The Dutch have driven the heroic Aayan Hirsi Ali out of parliament, out of Holland, and out of Europe. Their shameful appeasement of murderous, totalitarian Islamism has accomplished what the jihadists could not do: sadden one of Europe’s most important critics of jihad.
Bat Yeor, the author of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, tells me that this confirms “how low Europe has sunk. Instead of being grateful to Hirsi Ali, she is banned.” Robert Spencer, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide To Islam, assures me that “Holland would rather become a Sharia state than have to put up with someone who is trying to stop that from happening.”
To be fair, Holland has recently strengthened its immigration policies in ways that Muslims claim are “offensive” and “discriminatory.” Would-be immigrants will now have to pay 350 euros ($430) to take a “civic integration examination,” must already speak Dutch, and must indicate a willingness to live in a country in which nude beaches and homosexual marriage are legal.
This represents a late-in-the-day, but serious, effort to control immigration. But Holland has also just sacrificed and exiled its most important secular prophet. Theo von Gogh, Hirsi Ali’s collaborator on the film “Submission,” was murdered by a second-generation Dutchman of Moroccan origin. Since then, Hirsi Ali has lived under 24-hour guard. Her Dutch neighbors did not want to live near such a high security risk (which also lowered their property values) and brought a lawsuit to have her evicted. On April 27, they succeeded.
Then, a documentary aired in Holland which alleged that Hirsi Ali had “lied” in order to be granted political asylum and Dutch citizenship. Former Immigration Minister Hilbrand Nawijn called for Hirsi Ali to be “stripped of her Dutch nationality and deported.” Nawijn was head of Immigration and Naturalization Service when Hirsi Ali applied for asylum. Hirsi Ali’s own family provided “evidence” against her in the film. According to the Wall Street Journal, on May 15, Holland’s current immigration minister told Hirsi Ali that “her passport, granted in 1997, would be annulled.”
Like the courageous writer Oriana Fallaci, who dares not travel to her beloved native Italy or to Switzerland lest she be arrested and tried for her views about Islam, Hirsi Ali will now also be living in exile in America – the last, and perhaps only, bunker against jihad. Will she be granted political asylum in America? And if so, on what grounds?
The American Enterprise Institute has offered Hirsi Ali a position. Karlyn Bowman of AEI tells me that “President Christopher DeMuth extended the offer to her on May 16 to become a resident scholar.” Ali had visited AEI last year and spoke to a small group, who were “impressed by her extraordinary odyssey and by her courage, charmed by her easy manner, and also impressed by the scholarly projects she wants to pursue.”
So one of the world’s leading feminists has been offered a safe perch by a conservative think tank. I am not surprised. My own views about Islamic gender- and religious-apartheid have been received warmly and respectfully by conservatives, while such views have been attacked by many feminists as “white nationalist” and “racist.”
To the best of my knowledge, the American feminist movement, with its vast access to university positions, has not offered Hirsi Ali a perch. Perhaps multiculturally correct feminists are ambivalent about challenging Islamist misogyny lest they too be censured as “racists” or threatened with death. Indeed, as I document in my book The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom, among most feminists, race trumps gender. Many feminists are now more concerned with the “occupation” of Palestine than with the occupation of women’s bodies under Islam, and they tend to blame America and Israel for the sins of Islam.
