The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [47]
I read somewhere on the Web that you have been dubbed Bin Laden’s nightmare.
I am openly lesbian. Muslims are forced to regard this as a sin. We have held this view for hundreds of years, they say. Is that a valid argument for rejecting homosexuals? Because you have been doing it for such a long time? The Koran states that the diversity of nature is a blessing. That should shut them up.
Nine
Freedom Requires
Constant Vigilance
At times I end up in an unfamiliar situation that will lead me in a new direction. This has happened a few times recently. I became a politician, for instance; and, stranger still, I joined the conservative liberal VVD Party [People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy]. Now, who would have expected that? Certainly not me.
In 2002, I was having lunch in at a restaurant in the basement of the Dutch house of representatives. Here journalists can have a drink with politicians in a relaxed atmosphere and ask them questions off the record. As I was sitting there, a nice, charming gentleman came up to my table and asked if I would be willing to say a few words on May 4 (Memorial Day in memory of World War II victims) about freedom of speech.
The charming gentleman in question was Caspar Becx, the newly appointed chairman of the Nieuwspoort International Press Centre. He said he found it strange that I had been threatened in the Netherlands as a consequence of using my right to say what I think. Is it not strange to be a member of parliament and not to be able to go anywhere without bodyguards?
He has a point, I thought. And so, on the spur of the moment, I agreed to Mr. Becx’s request.
It was not until later, when I was preparing my speech, that I realized I had to say something on the occasion of May 4, Memorial Day, the most politically sensitive and emotional day in the year. Memorial Day is a symbol of the most gruesome period in Dutch and European history. In the Netherlands alone, 240,000 people were killed, among them more than 100,000 Jews. What had I let myself in for when I said yes? What could I, born in Somalia and having lived scarcely ten years in the Netherlands, possibly contribute to such an important and serious day? Could Mr. Becx not have found someone else to do justice to the symbolism of May 4? A member of the Resistance, for example? Or perhaps a relative of such a person? After all, some 25,000 people were actively involved in the Dutch resistance movement during World War II. The fact that I do my work as a member of parliament surrounded by bodyguards does not really warrant my making a speech in defense of freedom of speech. About 1,200 illegal news pamphlets were published during the war; there are people in the Netherlands who put their lives at risk to produce and circulate these pamphlets. Without the added luxury of bodyguards. Why had they not been invited to say something?
TODAY IS MAY 4, and I find myself in the peculiar situation in which you, dear guests, expect me to make a meaningful speech. But what can an immigrant add to May 4 [Memorial Day] or May 5 [Liberation Day]? Do I share the collective memory of the Dutch or, for that matter, the European war generation? And why should I commemorate their dead, when in my own country and continent of origin, there are countless people who die every day and will be completely forgotten.
But perhaps, on second thought, the idea to invite an immigrant to speak today is not that strange after all. The war ended fifty-eight years ago, and the majority of the Dutch population feels that it is genuinely a thing of the past. Formally the country has made its peace with Germany. The younger, postwar generations are