The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [7]
It is a dangerous development that the age at which girls can be married off in a country like the Netherlands, and in every Western country with a major Muslim minority, has dropped in the past few years. To marry someone off is to make a girl or young woman available to a man unknown to her who is then allowed to use her sexually. The younger the bride, the greater the chance she will be a virgin. In essence, what is involved here is an arranged rape approved of by her entire family. Marrying off usually implies the girl is not able or allowed to complete her education. Tragically, countless Muslim girls still have to comply with this practice.
Girls who are not successful in preserving their virginity or who are afraid (despite the fact that they have never had sex) that they won’t bleed on their wedding night resort to medical interventions that restore their hymens. Approximately ten to fifteen of these operations are performed in Dutch hospitals every month. As a result of the taboo on sex—and thus on sex education—Muslim girls and women end up with undesired pregnancies or infected with sexually transmitted diseases. The increase in abortions is directly related to the influx of Moroccan and Turkish women.
The third reason I am determined to make my voice heard is that Muslim women are scarcely listened to, and they need a woman to speak out on their behalf. Their official spokespersons are nearly all men. Given the widespread suffering of Muslim women, there are too few social organizations and political parties actively devoted to improving their lot. Spokesmen of Muslim organizations and immigrant politicians with Muslim backgrounds, along with other advocates of “group rights,” excel in denying, trivializing, or avoiding the enormous problems of Muslim girls and women in the West.
In a June 2002 interview, the member of parliament for the Socialist Party, Khadija Arib, said the following about the position of Muslim women: “People seem to think that immigrant women want to sit home alone all day, but this happens mostly because there is nowhere for them to go.” At the opening in spring of a mother-and-child daycare center in an Amsterdam suburb, she proposed establishing a special facility where women could attend activities all day long. In doing so, she denies the essence of the problem. In a large segment of the Muslim community, the notion still exists that women should not have any freedom of movement or work outside the home. Muslim women will benefit more from harsh criticism of this idea than from the creation of special women’s activity centers.
My final motive is my firm belief that the emphasis on a Muslim identity with corresponding “group rights” is detrimental to Muslim women. In 1999, Susan Moller Okin, a professor of political science and a feminist, launched a discussion in the United States between the advocates of multiculturalism, who favor the advancement and preservation of Islamic (or other) group cultures, and the opponents of multiculturalism, including Okin herself. In her view, the fact that many Western governments pursue a policy geared to the preservation of group cultures is in conflict with their constitutions which, after all, set down the principles of individual freedom and the equality of men and women. Among other criticisms, she points out that multiculturalists take no heed of the private lives of the cultures they are defending. And it is precisely in private life that differences in power and the repression of women manifest themselves most clearly.
In the final analysis, Muslim women in the West will benefit more from the dominant Western culture that is adhered to by the majority of the population and that offers them good opportunities to shape their lives according to their own insights. I am the living proof of this.