March 8, 2021 - 5:15pm
There was something missing from Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Weekend Essay for UnHerd, something that left me feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, I applaud Ms. Ali’s courage and determination to face the injustices resulting from an antiquated and dogmatic Islam at the detriment of her personal safety. And I agree with her on the dire need to uproot Muslim extremism from the West.
On the other hand, I disagree with the implicit conclusion that closing borders to Muslim immigrants would solve the problem, as it has become entrenched in Western countries. Her conviction in the incongruence of Islam, Muslims and the West is apparent throughout the essay, which is coupled with a sense of foreboding about large numbers of young Muslim men trying to cross European borders:
Hirsi Ali notes how difficult it is to discern who is worthy of being given the coveted refugee status, which again implies the difficulties in letting these Muslim men through.
To be clear, my disagreement with Ms. Ali doesn’t arise from any sentimentality because I’m a Muslim woman who lives in Egypt. Rather, it is from what I believe is a flawed analysis of the theo-political landscape where new Muslim immigrants are offered as scapegoats on the altar of the counter-extremism.
Ms. Ali warns that in allowing Muslim immigrants to Europe, the continent is effectively opening its borders to an extremist ideology that jeopardises secular states to redeem itself from the woes of its colonial past. The imminent danger is exemplified in the UK by grooming gangs, and across Europe by ISIS-inspired terror attacks. You could add more cases: Shamima Begum, the murder of Samuel Paty, Charlie Hebdo; the list is long and I could go on.
But take a closer look and try to find what links the perpetrators of all these incidents had beyond the fact that they are all Muslims and that the incidents took place in Europe. The striking feature is the fact that all those individuals are second and third generation immigrants, European nationals who have little to no connections to their families’ countries of origin. Those people weren’t fleeing from a war-torn country, risking their lives and their children’s lives on a boat trip that could capsize off the coast of Libya, in search of a better future. They were born, bred and radicalised inside European cities.
According to a World Bank report there were 720 European fighters who joined ISIS. The danger of extremist ideology isn’t merely located beyond the border, it emanates from the heart of Europe. As Arab Muslim countries like Egypt, UAE and even Saudi Arabia are taking rigorous steps to combat extremist ideology and terrorism, Europe is shackled by its inability to address a culture that enables and reinforces Islamic extremism through its silent complicity.
To address the problem, the true culprit must be identified because influential writers like Ms. Ali who can impact public policy should clearly articulate the problem or else it will lead to another round of the Misunderstanding Game she describes.
Heba Yosry teaches psychology and philosophy in Cairo. Her research areas include modernity, gender, metaphysics and language.
HebaYosry17
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SubscribeInternational borders with stricter control won’t stop terrorism; but open borders will certainly increase it. The bigger border of course is mental rather than geographic. The West increasingly sees citizenship as completely removed from nationhood. I waited three years after I had qualified for receiving a British passport before applying for it, because for me switching my nationality from Indian to British was not just changing passports. I had to be sure that my loyalty lay with my new homeland. I even wondered whether I would fight for Britain against India if the two went to war. The most honest I could be with myself was that I would not fight against Britain.
My British passport now means that I owe an allegiance and loyalty to this country. The Tebbit test, much mocked and derided, contained an essential truth. We cannot truly belong to a land and a nation till we love it as our own.
The home grown Muslim terrorists have been brought up believing that home is elsewhere; that loyalty to Ummah is greater than loyalty to your fellow citizens; that Islam/Sharia is the law they should live by rather than follow the rule of law of the place that is their home.
I don’t know how to teach them to make the country they live in as their loved home. Or else leave. All I know is that it took conscious and sincere effort on my part to pledge my loyalty to Britain. Ignore the need for nationhood and churn out passports as if the deep relationship between man and land is a mere piece of paper, and you will have treason within, willingly and ably supported by self-loathing natives.
+10 upvote of the week.
It’s almost exactly the same mental process that I went through in deciding to become a Britsh citizen. Now I call myself a British Zululander…
The failure to become British in heart may also be due to the pace of immigration, or perhaps a lack of appreciation for what the country has given them. For example British Indians who arrived as refugees from Africa seem to all be well-integrated, regardless of religion.
I think we can help by, when someone makes that decision to become a Brit, really welcoming them and making them feel at home in British community life (even though it has become so fragmented by “multi-culturalism” which in my mind is a lazy code to avoid adapting to newcomers in our midst – and also to avoid asking them to adapt to the country they have chosen).
I was struck by the homogeneity of Brazilian society, even recent waves of migrants like the Japanese who moved there after WW2 have become totally Brazilian – and I think there is a lot we can learn from countries like that.
Sorry for the rather “bitty” response to your excellent comment!
Thank you! This and some other comments you have made in this area, Mr Sharma, are among the most strong-rooted I have encountered on UnHerd. What is needed in this area, and in many others that attract a lot of attention, is that we go deeper than merely describing and deploring symptoms, even when those symptoms are horrifying ones such as bombings, shootings, honour killings etc. etc.
This comment (and others you have made) get to the deeper things by identifying and then interrogating the presuppositions on which arguments and therefore actions are based. Revolutions are built on ideas, from which springs action. Thank you for drawing so persuasively on your own experience — hesitations and all — to identify one of the most important ideas within this sorry tale of Islamism in Europe.
Thank you for this wonderful comment. I share your sentiments entirely, though I was born and brought up here as a Muslim. For a long while I believed that the ummah was more important (because it’s what I was supposed to believe) and it took me a long time to truly admit to myself that my allegiance lay with Britain and not the country of my parents’ origin or any other Muslim nation. That cognitive dissonance is very strong and it took a lot of soul searching to recognise it for what it was.
Thank you too for your comment. It’s important to hear this from someone brought up Muslim. I can well believe that this choice wasn’t easy for you. My Welsh-born grandchildren have been taught by their Moroccan Wahhabi-influenced father to put their Muslim identity before everything else (they have all been given Muslim names and have never been allowed to go to school – my daughter, British Muslim convert, home schools all four of them). I can only hope that when they reach maturity they’ll have the courage and good sense to affirm their loyalty to the country of their birth and their mother’s birth.
That’s sad to hear. I was brought up quite similarly closeted and I attended mainly Muslim schools for the most part. The Muslim identity was more important than anything else and I wholeheartedly believed it all growing up and throughout my twenties. Because I was so closeted I had little else to do but read books. It took me a long time, but reading saved me because I learnt to think for myself, clichéd as that sounds. Looking back, I’m still grateful for a religion that grounds me and gives me an avenue for the part of me that needs spirituality, but I no longer need the fanaticism and the ideology. And this was me, a South Asian Muslim female surrounded by well meaning ideologues and fanatics. Take heart, your grandkids will push against it one day, and they will want to know more about their heritage and country and hopefully you and your daughter will be there to return to them what they have lost.
“Her conviction in the incongruence of Islam, Muslims and the West is apparent throughout the essay,..”
As we have seen throughout history and across the globe, Islam is incongruent will all other belief systems and all other modes of existence.
Then this:
‘As Arab Muslim countries like Egypt, UAE and even Saudi Arabia are taking rigorous steps to combat extremist ideology and terrorism, Europe is shackled by its inability to address a culture that enables and reinforces Islamic extremism through its silent complicity.’
Perhaps, but the Saudis etc continue to fund extremist mosques and imams in the west. And yes, there is a ‘silent complicity’ among the governing classes when it comes to Islamic extremism. This is because the governing classes want to rub our noses in diversity (grooming gangs, FGM, bombs, halal etc) and because the left simply wants to destroy the west.
Either way, the fact that the terrorists are ‘homegrown’ is no reason to open the borders. Anyway, they are not all homegrown, not be any means. Many of those responsible for the Bataclan (and other) attacks in France entered in 2015, and a recent arrival from Afghanistan has stabbed seven people in Sweden a few days ago. Really, there is no end to it with these people, and the more of them you let in, the more carnage you will have.
Is unHerd planning a paywall?
Brendan’s question is a response to a version of my post that I quickly edited.
Unherd has invited readers to contribute/subscribe. But no paywall.
Is the wonderful old comments system going to return?
The present system is simply awful.
It’s pretty incongruent even within itself, as all the sectarian wars show. Or the persecution of the Ahmadis, who are apparently “not true muslims” for steering perilously close to a moderate and modernised interpretation of islam.
1111
Patently false. While some are Europe-born indeed, others arrived with the ‘migrant wave’ commencing in 2015, a well-publicised fact the author chose to ignore.
Yes, I made this point in my post. It’s pretty outrageous that Unherd allowed this blatant lie to be told. One expects lies in the Guardian, on the BBC etc, but not here.
That, and you made the other two points too i tried to make below, and you did much better than i did – i really should read the comments first before i type away the next time.
Off-topic (re: Guardian), but just seen Piers Morgan’s duet with that …ehm, person called Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimugubombogumbokekele, it’s hilarious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsObE9_XVr0&t=263s (the first five minutes)
I had to google the ogre – turns out, “Dr” aside she comes with all the following titles:
ROFLMAO
She can’t even articulate a simple English word, she just barks and oinks.
A nonsensical argument. The fact is that the main terror threat is Islamic. True, it’s already present in Europe but that doesn’t mean we should allow further recruits to add to the problem. If next door is on fire, then hosing the flames in your own kitchen will not be enough, will it? Really, that such miserable sophistries as this article should be presented in all their finery when a moment’s thought upends them!
Are they, really? They do fund a lot of it outside their borders, then.
And the reason for that silent complicity is what, exactly? Those who make any non-compliant noise are quickly delegated to the ‘islamophobe, racist, literally fascist’ corner by both the European-born muslim representatives and by their woke apologists. Is the author claiming that European politics are too soft on muslims? In that case i tend to agree, but somehow i’m not convinced that’s what she’s getting at
“The striking feature is the fact that all those individuals are second and third generation immigrants,”
Who would not be in Europe were it not for immigration.
Well. in the absence of a time machine, what are you going to do about it? We have the people we have. We need to deal with it.
Mass repatriation of a coloniser is always morally unimpeachable. Replacement of the native people is never moral.
Yes, we need to deal with it by repatriating them to their habitats of origin. It’s not some vis major act that they migrated en masse to Europe, but the result of manmade policies which can be undone.
Why so defeatist? Complacency won’t get us anywhere.
Slow down or stop immigration. Unless you want more of the same problem.
Exactly. Even if they are time bomb with a one-generation fuse, as the author contends, that is not a reason to keep bringing ever more of them into the house.
Indeed closing borders alone won’t solve the problem, as it has become endemic to quite a large extent (as correctly pointed out in the article); what’s needed on top of closing the borders to MENA / subsaharan immigration is stimulating voluntary repatriation. And for that to happen an overhaul of the current political / ideological hegemony (both on national and on supranational level) is a prerequisite. The current 2nd / 3rd gen thirdworld immigrants are the products of immigration policies exerted during the past few decades; they are still reversible if there’s political will.
So, are you proposing ethnic cleansing – the systematic expulsion of single-nationality European citizens who have the wrong religion or skin color? Really?
Why is it wrong to reject foreign colonisation of one’s homeland and the replacement of one’s own people which colonisation guarantees?
Any particular reason for phrasing it the contrived way you did?
Nothing to do wit ‘skin colour’ – i tan quickly and easily, so even in an average summer by June i get a good deal darker than most muslims. So do many of my fellow Europeans.
What i wrote was “stimulating voluntary repatriation“, not “systematic expulsion”. Repatriation of those with recent (2nd / 3rd gen) migration background from MENA / subsaharan origins, unless they can prove beyond doubt that their presence in Europe is conducive to European society.
Their “single-nationality European citizenship” is the result of flawed immigration policies of the past few decades. Nothing what cannot or should not be reversed.
You misunderstood a detail: If people have dual nationality you can take away one. If people have (only a) single nationality, as is the case here, that would render them stateless.
For the rest: a policy for support of native culture against incoming groups, as for the Malays of Malaysia or (somewhat in the breach) the Jews of Israel, well, that can at least be discussed. Systematic expulsion is no-no.
Righty-ho. How’s about stimulating voluntary repatriation then? Because that‘s what i wrote (now for the third time), but you keep talking about “systematic expulsion” for some reason.
You will find that the Jews were the original inhabitants of Israel – they only returned to their homeland, which was occupied by others for quite a long stretch of time. And by returning home, they created the one single civilised democratic country in the Middle East.
That’s a moot point in context of voluntary repatriation; they will all find they do have a ‘place of origin’ to apply to if they want to. That aside, the ‘statelessness’ legislature, like most of others regarding “refugees” and “asylum” are antiquated, long-obsolete laws drawn up in the aftermath of WW2 when a lot of European people were wandering about stateless, looking for refuge. They still had a purpose during the cold war era for those fleeing communist regimes. But they are unfit for the 21st century. We are talking about manmade laws, not laws of nature – manmade laws are fallible, ephemeral, subject to change – that’s why we don’t live under feudal laws drafted 800 years ago.
Perhaps you do not realise the extent to which the UK is a secular society. Most people do not believe in religion and find it odd that a creed that is 2000 years old ( Christianity) has any relevance to todays world – apart from a certain nostalgia for some of the old buildings.
Whilst the UK will tolerate a relatively small number of people who do believe in religion; the immigration to the UK of a large number of such people, and particularly those who wish to assert their religion above the existing secular norms, is a cause for concern in the UK.
I do take the point that it is often second or third generation immigrants who have not assimilated to their host country, but adding to that problem by allowing more first generation immigration would surely add to the difficulties in the future.
“Whilst the UK will tolerate a relatively small number of people who do believe in religion”
interesting comment about a country with a state religion. A state with an established religion is not a secular country. It may not be a theocracy but it is not, by definition, secular.
Makes me feel like running out and buying an American flag. Or three.
Funny and ironic comment you quote, who made Nick Godlike that he can say what amount of God UK will tolerate.
It’s a very odd thought, that a country will “tolerate” only a small number of people who believe in religion. Who is even asked this question? Oh you’re a Christian? Sorry we have enough already, back to wherever you came from. Someone’s religion is none of Nick’s business whatsoever.
Have you seen how empty our Church’s are?
Have you seen how many parish Churches are amalgamate together for one vicar to run?
It may be a state religion, in a technical sense, but it is rather like our monarchy we do not believe in the divine right of Kings.
You deny you have an established church? It’s not technical, it exists. And yes you have a monarchy as well. And since you mentioned the monarchy, it’s a good time to note that your monarch is the head of your state church. No country with an established religion is secular. You may not be a theocracy but you are not a secular country.
Do you believe that weekly church attendance is the only outward sign that one is a Christian? What about getting married in a church? If a couple does that but doesn’t attend church weekly are you saying that they cannot be Christian? Or having your child christened in one? You don’t appear to grasp that Christianity is a belief.
Now I feel like buying 50 American flags.
For a spot of hairsplitting: it’s not religion people believe in; it’s the existence of the deity they believe, and the ‘~ in’ bit of ‘believe in‘ implies emotional / spiritual investment in the deity’s existence. Whereas religion is a manmade construct (unlike the deity, who is an abstract entity).
That it is a secular society is why it is so messed up.Without a belief in some ‘Ultimate’ there can be no ethics (a code which is universally true) as compared to morals, which are culture based. Like a headhunter is being moral when he kills a stranger, or a secular humanist is when they kill their unborn infant.
That is why the Ten Commandments were so great, they were absolute, they were ethics as they came from the ultimate. All a secular Humanist can muster is correct and incorrect, and so they are doomed to self destruction, self loathing, and complete lack of understanding of right and wrong except as relative morality and situational ethics. Anything can be twisted to be ‘correct’ as example secular humanists have decided to self genocide. Too selfish to have children they must devote their life to – to repay society for all the children before themselves, and themselves, raised to adulthood give them everything they have, they just cannot return the duty of contributing to society by raising a worthy member to replace themselves. Like the scrounger who will accept any drink offered, but never buy a round himself. Just live for self.
That may or may not be true, but I draw your attention to my earlier reply.
The parish churches are nearly empty, so the majority people are certainly not practicing Christians.
You wouldn’t have any way of knowing that. You do not have to attend church every week to be a practicing Christian, Christianity is a belief. If you get married in a church that’s practicing your religion, in a state church no less.
Muslim terror is the #1 source of terror all over the world, e.g. in 2017 Muslim terrorists killed 22.4 people each day, 157.1 each week, 8170 in total – a lesson to all fellow Muslims and non-Muslims alike, everywhere.
Now Mrs Yosry (and all of so-called civil society, press, media, politics!) tells us that Muslim terror in Europe is an unrelated phenomenon, as many of these killers are second or third immigration immigrants. So, supposedly when Muslims commit crimes in Europe as no other group does, Europe is to blame, while if they wreak havoc elsewhere likely the weather is to blame, or, wait for it, likely Europe too, one way or the other.
No, Mrs Yosry, when Muslim terrorists behave the same all over the world, whether at home or in the diaspora, whether native or immigrant, that tells us something about the religion, culture, and society they come from – not ours.
Op-Eds are fine, but there needs to be substance and an arguable viewpoint – this isn’t fit to print. One reason why I won’t support Unherd.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_January_2017
Death by terror in 2017, per WP collection of press reports
A blogger extracted the data and sorted it by cause – religion, regional conflict or ideology:
cause | # of dead
Islam: 8170
Central Africal Republic: 432
Communism: 310
Myanmar: 105
Congo: 85
Anarchy: 3
Far-right: 3
Far-left: 1
> They were born, bred and radicalised inside European
> To address the problem, the true culprit must be identified
The sentiment that informs such musings is known:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag
»The white race is the cancer of human history;« It »eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads« and upsets »the ecological balance of the planet«
– Susan Sontag, 1967, Partisan Review, p. 57, 58
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre
»To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time.«
– Jean-Paul Sartre, introduction to The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
Being a ‘home grown’ Muslim of immigrant origins, I disagree with this article. Plenty of atrocities are carried out by those born and bred here, yes, but plenty are carried out by recent arrivals too. Allowing more in certainly won’t be solving this problem – once their children grow up, do we then expect them to become terrorists because the problem seems to be European? I rather think not – I agree with Hirsi Ali – the problem is the ideology.
I’m glad that you are here. And glad for all those who came to Europe seeking a normal, secular life, free from the ever-encroaching theocratic regimes of muslim countries. Unfortunately *here* is not quite so safe anymore – the theocracy is coming to get you, aided and abetted by immigration policies.
Yes, I feel the grip tightening and it saddens me. There’s a reason people wish to come and live here and I wish they would recognise and appreciate it, instead of trying to turn it back into those suffocating societies they’ve escaped from, funded by the petrodollars and encouraged by the new religion of Marxism or whatever label they give themselves.
Precisely.
And very sad to see what’s becoming of the region – home to some of the oldest, richest cultures on the planet.
My other half travelled a lot thereabouts (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India etc.) when he was a lad in the 70s, loved the place and its people.
“Hirsi Ali notes how difficult it is to discern who is worthy of being given the coveted refugee status, which again implies the difficulties in letting these Muslim men through.”
Only difficult as it is forbidden to discern.
Government could amass statistics on National Orign and wealth they accumulated, Benefits uptake, education attained, crime, how many children they had and the children’s success, Simple!
That this may not be done shows the West has a self destructive pathology. If your business is hiring you do not say ‘I have two job openings, send me two people’. That would be insane, yet it is how we do it for people who will become a member of our nation for ever.
“The striking feature is the fact that all those individuals are second and third generation immigrants, European nationals who have little to no connections to their families’ countries of origin.”
You’re Egyptian. Nasser kicked out millions of people who families had lived in Egypt for thousands of years.
Algerians kicked out French people whose families had lived there for over a century,
The idea that it has been a good thing to empty millions of the non-radical, peace loving Muslims out of the Middle East and import them to Europe and North America leaves exactly who behind?
The world is then astonished that the remaining radical elements are an inspiration and instigator of violence to their diaspora.
Today’s immigrants are tomorrow’s 2nd and 3 rd generation future radicals. And that is the fault of the receiving culture?
Huh.
So what is ‘the true culprit’?
It looks to me that it is other muslims radicalising the vulnerable and angry in the UK and other European countries. Many of those doing the radicalising in the past were not European, and I suppose many are now radicalised over the internet.
I suppose it will be the host’s fault for causing there to be vulnerable and angry ‘3rd generation immigrants’ though.
As always History has a precedent or two.
In the early seventeenth century, Spain irritated by the large number of Muslims in the country, attempted to remove them in a procedure called the ‘Expulsion of the Moriscos’.
The brain child of the Duke Lerma, chief henchmen to King Philip III, the Islamic presence in Spain was completely eliminated, although how many were actually ejected is still a matter of fierce controversy.
However those that managed to remain were extremely careful to adopt Christian behaviour in all its outward forms.
Those that failed invariably ended up on a very public bonfire! Charmingly called an ‘Auto da Fe ‘…. an act of faith.
Muslims who engage in terrorism aren’t, as I understand it, fighting against individual nations, they’re fighting against what they see as a decadent and secular Western way of life. ‘Borders’ then, need to be viewed in a wider context, in our case in Europe in a European context. For if that doesn’t happen, then it implies preventing someone with, say, a French passport entering the UK if they are Muslim – a very dangerous path to embark on. That many people who become terrorists are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants is perhaps an argument for saying that those grandparents should not have been allowed in in the first place unless they were prepared to unconditionally accept the culture that they were coming to, though still and all, this is going to have to be seen as a Europe-wide issue, or it’ll be futile. The only alternative I suppose is to close the borders to everyone, from wherever the arrive, European countries included, but that isn’t realistic, is it? I certainly hope it isn’t.
The problem is even bigger than Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes but the author’s solution is to allow it to grow even bigger. Why? And what sort of novel public policy panacea does she imagine? Some magic that no Western government has discovered in the past few decades, apparently? Seriously delusional.