Both women renounced their Islamic faith, westernized, and spoke openly in criticism of Muslims. But first, they made a far braver step: they started to question their own cultures.
Hirsi Ali was a Somali refugee who became a member of parliament in the Netherlands. Her accounts of her earlier life — in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia — lack nothing as an exposé. However, the radicalization of Muslim youths in these countries is a relatively new problem — and one far more complex than Westerners would like to believe.
Not until the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Somalia during Hirsi Ali's childhood were strict dress codes and moral crusades common. From her own explanations, and examples of other strict adherents, we are shown that the burqa and hijab are not, in fact, symptoms of female oppression.
Remarkably, they are displays of strength and superiority over others. This will, of course, seem a self-evidently ridiculous statement, if you are not aware of what Islam can represent to the adherent. In The Wall Street Journal, Shelby Steele explained:
[The Islamist's] group is God's archetype, the only authentic humanity, already complete and superior. No striving or self-reflection is necessary.
The wearing of hardline Islamist clothing is to the wearer what a muscle-bound Hercules is to a bunch of scrawny 90-pound weaklings: a condescending power display. The protagonist — but not necessarily the observer — is aware of the importance of the burqa and hijab. If there is to be any feeling for the infidel, aside from intolerance and superiority, it is pity.
Both authors' accounts of the school curriculum, focused on dogmatic, unquestioned immersion in the Quran, and a vicious indoctrination of hatred towards Jews and Israel, are shocking and saddening. Hirsi Ali's description of reaching the Netherlands awakens the reader to what is occurring daily, not in far-off lands — but within Europe.
For a long time, the Dutch believed that the best way to help immigrants assimilate was to build them mini-Mogadishus.
Within the refugee centers, and, later, the community, Hirsi Ali could see the damage this caused: her compatriots remained in stasis, neither integrating nor seizing the opportunities the Netherlands offered. Hackneyed accusations of racism and prejudice were their connection to Europe.
One of Hirsi Ali's first acts as a member of parliament was to demand a police investigation to record precisely how many "honor killings" occur in the Netherlands each year. Such a heinous crime had been simply ignored by her adopted homeland. The uncovering of this and other activities in the Muslim communities forced Hirsi Ali into hiding, and, eventually, emigration to the U.S. Her atheism is seen as apostasy by the Islamists — punishable by death.
For weeks, between the assassination of Theo van Gogh, a filmmaker killed by a jihadist in 2004, and her immigration to America, Hirsi Ali remained under the strictest protection, on the run from the threat of a similar — and, indeed, promised — fate.
The life of Nonie Darwish was strongly influenced by the fate of her father, Lt. Gen. Mustafa Hafez, who in the 1950s was sent by Egyptian president Nasser to command Egyptian army intelligence in Gaza. There, he established the fedayeen, which launched attacks on southern Israel. Beloved by the Palestinians, Hafez was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in 1956, when Nonie was only eight.
But certain things stuck in young Nonie's mind, other than the supposed glory of having a shahid (martyred) father. Like Hirsi Ali, throughout her childhood she displayed a constant curiosity about her surroundings. One issue bothered her especially: How could so many Egyptians be so poor? The reply was always the same fatalism: insha-Allah — "God willing."
A life spent following the Quran is a life spent doing God's will, but in today's world of satellite television and cheap air travel, the impoverished Arab youth is realizing that God's will delivers precisely the opposite of that which is enjoyed by the infidels of the West. The confused bitterness of these authors' fellow Muslims festers painfully.
Darwish describes Muslim society as rife with complex problems. Unstable relationships within the family — and especially those between men and women (who are seen, in sharia law, as basically chattel) — are initially created by a wife entering marriage with no power. Also, because of the perceived threat of a female friend stealing her husband, a woman cannot form solid friendships. Suspicion, insecurity, and an absence of love prevail.
Under conditions of polygamy, Darwish shows, better-connected men have a better choice of women. As a consequence, there remain large numbers of poor, uneducated men who have no available partners. This does not produce a harmonious society.
Secretly, Hirsi Ali destroyed her own ability, as it were, to remain ignorant enough to suffer a Somali marriage. She had read countless trashy women's novels from the United States. She had been corrupted. But, more honestly, she had seen the dynamics of a fruitful, romantic relationship.
To many in the West, the life-threatening work done by Hirsi Ali and Darwish means little. But these women have lifted the veil on Muslim culture — most importantly, from within.
|
|
