Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 37, faced terrible adversity from a young age in her native and now aims to reveal the “truth” about and its treatment of women.

2 | WW JULY 2007 WW | profile ENEMY OF ISLAM Her strident views on Islam have earned the Somali- born author, film-maker, politician and human rights campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali fame, controversy, a nomination – and countless death threats, writes David Leser.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI doesn’t look or The crime of the two film-makers had sound dangerous, but if her enemies had been to produce an inflammatory short their way, she would be dead. A public work called Submission Part One, in stoning, perhaps, or a bomb detonated in which lines from the Muslim holy book, the middle of the night, or even an attack the Koran, were painted onto semi-naked in broad daylight, such as the one that ended actresses portraying various aspects of the life of her friend, Theo van Gogh. Woman’s submission to Man. That’s the degree of hatred she inspires. The murder plunged the , one Never was this made more apparent of the most progressive societies on earth, than on that chilling morning into crisis. Here was the dark side of the two-and-a-half years ago when van Gogh, multicultural experiment laid bare. At least the maverick Dutch film-maker, was a dozen mosques were attacked and an cycling to work during rush hour and a Islamic primary school twice set alight. Ayaan Muslim extremist named Mohammed Hirsi Ali, by then not just a scriptwriter, but Bouyeri stepped out from the shadows a member of the Dutch parliament, was to shoot him eight times. forced into hiding, re-appearing two-and-a- Van Gogh staggered on for a few metres half months later with her security redoubled. and then, according to witnesses, twice When she returned to parliament in begged his assailant for mercy. “Can’t we January 2005, politicians and journalists can talk about this?” he pleaded. alike gave the Somali-born granddaughter Bouyeri, a Dutch-born citizen of Moroccan of a warlord and daughter of a Muslim rebel descent, was not interested in talking. He leader a standing ovation. To many, she drew two butcher’s knives from under his had become the symbol of moral courage jellaba (a loose-fitting Moroccan robe) and in a country suddenly confronted with a with one of them slit the film-maker’s throat. potential clash of civilisations. With the other, he impaled a letter on his A year later, Time magazine hailed her Avictim’s chest, addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. as one of the 100 most influential people It read, in part, “You will break yourself in the world and, in 2006, she was voted to pieces on Islam. You, oh America, will European of the Year by the editors of go down. You, oh Netherlands, will go Reader’s Digest magazine, as well as  PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADRIAN COOK. BY PHOTOGRAPHY down … You, oh Hirsi Ali, will go down.” nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

WW JULY 2007 | 3 That was just months before a Dutch court order evicted her from her home and stripped her, briefly, of her citizenship. Within days, she had also caused the collapse of the Dutch government.

ver since the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, Ayaan Hirsi EAli has been speaking out against the faith she had been raised to believe in and uphold. She has portrayed the hijackers’ actions as the logical outcome of Islam’s rigid belief system and moral framework. She has described the religion as a totalitarian system and the Koran not as a holy book, but as a historical document responsible Above: Police investigate the murder of for spreading brutality and bigotry. She Dutch fi lm-maker Theo van Gogh (right) has condemned loudly the subjugation of in Amsterdam in November 2004. women and, perhaps most inflammatory of all, she has even attacked the founder of the Islamic faith, Mohammed himself. think she is very misinformed about the The 37-year-old writer, who was in spiritual aspects of Islam. Australia for the Sydney Writers’ Festival “I have declined to talk about her in in May and to promote her explosive the past because I don’t want to give her international best-seller, , believes more air time than she deserves. I think Islam is a threat to everything the she is very oppressed herself and she should Western world holds dear. “It is a threat seek help. She is putting all Muslim to liberalism,” she says. “It is contrary to women in the same basket … and blaming the Enlightenment. It subjugates women. Islam for the bad cultural practices she It limits the imagination. It is bad for all had to live under.” of us, regardless of where you are from.” And for these strident views, Ayaan ost of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s life has has been cast out by her family, subjected been a grim study of war, exile, to five years of death threats, forced into Mfamine, civil unrest, rebellion and and sweating. It took two weeks for her hiding in both the Netherlands and the US, institutionalised violence against women. and her siblings to recover, although evicted from her home and placed under a When she was five years old growing Haweya never quite did. “She became ill 24-hour security watch. up in Somalia, in East Africa, she had her with a fever for several weeks and lost a In Washington DC, where she now lives, genitals removed on the floor of her family lot of weight,” Ayaan was to recount. she is driven around in armoured cars and home. (Her older brother, Mahad, six, and “She had horrible nightmares … My once given round-the-clock protection. She is younger sister Haweya, four, were also cheerful, playful little sister changed.” also reported to have bodyguards posted circumcised that day.) Today, sitting on a sun-kissed deck outside her bedroom while she sleeps, a “The scissors went down between my above the white sails of Sydney Harbour, claim she will neither confirm nor deny. legs,” she recalled in harrowing detail in Ayaan is quick to point out that this didn’t “I can’t tell you that,” she says now. her book, Infidel, “and the man cut off my just happen to the women of her family, “I’m really sorry. Those kinds of details I inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a it happened to 140 million women around am not allowed to talk about.” What she butcher snipping the fat off a piece of the world. And that’s not counting the will confirm is that she has received death meat. A piercing pain shot up between many millions of girls who died from their threats while in Australia, as well as prior my legs, indescribable, and I howled. infections following surgery. “It’s not an to arriving in the country. “[Certain people] Then came the sewing: the long, blunt accident,” she tells me. “It’s not a disease. It’s an activity carried out in the name of “[ISLAM] SUBJUGATES WOMEN ... IT IS BAD FOR ALL love and protection.” And, yes, while is more a OF US, REGARDLESS OF WHERE YOU ARE FROM.” tribal, pre-Islamic practice than an Islamic practice, Ayaan maintains it has always been have made it very clear that I am not needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding justified in Somalia in the name of Islam. welcome,” she says. outer labia, my loud and anguished protests, As a little girl – before her circumcision – This might explain then why there is my Grandma’s words of comfort and she was teased for having a clitoris. no record of her staying at her hotel, why encouragement. ‘It’s just this once in “Kinterleey”, they would call her, which our rendezvous point has been changed at your life, Ayaan. Be brave, he’s almost meant, literally, “she with clitoris”. the 11th hour and why her security detail finished’. When the sewing was finished, has been suddenly doubled. the man cut the thread off with his teeth.” yaan grew up a good Muslim. It might also explain why Australian Ayaan lost consciousness and then She learnt the Koran line by line. Muslims regard her views as ignorant at to discover her legs tied together. AShe studied in Islamic schools. best and, outrageously provocative at worst. This was to help facilitate the formation She prayed five times a day and wore “I think she is entitled to her views,” of a scar. Her bladder was bursting, but it the protective veil. says Maha Abdo, spokesperson for the hurt too much to urinate. Her legs were Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a  MICHEL PORRO/GETTY IMAGES. BRUNOPRESSE/GETTY IMAGES. MICHEL PORRO/GETTY IMAGES. Muslim Women’s Association, “but I covered in blood and she was shivering devout Muslim, but also a graduate of

WW JULY 2007 | 5 Above: Ayaan (centre) with the man she was betrothed to, Osman Moussa (right), and a chaperone. Right: Ayaan’s father, Hirsi Magan Isse, in a picture she carries in her wallet.

New York’s Columbia University and a for the next 13 years. It was in that While a part of Ayaan accepted these famed literacy campaigner throughout the world of ideas began to open up to her. strictures, another part of her began to Somalia. Son of a famous warlord, he Although attending a Muslim girls’ rebel internally. was to spend the early years of Ayaan’s school, Ayaan was lucky enough to have “How could a just God desire that life in jail for leading a rebellion against a teacher who encouraged her to read women be treated so unfairly?,” she asked Communist rule. books such as 1984, Huckleberry Finn, herself. “If God was merciful, why did Ayaan’s mother, Asha, was born under The Thirty-Nine Steps and Wuthering He demand that His creatures be hanged a tree in the Somali desert, and although Heights. Ayaan learnt through these in public? If He was compassionate, why married off to her first husband – a man fictional worlds that men and women could did unbelievers have to go to Hell?” And she instantly disliked – she did something be equal. It was a confounding notion, how was it, she wondered, that men such rare for a woman in those days. She sought but one that left a lasting impression. as her father could simply abandon their – and obtained – a divorce. “She told this By the mid-1980s, a stricter, more wives and children, and go and take a man, ‘I will remain married to you now and radical creed of Islam had also started to second wife, then a third? when my father dies I will divorce you.’ ” find its way into the Islamic schools and In 1981, when Ayaan was 11, her In 1966, Asha married Ayaan’s father, mosques of East Africa. The Muslim father had left the family home and, but the Somali civil war and Hirsi Magan’s Brotherhood, a precursor to the Al Qaeda shortly afterwards, taken up with a second long absences from home meant their movement, wanted its followers to return wife. Ayaan’s mother refused to show relationship was often strained. to the fundamental teachings of Islam. her jealousy publicly, but instead turned When Ayaan was eight, the family moved to and it was there she had “IT’S NOT ONLY THAT YOU CAN’T PUT ON NAIL POLISH ... her first taste of a country under or Islamic law. On arrival at Jeddah airport, YOU’LL NEVER BE A MAJOR, YOU’LL ALWAYS BE A MINOR.” her mother was prevented, she claims, from travelling into the city with her children Much of this revolved around the control all her humiliation and heartbreak onto because she was unaccompanied by a man. of women. her daughters at home, inflicting on them Ayaan’s father had failed to show and Ayaan says she was taught that a many savage beatings. no amount of protest or argument would woman could be beaten by her husband This strengthened Ayaan’s resolve shift the authorities, who forced the family if she disobeyed him; that she would be never to become dependent on anyone. to wait in the arrival lounge until a male required to be sexually available to him In 1992, when her father announced could be found to escort them out. Only hours at all times – except when menstruating; he had chosen a Somali man based in later, when a Somali man, a complete and that she was responsible at all times Canada to be her husband, Ayaan refused. stranger, agreed to go with them, could for his sexual arousal. For this reason, It didn’t matter that, according to her they leave the airport. she needed to be covered up. father, the prospective husband was Ayaan hated Saudi Arabia. To her, the “I couldn’t sit here with you [like this] tall, had strong bones and white teeth, country was a giant prison. “People had dressed as I please,” she tells me now, and came from a suitable clan. Ayaan their heads cut off in public squares,” she a glorious study of beauty and casual had met him and thought the man an observed. “Hands were cut off. Men were elegance in her grey linen top, black idiot. She begged her father to allow flogged. Women were stoned.” And women pants, pearl earrings and heeled sandals. her to choose her own husband, but were hissed at if they ventured out alone. You couldn’t be wearing perfume her father insisted. “It’s a terrible sound,” she says, “and [my either, I venture. “No. Nor could I have And so the daughter of this rebel mother] couldn’t go out of the house without my nails polished or filed. It’s not only fighter did what was only natural to her – taking my brother with her, or without taking that you can’t put on nail polish and that she rebelled. On her way to the wedding a whole horde of children with her.” you can’t put on perfume, and that you in Canada, she stopped over in Germany In 1979, the family was deported from can’t put on high heels because tapping and then, after two days, fled to the Saudi Arabia because of Ayaan’s father’s of the high heels is going to seduce men, Netherlands, where she had heard they rebel activities. They went first to but also that you’ll never be a major, were welcoming towards migrants  SIMON & SCHUSTER. and then onto Kenya, where Ayaan remained you’ll always be a minor.” and refugees.

WW JULY 2007 | 7 I’m traumatised that four London train stations were blown up? No, what I’m saying is that people are being indoctrinated into acting this way and I know exactly the circumstances under which this happens. “Through immigration, you expand Islam. As a woman, I have absolutely no advantage whatsoever in having Islam spread. So I object to it – as an individual human being who loves liberty and not only my own, but everybody else’s.

n 2003, Ayaan Hirsi Ali entered the Dutch parliament as a member of Ithe right-of-centre People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. (She believed the Labour Party had become too muddled in its thinking on immigration Above: Ayaan pictured during the Sydney Writers’ Festival in May. After six years issues.) She was already in fear of her life campaigning against Islam, she says she would like to hand over to someone else. and living in a secret location at the time she was sworn in. In the middle of last year, she was n the space of 10 years, Ayaan Hirsi Ali rights movement and European history, evicted from her home under court order went from being a refugee to the most especially the spread of fascism and because her neighbours feared for their Ifamous woman in the Netherlands. communism. She began to acquaint safety. A month later, her citizenship She arrived in the country expecting to be herself with psychology and how this was revoked – albeit briefly – because confronted by chaos and sin. Instead, she offered another moral framework for she had given a false name and date found the blond kind, hospitable humanity besides religion. of birth when she had applied for her and their society well-ordered. Then, on entering the Netherlands’ citizenship. (Ayaan had given her Already speaking five languages, she most prestigious university, the University grandfather’s name because she feared set about learning a sixth, Dutch. Within of , she began immersing herself being tracked down by her father and three years, she was an official Somali- in comparative political systems and the handed over to her husband-to-be.) Dutch interpreter, visiting police stations, history of ideas. Her career trajectory The decision caused an uproar and, prisons, abortion clinics and women’s was spectacular. After graduating with in the following month, indirectly caused shelters regularly. a masters degree in political science, the collapse of the ruling Dutch coalition. What she saw in these desperate places she became a junior researcher with the As Ayaan says rather sheepishly now, was a failure of the multicultural experiment. left-of-centre Labour Party. Her brief: “I think I’m the first Third Worlder – Many Muslims had never learnt Dutch to look at immigration. Her starting date: not only Somali – to bring down a and had rejected the values of tolerance September 3, 2001. government like that.” and liberty of which the Dutch were With the terrorist attacks on America, Today, she is no longer a member so proud. Moreover, Dutch efforts to Ayaan’s position towards Islam hardened. of the Dutch parliament. She lives in accommodate minority cultures, particularly “War had been declared in the name of Washington DC, where she works for the conservative think-tank, the American “WAR HAD BEEN DECLARED IN THE NAME OF ISLAM ... Enterprise Institute. The threats have not gone away. NOW I HAD TO MAKE A CHOICE. WHICH SIDE WAS I ON?” Ayaan reveals to The Weekly that she would like someone else to champion Muslim ones, had, in Ayaan’s opinion, Islam, my religion,” she said. “And now I the cause instead of her. After six years, actually perpetuated cruelty to females. had to make a choice. Which side was I on?” she has had enough. She would love “Thousands of Muslim women She was squarely on the side of nothing more than for her family to and children in Holland were being individual freedom. By May 2002, she embrace her again, to find happiness systematically abused,” Ayaan said. declared herself an atheist and began with a partner of her own choosing and “Little children were excised [circumcised] calling for the kind of self-examination in to revel in the freedom that others in the on kitchen tables – I knew this from Islam that Europe had put itself through West take for granted. for whom I translated. Girls who chose their during the 17th and 18th centuries. “To take advantage of this,” she own boyfriends and lovers were beaten In a series of articles and television says with a sweep of her arm, taking half to death or even killed. The suffering appearances, she branded Islam as backward. in the entire shimmering spectacle of of all these women was unspeakable. The death threats poured in and her critics Sydney Harbour. “And while the Dutch were generously took aim. They called her a fanatic, a secular Yet failing this, she will continue to contributing money to international aid fundamentalist, an Islamophobe who had speak out and to work on her new book, organisations, they were also ignoring the chosen to project her own life’s traumas one based on an imaginary conversation silent suffering of Muslim women and onto the faith of one billion people. in New York between the Prophet children in their own backyard.” “Is it because I’m traumatised that Mohammed and the great 18th century Ayaan’s deep unease was reinforced the 11th of September happened?” she liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill. by her college studies, where she began to retorts now with what I see as a quiet, but Oh, dear. It feels like more trouble ■ absorb the lessons of the American civil unnerving, certainty. “And is it because ahead. KRISTI MILLER/NEWSPIX.

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