The New York Times bestselling author of Infidel, Nomad, and Heretic argues that waves of Muslim immigration are transforming sexual politics in Europe in ways that threaten to undermine the hard-won rights of Western women.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been speaking against Islamic extremism for decades. In the age of #MeToo, she asks: Why is no one talking about the explosion of sexual violence and harassment in Europe’s cities? No one wants to admit that the problem is linked to the arrival of more than a million migrants from Muslim-majority countries.
Hirsi Ali knows the pain of sexual violence firsthand. Growing up in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, she suffered female genital mutilation and the frustration of being treated as a second-class citizen. When she fled to the Netherlands, she thought she had escaped to a paradise of gender equality, but now new waves of Muslim migration imperil women’s freedom.
In Prey, Hirsi Ali explains the systemic causes of sexual violence in the Muslim world, from the barring of women from public life to the lack of legal and cultural bulwarks against sexual abuse. She also brings up uncomfortable questions for the West. Why, she asks, have the European authorities and media sought to hush up the wave of violence against women? Why do Western feminists prefer to complain about glass ceilings in the workplace when women are facing severe threats to their most basic rights?
A refugee herself, Hirsi Ali is not against immigration. She wants Europeans to reform their broken system—and for Americans to learn from European mistakes. Immigration implies integration and assimilation. If that is not made clear, the call to exclude new Muslim migrants from Western countries will only grow louder.
For two decades, Hirsi Ali has faced death threats and harassment for daring to speak her mind. But she refuses to be silenced. In Prey, she argues passionately against allowing the clock of women’s right to be turned back.
Â
