While we were talking, my phone rang. It was Leon de Winter, a famous Dutch writer. I asked “Oh, are you going to tell me to be careful?” because all these lectures from friends and colleagues were starting to get on my nerves. But de Winter said, “No, I am only going to say how much I admire you. I watched you on TV the past two evenings, and I really think what you’re doing for us is great.” He warmly invited me to dinner the next week, which was something like an American receiving an invitation from Philip Roth, except that in Holland everyone knows Leon de Winter. I accepted, of course, but I told him, “I’m a little ashamed, because I haven’t read any of your books.” He said, “No problem. I’ve read your articles.”
The phone rang again, and now it was Jaffe Vink from Trouw, who said, “I want you to talk to this special policeman who works for the Dutch Secret Service, because something very bad is brewing. I think the threats against you are real. You can see him on Monday.” I agreed to do it.
I spent that weekend at home with Ellen, doing chores and trying to mend our flagging friendship. On Monday morning I went to meet this special policeman. His office was like a prison: bars, and more bars, and every door with elaborate locks and cameras. I told the man, “I don’t know what I did or said, but my father is afraid I will be assassinated, and all sorts of people seem to be terribly worried about me. I haven’t received any threats directly, so I feel a little dumb, but it’s beginning to frighten me.”
He said, “You are a little dumb, because these threats are very real. We know about some of them. You’ll need protection. Go to the police office in Leiden and file a complaint. And tell them about the stuff on the Internet.”
I said, “Is there something about me on the Internet?”
He sighed and said, “A lot, and it’s growing. We’re monitoring it.” This man was very Dutch, very avuncular and protective, and he told me to stop thinking I was an invisible nonentity. I had set off something that could be very big and very dangerous.
I went to the police station in Leiden, which I knew well from my work as a translator. A police officer who had already heard about me—and seemed, in fact, to know far more about my situation than I did—said police would evaluate the security of my house, and that Ellen and I would have to change the locks.
He asked, “How many people do you think know your address?” I showed him one of my business cards: my home address was printed on it. I’d given those cards out to people at debates all over the country. Networking was part of my job. Moreover, I said, Ellen and I were in the phone book. He groaned.
At another Wiardi Beckman Institute board meeting that night, I was on the agenda again, but nobody blamed me for anything. Again, Job Cohen was splendid. He said, “Whether I agree or disagree with Ayaan is irrelevant. Any threat against her for expressing a simple opinion is completely unacceptable to all of us.”
I thought, “Why on earth isn’t Cohen the leader of the Labor Party?” He was such a clear thinker; he had authority; he understood the rule of law better than anyone I knew. I felt slightly ashamed that I had once called him names in an article. After the meeting, Cohen came up to me and said, “Ayaan, you look exhausted. I want you to think long and hard about taking on this challenge. This could take a long time. Do you want to live like this? Go and eat something, and get some sleep, and think about it.”
It was clear to everyone, apparently, that I shouldn’t take the train to work again. It wasn’t clear to me exactly what they thought I should be protected against, but all were adamant that any chance encounter might set off some kind of violence. So that night Karin drove me home, and the next morning she came with her crew and drove me to work. The following day, Paul Kalma called the hosts of the TV show and got the name of the private bodyguard service they had used to protect me. He decided to hire them to drive me to and from work.
My daily life became unbelievably complicated. When I was at work in Amsterdam, the Amsterdam police were responsible for my safety. But once I got to Leiden, thirty miles away, I had to phone the Leiden police to let them know I was home, because now they were responsible for me. Moreover, the bodyguard service was expensive, and the Labor Party, having lost a number of votes, had just slashed the funding of our think tank. Paul Kalma asked me if I couldn’t find an address in Amsterdam for a while, so the Amsterdam police could just walk me home every night.
A reporter called to talk to me. I said, “I can’t. I just filed a complaint, and I’m not going to talk to the media any more.” She put that in the paper; it became headline news that I was being forced into hiding. I received bags full of mail and lots of offers from people who wanted to hide me in their homes. One was my former professor of Methods of Social Research. He lived near the Labor Party office, and his duplex apartment included a granny flat with a kitchenette, which was empty.
We decided that I should move in there temporarily, after the weekend. When I told Ellen, I could feel the air stiffen with her disapproval. We had an argument; she accused me of abandoning my share of the housework and of our friendship. I told her she wasn’t supportive when I needed her. It was ugly, and the bodyguards were honking impatiently. I left.
That evening I was supposed to have dinner at the Hilton in Amsterdam with Jaffe Vink, and Leon de Winter and his wife. We had just started the appetizer when suddenly the two bodyguards descended on me, caught my hands, wrapped themselves around me, and said, “We’re leaving.” I barely had time to put down my fork.
They took me out through the back doors. I didn’t see anything, but as we drove away, fast, the bodyguards told me that cars packed with North African–looking men had begun arriving, one after another. They were dropping people off in the hotel parking lot and then heading off to get more people. Someone must have seen me walking into the hotel and cell-phoned his friends. The guards said they weren’t equipped to deal with such numbers. I saw nothing, but now I was frightened.
We arrived at the Leiden police station where, an officer told me, they had been doing their own research and felt strongly it was unwise for me to continue sleeping at my house in Leiden. My address was too widely known; there was no way they could protect me. I said, “Are you saying I should sell my house?” The police officer said, “We can’t tell you to do something like that, but we can tell you that you’re not safe there.”
I phoned my father. When he picked up the phone I said, “Hello, Abeh, this is Ayaan.” There was a shuffle and a click. This happened a number of times. I had insulted that which he held most dear. Our relationship could never be mended.
* * *
When it was clear that my living situation had become untenable, Leon de Winter proposed that I go to a writers’ retreat in California to take a break. I could return when things had calmed down in Holland. I didn’t have the money for such a trip, but Paul Scheffer suggested that the Institute set up a nonprofit foundation and raise funds.
I had come to incarnate a situation that Holland was beginning to perceive and was shocked by. This peaceful country, which thought it had reached the peak of civilization and had nothing more to worry about except perhaps the dikes breaking one day, was waking up to the nightmare of citizens who completely disagreed with fundamental values like free speech—to the realities of airplane attacks and murdered politicians and death threats. The news that a young woman could have her life threatened merely for speaking the truth, as she saw it, on TV seemed to many people an important symbol.
People petitioned for my right to free expression. They sent flowers. My views became a subject for debate. Some people claimed that all the threats against me were just lies and hype, but many others, whom I didn’t even know, seemed to be working now to gather support for me. Leon de Winter, Geert Mak, Harry van den Berg, and Paul Scheffer, all well-known Dutch writers; Job Cohen; Felix Rottenberg, a former leader of the Labor Party, and Paul Kalma, my boss; Tilly Hermans, now my Dutch book publisher, and Cisca Dresselhuys, a prominent feminist—all these extremely vi
sible and important figures were involved in my case. They wanted me to be able to return to Holland safely, and under the protection of the elite police corps that protects well-known politicians and the royal family, instead of just under the eye of the local police.
In October 2002, I flew to California. It was the first time I had ever been in the United States, and I realized almost immediately that my preconceptions of America were completely ludicrous. I was expecting rednecks and fat people, with lots of guns, very aggressive police, and overt racism—a caricature of a caricature. In reality, of course, I saw people living perfectly well-ordered lives, jogging, and drinking coffee.
I loved the huge bookstores and spent hours in the Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, where I was staying, buying crateloads of books. It was a relief to have the time to think and read again.
* * *
On October 16, 2002, the cabinet fell, after less than three months in power. Pim Fortuyn’s group in Parliament was unable to manage a coalition with the Liberals and the Christian Democrats. The small universe of Dutch politics was agog: the country faced the prospect of yet another election, scheduled for January 2003.
Neelie Kroes, a prominent politician from the Liberal Party, which is known in Holland as the VVD, is a strong woman, very dignified and determined. Although we had never met, Neelie was outraged that someone in my position would have to leave the country to seek safety. She organized women politicians from all the main political parties in Holland to issue a statement in support of my right to speak freely, in safety.
Neelie believed that the Dutch Parliament needed more strong, bright women. When the cabinet fell and new elections were called, she thought of me, even though I was only a junior researcher from the Labor Party and she from the right-wing VVD. Neelie called Leon de Winter and told him she wanted me to stand (run) for Parliament for her party.
Far away in America, I thought about it. I wasn’t horrified by the idea of being called right wing, as some people are. In Holland, all the political parties are in favor of an active, almost invasive degree of government intervention in the business of buying and selling, with high taxes and redistribution of wealth. In economic terms, the Liberal Party stands for less government interference and lower taxes; I felt comfortable with this. In terms of its principles, the Liberals were secular, careful to be neutral about religion. They stood for abortion rights, gay rights—the emancipation of the individual.
Moreover, I felt disappointed by the Labor Party. I had joined them originally because, in my mind, social democrats stood for reform. They sought to improve people’s lives; they cared about suffering, which I thought should have meant they would care about the suffering of Muslim women. But in reality, the Labor Party in Holland appeared blinded by multiculturalism, overwhelmed by the imperative to be sensitive and respectful of immigrant culture, defending the moral relativists. When I said the position of Muslim women had to change—to change now—people were always telling me to wait, or calling me right wing. Was that what they told the mine workers in the nineteenth century when they fought for workers’ rights?
Neelie was planning a trip to visit her son, who was living in San Francisco, and it was there that we actually met. I told her I was considering moving to the United States to pursue a PhD. We talked politics. She listened as I went on about the Enlightenment and John Stuart Mill and the cage of women’s repression and then caught my eye with a decisive air and told me, “You’re not a socialist. You are one of us.”
Neelie said my dreams of academia were like a sinkhole; they would never go anywhere. No matter how wonderful a PhD thesis I wrote, it would disappear into a file drawer. It would never shift the lives of Muslim women by an inch. The most important thing I could do with my life was expose the reality of those women’s lives to people in power and make sure that existing laws demanding equality between the sexes were applied. Mine was in a combat of action, not ideas. I should stand for Parliament, where I could truly have an effect on the emancipation of Muslim women and the integration of immigrants.
That night I thought about what Neelie had said. What was I trying to achieve? Three things: first, I wanted Holland to wake up and stop tolerating the oppression of Muslim women in its midst; the government must take action to protect them and punish their oppressors. Second, I wanted to spark a debate among Muslims about reforming aspects of Islam so that people could begin to question, and criticize, their own beliefs. This could happen only in the West, where Muslims may speak out; in no Muslim country can there be free discussion on such a subject.
Third, I wanted Muslim women to become more aware of just how bad, and how unacceptable, their suffering was. I wanted to help them develop the vocabulary of resistance. I was inspired by Mary Woll-stonecraft, the pioneering feminist thinker who told women they had the same ability to reason as men did and deserved the same rights. Even after she published A Vindication of the Rights of Women, it took more than a century before the suffragettes marched for the vote. I knew that freeing Muslim women from their mental cage would take time, too. I didn’t expect immediate waves of organized support among Muslim women. People who are conditioned to meekness, almost to the point where they have no mind of their own, sadly have no ability to organize, or will to express their opinion.
When I worked at the Labor Party think tank, trying to talk about these issues, people always accused me of failing to back up my arguments with data. But hard numbers were completely unavailable. When I tried to find out about honor killings, for instance—how many girls were killed every year in Holland by their fathers and brothers because of their precious family honor—civil servants at the Ministry of Justice would tell me, “We don’t register murders based on that category of motivation. It would stigmatize one group in society.” The Dutch government registered the number of drug-related killings and traffic accidents every year, but not the number of honor killings, because no Dutch official wanted to recognize that this kind of murder happened on a regular basis.
Even Amnesty International didn’t keep statistics on how many women around the world were victims of honor killings. They could tell you how many men were imprisoned and tortured, but they couldn’t keep tabs on the number of women flogged in public for fornication, or executed for adultery. That wasn’t their subject.
I decided that if I were to become a member of the Dutch Parliament, it would become my holy mission to have these statistics registered. I wanted someone, somewhere, to take note every time a man in Holland murdered his child simply because she had a boyfriend. I wanted someone to register domestic violence by ethnic background—and sexual abuse, and incest—and to investigate the number of excisions of little girls that took place every year on Dutch kitchen tables. Once these figures were clear, the facts alone would shock the country. With one stroke, they would eliminate the complacent attitude of moral relativists who claimed that all cultures are equal. The excuse that nobody knew would be removed.
If I were in Parliament, I could try to act on my beliefs, not just spout them. And Neelie was right: although the Labor Party had come to seem the right party for me, and although I was truly loyal to Paul Kalma and Job Cohen, many things about me had never fit with Labor’s ideas. Social democracy is grounded in the rights of groups of people, not individuals. The Liberal Party may not have been as cuddly as Labor, but its philosophy was grounded in the values of personal freedom. My ideas felt comfortable there.
I was a one-issue politician, I decided. I am still. I am also convinced that this is the largest, most important issue that our society and our planet will face in this century. Every society that is still in the rigid grip of Islam oppresses women and also lags behind in development. Most of these societies are poor; many are full of conflict and war. Societies that respect the rights of women and their freedom are wealthy and peaceful.
I decided I would go wherever I had the most ability to effect change. If the Liberal Party was offering me a platform to stand on,
then so be it.
I phoned Paul Kalma and told him I would be leaving both the Labor Party and my job. He told me he thought it was a huge pity that I was switching parties, but he said, “You’ll be pursuing your ideals, and I support you.” He wished me luck.
* * *
Neelie Kroes and the Liberal Party leaders Frits Bolkestein and Gerrit Zalm wanted me to be given a high position on the Liberal list of candidates for the election. Dutch politics doesn’t work on the basis of local constituencies. Everyone votes for one nationwide list of candidates, and seats in Parliament are portioned out to the top names on each list, depending on what proportion of the votes each list receives. Dutch political parties are all grounded in powerful local groups, which jostle for electable positions on the list.
I was a rank outsider. If I wanted to be elected to Parliament, I would have to make my case to the Party barons. But Neelie and Zalm wanted my participation in the election to remain confidential until the Liberal Party Congress on November 30. For a week, I traveled around Holland as unobtrusively as possible, shuttling from one local Liberal potentate to another.
The Party barons were mostly hostile at first, although some were curious about me. One elderly man said, “You’re from Africa, and you’ve been threatened because of remarks you made about Islam, and you’re a woman, and a member of the Labor Party—and now you want to be with us Liberals? We’re entrepreneurs. What do you know about business? Are you even interested in us?”
I answered, “That depends who ‘us’ is.” I said that I wanted to address the issues of immigrant women, especially Muslims, and explained how I thought that affected business. Businessmen had a strong motive to free Muslim women to participate fully in society. If girls and women are uneducated, oppressed, and psychologically demeaned, then their children are all stunted by their ignorance. If women are well educated and nurtured, they and their children make up a self-reliant, responsible citizenry and a productive workforce. I also talked about integration and social welfare. I said, “You know the history of Liberal ideas. The oppression of women in Holland is against the philosophy of your party. To uphold the values of your party you should support my membership of it, because I stand for your values.”