The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [36]
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 deciding 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