Ayaan

A few weeks ago, the blogs were abuzz over the case of a Saudi woman who was gang-raped.

In other countries, she would have been the victim, enjoying the full weight of the law on her side. Media would have been obliged to protect her identity while unmasking those responsible for a heinous crime.

Under Saudi law, however, it was the woman who ended up in jail, sentenced to lashings apart from serving time. She was found guilty of being alone in the company of a man who was not a relative.

Fortunately, her case was taken up by a courageous Saudi female journalist. The incident was widely covered and commented upon in the world’s blogs. The western media took up the case and provided it even wider publicity.

Eventually, the Saudi king, facing the court of global public opinion, found it in his heart to pardon the poor woman, sparing her not only from spending more time under detention but also from the humiliation of a public lashing. There has been no further report about the fate of the men who raped her.

The pardon averted an even more impassioned international debate about the status of women under Islam.

Strangely, the same intense internet discussion has not benefited the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman now confined in a safe house somewhere in the US with armed men guarding her door. A fatwa has been issued against her and her life is gravely under threat from Islamic fanatics.

Ayaan recently published her story in a book entitled, with such a sense of irony, Infidel.

Her story began in 1992. Forced into a marriage to a man she did not even know, Ayaan fled Somalia and was admitted into the Netherlands as a refugee. In the liberal society, she began working as a cleaning lady, hiding even from her own family who resented her defiance against customary practices.

But Ayaan is a lot more talented than most other cleaning ladies. She fluently spoke Somali, Arabic, Amharic, Swahili and English. Soon enough, she was learning Dutch.

Her talents landed her a job as a translator for organizations helping other Somali refugees. Among those other female refugees were those who suffered sexual abuse, mutilation and subjection.

Ayaan eventually attended the University of Leiden, taking courses in political science and philosophy. She became an outspoken critic of archaic Islamic laws oppressive to women. Soon, she earned the ire of Islamist fanatics and became the subject of death threats.

Because of the threats, she fled the Netherlands and settled in the US in 2002. Soon after, however, she was contacted by Dutch deputy prime minister Gerrit Zalm. The deputy prime minister asked her to return to the Netherlands and seek a seat in parliament, assuring her that she would enjoy the protection she needed from the Dutch state.

Ayaan was elected to a seat in the Dutch parliament. This provided her a highly visible platform to continue her crusade against the oppression of women under archaic Islamic laws.

In 2004, Ayaan collaborated with director Theo van Gogh in a film entitled Submission. The film looked into the plight of millions of women under archaic Islamic laws. The film provoked an insane reaction from Islamic fundamentalists.

Soon after the film’s release, van Gogh, who refused bodyguards despite mounting threats against his person, was gunned down in the street. He was nearly decapitated. A butcher’s knife was planted on his chest, holding down a note warning Ayaan Hirsi Ali of the same fate.

The incident forced Ayaan into hiding once more. For months, she was moved under heavy guard from one safe house to the next. At times, she was moved more than once a day.

That existence was unbearable for Ayaan, a member of the Dutch parliament. She decided to flee to the US once more. There, the cost of protecting her was shouldered by the Dutch government.

Last October, however, Amsterdam announced it can no longer afford to spend for her protection outside Dutch borders. That announcement was basically an advertisement about Ayaan’s vulnerability.

For speaking against the oppression of women, Ayaan is now forced to live in fear. The fate that befell van Gogh tells all of us that the threats against her are not to be taken lightly.

By refusing to protect her any further, the Dutch government has yielded to the unremitting capacity for terror of Islamist fanatics. They have made the ordeal of this heroic lady a warning to all others who fight for justice for women in societies ruled by oppressive customs and brutal beliefs.

It is not just Ayaan’s safety that is the issue here. The larger issue is the capacity of open societies to protect those who speak for a more modern understanding of the role and place of women in society against the enormous capacity for terror of fanatics who resent “infidels” like Ayaan.

This brave woman’s plight is a matter of grave concern for those who believe in the possibility of equality between the sexes and tolerance of other views as an essential ethic of civilized life.