The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [74]
A spokesperson for the Netherlands Muslim Broadcasting Network says: “Hirsi Ali has a problem with these verses from the Koran. But it is not the Koran that incites men to abuse women, it is the men themselves. She should address them directly and invite them to discuss the matter. Emancipation begins from within. If you attack what people value, you will lose their trust.”
All these reactions were fairly predictable. It does not matter whether the person commenting has actually seen Submission. It does not matter whether the critical reflections on Islam are expressed in the form of a short film, a text, or something else. These people just want to deny Islam’s biggest weakness: the way in which women are regarded and treated. Leaders of Muslim organizations warn that the Muslim community will not accept the images of women whose bodies have been painted with verses from the Koran. But the fact is that Muslim organizations, and Muslims in general, have for centuries gone along with what actually happens when the message contained in these verses is applied to the bodies of the actresses in Submission: the lashing of “unchaste” women, the systematic mistreatment of “disobedient” women, the rape of married women by permission of Allah, and the ostracizing, or even murder, of girls and women who have become the victims of incest. All this is followed slavishly, thoughtlessly to clear the family name of shame.
Representatives of Muslim organizations deny the message contained in Submission and also deny the fact that large groups of Muslim women are forced to take refuge in women’s shelters, that many are dumped by their husbands in their country of origin, with all their children and no money. The Department of Justice has actually been stopped from keeping a systematic record of the number of honor killings that occur each year, because sophistic spokespeople for Muslim organizations warn that this would upset the people whose interests they protect. Yet the regional institutes for mental welfare and other mental health care services are aware that many Muslim girls become the victims of incest and forced marriages and are taken away by their fathers to be murdered in the family’s country of origin. Whose interests are being protected by the government here? Murderers are being protected.
The hidden agenda of the conservative spokespeople of Muslim organizations is the same as the agenda of Muslim schools: Western Muslims want to be free to decide how they treat the female members of their family. These are organized enemies of women, and they endorse the unspoken consensus that prevails in Islamic countries: how women and girls are treated is a private family matter. If any female behavior seems remotely threatening to the family honor, then fathers, brothers, and any other male relatives may intervene as they think fit. Verses in the Koran are used to justify male violence against women, and also to appease the perpetrator’s conscience and that of any witnesses. By exempting the holy text from all criticism, the leaders of Muslim organizations everywhere successfully preserve the system that underlies the oppression of women. And so they perpetuate its practice.
In fact, the majority of Muslim men do not regard the way they treat women as “oppressive,” “abusive,” or “murderous”; they feel that violence is a fair response to the way women behave. As one Muslim spokesperson said, “Muslim women know the rules. If they choose to overstep the mark, they will be punished,” and “with the exception of some extreme cases, there is little wrong with the position of women in the Islamic world.” Doesn’t that speak volumes?
Yet Muslims think I place too much emphasis on the negative aspects of Islam. They ask why I do not make a fuss about the intolerance among Christians or Jews and believe that I am more interested in putting Islam in a bad light than in improving the position of women.
It is true that the Bible and