The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [77]
The third group are the utterly vulnerable. Some of these girls are imported as brides or domestic workers from the country of origin of the immigrants with whom they come to live. Some are daughters of the more conservative families. These girls are removed from school once they attain puberty and locked up at home. Their families get away with this form of modern slavery because the authorities rarely take notice of these young women. The girls have often been brought up to be absolutely obedient; they perform household chores without question. Their individual wills have been bent to the servitude taught at their parents’ house and put into practice in their husbands’ homes or the homes of the people who import and enslave them. They can hardly read or write. When they marry, they generally bear as many children as their individual fertility allows. When they miscarry, most of them view this as God’s will, not as a lack of proper health care, which they are usually prevented from seeking because of their families’ religious reasons.
When a woman in this subjugated state is violently abused by husband, brother, or father, she considers it a result of her own wrongdoing. In response, she promises to behave better in the future. Some abused women may be tempted to rebel by running away or informing the authorities when their life becomes too painful. Those who act on such a temptation are likely to be killed by their own family or husband, or end up in prostitution or in the women’s shelters. Some who have shown signs of rebellion are lured back to their country of origin by parents or husbands and simply dumped there, abandoned, disowned, with or without children, and with no financial resources or people to help them.
For a while now I have been asserting that the most effective way for European Union governments to deal with their Muslim minorities is to empower the Muslim women living within their borders. No one has offered a convincing argument against this position, but no one outside my own party seems to want to make the first step to help these women. The best tool for empowering these women is education. Yet the education systems of some European Union countries are going through a crisis of neglect, particularly with regard to immigrant children. We are now paying the price of mixing education with ideology. However, let me stick to the important subject of freeing women from the shackles of superstitious belief and tribal custom.
The biggest obstacle that hinders Muslim women from leading dignified, free lives is violence—physical, mental, and sexual—committed by their close families. Here is only a sample of some of the violence perpetrated on girls and women from Islamic cultures:
Four-year-old girls have their genitals mutilated: some of them so badly that they die of infections; others are traumatized for life from the experience and will later suffer recurrent infections of their reproductive and urinary systems.
Teenage girls are removed from school by force and kept inside the house to stop their schooling, stifle their thinking, and suffocate their will.
Victims of incest and sexual abuse are beaten, deported, or killed to prevent them from filing complaints.
Some pregnant victims of incest or abuse are forced to have abortions by their fathers, older brothers, or uncles in order to keep the family honor from being stained. In this era of DNA testing, the girls could demonstrate that they have been abused. Yet instead of punishing the abusers, the family treats the daughter as if she had dishonored the family.
Girls and women