Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of The Caged Virgin, sets out to explain the Islamic religio-cultural mentality of staking a family's and clan's honor on the virginity and chastity of the females. Her book also exposes the numerous brutal and misogynistic practices perpetrated against women in order to keep them submissive and preserve the group's reputation; these practices include female genital mutilation, culturally sanctioned domestic abuse, forced marriages (including child marriages), and honor killings. One of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's key points is that this religio-cultural mentality and these abuses are prevalent in Muslim immigrant communities in the West. Unfortunately, politicians, academics, journalists and law enforcement officials often turn a blind eye on the plight of immigrant women, operate on a double standard that is tacitly permissive of these "cultural differences", or simply do not work efficiently enough at assisting Muslim women who are in danger.
The author herself, born in Somalia, suffered forced genital mutilation as a child and fled an arranged marriage to a stranger; growing up she was also educated to despise infidels, particularly Jews. When she arrived as a refugee in Holland, she took up work as an interpreter among Dutch Muslims and saw firsthand numerous examples of the problems and traumas of Dutch Muslim women and also men. She then became an MP, in the hopes of implementing public policy that would assist immigrants. In her book, and in speeches and interviews that she has given, she criticizes a "multicultural" or "politically correct" approach to the immigrant communities, which allows those communities to operate entirely with their own separate set of values and not assimilate any conception of individual, universal rights and personal freedom. Community leaders are often quick to call any criticism of their cultural practices as "racist" or "intolerant", no matter that in Dutch society - and western society in general - some of these practices are outright criminal. Politically correct, multiculturalist politicians and officials would rather not "offend" these outspoken representatives of the immigrant community, even though by not causing any offense, they are ignoring the suffering of too many Dutch Muslim women and girls, who live on Dutch soil and are entitled to the government's protection from harm and oppression. The same scenario plays out in other European countries, as well, and might be taking root in the US; community spokespeople and heads of ethnic and immigrant organizations will be quick to use the language of western values and multiculturalism in order to direct attention away from the absence of such values in their communities.
All of these issues are discussed in the book, which is not written as a hateful rant or an angry diatribe. The author writes urgently and with feeling; these matters are understandably close to her heart, and should be of utmost importance to the world at large as well. Though in recent years she embraced atheism, she does not prescribe this as a course of action, and she does not write contemptuously of religious Muslims. What she urges is an age of enlightenment for Islam; she wishes for free thought, unhindered expressions of dissent, and a general promotion of the welfare of women, including their active participation as equals in the social sphere. She cites examples of Muslim women and girls in Europe who are yearning not to conform exactly to their families' wishes; they might want something as simple as dressing in a more western style, to choosing whom they wish to marry, what job to hold, how many children to have. The author sees in these women the promise of a reform for how Islam is still widely practiced. She hopes for the predominance of more modern and liberal interpretations of the Koran.
The book includes the script that Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote for Submission, the film directed by Theo Van Gogh, who was brutally murdered by a jihadist for his audacity to use his personal right of free expression in order to criticize cultural abuses; the film focuses on passages from the Koran that have been used to justify various abusive practices against women. The Caged Virgin also includes an open letter to Muslim women and girls who come from strict, traditionalist families but who are seriously contemplating starting their own life and not conforming to their families' idea of what life for a woman should be like. Again, to make this clear, the author does not lump all Muslims together into one way of thinking or practicing their religion. She also describes her own family honestly and without bitterness; she will quite clearly write about the pain caused by her father's rejection of her, but also notes the times when, growing up, he complimented her intelligence and generally had more of a sense of humor than her mother. Her father was also opposed to female genital mutilation; it was her grandmother who arranged for it to happen, during one of her father's lengthy absences from home. She does not set out to portray all Muslim women as victims; she points out great courage and strength when she has observed those traits, and she also makes the important observation that women themselves police and enforce misogynistic cultural practices. Her concern also extends to how these cultural practices affect men - boys, for instance, who grow up in a household with an uneducated and abused mother, and men who enter marriage with no understanding of women.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes with courage, honesty, and clarity; she expresses her personal vision and does not shy from exposing abuse. She knows what is at stake here, from the personal lives of Muslims to the broader issue of peaceful co-existence with the west. She dismantles the arguments of politically correct multiculturalists without viciousness, only with steady persuasiveness. She is a necessary voice in public life and the ongoing struggle for personal freedom and individual values.
