. We return to the subject of Muslim immigrants and their difficulties in finding their place in European societies. Her own case - from cleaning lady in an asylum shelter to world famous politician in 13 years - is exceptional. Having lived 11 years in Kenya, she spoke perfect English. She was a well-educated young woman when she boarded the train from Germany to The Netherlands. She craved freedom, and lapped it up when she found it. “The way Dutch women talked openly to each other about sex, in great detail. This was extraordinary to me.” She picks at her quiche and observes that Moroccans and Turks stay within their own circles. She doesn’t suffer from that kind of peer pressure. “I have nobody to accuse me of being decadent, westernised, a traitor, a... slut. There’s no one to remind me of my roots all the time. This is good for one’s mindset.”
There are plenty of people who do accuse her of those things and some have even tried to kill her. But they are strangers. Hirsi Ali fought for her place in Dutch society by letting go of her past. This is why she hates people explaining (and sometimes dismissing) her strong views on Islam by referring to her background: her circumcision in Somalia, her family’s exile in Saudi Arabia, her run-ins with Muslim teachers, her forced marriage. These things, she says, “are irrelevant to my argument”. What enrages her is not her private history but the fact that Muslim women “cannot exercise their freedoms in Holland, because their own families continue to practise their cultures and Dutch authorities encourage this by telling people to stick to their own ways”.
The sunlight has shifted. We change tables. The guards take up new positions. The half-eaten quiche is pushed away. Coffees are ordered.
When she was much younger, she was a devout Muslim, who believed that Salman Rushdie deserved to die for insulting the Prophet. Then, at Leyden University, where she read political science, she discovered Karl Popper on the open society, Spinoza on free thinking and Hayek on individualism. As her Muslim beliefs faded, she became an activist. Islam, she often says, needs its own Voltaire. The script she wrote for Theo van Gogh’s film, which features projections of Koranic texts on to the half-naked bodies of veiled women, was conceived in this spirit.
Hirsi Ali’s parents are still devout. Her father, a former politician who was jailed for his opposition to dictatorship in Somalia, still prays for his daughter’s return to the faith. Both her parents support her struggle for women’s rights but they do not believe that female oppression is rooted in Islam. Hirsi Ali disagrees: “If you read the Koran and the Hadith, you see the oppression of women in the text. That was a shock even to me.” Since so much about traditional Islam is incompatible, in her view, with secular, liberal society, drastic measures must be taken. Religious schools should be abolished. The Dutch constitution, which makes provisions for state-funded religious education, should be rewritten. The Dutch state must defend its secularism, like the French Republic. Islam must be reformed.
Before getting into a discussion about the finer points of religious reform, we debate the merits of moving to a pastry shop nearby. Hirsi Ali is basking in the sunlight, like a contented cat. “I feel safer outside Holland,” she says. “Different people, different languages. A false sense of security, I’m sure.”
So how can the faith be reformed? Hirsi Ali has given this a lot of thought. “First of all, we must agree on what is right, what is friendly to human beings. Then you see what is not and you modify everything. On relations between men and women, we must consider the circumstances when the laws were invented and then move on,” she says.
This is all reasonable, which may be part of the problem. Too much reason can reform a faith away, which would be fine with Hirsi Ali, who regards herself as an atheist. “My opponents will say that with my ideas Islam will be like what they have in the west. Sure, I say, but we drive western cars, so why not borrow western ideas. Universal rights were invented here, but are not unique to the west. That is why they are universal.”
With that we decide to move on for a pastry. “Another cafe?” asks the bodyguard. Ayaan Hirsi Ali smiles, delighted with the mere fact of being alive.
Brasserie de Bourbon and Les Deux Magots, Paris
1 x orange presse
2 x water
2 x double espresso
1 x milk coffee
1 x quiche lorraine
1 x glass white wine
Total: E59.30
Bron: Financial Times (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/73ea88c8-0489-11da-a775-00000e2511c8,ft_acl=,s01=2.html)