The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [25]
Five
What Went Wrong?
A Modern Clash of Cultures
Immigrants are expected to adopt certain standards and values that are part and parcel of Western society and to behave accordingly. The debate around integration denounces the behavior of Muslims who do not meet these standards but often fails to tackle the underlying causes. Westerners condemn polygamy, vendetta, and abuse of women; we want to improve education and increase employment; we see the causal link between unfinished school careers and criminality. And yet we prefer not to discuss the cultural and religious backgrounds of these wrongs and problems. We readily pass over the fact that traditional customs and orthodox religious opinions stand in the way of integration.
It is clear that “old forms and thoughts” will continue to influence Muslims for a long time to come. Archconservative imams, marriage to imported partners, the increased interest in Islamic teachings, and watching TV stations with fundamentalist leanings all contribute to this. Western integration policy should therefore address the regrettable correlation between the limited cultural development of large sections of the Muslim population and their social disadvantages.
The basic principles of traditional Islam, combined with the old customs of the ethnic groups, clash with the elementary values and standards of Western society. Failing to adopt the values of the host society or adhering to the standards of the country of origin explains to a large extent why many Muslims in the Netherlands are falling behind socially and economically. With the help of the work of three writers—Karen Armstrong, Bernard Lewis, and David Pryce-Jones—I argue that the Islamic faith lends itself more than any other to the preservation of premodern customs and traditions. For in Islam, culture and religion are very closely connected, and verses from the Koran legitimize many practices that—in the eyes of Westerners—are unacceptable. The mental world of Islam is a reflection of the stagnation that entrapped this religion a few centuries after its birth.
This premodern mentality will continue to work against Muslim integration in the West. But there are four different models to solve the problems of integration: the political-legal model, the (purely) socioeconomic model, the multicultural model, and the sociocultural model. To a greater or lesser extent, each takes into account the cultural-religious background of Muslim immigrants.
SOCIAL RELEVANCE
Of course, immigrants from Surinam, the Antilles, (Christian) Ghana, and China (to name but a few groups) also have problems, but Muslims have very specific difficulties that stem from religion and culture when it comes to adjusting to a modern, Western society. This is “religion as a culture-forming factor, with a system of values and morals derived from ideas about Divine Truth, and on the basis of this, a community, which is a natural translation of a higher moral order.” The drop in the number of young Muslims who attend the mosque by no means implies that these young people do not regard themselves as Muslims. For many nonpracticing Muslims, the essence of their identity and the system of values and morals by which they live remain Islamic.
Muslims in the Netherlands and other Western European countries are immigrants from Turkey and Morocco who have come to find work and have had children there. In the year 2000 these Dutch communities counted 309,000 and 262,000 registered people, respectively. In addition, the past decade has seen a considerable influx of asylum seekers, from Iraq (38,000), Somalia (30,000), Afghanistan (26,000), and Iran (24,000). In 2000 a total of approximately 35,000 people had arrived in the Netherlands from Pakistan, Tunisia, and Algeria. As