Dutch Muslim women enrages Islamists

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 03/04/2006 7:32 AM  |  Opinion

Roy Voragen, Depok, West Java

Amid the current cartoon controversy it is helpful to look at a similar controversy: Submission, the short movie Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh made in 2004. Van Gogh was murdered -- because of this movie -- on Nov. 2, 2004, in broad daylight by the ""born-again"" Muslim Mohammed Bouyeri. Bouyeri, who had joint Dutch and Moroccan nationality, was born in Amsterdam in 1978; his father is from a small Berber village in the Rif area, Morocco.

Bouyeri shot and stabbed Van Gogh, leaving two knives in his chest, one pinning a letter to his chest in which he revealed the actual target: Hirsi Ali. She enjoyed police protection after receiving numerous threats. Time Magazine, though, declared Hirsi Ali as one of the hundred most important people of 2005.

After the murder of Van Gogh, Minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner, a member of the largest Christian party, said that it should be made easier to make blasphemy punishable (no one has been sentenced on blasphemy grounds the past 40 years), implying that Van Gogh's criticism of Muslims caused his untimely death.

Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969, and raised in a conservative, patriarchal Muslim family. Hirsi Ali's father arranged her marriage with a cousin in Canada, but instead she requested political asylum in the Netherlands and after five years she gained citizenship.

She studied political science and worked part-time as an interpreter for abortion clinics and women's shelters. After graduation she worked for the think tank of the Labor Party, but when it became apparent that she and the Labor Party disagreed on the effects of multiculturalism on women she left for the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). Since 2003 she is a member of Parliament for the VVD and she is a spokeswoman on emancipation and integration issues.

Not only is Hirsi Ali worried about the position of women in society, but she seeks the reason for many women's difficult position in religion in general and Islam in particular. Hirsi Ali combines feminist discourse and the ""war on terrorism"" rhetoric. The movie Submission deals with women who suffer from abuse, which Hirsi Ali claims is legitimized in the Koran.

Hirsi Ali wants to show that Muslim women are subordinate to men. Muslims went to court to get Submission withdrawn from circulation. While the court ruled in favor of Hirsi Ali, the producer gave in to pressure and no longer allows the screening of the movie out of fear for the safety of people connected with the film.

Hirsi Ali as a feminist is inspired by Susan Okin's essay Is multiculturalism bad for women?, in which Will Kymlicka's book Multicultural citizenship is criticized. Kymlicka claims that one's culture is important for one's identity and self-respect, and that minority groups therefore can get group rights. But this overlooks the intolerance and violence toward group members. Liberals like Kymlicka find it difficult to condemn private sphere practices, but unless women, in the words of Okin, ""are fully represented in negotiations about group rights, their interests may be harmed rather than promoted by the granting of such rights.""

Hirsi Ali is moving more and more in the direction of a ""war on terror"" rhetoric; some critics call her an orientalist. Hirsi Ali claims that western civilization is superior to Islam and that Islam is incompatible with freedom, especially freedom of speech, and equality.

The consequence, in general, is a polarization -- between us and them -- and a condemnation of cultural relativism. In response to the cartoon controversy Hirsi Ali called some politicians cowards and hypocrites; according to her some of them gave in to pressure and intimidation out of fear of violence, and implicitly accept censorship while pretending to do this in the name of respect.

Hirsi Ali's perspective is elitist; she wants to unveil women. But the women in Submission lack agency, these women are mere abstractions. And real personhood is needed if we as outsiders want to get to know them through a dialog. Now they are only spoken to.

Hirsi Ali's message would have had more chance to come across if she had made a documentary on Muslims living in women's shelters. Why is it so hard to believe that a woman wearing a veil can be a strong, independent citizen? Islam and democracy are not necessarily in contradiction, nor are Islam and emancipation per se in contradiction. Pakistani Riffat Hassan wrote a few months before the Sept. 11 tragedy: ""Many Western analysts are still unable to see Islam as a religion capable of being interpreted in a progressive way or as a source of liberation to Muslim peoples.""

Of course we cannot conclude that the Netherlands is turning into a battlefield of civilizations based on what Ayaan Hirsi Ali says. But there is a lot of frustration in Dutch society, so remarks Ahmed Aboutaleb, who works for a NGO promoting multiculturalism: ""If you are not tough enough for your own grass roots, then you do a bad job in the eyes of the majority. But if you are tough, your own grass roots will see you as a traitor.""

And it remains an important question as to why so many immigrants depend on social welfare, are in prisons and women's shelters; to blame this on religion is humiliating and all too easy for believers.

The writer teaches philosophy at the University of Indonesia, Depok, West Java.

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