Fortuyn's Legacy, Minnesota's Lesson -

Fortuyn's Legacy, Minnesota's Lesson - Odd parallels here, in a story I first saw on Andrew Sullivan's site. In the Netherlands, a female Somali refugee is ready to take up Pim Fortuyn's cause - and much more.Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a 32 year old Somali woman who is under a fatwa for denouncing Islam's backwardness, seems a shoe-in to win a seat in the Dutch parliament.

There are lessons in this for Minnesota, too.

In a sense Miss Hirsi Ali is the heir to Mr Fortuyn's revolution, despite being part of a mainstream party and, with a fragile frame and diffident manner, seeming anything but a firebrand.

Just weeks ago she was in hiding, evading what amounted to a death sentence, after she said Islam was an oppressive, misogynist religion trapped in the 13th century that seemed to be at war with almost all non-followers.

"I was provoked by some guys shouting at me in a TV debate," she said in precise, fluent English, almost at a whisper. "So I blurted out, 'It's my religion, and my culture, and I can call it backward if I want'. But I was also drawn into saying I was no longer a practising Muslim and that set it all off, because the punishment for leaving the faith is death."

Her story is alternately inspiring and blood-curdling:

The daughter of a Somali dissident imprisoned by the Siad Barre regime in the 1970s, she grew up in exile in Kenya, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. She was subjected to the cruel ritual of female circumcision aged five, then ordered against her will to marry a kinsman in Canada, who wanted her to bear him six sons.

"I was sent to Germany to meet him but I couldn't face it," she said. "So I slipped across the border into the Netherlands at 11 o'clock on a November night in 1992 and asked for asylum." She would have gone to England but Holland had an open border under the Schengen treaty. She was 22 and did not speak a word of Dutch. Finding odd jobs as a cleaner, and learning fast about the underworld of abused Muslim girls hiding in shelters, she educated herself, ultimately studying political science at Leiden University.

Although she's not a member of Fortuyn's party, she preaches the same synthesis of classical liberalism, individualism, and reappraisal of Holland's socialist system. Here's the money quote:

"I wanted to understand why the western countries were doing so well when the rest of the world seemed to be collapsing," she said. "I studied the history of European political thought from the Greeks and Romans up to the Second World War." Her favourite thinker is John Stuart Mill.

"I learned that people in the West value the autonomous individual. They understand the importance of science, knowledge. They are capable of criticising themselves and there is an ability to record history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. It is exactly the opposite in Somalia where all the institutions of record are missing, and my grandmother's memories of the clan wars will die with her," she said.

And she has some lessons for Minnesota:

She was asked by the then ruling Labour Party to research why so many Dutch-born Muslim youths seemed to be at war with their host society.

Her conclusion was a blistering critique of the Dutch state policy of multiculturalism, which she described as a calamitous mistake born of "a misplaced sense of guilt or pity" that has allowed militant imams "preaching hate" to indoctrinate youths in segregated schools, all paid for by fat subsidies from the Dutch taxpayer. She is demanding an immediate end to state funding for 700 Islamic clubs, often run by hardline clerics.

"The Netherlands is a country that worships consensus and peace, but here you have newcomers who are not integrated into this system. They exploit the values of an open liberal society to reach illiberal ends," she said.

Illiberal - or criminal, or just plain corrosive of Dutch society.

Sound familiar to you?

The lesson is one our schools in Minnesota seem to have abandoned: while one needs to study, and be aware of other cultures, there is very little in any of them to emulate; certainly nothing in their political, judicial or social systems is worth lionizing, least of all at our expense.

Posted by Mitch at January 13, 2003 06:43 AM