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Key insights from
Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the
Erosion of Women's Rights
By
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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What you’ll learn
Somali-born women’s rights
activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali begins her book by asking, “Where are all the
women?” and goes on to explore why women in European cities like Paris,
Stockholm, Brussels, and Berlin feel increasingly vulnerable in certain
public spaces where they had once walked freely and confidently. Ali
distances herself from what she considers progressive denialism on one side
and harmful alt-right exaggeration on the other, hoping for a resurgence of
constructive conversations about Islamic immigration and its effect on
women’s rights. According to Ali, Europe’s dilemma can still be mended and
should serve as a warning to the United States.
Read
on for key insights from Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's
Rights.
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1. Progressives
concerned about fueling alt-right ire should advocate honest conversations
about immigration instead of quashing them.
Attempting to speak about
the realities of immigration is like traversing a minefield. It is
difficult to cover this topic without being accused of spreading or
encouraging alt-right causes. Unfortunately, there is plenty of that
already happening, between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s concerted
efforts to destabilize liberal democracy through misinformation about
immigrants and far-right groups telling misleading or completely false
stories to propagate a vicious nativist narrative.
There has to be a
reasonable, middle way forward: one that does not fuel alt-right
fabrications but also does not deny the very real and pressing problems
that Europe’s immigration policies are creating, as many progressives have
been apt to do. Contrary to progressive fears, being honest about what is
really happening is the best antidote to the alt-right unrealities.
Otherwise the problems will
persist and the alt-right clamor for repatriation will become increasingly
shrill. It is precisely because many European nations are not willing to
discuss immigration-related issues that radical far-right groups are
gaining traction. Their actions and rhetoric—however problematic—are
attempts to fill the vacuum that European passivity and reticence have
left.
If we want to uphold a
cultural tradition of tolerance and freedom, if we want to find paths to
meaningful immigrant integration, if we want virulent alt-right forces to
dissolve, and the fragile, recent phenomenon of women’s rights to continue,
then there have to be open conversations about the changes European
officials need to implement.
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2. There have been
five major immigration waves in western Europe since World War II, but the
fifth is by far the largest.
There have been five mass
migrations to western Europe since 1945.
The first wave involved
immigrants displaced after the Second World War, including Jewish survivors
and Russian and Eastern Europeans escaping Soviet rule.
The second wave involved
so-called “guest workers” fleeing recently liberated European colonies like
French Algeria and Caribbean immigrants from former British colonies coming
to the United Kingdom during the late 1940s, 50s and 60s.
The third wave was
comprised of Turks who were invited to Germany in the 1970s to cover labor
shortages, but many guests chose not to return home.
The fourth wave began with
the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite governments in 1991. Not
long after, there were also brutal civil wars in Bosnia and Somalia, which
added to the number of displaced people looking for asylum in Europe.
The fifth wave, with which
this book deals, has been far and away the largest. Over a 10-year period
beginning in 2008, 3.5 million immigrants crossed illegally into the
European Union, along with 5.8 million new asylum applications. Between a
vicious civil war in Syria, the dissolution of al-Qaddafi’s regime in Libya
in 2011, Russian military interventions in Syria in 2015, ISIS, and
neighboring nations like Turkey and Iran fighting by proxy, millions have
been displaced.
This influx of fifth-wave
migrants have been disproportionately young (80 percent under the age of
35), male (67 percent), and from war-torn Muslim-majority countries in
North Africa and the Middle East (e.g., Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria,
Afghanistan). Nine of the top 10 “sender” nations are predominantly Muslim.
2015 was the peak year for fifth wave immigration. That year alone, about 2
million people came to Europe. Between 2010 and 2016, Europe’s Muslim
population grew from 19.5 million to 25.8 million.
These statistics form a
vital framework for the discussions of immigration-related questions. It
helps us explore the questions of whether there is a connection between
recent mass immigration and European women feeling increasingly unsafe.
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3. Collecting data
on violence against women has its challenges, but is not impossible.
Coinciding with the fifth
wave of immigrants has been a wave of violence against women in Europe.
Investigating rates of violence in large populations is a complex undertaking.
One challenge is that
official records only show us reported incidents. Statisticians estimate
that the vast majority of sexual assault and rape incidents go unreported,
between 80 and 90 percent in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany
and Sweden. Many women never report the incidents, and of those who do, the
cases usually get dropped and those that proceed rarely end in conviction.
We have to view official records with some skepticism, since there is good
reason to believe the reports represent only some of the sexual violence
committed against women.
Moreover, the definitions
of rape, assault, and harassment change from country to country, so if we
are looking at Europe’s population, it is difficult to compare rates in one
country against the rates of another. The best you can do is track trends
of violence toward women within individual countries over time, using the
definitions that each country goes by.
The best we can do is
couple official police reports with data gleaned from polls and
self-reporting services like hotlines. But even taken together, we have an
incomplete record of violence.
The bottom line is that
violence against women is difficult to measure, but it is still not
impossible to get a sense of changing norms. Let’s set aside domestic
violence between intimate partners and family members, which is common but
difficult to track well, and focus instead on violence in public places.
Since the fifth wave of immigration in Europe, violence against women in
public places has been trending upward since the peak year of immigration
in 2015.
For example, Denmark’s
sexual offense rates were stable from 2010 to 2014, but between 2014 and
2017, the rates of rape doubled, as did sexual offenses more generally.
In England and Wales, rapes
increased by 48 percent between 2015 and 2017.
In France, there was a 17
percent increase in rapes between 2017 and 2018.
German rape and sexual
coercion cases were stable from 2000 to 2015, but in 2017 there was a 41
percent surge.
Sweden experienced a
similar phenomenon: relatively stable numbers of sex crimes against women
in the early 2000s, but then a doubling of those crimes between 2014 and
2016.
Just because alt-right
trolls hyperbolize the problems caused by immigration does not mean the
problems are non-existent. The fact that the fifth wave of immigrants were
mostly young, male, and Muslim is not a trivial detail. Of course, not all
Muslim men are violent, nor are non-Muslim men free of all misogynistic,
violent impulses. But many of these men are coming from societies that are
hyper-patriarchal, in which women have far less self-determination and
mobility than men. Some of them believe that women are inferior and
available for their pleasure should the opportunity present itself. It is
this segment that is problematic; this segment is altering certain public
spaces in such a way that European women feel increasingly afraid to walk
about, erasing themselves from public life in the interest of safety,
avoiding catcalls, lewd comments, being groped, or worse.
It is misleading to label
attempts at connecting trends in immigration and trends in misogynistic
behavior “racist.” Ultimately, the connection is not a question of race
(which is a permanent, unchangeable feature of a person’s identity), but a
matter of culture, which is dynamic and subject to change. In the past, the
author had hoped that European traditions of tolerance, freedom of speech,
and respect for women would transform immigrants who came to Europe’s
shores, but it is Europe’s culture and institutions that have changed
dramatically and begun to resemble the cultures of developing nations that
refugees are attempting to flee.
One Swedish politician was
taken to a predominantly Muslim immigrant section of his city, and was
asked what was missing. What he failed to see was that women were entirely
absent from public spaces in that neighborhood.
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4. Whatever the
official reports don’t capture can be discovered by simply walking around
radically transformed neighborhoods.
In addition to poring over
police records, court rulings, and self-reports, another line of inquiry
that sheds light on the changing street-level realities in Europe are
in-depth interviews with European women and journalists who have been
maligned for attempting to voice concerns about women’s safety. After a
series of lengthy interviews with numerous women in European cities with
the greatest influxes of immigrants, common themes begin to emerge. When
asked for honest opinions about their home cities, many of them report a
rapidly shifting cultural landscape.
Anonymous self-reporting
and official records give us big picture abstractions and we can further
supplement them with on-the-ground reports from women.
According to one Swedish
journalist (who has since been unjustly maligned for reporting the facts),
Stockholm is a very different place. Businesses and public amenities are
adjusting their protocol to accommodate immigrants. Stockholm’s largest
public swimming pool for example has implemented alternating time slots for
men and women looking to use the jacuzzi after a string of sexual assault
incidents. There are now security details, cameras, and bilingual “hosts”
to help resolve any further issues. Women are finding it necessary to
change their habits. There are certain streets women will not walk down
anymore.
In response to a growing
sentiment that women are not safe in some sections of Paris, two female
filmmakers went undercover in a suburb outside Paris and were barred
entrance to a cafe, informed that only men were welcome. When the women
objected on grounds that it wasn’t the French way, a man in the cafe
replied, “You are not in Paris! The mentality is different! It’s like back
home.”
Many women in Europe are
responding to the fear of harassment (or worse) in predominantly male
immigrant-dominated areas with strategies very similar to those adopted by
women in Middle Eastern and African countries: Make yourself scarce.
Some women that Ali’s team
interviewed in major European cities cautiously admitted that they were
afraid to talk about their safety and the safety of their communities
because the biggest threats, as far as the people they were encountering
and harassed by, were immigrants. One woman said she wished the men who had
harassed her earlier had been white European-born men so that she could
have more frank conversations about her safety. But she admitted that
having conversations with her left-leaning friends about harassment were
virtually impossible because of where the harassers were from.
So strong is the fear of
appearing racist that some native-born European victims are almost
apologetic about coming forward and sometimes even apologize to their
violators for pursuing justice. There is a strange clash between immigrant
rights and women’s rights, and European women increasingly feel that they
must be silent to accommodate immigrants—even those acting in violently
misogynistic ways.
Women are covertly
developing their own safety measures. There are apps that map out so-called
“no-go zones” in major European cities. One of the author’s researchers
working in Germany found pepper spray for sale at a pharmacy—placed in a
rack between women’s magazines and women’s hair products. After the wave of
sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, in 2015, one entrepreneur invented
Safe Shorts, which are padlocked to the body, made of extremely durable
fabric, and also have an alarm that sounds if anyone tries to meddle with
the shorts. Another business in the Netherlands invented a bracelet that
gives off a noxious odor when the trigger is activated. Even if the media
is reticent and police and courts are forbidden from mentioning race or religion
of perpetrators, on-the-ground realities are revealing women in fear and
new products and services popping up to reassure them—even if the
government will not.
It is bewildering that
Muslim women living with curtailed freedom and mobility and European women
getting gang raped more and more frequently elicits less sympathy from
modern feminists and media personalities than a handful of Hollywood
celebrities being sexually assaulted. The #MeToo movement readily crossed
the Atlantic and took root in Europe. In France, for example “Squeal on
your pig” became the trending equivalent. A number of regular offenders
were fired and disgraced. A few were taken to court. But there is much less
attention given to victims of roving migrant gangs, even if far more women
in Europe are complaining and reporting violations. The truth is that most
modern Western feminists do not grasp how profoundly misogynistic some of
the Muslim-majority cultural patterns are, or what they will do to equal
rights they want to fight for.
Again, media reticence does
not help immigrant communities. It certainly does not help immigrant women
or European women. The silence also fails to sidestep or subdue alt-right
angst. Only honest conversations about the realities women now face will
help.
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5. Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s power shows how far women have come, but the consequences
of her 2015 decision reveal how vulnerable women’s rights are.
German Chancellor Angela
Merkel is one of the most powerful women in the world in a moment in
history where women have more power and say over their lives than ever
before. In 2015, when Merkel made the controversial decision to allow more
than one million refugees into Germany, she was one of 17 women leading
countries. We might fail to appreciate how unusual a state of near-equality
between men and women is. But we also might miss the irony that this
powerful woman’s decision has disempowered many women in Europe, as the
ripples affect the relatively new and fragile tradition of rights and
freedoms for women.
Originally, Merkel held a
tougher line on the immigration question. She argued that Germany simply
could not accommodate a massive influx. “We just can’t manage that,” she
famously told a young Palestinian girl whose parents were on the verge of
repatriation. There is a great deal of speculation over what might have
catalyzed Merkel’s pivot. Was it an attempt to make up for Germany’s steely
austerity in the face of Greece’s financial insolubility during the 2008
Euro Crisis? Or was this Germany’s chance to assuage its collective guilt
over the Holocaust and their hostile bid for world domination last century?
Some speculated that her Christian background pulled her toward caring for
the foreigner. Others smelled more political motives: Hardline immigration
policies in the 1990s in the face of the fourth wave refugee crisis had
cost Merkel’s party political influence and popularity.
But the answer might be
simpler than that. It could be that Angela simply lost her head. As one
official reported, at the moment when she and top German officials gathered
on September 12, 2015, to sign a hard-lined, closed-border policy into
effect, she could not bring herself to endorse it. Neither could the other
officials. And at first, most Germans were thrilled, welcoming immigrants
with cheers and signs at metro stations and public squares. And then tens
and hundreds of thousands of immigrants kept pouring into Germany, and it
was not long before the nation was clearly overrun.
The darker side of a
well-intended decision fell on Merkel’s head on December 31, 2015, in
Cologne, a now world-infamous night on which 1,500 men (mostly of Arab and
North African descent) sexually harassed and stole from hundreds of women.
The local police could not quell the onslaught and opted instead to
downplay the incident. What we do know is that 661 women reported sexual
assault. The incident has become symbolic of the German state’s struggle to
meaningfully incorporate its immigrants, as well as the government’s
inability to speak honestly about the problem.
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6. Even with
declining immigration numbers in Europe, the threats to women’s rights have
not abated.
Migration rates have
dropped since the three-year immigration surge from 2015-2018, and fell
even further in 2020 thanks to a global pandemic. But Europe’s policymakers
would be mistaken to believe the crisis is over. A Gallup World Poll
revealed that about a third of people from Sub-Saharan Africa and almost a
quarter of North Africans and Middle Easterners would come to Europe if they
had the chance. A number of nations from those regions (Iraq, South Sudan,
Congo and Somalia) topped the Fragile State Index, which ranks the
instability of countries, which means refugee-creating conditions are ripe.
And then of course there is
natural population growth. Muslims tend to have far more children on
average than Europeans. The Muslim population will probably double or
triple by 2050, even if Europe tightens its borders.
These are figures that
Europe cannot ignore. European leaders’ decisions to play ostrich politics
by keeping their heads in the sand will likely lead to serious, ingrained
encroachments on women’s rights in the next decade or two.
Local organized crime finds
recruits from rejected asylum seekers and those illegally entering the European
Union. Even though there are obvious risks to a life of crime and staying
off the grid, many still prefer it to the undeveloped violent villages and
small towns they hail from.
Denialism is a loss for
everyone: It harms the asylum seekers, prevents the development of an
integration process, and it erodes trust in the government to maintain
borders and streets effectively. Rule of law itself is undermined, which
further degrades social trust between citizens. The biggest losers,
however, have been women and feminist movements, who have only for the past
several decades enjoyed an unprecedented, near-equal freedom to men.
In the 1990s, when the
author first came to Europe, she never would have dreamed that Europe would
open its arms to the attitudes and culture of places that systematically
curtail the freedoms of women, but that is exactly what is happening.
The hope is that European
leaders will take seriously the challenges and consider a revamp of
immigration-related institutions—instead of just tinkering with micro
adjustments that only further complicate the process and segment society.
This segmentation will only harm immigrants (the very group that these
leaders ostensibly want to assist), because it leaves more space for sharia
law, honor killings, and other harmful cultural imports to thrive.
The alt-right proposals of
iron-clad borders and ruthless deportation are unconscionable, but so is
doing nothing. What European policymakers can do is create probationary
systems that tie acceptance of an asylum seeker to their ability to meet
certain integrationist benchmarks, like language acquisition, maintaining a
clean record, and attending classes that teach Western values.
The welfare state only
functions when those who benefit from the system are also buying into it.
As it stands for many immigrants, there is benefit without buy-in. This is
a recipe for dissolving citizen-state bonds. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman
was absolutely right that you can have open immigration policies or a
welfare state but not both.
Austria took flack for
trying to create a more reciprocal relationship between incoming immigrants
and the state. Since 2018, new arrivals have had to sign documents stating
that they will fulfill requirements of the state within a certain amount of
time, including learning German, learning Austrian values, and getting a
job.
Those who fail to comply
with the expectations within two years are repatriated, but those who do
can continue their path to citizenship. It is the stick as well as the
carrot, and it works. Upon the announcement of Austria’s new policy,
immigrants came in droves to sign up for German classes and seminars on the
country’s central values. Interestingly those most ardent about bringing
immigration-related problems to the forefront of European consciousness are
not xenophobic nativists or alt-right fanatics, but immigrants who have
successfully integrated into European society.
Europe needs to rethink
immigrant integration efforts as Austria has done, and policymakers need to
take a serious look at the refugee-creating factors in sender countries,
and see what can be done to encourage stability in those regions. The idea
that it is someone else’s problem won’t make the problem go away, abroad or
at home.
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7. The real-life
Handmaid’s Tale is not coming from evangelicals in North America, but from
Muslims in Europe.
If you do an online search
for women in Kabul in the 1960s, you will see photos of women in dresses,
exposing their legs and arms. You will find photos of women walking through
the streets without a male accompanying her. You will see stylish haircuts,
boys and girls sitting together in classrooms. There was a time in Saudi
Arabia when women enjoyed similar freedoms. They did not have to cover
their heads, and they could mingle with men in restaurants. The Taliban has
turned back the clock in Afghanistan, as have Wahhabi mullahs in Saudi
Arabia. Egyptian policymakers laughed at their president in 1953 when he
warned that the Muslim Brotherhood would mandate women wear hijabs in
public.
Obviously, not all segments
of these societies enjoyed these kinds of freedoms, and these countries
still lagged behind equality in the West, but it is remarkable that this
level of freedom existed in any segment of societies in the Muslim-majority
world. It is also sobering how quickly clerics and autocrats stamped those
liberties out.
Some progressives look
askance at evangelical Christianity as the force that will usher in a
real-life Handmaid’s Tale, but the dystopic Gilead from Margaret Atwood’s
story that they fear so much already exists in Europe, where a spirit of
equality is gradually eroding thanks to imports of sharia law and fiercely
patriarchal cultural sensibilities. Women are paying the price for it. If
modern feminists claim to care for women, they cannot just care for the most
recent case of an actress calling out a film producer; they must stand with
their Muslim and European sisters and reject the encroachments of
misogynistic systems in Europe.
There is no inexorable
march toward progress as many progressives assume. What is unfolding in
Europe reveals more a pendulum than an ever-improving social evolution.
Social devolution is also a possibility, and it must be taken seriously.
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