Multiculturalism Promotes Misogyny

In a recent article in the Spectator Ayaan Hirsi Ali presents some of the arguments contained in her new book, Prey.

In particular, she weighs the cost of multiculturalism, especially when it led European nations to turn a blind eye to the cultural practices that Muslim migrants brought into their countries.

For failing even to try to assimilate arriving Muslims, Europe has sacrificed their children, and especially their girls and women to bands of predators. Apparently, human sacrifice is endemic to multiculturalism.

It began with guest worker programs:

Multiculturalism also meant that little effort was made to promote the cultural assimilation of immigrants and their children. ‘Dish cities’ — cultural enclaves watching satellite television broadcasts from abroad — became a feature in many parts of Europe. What was over-looked is that multiculturalism is often at odds with a commitment to universal women’s rights, particularly women’s autonomy and security in the public sphere.

Europe’s leaders did not realize that opening the gates brought not just guest workers, but also their culture. Sometimes — often — the cultures of newcomers contained misogynistic norms incompatible with the modern notions of women’s rights that had made rapid progress in Europe from the 1960s on. Suddenly, Europeans were confronted with the unfamiliar: traditional practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and honor violence.

Standing up against misogyny-- a quaint notion that falls before the gods of multiculturalism:

When I lived in Holland in the 1990s, interference into issues surrounding traditional practices was generally discouraged. Confronted with evidence of abusive behavior by men, Dutch experts frequently empathized with migrant women, but remained reluctant to wade into controversial cultural issues.

Multiculturalism was sacrosanct. The consensus among the leadership of both the center-left and the center-right was that drawing attention to the mistreatment of women and girls in immigrant communities would only stigmatize immigrants, which in turn would impede their integration. If many women in these immigrant communities became collateral damage, it was lamentable but unavoidable. There were other, bigger issues and events demanding the political class’s urgent attention: economic downturns, the European integration process and so on.

A few feminists complained, but their voices were silenced:

Even as dissident feminists began asking serious questions about the mistreatment of women, relativist dogmas continued to hold. In many cases, the European authorities looked away from child marriage, female genital mutilation, grooming gangs, even honor killings.

No one cared that Muslim women were openly degraded and demeaned. And no one cared that they were forced into child marriages and not allowed to pursue any educational goal:

In the public sphere, women from migrant backgrounds were unable to enjoy the freedoms and autonomy available to European women. Across Europe, fully shrouded women were seen walking three feet behind their men. Teenage girls were removed from school and married off, their education and careers curtailed, their prospects of any kind of success in western society stunted. In many cases, the authorities turn a blind eye because these were issues for ‘them’ not ‘us’.

Hirsi Ali continues:

Many migrants, especially those from Muslim-majority countries, brought with them a different relationship between men and women. Women unaccompanied by a male guardian could be seen as prey: if a girl is left unaccompanied or unveiled, it means no one cares to protect her.

So, thanks to multiculturalism, Western women became prey to Muslim males. You will ask where the feminists were while this was happening. Of course, they were hiding under the sofa, occasionally coming out to defend abortion rights:

My new book, Prey, documents the wave of sexual harassment, assault and rape that followed the surge in immigration that occurred in the wake of the Arab revolutions and reached a peak in 2015 and 2016. Politicians and the mainstream media have done their best to downplay this post-2015 wave of harassment or assault, leaving populists and far-right-wing groups to exploit it (and to exaggerate it) for electoral advantage.

Of course, no one reports this news. It would make Muslims look bad. And we can’t have that.

Remember the Uighurs.