Buruma on Ayaan Hirsi Ali

It would have been better if she had taken this opportunity to speak up for the people who face the same problem that she did, of trying to move to a free European country, because their lives are stunted at home for social, political or economic reasons.

But if you read this Guardian piece it appears that she didn’t indeed face “the same problem”; apparently she’s a real fraud:

From the age of six or seven, Ayaan Hirsi’s life became that of an exile, her family moving from Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia and then, for 10 years, to Kenya.
[…]
In 1992 – having deleted the story of her life in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya; and having gained entry as a single Somali woman fleeing danger – she was sent to an asylum seekers’ centre in Leintern…

This is not exactly the same as “they had finessed their stories”.

Why are so many (or even any) people so harsh in their judgment of Hirsi Ali? A “real fraud” seems rather as if you feel superior. Why the venom?

Might it be because she says things you don’t want to hear?

As to her “collaborating with the likes of Verdonk against other would-be immigrants” — I do not believe that is so. She called for immigrants to integrate , warned of the danger of Islam and was against multi-culturalism — that is hardly anti-immigrant. Do I have the facts wrong?

…amounted to disgusting hypocrisy

I’m only saying that this is more than just a case of hypocrisy, because there is a difference between people trying to escape limited opportunities and people trying to escape ‘great danger’, as that Iraqi family from the quote.

I mean, if she lied in similar ‘great danger’ circumstances, then it could’ve been called ‘hypocrisy’, but since her circumstances were much-much milder and her lie was much-much bigger, there must be a stronger word for her here, IMO.

Maybe ‘disgusting hypocrisy’ is it, I don’t know…

A few questionss and comments from a Belgian immigrant in the Netherlands:

Hirshi Ali has said that she gave a different name/birth date because she was trying to escape from a forced marriage. She was being married to a nephew who was living in Canada, and on her way to Canada she escaped when she made a stop-over in Germany. SHe has said in interviews that she didn’t wanted to be traced down by her family and therefore lied in the asylum procedure. Does that qualify her as a “real fraud” ? I think I would do the same if I were in that situation.

It is a public fact that Hirshi Ali has been telling that she lied many times before; I heard it on the radio a year or two ago, and she has also said it in print. So why this legal action now? Verdonk claims that she has never known these facts, but there is some evidence that this is not true (e.g. someone was with Hirshi Ali when she was telling it to Verdonk in a telephone converstation a while ago)

Has it been pointed out in the UK/US that there is currently, for the first time in the history of that party, an election for the leader of the VVD (the party of both Verdonk and Hirshi Ali) ? Many commentators in the NL have pointed out that Verdonk’s swift decision of taking away Hirshi Ali’s citizenship cannot be seen apart from her tight fight with the other candidate for this position (if the VVD would turn out to be the largest party after the elections, which is not impossibly but not likely, then that leaders will become PM.)

It’s interesting that the reasons tht are given in the English-language press for why Hirshi Ali is not popular in the NL seem to be different then the ones in the Dutch press (correct me if I’m wrong!). In the NL, it is especially her *style* of insulting people and picturing everything in black-white that upsets people. She is also against all forms of Islam, having claimed that Islam is incompatible with liberal values and basic rights. As such, she is regarded by many as “an enlightenment fanatic”. Many muslims from Maroccan or Turkish decent feel that she is portraying a picture of their religion which is untrue and insulting.

“the same problem” is clearly identified by Buruma as that of getting into a European country in order to escape limited opportunities. Since laws keeping such people out are manifestly unjust, I really don’t see how it can have been wrong for her (or the finessers) to lie in order to evade them

Do you really think that laws preventing people from migrating just on grounds of limited opportunities are “manifestly unjust”? In effect the right to migrate anywhere in the world not subject to the controls of the indigenous inhabitants of a territory?

It seems like an overkill to escape to Germany and then to the Netherlands to avoid arranged marriage in Canada. As far as I know Canada is not famous for enforcing arranged marriages. All you need to do is to mention it in the Canadian airport of your destination.

Well, immigration is a limited resource. The justice here is expressed in you being able to enter the queue of people trying to enhance their opportunities; lying to cut the line can hardly be justified. Also it’s understandable when individuals try to do it.

Chris Bertram – so the logic of your argument results in no control whatsoever on migration?
And does that argument apply at the micro level?
Can I claim space in your house because I believe that mine is unjustly smaller?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s been offered every opportunity to preserve her Dutch citizenship. Parliament voted to consider special circumstances for her. She has not even been stripped of citizenship yet – Verdonk says that her statement is not final and AHA has six weeks to respond.

I can’t say that I’m much impressed with AHA. Her family denies that she was being sent into a forced marriage or that she was raised in a very strict religious home. This happens with liberal Mennonites often enough: the children of not terribly religious homes use their origins as an excuse to be bad, or to say awful things about Mennonites, in order to “escape” some largely absent oppression. (Okay, I have at times in my life been an example of this.)

Possibly her family is lying, but even still, she chose her allies and her party. She stood for strict rules for immigrants, and now she’s finding that they apply to her too. She says that the Netherlands shouldn’t accept immigrants whose lifestyles create risks for the Dutch, and yet she complains when her neighbours try to kick her out of her apartment because her political activities create risks for them. And now, she’s going to work for a think tank that counts among its personnel Michael Ledeen, vendor of arms to theocratic Iran; Charles Murray, believer in the intellectual superiority of his race over hers; and John Yoo, advocate of torture.

She’s made her choices and she can’t claim anyone forced her to make them.

Can I claim space in your house because I believe that mine is unjustly smaller?

Chris, does your house have a democratically elected leader? Does it have a bill of rights? Does it guarantee equality for its residents? Does it advocate particular social and economic structures and intervene in other homes to promote them?

Perhaps a nation is something different from a house.

Yeah, my problem is that according to her various family members she was not escaping an arranged marriage at all. She has cotnributed a lot to the hostility towards Muslims in Europe. And now rather than understanding how what she did was wrong she’s blithely off to work for the American Enterprise Institute.

On Saturday, an op-ed piece appeared in “de Volkskrant” that perfectly captured my position. It is by Abram de Swaan, a professor of social sciences at the University of Amsterdam, but unfortunately not available online (and even then it would be in Dutch…) Let me quote from it:

[Firstly, l]ike all believers _and_ defectors [from religion -Drago] she thinks there is a book which contains everything. First everything it contained was correct and now everything is false. That book is still the koran for her. She thinks muslim men beat muslim women because it is written. But that holy writ contains all kinds of archaic gibberish, which has attracted a growth of innumerable interpretations over one and a half millenium. Every passage can be taken any which way by religious scholars. It doesn’t say what it says.

Those religious men do not beat their wives because the koran prescribes it, but because they come from tribes in an agrarian, pre-industrial society where men and women are highly unequal. In China and Latin America, in Africa and India, women are belittled, held back and abused equally routinely. Allah and His Prophet are not needed at all. There are islamic milieus in which women are no worse off than in Western Europe or North America. Hirsi Ali attacks islam, but she should be focusing on the patriarchy, regardless of the religious justification the patriachs use.

Secondly, Ayaan’s performance is paradoxical and puts her supporters in a double vise. The reproach that muslims mistreat women is undoubtedly true in very many, far too many, cases. But in this somewhat xenophobic, mildly racist society it also works as a stick with which to beat a dog: it’s not that one has anything against muslims per se, but they abuse their wives, you see… (…)

It is therefore not surprising that most muslim women in The Netherlands want nothing to do with Hirsi Ali. It’s not that they ignore or condone the discrimination and abuse of women, to the contrary. But they sense in the public criticism an all too sharp rejection and belittlement of muslims in general, their own fathers, brothers and lovers included. (…) They feel, despite everything, that they have to close ranks.

(…)

A recent, as yet unpublished, study of the reactions of muslim women to Hirsi Ali will show that a great majority of these women despise her and quite a few think she “should die”. Moments later, these same women espouse the very same objections to their own circle as Ayaan does. In other words, these women disagree with Hirsi Ali, but hold the same opinion. In the heated discussions about Ayaan’s performance, these women also bring up the very circumstances she has put on the agenda. That is her great achievement. She has, however, failed to create an opportunity for these same women to publicly agree with her without feeling like traitors to their own, often belittled, minority. Perhaps this is not Ayaan’s fault, but a function of the current, islemophobic West.

[Translation, including all errors and typos, mine – Drago]

This is, to me, what is so infuriating and ultimately tragic about Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I could not agree more that the issues she raises ought to be talked about and adressed, but she has personally helped create an environment where such a thing is less, rather than more, likely to occur. I agree with her that islam needs an Enlightenment of its own, but she is in fact helping to foster a Counterenlightenment movement. She is correct about many of the problems, but sorely mistaken about their causes and how to tackle them. She has made shooting herself in the foot a new art form, while calling people who disagree with her about these things “appeasers”. That is what many people object to.

The only person who should be deported anywhere is Ian Buruma–and to the moon.

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2005/07/18/burumas-morals-and-ours/

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/02/27/ian-buruma-what-an-embarrassment/

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/05/15/ian-buruma-on-hugo-chavez/

Nice post, Chris, and thanks Drago for the article. I’m down with both.

Abb1, comrade, I think you’re a little off-base on this one. Surely all refugees and other immigrants tell stories that are somewhere between perfect truth and outright fabrication, and flee their home countries for reasons somewhere between immediate fear of death and a general desire for a better life. AHA strikes me as being perhaps more toward the latter side than most, but certainly not uniquely so.

So I can’t see any reasons for highlighting the reasons in which she “didn’t deserve” Dutch citizenship, unless your goal is to undermine the claims of refugees and immigrants in general. And that would go against the principles of Red internationalism that I flatter myself we share.

Louis, why should a Marxist display the kind of tender regard for Islamic sensibilities that you profess when denouncing Buruma? (Not that you owe me or anybody an explanation, but I am genuinely curious.) I truly don’t get it. You seem far too intelligent to adopt a simple-minded “enemy of my enemy is my friend” posture, but I can’t see why else you would get so exercised at attacks on a religious ideology which clearly is in radical opposition to everything I would expect an “unrepentant Marxist” to stand for. (For the record I personally don’t like Christianity any more than I do Islam, yet I certainly don’t advocate “preventive” wars against the adherents of either religion.)

This is what happens to someone who publicly defends a reasonable, nuanced position…

First time I’ve seen AHA accused of defending a reasonable, nuanced position.

Well, this is just how it is with refugees, I happen to know a little bit about it. A woman with a child would come to a refugee camp in Africa and you don’t know if she is there because their village was burned to the ground or if she’s just borrowed someone’s child and is looking for some rest and free food. So, she will be investigated and, if caught lying, rejected.

Nothing is wrong with having economic reasons, nothing at all, but this is just how it is, regardless of what we feel. Again, it’s a limited resource. Immigration question is different, but refugees? Come on, who really undermines the claims of refugees here?

“We have the right to stop you from entering our territory because, were you to enter, the lives of our citizens would be somewhat worse (thanks to your consumption of public goods they’ve paid for), though they would remain (much) better than the life we condemn you to by excluding you.” ?? I really don’t see why the would-be immigrant should find that morally compelling.

Or the would-be thief or, better, con-merchant outside a rich person’s house? The argument is straightforward: redistribution is morally compelling in the eyes of the poor and therefore provides a license to break the law (at least by dishonesty). Or am I missing something?

Otto, that is correct, except insofar as a general respect for private property is sufficiently beneficial to the poor that they (explicitly or implicitly) consent to it.

So it’s the distinction between private and public goods (cf. CB’s original quote) which drives the difference? The would be immigrant is consuming public goods by deception, but the would be con merchant private ones.

Chris Bertram,

‘Last time I looked, political parties were voluntary associations. Anyway, see comment #8 from Pieter above.’

True part association is voluntary but the last time I looked most Western political parties were rather large and diverse groups.

And I dunno know maybe it is just me but I don’t think we should hold individual members of that association responsible for every action of that association. You know for instance maybe the individual is against the action.

Come to think of it being a citizen of Holland is a voluntary association. Is everyone in Holland guilty?

Pieter didn’t make a case for collective punishment, you did. Pieter wasn’t as lazy as you.

Thanks, Louis, that makes a good deal of sense to me.

First time I’ve seen AHA accused of defending a reasonable, nuanced position.

OK. Cite, ipsum verbum, some unreasonalble, unnuanced remarks she’s made, and don’t confuse “reasonableness” with conventional wisdom or popular pieties.

Roger, she didn’t get her refugee status in the Netherlands because of her alleged forced marriage; she applied as a ‘Somali woman fleeing danger’ even though at that time she had left Somalia 20 years ago and wasn’t fleeing any danger – she already had refugee status in Kenya and was perfectly safe there. She came up with the ‘forced marriage’ explanation later.

logicguru,

Her most frequent error in is to refer to radical islam as “the pure islam” and also “true” islam. Copious examples here (Dutch). This, needless to say, is as ridiculous as saying that only followers of Pat Robertson’s or Fred Phelps’ brand of Christianity are “true” or “pure” Christians. It is, in fact, both unreasonable and unnuanced. Not only that, but this silly idea is what basically her entire outlook on this issue is based on: radicals are “true muslims”, but well-assimilated muslims who have no dominionist, never mind terrorist, ideas can be dismissed as not actually being muslims at all.

Sorry but I don’t do Dutch and, I expect, the article you cited loses something in the translation. As I understood it Ali called for a “reformation” in Islam which she suggested would come from those assimilated Muslims living in the West. This is representative of the position I took her to hold, which I’ve seen in a number of other quotes.

And pardon my Tu Quoque but how many critiques of Christianity, from Dennett and Dawkins to the latest ephemera in the blogosphere pay any attention to liberal or even mainline Christians, and how many that do regard them as anything other than a marginal, anomalous minority?

Surely anti-immigration arguments from the social contract must be worth something?

X is illegal where I live (Nation A). It’s not illegal everywhere. Someone who lives where I live has a demonstrated history of not having done X, or being punished for doing it and being brought into the criminal justice system. Someone living in Nation B has no such history.

Nation A has no authority outside its borders. But doesn’t it have a legitimate interest in counting a history of living under its laws as important when it comes to determining who can and can’t live there? It strikes me a strange to allow immigration just on the basis of a professed ambition to obey the law of Nation A once you get in.

In the AHA case, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to kick her out for lying about who she is. It strikes me as completely reasonable to want to check whether an immigrant has obeyed the laws of where they come from, for reasons of public protection. Lying about who you are works to defeat that and shows no respect for the legitimate interests of the community which you wish to join.

Emmanuel Goldstein,

I said it depends on the circumstances and a lot of people made a lot of wild assumptions about my views based on that.

(Please keep in mind that everyone but pacifists essentially agree with that statement.)

Chris has very clearly stated that an elected member of a party is responsible for all of that parties policies.

From collective responsibility to collective guilt to collective punishment is a very small and logical jump.

Drago, two thoughts:

#21: “That is her great achievement. She has, however, failed to create an opportunity for these same women to publicly agree with her without feeling like traitors to their own, often belittled, minority. Perhaps this is not Ayaan’s fault, but a function of the current, islemophobic West.”

Perhaps neither. Perhaps the responsibility for remaining in an inarticulate, quasi-submissive position has something to do with people’s own unwillingness to think about their responsibilities more extensively.

Perhaps Ali’s great contribution is that she merely voiced an independent opinion, flawed or not.

Perhaps the tragedy of Ayaan is that she is still a singular performer, rather than one of an emerging class. Perhaps she is just ahead of her time.

#53: “This, needless to say, is as ridiculous as saying that only followers of Pat Robertson’s or Fred Phelps’ brand of Christianity are “true” or “pure” Christians…”

This depends on your understanding of ‘true’. True/pure Christians are precisely that group of people who imagine themselves as emphasising the truth or purity of their belief above all else. This does not preclude other people from feeling ‘truly’ or deeply Christian while abstaining from a demonstrative posturing about it. So it’s helpful to determine whether Ali is gesturing towards the former or if she is making a convoluted statement about all people with a Muslim background, which would necessarily include herself.

That said, the character of the story is evocative of the Tawana Brawley political circus, and I am wondering how many people are trying to make someothing of a flawed opportunity.

Seeing a VVD minister behind the attack on Ali surprised me more than anything else. Not because of the partisan disloyalty, but because I didn’t think dog-whistle politics was the VVD’s stock in trade. I saw them as the pro-business libertarianish party in the Netherlands.

In any case, accounts now make a big deal of Ali’s party switch, but it didn’t seem quite so dramatic to me at the time. VVD and PdvA (the Social Democrats) had been in coalition for almost a decade at the time. I wouldn’t assert that their views were in unison, but nevertheless VVD had been in a coalition that defended a much more liberal immigration policy for some time. At the time that she joined, I think they were certainly far from the Fortuynists, and I think they ended up losing pretty badly in the elections soon after because of it.

In any case, the VVD platform now is not what I remember from before, at least on immigration. I think that Ali jumped a relatively modest gap at the time, and then it became a canyon when her new party changed beneath her.

I don’t know where Ali stands on the current platform, but I’m not taking for granted that it represents her view. Having just changed parties certainly must put her in an awkward spot, however. Perhaps she felt jumping ship again would have been fatal for her political career. I know that we all want politicians to be above considerations of their professional survival, but I dare say it’s rather not that simple.

Hasn’t this all occurred before? Ex-Catholic campaigners against Catholicism often attracted controversy. In Australia in the 1920s an ex-nun Sister Ligouri was controversial and her cause was taken up by militant Protestants.

Engels,
I’d have to assume that Chris Bertram takes the very idea of the state to be unjust.

In the case of asylum they have quotas and your getting ahead means that for your opportunity to have a better job someone may have to die.

This is not exactly the same as the draft story. In the draft situation you face the same predicament as the next guy who will be drafted instead of you.

Suppose it’s a question of you getting a pay cut or someone drafted and sent to war. Would this still be a ‘good question’?

Chris Betram writes “I can avoid the draft by lyingly pretending to belong to one of the exempt categories. Is it wrong for me to do so?”

Yes it is “wrong.” The proper thing to do is to refuse to serve because you think the war is “unjust.” Lying to avoid service allows the unjustness to go unchallanged. As a citizen you have both the right and, I would argue, the responsibility to resist the unjust war on the basis of its unjustness not to avoid the issue by misrepresenting your reasons for opting out.

n the case of asylum they have quotas

Really? You know this?

abb1- Most countries distinguish between asylum and refugee policy- asylum is granted to those who are in the host country already and apply for it there. Refugees are out of their country of origin but not yet in a country that will keep the permenantly. There clearly are quotas on refugee resetlment in most countries- perhaps all countries that take them in. I can’t recall the number for the US now, but it’s set each year by the congress and approved by the president. During the Bush years the quota has largely not been filled because of demands for background checks that refugees cannot be reasonably expected to meet. But, in the US at least (the country who’s immigration/asylum/refugee law I know most about) grants of asylum to those already in the country have no effect on the refugee quota number- the two systems are distinct in that way- and there is no quota on asylum grants, though there sometimes is pressure from various sources to raise or lower how hard cases are fought, etc. I can say nothing about the specific asylum/refugee policies of most of Europe.

As for conscription, Legal Permanent Residents (green-card holders) are subject to conscription in the US if there were to be a draft and must register with the selective service program. I have no idea what other countries do here, but this does not seem especially problematic to me, especially since, if the LPR objected to the war strongly enough, he could simply return to his home country.

Well, Abb1, you may doubt it, but this is again an area where you don’t really know what you’re talking about, but just have a feeling. I suppose those not on the right have “truthiness”, too. But, I actually work in the area, and have friends who have worked in the area for years, and so actually know something. Also, you can get the statistics of grants of asylum pretty easily. There’s no connection between the asylum grant rate in the US and the refugee quota number. Really, you might be interested in facts once in a while.

abb1 – As Matt said, there is no quota for asylum grants. This is true in the US, the UK and other European countires. If asylum grants counted towards the refugee quota this would mean that there was a quota for asylum grants – the refugee quota. But there isn’t.

Asylum seekers are people on your country’s territory who claim that they would face persecution, possibly death, if they were to return to their home countries. If you set a quota for the number of asylum seekers permitted to remain, then you would have to face the question of what to do when the total number of successful applications exceeded the quota ie. what to do with people who the courts have recognised as facing persecution in their home countries and whose only failing is that they came too far down your list. You would have a number of options:

(i) Forcefully send them back to their home country in the knowledge that they will be persecuted there and possibly killed.
(ii) Keep them waiting in an offshore detention centre until there is “room” for them in your country. (Inhumane and contravenes the UN Refugee Convention.)
(iii) If the travelled through another country before they reached your country, send them back there. (Even though it is not clear that any state would consider asylum applications from people who have already been recognised as refugees in another country).

Needless to say, none of these options look very attractive.

If they have to admit too many asylum seekers this year, then they will reduce the quota for the refugees next year, that’s all there is to it.

You don’t know this at all, do you? You are just making this stuff up.

Sorry, I don’t understand what you’re talking about, engels.

I’ll repeat my question then. Do you have any grounds for making your claim – that the government will reduce the intake of refugees the next year to compensate for any additional asylum applications granted in a given year – or are you just bullshitting?

BTW the question of whether countries have quotas for asylum seekers is not a “largely irrelevant, unimportant detail”. It is morally important and it was a big political issue recently here in the UK.

And in any case, your original claim, which you have never had the grace to concede, was that “in the case of asylum they have quotas”.

I do find it slightly depressing that the latter part of this thread has consisted almost entirely of

(i) various people calling you on your bullshit
(ii) your spirited defence of the eternal leftwing principle that abb1 is always right.