Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Biography

Background

Hirsi Ali's father Hirsi Magan Isse was a member of a prominent Somali clan who studied abroad in Italy and the United States. Her mother, Asha, had worked in her youth in Aden and the Gulf where she was attracted to the Wahhabi version of Islam. In 1969, the year Hirsi Ali was born her father was imprisoned by Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. He escaped the country in 1972, and the family were not reunited until 1978.Although her father did not believe in female circumcision, Hirsi Ali was subjected to it while he was away.In 1980, they moved to Kenya, where Magan Isse subsequently left them to join a group of political exiles in Ethiopia.

Asylum in the Netherlands

In 1992, Hirsi Ali fled to the Netherlands via Germany to escape an arranged marriage with a cousin in Canada. She claimed asylum using a false name, maintaining she had come directly from Somalia rather than Kenya. In a statement some years later, Hirsi Ali said of this:

I have said many times that I am not proud that I lied when I sought asylum in the Netherlands. It was wrong to do so. I did it because I felt I had no choice. I was frightened that if I simply said I was fleeing a forced marriage, I would be sent back to my family. And I was frightened that if I gave my real name, my clan would hunt me down and find me. So I chose a name that I thought I could disappear with – the real name of my grandfather, who was given the birth-name Ali. I claimed that my name was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, although I should have said it was Ayaan Hirsi Magan.

The Economist criticised the account of the episode in her autobiography, Infidel:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not the first person to use false pretences to try to find a better life in the West, nor will she be the last. But the muddy account given in this book of her so-called forced marriage becomes more troubling when one considers that Ms Hirsi Ali has built a career out of portraying herself as the lifelong victim of fanatical Muslims.

After gaining asylum, Hirsi Ali undertook a number of short-term jobs and courses in Dutch and social work. She then studied political science at the University of Leiden until 2000. She also worked as an interpreter and translator for the Dutch National Migration Service. In this role she became critical of the Dutch asylum system, which she regarded as favouring more educated asylum seekers.

Political Career

After completing her masters in political science, Hirsi Ali became a fellow of the Wiardi Beckman Foundation, a research institute linked to the social-democratic PvdA. In spired by the Atheist Manifesto of Leiden philosopher [[Herman Philipse], she renounced Islam to become an atheist. Her emerging critique of Islamic culture was reflected in a book entitled De Zoontjesfabriek (The Son Factory). It's publication led to the first threats on her life.

In November 2002, Hirsi Ali switched to the VVD, accusing the PvdA of ignoring the negative aspects of immigration from Islamic countries. She served as a VVD parliamentary assistant from November 2002 until January 2003, when she was elected to the Dutch parliament. She began to receive permanent police protection around this time, because of the growing threats to her life.

In an August 2005 interview, Hirsi Ali told the Trouw newspaper:

“Mohammed is, according to our Western standards, a pervert. A tyrant. He is against freedom of expression. If you do not do what he says, you will end up on the wrong side of things. That makes me think of all those megalomaniac rulers from the Middle East: Bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam. Do you find it strange that Saddam Hussein is there? Mohammed is his example. Mohammed is an example for all Muslim men. Do you find it strange that so many Muslim men are violent?”

Muslim groups called for her to be prosecuted over the comments. In March, the public prosecutor ruled no offence had been committed because "no conclusions as to Muslims and their dignity as a group is not denied."

Hirsi Ali wrote the screenplay for Submission, a short film directed by Theo Van Gogh which was shown on Dutch television in August 2004.The film portrayed violence towards women in Islamic society and featured verses from the Koran projected onto women's bodies.Hirsi Ali went into police protection following the film's release after receiving death threats.

On 2 November, Van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, who left a death threat against Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest with a dagger.Hirsi Ali went into hiding at first in the Netherlands, and then in New York.

She returned to the Dutch parliament on 18 January 2005. On 18 February, she revealed the location of herself and Geert Wilders, who had also been in hiding, and demanded a secured house which she was granted a week later.

In 2006, she received the Reader's Digest European of the Year award. In her acceptance speech, she urged action against a nuclear armed Iran, and warned that President Ahmadinejad's conference questioning the reality of the holocaust should be taken seriously:

"Before I came to Europe, I'd never heard of the Holocaust. That is the case with millions of people in the Middle East. Such a conference should be able to convince many people away from their denial of the genocide against the Jews."

In March 2006, Hirsi Ali was one of 12 writers, notably including Salman Rushdie, who put their names to a statement warning of "a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism" in the wake of the Danish cartoons controversy.

On 27 April, a Dutch judge ruled that Hirsi Ali had to leave her house, after her neighbours complained she was a security risk.

Hirsi Ali is currently Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she is “researching the relationship between the West and Islam; women’s rights in Islam; violence against women propagated by religious and cultural arguments; and Islam in Europe.” In October 2007, Hirsi Ali was forced to briefly return to the Netherlands, where she continued her work from a secret address, after the Dutch government declined to continue to pay for security measures to ensure her safety abroad. Hirsi Ali is now back in the United States.

Hirsi Ali is currently working on a new book entitled Shortcut to Enlightenment, Part I. She describes the book as a philosophical encounter between the prophet Muhammed and several classical and modern Enlightenment thinkers. In one of the chapters Muhammed and John Stuart Mill debate

"the position of women in society and the relationship between men and women. And in another chapter he has a conversation on the relationship of the individual and the community. And in another chapter he has a dialogue with Karl Popper on the open society and its enemies. And Karl Popper asserts that Islam is an enemy of the open society. And the last chapter is about what happens to the prophet after these dialogues. Does he convert to the ideas of these liberals or does he stick to his own?"

Views

On Vlaams Belang

While a number of US neoconservatives have flirted with the Belgian far-right Vlaams Belang because of its opposition, to Islam, Hirsi Ali has called for the party to be banned, saying that "it hardly differs from the Hofstad [terrorist] group" and that its "way of thinking will lead straight to genocide."

On Israel-Palestine

In a 2006 interview published in the Jerusalem Post, Hirsi Ali described Israel as a "liberal democracy" based on her visits to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and its beaches where she "saw that men and women are equal.”

Asked about her views on Palestinians Hirsi Ali said:

"Their side is dilapidated, for which they blame the Israelis. In private, however, I met a young Palestinian who spoke excellent English. There were no cameras and no notebooks. He said the situation was partly their own fault, with much of the money sent from abroad to build Palestine being stolen by corrupt leaders."

Hirsi Ali believes that "Dutch socialism" holds Israelis and Palestinians to double standards. Whereas the former are held to "exceptionally high moral standards", "the standards for judging the Palestinians...are very low." This creates a situation which "helps the Palestinians become even more corrupt than they already are", unlike the Israelis who "will always do well, because they themselves set high standards for their actions."

On Iraq and US Foreign Policy

Hirsi Ali subscribes to the view that during the bipolor era of the Cold War, US foreign policy was guided by its "national interest." "In that time, the foreign policy of America was: American interest first. That's natural." This created a situation where the United States would would say, "Ok, we need oil from you. What do you have? A dictator. You're not giving us your oil. We're going to remove this dictator and replace him with a dictator who's friendly to our interests." According to Hirsi Ali, the term Cold War itself is therefore misleading because "it wasn't cold. I am someone who comes from the third world. In the third world, the cold war wasn't cold. Millions had been killed. It was a proxy war."

As a strong proponent of the "democracy promotion" doctrine, Hirsi Ali argues that in the post-Cold War era, the United States emerged as the sole superpower and it was therefore necessary to rethink the rationale behind foreign policy. In the debate that ensued between competing factions within the policy-making establishment, it was the neoconservatives who "have the moral high ground." No longer a case of simply putting in place friendly undemocratic regimes in order to gain access to key material resources:

"we say we can create a mutual interest, we need your resources; the interest of our economy is in your countries, we will take that; but we are not only going to take it, we are also going to give you—your countries are complete disasters—we are going to bring you democracy"

The rise of neoconservatism thus marked a "shift in morality, in American foreign policy from just "grab and go," which was bad, to "Ok, we are going to set things right there." That shift in itself is a good shift. But the way it happened was catastrophic" and "just another romantic naive moral adventure."

Hirsi Ali is critical of the Iraq War, which she believes "was about oil", because:

"the assumption that the administration made was that they thought that you could go in there for a short while and show the people, "See, we are your friends," and that everyone in Iraq would embrace democracy—from tribalism to democracy; from dictatorship to democracy—that is the mistake that was made. There was no commitment to stay for at least fifty years or a hundred years."

She also argues that the choice to attack Iraq in relation to 9-11 was ill-founded.

"From a declaration of war point of view, and even from a resources point of view, Saudi Arabia was the most logical target to attack. The land that the United States should have occupied on the 12th of September should have been Saudi Arabia. That's where the ideology came from, that's where the money came from, and that's where the men came from who committed the attacks."

Asked whether an UN-sponsored invasion of Iraq posed a better alternative and could have led to a more stable occupation, Hirsi Ali said:

"That argument is strong as far as concerns Europe, and the Western powers. As far as concerns the members of the United Nations, they would never support it. If you talk to one of the people there and say you are on the list of dictators I am going to come for next, it is obviously not going to happen. So that's the problem with the United Nations; every nation is a member."

On Influences

Hirsi Ali claims the 'tales of freedom, adventure, of equality between girls and boys, trust and friendship' found in Nancy Drew mysteries as the inspirations for her rebellion.

Criticism

Ali has been celebrated as a defender of women's rights and free speech, as well as accused of being an opportunist that has ridden the wave of anti-Islam sentiment in the West to achieve fame. In his account of a controversial film-maker's death which is also considered a study of Islam's place in Europe today, Ian Buruma responds to Ali's comparison of herself to Voltaire:

...Ayaan Hirsi Ali was no Voltaire. For Voltaire had flung his insults at the Catholic Church, one of the two most powerful institutions of eighteen-century France, while Ayaan risked offending only a minority that was already feeling vulnerable in the heart of Europe.

Affiliations

• American Enterprise Institute
• Geert Wilders - former associate

Resources

• Infidel: An Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Guernica, February 2007