Posted on 12/12/2004 9:46:30 AM PST by Land_of_Lincoln_John
AMSTERDAM—Novelist Yasmine Allas doesn't believe in happy endings.
That's so despite her own unlikely road to success. The daughter of a wealthy army officer, she fled as a teenager from her repressive childhood in Somalia, where she had dreamed of becoming an actress, dating men, drinking wine and living the life she saw in movies.
Now in the Netherlands, having gained an audience for her bleak stories of oppressed women and failed immigrants, she finds she still can't escape fear.
Since the slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh last month in Amsterdam, there have been death threats against two prominent Muslim women — politicians Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Holland and Mimount Bousakla in Belgium — who have spoken out against repression.
Allas, 35, is among a growing group of young women from Muslim backgrounds who are making it in politics, the arts, media or the law in Europe, and in some cases are putting themselves at the forefront of the fight against extremism from two directions — Islamic fundamentalists and Europe's far-right fringe.
In Somalia, says Allas, "If you are a girl, you always are in fear of your parents, your older brothers, your male neighbours. It is always the man....It is always fear and fear and fear."
Now Allas' sister says she fears raising her small children in the Netherlands because of its heated anti-immigrant climate. Her two brothers have left the country.
"When I came to Holland, for me it was, `Whew! What freedom! What a country!' It was love, immediately," she recalls.
"But Holland is not the same."
Nusrat Chagtai, a Muslim human rights lawyer of Pakistani origin who works in England, acknowledges that "we are very fortunate we have a lot more freedom." Yet the higher profile comes with risks.
Fatima Elatik, deputy mayor of Amsterdam's heavily immigrant Zeeburg borough, was assigned bodyguards after receiving threats from a right-wing Dutch extremist after the Van Gogh killing.
Since Sept. 11, "There's been a lot of Muslim- and Islam-bashing in our society that really was very frightening," says Elatik, 31.
She deals often with young immigrant men and women who want to be Dutch, yet feel alien. She wears a head scarf, but she considers herself a modern, liberal Dutch woman.
"What is typically Dutch? I don't look Dutch, I don't have a Dutch name. But I wear Dutch clothes. Even my scarf, my hijab, I buy in Dutch stores. What more do you want from me?"
Elsewhere in Europe, some women confront the culture clash in unusual ways.
In Norway, Pakistan-born Shabana Rehman uses humour. A women's rights activist and professional comedian, her stories — told in saucy, slangy Norwegian — focus on the taboos of Islam, and culture conflicts.
"I go up on stage with texts from my own daily life," she says on her website. "Openly, and with some wonder, I share with the public how I experience sexual and cultural expectations."
In April, Rehman caused a stir during a televised debate on Islam attended by Mullah Krekar, the founder of suspected terror group Ansar al-Islam, who lives as a refugee in Norway.
Rehman talked Krekar into allowing her to perform "a little test" on the stage to see if he was a fundamentalist. She grabbed him by the hips and lifted him.
"A man who can be carried by a woman can't be a fundamentalist," said Rehman to howls of laughter. Krekar exploded with rage and threatened a lawsuit.
In Italy, Rula Jebreal, 31, of Palestinian descent, anchors the late-night news on LA7, a national TV network. She sees Western freedoms as "absolutely compatible with the Muslim religion."
She's also a critic of the Iraq war, to which Italy contributed troops. "When I criticized the war. I received messages with insults and threats," she says.
The suspect in the Nov. 2 killing of Van Gogh, 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri, wrote a five-page letter pledging that "Islam will celebrate victory with the blood of martyrs" and allegedly left it impaled on the knife in the filmmaker's chest.
The letter explicitly threatened Hirsi Ali, a 35-year-old Somali-born Dutch politician who collaborated with Van Gogh on a film denouncing the treatment of Muslim women. She has not appeared in public since.
A telegenic former refugee who describes herself as a "lapsed" Muslim, Hirsi Ali campaigned against Muslims who reject Dutch values such as gender equality and gay rights. She outraged the Muslim community by saying the Prophet Muhammad was a tyrant by today's standards, and by urging women to abandon their traditional veils or head scarves.
In Belgium, Mimount Bousakla, a 32-year-old senator of Moroccan origin who criticized a Muslim group for failing to condemn Van Gogh's murder, received a telephone call threatening her with "ritual slaughter." Two years ago, Bousakla wrote a book, Couscous with Belgian Fries, critical of forced marriages and the subjugation of Muslim women.
She has continued working in the senate, but stays away from home at night. A Belgian convert to Islam has been arrested and confessed to threatening Bousakla.
It is in the Netherlands that the culture clash has been the most explosive — perhaps because it was long obscured by the nation's fabled tolerance and progressive views.
Since the Van Gogh slaying, there have been some 20 arson attacks on mosques or Muslim schools, and apparent retaliatory attacks on churches.
For years, anti-immigrant feelings were "fearfully repressed" by Dutch governments haunted by the Holocaust, when 70 per cent of Holland's Jews were slaughtered by the Nazi death machine, says Meindert Fennema, a professor of political theory and ethnic relations at the University of Amsterdam.
"These feelings were always there."
Reality is never like that. When are people going to learn that movies are not reality.
Notice how this article turns things around? The whole gist of it is "oh, look at the poor innocent Muslims being persecuted by the racist Dutch." Not much mention of the problems that are being caused by massive Muslim immigration to Western Europe and their refusal to even consider a bit of assimilation.
}:-)4
You're absolutely correct.
Actually a lot of people came to this country America based on what they saw in the movies. You'd be surprised.
Uh, sista, Dutch women do not wear hijabs. Lose the head rag and why you are at it, lose the filthy religion.
Once a raghead always a raghead.
Change religions.
"For years, anti-immigrant feelings were 'fearfully repressed' by Dutch governments haunted by the Holocaust, when 70 per cent of Holland's Jews were slaughtered by the Nazi death machine, says Meindert Fennema, a professor of political theory and ethnic relations at the University of Amsterdam."
And you haven't explained to them the difference between race, politics, and religion, Meindert? Or do you know yourself?
Isn't the beautiful, glamorous model, Iman, who dated men and married one, drinks wine, and lives the life she saw in the movies, from Somalia?
I loved it when Iman said (and I quote from memory, but it went something like this): "I'm a woman. I'm black. I'm a foreigner. And it's all going to work for me." It did.
Uh, Shabana, what part of "Kill the apostates" are you struggling with?
Actually I am not surprised. Thats what attracted immigrants to this country in the 1800 - streets paved with gold. Boy were they disappointed!
And of course the Palestinian news anchor in Italy is against the war in Iraq, so she must have approved of the way Saddam was handling things, including the treatment of women.
Well I've heard both my parents say that you come to this country and you get a rude awakening. You have to break your back building the streets first. Some people do get very disillusioned and disappointed, but watching their children be successful makes up for it. At least, this is what I am told.
No ex- or non-Muslim is safe in countries where citizens ownership and possession of firearms are forbidden.
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