The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam Page 8

  The problem with this vision is that there is a gap between immigrants’ formal rights and the actual process of settling down and becoming fully emancipated members of society. In practice very few immigrants make use of their civil and political rights. Their turnout at the elections, for example, is depressingly low. Because familiarization with Dutch society is limited, their awareness of their individual rights is, too.

  Paradoxically, in practice, formal rights are used to achieve the opposite of integration, namely to segregate the community from the rest of society on the basis of its religion (ethnicity). The most tragic example of this is the government system of subsidies for special Islamic schools. The ease with which immigrants can draw social benefits also has its drawbacks, one of which is that many immigrants have slipped into a permanent dependency on state benefits.

  The political-legal approach is based on Dutch national history formed over centuries of political tensions among different Christian and secular groups. It does not take into account the background of the Muslims in the Netherlands. Because there is such a difference between the mind-sets of Muslim immigrants and the Dutch population, however, this approach perpetuates the disadvantages mentioned above. Radical Muslims will not be absorbed into the country the way the Roman Catholics and other sects eventually were in history. Radical Muslims are opposed to the system itself. Radical Muslims want to destroy the whole system.

  THE SOCIOECONOMIC ANGLE

  In this view, immigrants from non-Western countries are labeled as disadvantaged. The state aims its legislation to create equal opportunities for their education, employment and income, health care, and housing. The group’s disadvantages are considered only socioeconomic, however, and are not thought to be byproducts of any culture or religion.

  The advantage of this approach is that it takes into consideration the different ways immigrants are excluded, in what we call “blind” segregation. For instance, large numbers of immigrants in deprived areas are virtually segregated into “black” schools, whereas most ethnic Dutch children are in “white” schools. But as before, the disadvantage of this approach is that it is based on the specific circumstances of Dutch social history, in particular the struggle between labor and capital, and the institution of the welfare state after World War II. After this, the Dutch working class became emancipated into a bourgeois middle class. Most Muslims in the Netherlands, on the other hand, come from a completely different background, one of institutionalized inequality, which is why this approach has two major downsides. In the first place, it leads to victimization, because it places all the responsibility for dealing with the problems on external factors (the government, Dutch society); it also gives the group a negative self-image and encourages a distrustful attitude toward the world outside the group. This causes tensions between the parties and gives rise to recriminations.

  Moreover, the provisions of the Dutch welfare state, such as social security and rent subsidy, help cushion the consequences for those who have dropped out of society, who no longer absolutely need to adjust to the ways of Dutch society if they want to survive. In this way, the process of modernization comes to a halt for large groups of Muslims; from the margins of society they cling to values and standards that stand in the way of their own emancipation.

  MULTICULTURALISM:

  INTEGRATION WHILE RETAINING ONE’S OWN IDENTITY

  A multicultural approach aspires to promote different cultures living peacefully side by side under one government, in accordance with the rules of mutual respect, and with the same opportunities and rights. Yet advocates of multiculturalism favor giving minorities special privileges. Originally, these special privileges are intended to safeguard the rights of the indigenous population in countries such as Canada (Indians and Inuit) and Australia (Aboriginals). Nonetheless, many people in the Netherlands still defend this position. For example, M. Galenkamp, a philosopher of law from Rotterdam, was critical of the Prime Minister Balkenende’s proposal to make the fundamental starting points for the government’s integration policy the Dutch system of morals and values (basic human rights) and the separation of church and state. Galenkamp argued that this would be impossible, since the Netherlands is no longer a homogeneous society; she also feels it would have the undesirable effect of polarization, which would be detrimental to social cohesion; and she argues that it would be unnecessary because a better starting point would be the “principle of damage” devised by J. S. Mill, the nineteenth-century philosopher, who believed that no person should ever have to suffer as a result of someone else’s exercise of freedom.

  If John Stuart Mill were living in Holland today, he would disagree with Galenkamp. He would explain to her that the position of Muslim women living in Holland is already contrary to the “principle of damage.” The problem with Galenkamp is that she’s very formal in her thinking, as a lawyer is trained to be. Lawyers are not taught to understand the term power; they concentrate on the vertical relationships in society—the vertical relationship of the individual and his relationship to the government. So, they argue, the freedom of the individual must not be restricted by the government. But they do not see the way power works horizontally. They do not see how to prohibit one individual from taking the freedom of another individual. They do not see or understand the subcultures, particularly Islamic interior cultures. They do not see how Muslim women are socialized to believe in the importance and rightness of their own oppression. Mill was quite aware of the importance of reading and reasoning as tools of self-understanding and of understanding the world. If a woman is socialized to believe in her own oppression, that would not meet the condition of freedom.

  Multiculturalism has been the biggest influence on Dutch integration policies since the realization, around 1979, that the guest workers who had flowed in from other countries to perform service jobs were going to stay for good. Multiculturalism is so influential partly due to the nation’s history of having learned to live with many minorities in a peaceful way. This coexistence was based on the principle of “emancipation through the conservation of identity,” of the integration of different peoples as they preserved their own ethnic, cultural identities. Multiculturalism is also influential because of the guilt that the Dutch feel over their colonial history and over the racism against and genocide of the Jews during World War II.

  The problem with this multicultural view is that it denies that cultural and religious standards can have negative effects and retard the integration and emancipation of peoples, particularly Muslims. Thus, the multiculturalists welcome the emergence of a Muslim section of society because they are under the illusion that it will help encourage Muslim economic emancipation as it did with the Roman Catholic sectors years ago. The Catholics in a largely Protestant Dutch country were for some years poorer, with large families and low-paying jobs, like Muslims today. But they organized themselves around the Catholic Church and improved their financial and economic lives until they became quite integrated.

  The multiculturalists say, “If it worked for the Catholics, why shouldn’t it work for the Muslims?” But this is a dangerous misconception about the vast majority of Muslims and will merely encourage their separate, inward focus on their own isolated culture. What the multiculturalists forget is that the Catholics shared with the other Christian/Protestant sects the same language, the same national identity, a common history, and basically the same ethnicity. And they were both Christian, although they might disagree on how to express their religion. The Muslims in Europe have myriad different languages and ethnicities that further separate them from their new country. The socioeconomic background of these many peoples is also quite varied and starkly different from the European background. Because multiculturalists will not classify cultural phenomena as “better” or “worse” but only neutral or disparate, they actually encourage segregation and unintentionally perpetuate, for instance, the unsatisfactory position of Muslim women. State subsidies for nonstate schools allow Muslim
s to have their own schools, including separate boarding schools for boys and girls, in which young girls are indoctrinated to expect a future as mothers and housewives in accordance with very conservative Islamic practices.

  THE SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH

  The economist Arie van der Zwan recently concluded that the lack of progress in integration cannot be explained by objective socioeconomic factors alone. Sociocultural factors are equally important and combine with very real socioeconomic disadvantages to cause the integration problem. He draws distinctions, for example, between the various groups of non-Western immigrants. On the one hand, there are the people from Surinam and the Antilles, and on the other the Moroccans and Turks. Referring to the study by the Netherlands Scientific Council of Government Policy, mentioned above, he concludes that the former two groups form a subclass that has become almost identical to its native Dutch counterpart. But Turks and Moroccans present qualitative and quantitative differences, which arise from their sociocultural position. Only a third of the Moroccan and Turkish population can be considered integrated immigrants. For two-thirds, the prospects for integration are very poor indeed.

  One-half of the unintegrated group consists of people over forty-five, most of whom have stopped working. The other half consists of second- and third-generation Turks and Moroccans, who, van der Zwan writes, are impossible to classify: “The strong identification with the ethnic group has gone, while integration into society has not taken place yet, and the prospect of this happening is doubtful.” This vulnerable, uprooted group is exposed to the temptations of Western society (freedom, drugs, nightlife), but lacks the inner mental or individual resources or education to control inappropriate behavior. Social derailment is common with these young people: education and employment can lead to social elevation, but delinquency and the lure of fundamentalism often are more alluring.

  CONCLUSION

  If we interpret the concept of “integration” as a process of civilization for groups of Muslim immigrants living within the Western society into which they have been received, we render superfluous the pseudodebate about the equality of cultures. Whether an immigrant should accept or give up something in order to function better within a society depends on the demands of that society. As immigrants develop an awareness of their level of achievement in relation to others, they see that in order to progress they need to behave according to the values and standards of their newly adopted home country.

  A third advantage of regarding integration as a process of civilization is that it helps the native population to empathize with the immigrants facing this challenge. It is easier to show mutual understanding in the knowledge that the immigrant is about to face a fundamental personal change. The native majority has had over a hundred years to come to grips with modern values, which gives them a psychological advantage over the people who have walked into society straight from the Riff Mountains or the Anatolian countryside. Denying this really would be counterproductive, yet this form of tolerance is quite different from advocating the preservation of traditions and values merely for their own sake.

  After all, the Dutch no longer advocate the tradition of an ancestral, premodern, religious tradition. Tragically, however, the Dutch government has ignored the culturally disadvantaged position of Muslims for decades. In recent years, the most common approaches the government took to these problems were the political-legal, the (purely) socioeconomic, and the multicultural, all three of which were strongly colored by typically Dutch political, economic, and cultural traditions. Only an approach that addresses both the socioeconomic disadvantages and cultural factors unique to Islam offers a real chance of promoting successful integration. Failure to do this would be catastrophic, above all for the weakest group of Muslim immigrants, the women and girls.

  Six

  A Brief Personal History of

  My Emancipation

  At the time of this interview, I had been forced by death threats to leave the Netherlands to go into hiding. I expected that once I returned to the Netherlands all publicity would—at first—focus on me again and not on the debate. Right now the media are still lapping it up: a black woman who criticizes Islam. One day the magic surrounding me will disappear. At some point they will have had enough, and then it will be possible to think about the real issue again, about the fact that the failure of integration is to a considerable extent due to the hostility toward women in Islamic culture and religion.

  I knew what I was letting myself in for when I took this position. The negative reactions did not surprise me. This is a topic that stirs up controversy. If I do go on—and I will—I will have to expect the difficult repercussions that will inevitably follow. I understand that rage. Any group on the brink of a transformation will experience that fury. My strategy is to keep pushing until the storm is over. One day I will be able to say the things I am saying now without inciting these violent emotions. Others have also begun to speak out and are fighting for the emancipation of dependent, semiliterate women from immigrant communities. The third feminist wave is on its way, and it is giving me goose bumps.

  Emancipation is a struggle. I chose that struggle and am now going to carry on fighting for it as a member of parliament for the Liberal Party. I decided to switch over to them because I was getting sick of the evasive behavior of the Labor party, which has closed its eyes to the growing feelings of unease in society. Suppression of women does not seem to them to be an important theme, and they are not committed to admitting it occurs, addressing it, or correcting it.

  I have not chosen to join the Liberal Party, not because I care less about social issues on which the Labor Party thinks it has a monopoly, but because I have come to realize that social justice begins with the freedom and integrity of the individual. Everything in our society focuses on the individual citizen: you take your exams on your own, you fill in your own tax form, and in court you alone have to face your sentence. Personal responsibility always comes first. But what does the Labor Party do? It still treats immigrants as a group. You might ask yourself, why? The answer is, because this party is not in touch with reality.

  Let me give an example. As an interpreter I was involved with immigrants who had committed social security fraud. In order to claim an allowance, both partners have to sign; the woman does this at her husband’s command. He points to the dotted line and says “sign here.” But she has no idea what she is signing for. In her home country she has never had to do anything like this. Then the police come to the door. The man and woman are charged with social security fraud. It turns out that the husband had a job on the side. She, however, knew nothing about it: true, he leaves the house every morning and comes home late at night, but Muslim men rarely tell their wives how they spend the day. So why should she have noticed anything? It emerges that they have to pay back eighty thousand guilders, half each. In other words, the wife is made jointly responsible for the husband’s misconduct. And this case is by no means unique; there are hundreds like it.

  Try to convince the Labor Party that these women should be freed from their dependent position; you won’t succeed. The party aims to keep Muslim women in this position because it thinks that it will help the women’s sense of identity. “Those women,” they say, “are happy in their own culture.” The party overlooks the children, too. Until, that is, they turn into little “Moroccan bastards.” Then there is the devil to pay.

  In a Dutch newsmagazine, a general practitioner and well-known member of the Labor Party relates how a Muslim woman came to his surgery and said: “It is God’s will that my husband has become so ill.” The thought that your life lies in the hands of God may offer you comfort on your deathbed, but it also means that you will end up sooner on that deathbed. However, this doctor thinks it is a “nice conviction.” As it happens, he does not believe in God himself, but it seems agreeable to him to be able to utter this kind of nonsense. What he is actually saying is: they have a right to their own backwardness.

  The dec
iding factor for my changeover in October 2002 to the Liberal Party was the assurance by the party leader that I will be given the freedom to bring to the top of the political agenda the integration and emancipation of immigrant women.

  I do not understand why my decision has generated such an emotional response. People use words like treason, as if I had joined a criminal organization. But after eight years of a coalition government composed of the Liberal and Labor parties, the differences between the two parties are really not that big. I can understand that people feel let down by me personally. However, the fact that Labor has done a lot for me does not mean I should remain loyal to the party when I can no longer identify with its viewpoints. Everyone suggests it was an impulsive decision, but I had already said back in August that I was not happy and wanted to leave.

  Of course, I have to learn certain things. I understand that at times I must strike a compromise, that I need to become more strategic in my thinking and formulate my thoughts more accurately, but I have no intention of giving up. I can live with the price I have to pay for this. As long as I am protected, I have the mental energy to go on. I need to be careful, though, not to push for too much too fast. My impatience is my Achilles’ heel: I want it all to happen here and now. I need to be told that tomorrow will still be good.

  I KNOW MY father loves me, but I have made a choice that radically opposes everything he stands for. If he really said to the Dutch weekly what he is quoted as saying—that he never received any phone threats—it feels to me like a slap in the face. After each of my public appearances he received telephone calls from Somali Muslims who wanted to lodge a complaint. Initially he ignored these calls, but he did ask me whether the stories were true. I told him that I was making a stand for the rights of women in Islam. His reaction was: “Make a stand for what you feel is right, but make sure you do it in God’s name.” The fact that I have now publicly denounced God is a terrible disappointment to him, one he can barely accept. By smearing Islam, I have smeared his reputation and his honor. That is why he has turned away from me. I feel for him, but at the same time I am furious. At the end of the book that I am writing at the moment, I address an open letter to him in which I accuse him of offering his children conditional love only. Every time he has had to make a choice between the community and his children, he has chosen the former. This hurts.