Nomad by Hirsi Ali Ayaan

Author:Hirsi Ali, Ayaan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307398529
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

In March 2008 the New York Times ran a piece headlined “Resolute or Fearful, Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling.” I read, appalled, that 40 percent of Pakistani and Southeast Asian families in the Lodi district east of San Francisco have opted for home schooling for their daughters. Many possible reasons for this decision were listed in the article: so that Muslim children will not be teased or mocked, exposed to pork, “corrupted” by American influences—but mainly so that the girls do not engage in behaviors that would “dishonor” their families and render them unsuitable for marriage.

Smiling, Vermeer-like photos of young girls in veils, reading and playing with their yo-yos, softened the shock that this information might otherwise elicit. But why should American citizens or future American citizens be taught that girls must cover their hair and even their faces? That boys and men are entitled to boss girls around? That loyalty to another, higher law is more important than loyalty to the U.S. Constitution? That a minimal education and an arranged marriage to your cousin is all that a female American Muslim needs? Why live in the United States if you want to keep girls culturally illiterate?

It is important to remember that Muslim schools are different from so-called regular Christian or Jewish schools. By “regular” I mean schools that are Christian or Jewish in identity but have secular curricula. Muslim schools, by contrast, are more or less like madrassas, which emphasize religion more than any other subject. Students are taught to distance themselves from science and the values of freedom, individual responsibility, and tolerance. The establishment of a Muslim school anywhere in the world, but especially in the West, gives Wahabis and other wealthy Muslim extremists an opportunity to isolate and indoctrinate vulnerable groups of children.

When I was growing up in Kenya, my best friend, Amira, was from a Yemeni family. They lived in Nairobi as if they were still in Yemen. Although Amira was at least permitted to attend school—a Muslim school—she had to marry a man from Yemen who couldn’t read or write and showed absolutely no respect for her. Her cousin Muna was spectacularly smart—when she was eleven she ranked seventh in a nationwide exam—but when she was fifteen she was married to a pudgy man twice her age who took her away with him to Saudi Arabia.

Amira and Muna, like so many Muslim girls, were seen by their families as little more than incubators for sons. They had no intrinsic value and few choices. That is what lies behind the soft-focus photograph of those three little girls in jilbabs on their sofa in America.

Today most Muslims in America are unquestionably different from most Muslims who live in Europe. Because they come mainly through airports, and thus have visas, they have undergone a kind of preselection process based on their educational level, their prosperity, and their language skills. In America this process is far more critical, more attentive to an immigrant’s skills and the benefits he

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