Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) – In a special live edition of Hoover’s flagship broadcast, Uncommon Knowledge, Research Fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali discussed her newly released book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights.
In the conversation with host Peter Robinson, Hirsi Ali was joined by Valerie Hudson, professor of political science at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service; and Christopher Caldwell, journalist and author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West.
Hirsi Ali began with an explanation about Prey’s premise: that decades of immigration in Europe that reached heights within the past six years has resulted in an unprecedented rise in incidents of sexual assault committed overwhelmingly by men from Muslim-majority countries. She contended that the responses by European governments have been overwhelmingly inept. Policies framed by political correctness and a misunderstanding of the nature of Islamic fundamentalism have led to unintended consequences for not just women but also religious minorities and more vulnerable populations, including Jews, homosexuals, and culturally assimilated Muslims.
Hirsi Ali maintained that these conditions have allowed extremist Islamist voices to shape the norms, values, and laws in some of Europe’s most powerful countries. She asserted that the burden of this crisis has been squarely placed on women, many of whom have been advised by law enforcement to retreat from public spaces and alter their daily lives to ward off unwanted advances and potential harm. As well, many political leaders have tried to deflect from the ramifications of unmitigated immigration by blaming public outcry on racist or nativist attitudes among the population.
Hirsi Ali explained that many of the perpetrators of sexual violence place women in two distinct groups: females who are adherents to Islamic honor codes and protected by male relatives, and others, who are perceived as immodest and thus are fair game for exploitation.
In Prey, Hirsi Ali cites a recent court case in France in which a Bangladeshi man was given a suspended sentence for raping a 15-year-old girl. The rationale of the French court was that the perpetrator had been “deeply influenced by the culture of his country of origin where women are relegated to the status of sexual objects.”
“In these case-by-case incidents that take place, the lawyers who defend the perpetrators will obviously use anything and everything they can get,” Hirsi Ali said. “If they can get a more lenient sentence or an acquittal for a perpetrator by bringing culture into it, they do that, and it works.”
Valerie Hudson asserted that the rise in sexual assaults shouldn’t be uniquely attributed to a surge in Muslim immigration. She argued that sexual violence is more pervasive when men severely outnumber women. Some countries, such as Canada, have taken steps to address these disparities and have placed a moratorium on the immigration of single adult men. Other governments have taken similar steps to prevent imbalances in migration or ensure that immigrant populations adapt to the norms of a modern liberal democratic society.
“I think that there is some interesting diversity of approaches. . . . Ayaan has pointed out in her book one of the most important things is language and values assimilation as well as workforce participation,” Hudson maintained.
Chris Caldwell explained that Africa’s demographic explosion also presents a unique challenge. Radical strains of Islam advanced by ISIS, al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram have spread in parts of the continent and are capable of large-scale violence. These factors, combined with weak state structures and constrained resources in some countries, could potentially result in future pushes of mass migration.
Hudson expressed worries that by European leaders accommodating primitive cultural norms about women, the West risks jettisoning its legacy of achieving the freest society for women in the history of civilization.
Caldwell stressed that this risk is indeed real, because European countries are largely relativistic about their value systems.
“It’s very tough for a society that doesn’t believe in anything absolutely to confront a society in which many people believe in things absolutely,” Caldwell concluded. “[Migrants to Europe] are bringing their religion into a vacuum. With it they are bringing their value system into a vacuum.”
