The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam (14 page)

Anab’s younger sister Shukri leaves for good. She escapes and never wishes to have anything to do with her family again.

THE VIRTUOUS HOUSEWIFE

She is in her mid-forties, has two children, and is pregnant with her third. The doctor tells her that he wants to discuss the result of a blood test that was done as part of a routine pregnancy examination. There is something important he needs to tell her: she is HIV-positive.

The woman is upset: “That’s not true. I have led such a virtuous, chaste life. I have strictly adhered to the rules of Islam and of my family. And when I was young I never so much as looked at a boy. I have never been alone with a boy. I can’t possibly have a sexually transmitted disease.”

The doctor repeats that she is HIV-positive all the same and asks: “What about your husbands’s sexual activities?”

She replies that her husband is very good to her, that he takes good care of the children, behaves in a responsible manner, and comes from a good family. It is out of the question that her husband could have contracted HIV. And anyway, it is a disease Muslims cannot get. It is a disease that affects Christians, and above all homosexuals. Neither she nor her husband has had a blood transfusion, so that cannot be the cause either.

When her husband is examined, it turns out that he is also HIV-positive. He moved to the Netherlands before her. She joined him later when the family was reunited. It seems likely that when he was on his own, he led an active sex life or regularly slept with prostitutes.

“AFTER THE ABORTION, I WILL NEED TO BE A VIRGIN”

I am called by a doctor. “I have little Amma here, a Somali girl,” he says, “who wants to discuss something serious but refuses to see an interpreter. We’ve finally got her to accept an interpreter over the phone. Can you help?”

The girl refuses an interpreter because she is too ashamed to reveal her problems in the presence of another Somali woman. To win her trust I tell her that as an interpreter I am sworn to secrecy. She refuses to give her name. She is seventeen but smart for her age. When I promise her I will not pass on anything to anyone else, she says, “No, you had better not.”

She says to the doctor, “I am pregnant and I want it removed.”

“How do you know you’re pregnant?” the doctor asks.

“I bought a predictor kit, and the test showed that I’m pregnant,” she says. “I wasn’t surprised because I had missed my period.”

The doctor says that she is still officially underage and that he cannot just refer her to an abortion clinic. Her guardian at the trust in charge of underage asylum seekers will have to be involved in the decision.

“No,” she answers. “I don’t want her to know.”

The doctor says that in that case he cannot help her.

“Okay,” she says, “then I’ll go to Rotterdam. There is a Cape Verdean woman there who can do it.”

Afraid of what might happen to her in Rotterdam, the doctor gives in: “All right, I’ll help you. But I insist on having an interpreter present. Because it is my duty as a doctor to explain everything to you.”

She describes how her pregnancy would be regarded in the Somali community: “If they find out, I’ll become an outcast.” At the shelter for refugees, she shares a room with two other Somali women. To prevent them from realizing that she is pregnant, she wants the abortion to go ahead as soon as possible.

S
HE ACCEPTS ME
as an interpreter, and together with the doctor I visit her to explain that in the Netherlands you need to follow certain procedures before you can have an abortion. We ask her to allow herself two days to think carefully about all the questions she will have to answer (“How long have you been pregnant?” “Do you wish the father to be involved?”). She needs to let everything sink in before making a final decision. She must be absolutely certain that she wants to have the abortion. But she has already made up her mind it seems. She is referred to the abortion clinic in Leiden, and I accompany her.

The waiting room in the clinic is full of immigrant women. The so-called recovery rooms are also almost exclusively filled with immigrants, mainly from Turkey and Morocco and a few from China. The girl for whom I am interpreting is asked the same questions as before and she is encouraged to think carefully about her decision. Asked whether she would like the father to be present, she replies, “No, he gave me his word that he wouldn’t penetrate me, but he did. I don’t want him involved.”

She demands that her stitches not be damaged by the abortion. They must absolutely remain intact. The doctor examines the stitches and says he will have to take them out. “In that case I want you to put new stitches in after the abortion,” she demands, and proceeds to have the abortion.

After the abortion the girl is told that she will have to recover first and can come back at a later date for the stitches. Presumably this never happened, since Dutch doctors will now replace these kinds of stitches. But to have the stitches replaced; she might have traveled to Italy or the United Kingdom, where doctors are known to do this.

T
HE
D
UTCH SOCIAL
security system is not very well set up for the problems of Muslims. This inadvertently contributes to perpetuating the situation and keeps everyone locked in the virgins’ cage. Dutch psychologists are, quite rightly, used to treating their patients as individuals. In my interpreting days I witnessed how they also used this approach with Muslim women. An important question was always: “What would you like yourself?” Many women simply did not know. They would sit, quiet as a mouse, and shrug their shoulders. “What my husband wants,” they might say timidly, or “As Allah wishes.” And there were even women who would answer: “Whatever you think is right.” They had never learned to want anything for themselves. “What would you like for your children? What decision would you like to take for them?” They had not learned this either, so did not know how to answer. The social workers did not understand them; they were puzzled and frustrated. As a last resort they referred these women to other agencies, but there is a limit to how often this can be done.

There is a new branch within the world of aid agencies known as “intercultural welfare” (or something similarly ugly). It offers separate help to, for example, Muslim women who have suffered abuse. One example is the Saadet Shelter in Rotterdam. The women who end up there do not learn how to become more resilient and independent. No, assertiveness training is only given to native Dutch victims of abuse. The preferred solution for immigrant women is “mediation” between the victim, her family, and her husband. This common attitude of the aid agencies is based on the advice of countless organizations set up for the benefit of the immigrant population, some ethnic in origin, others religious. The spokespeople for these organizations, which are subsidized by the government, tend to be men and occasionally women who for one reason or another wish to maintain the status quo.

A
n average of eighty women, forty children, and twenty-five men die each year in the Netherlands as a result of domestic violence, but the government has no proper answer to the problem. If the domestic violence takes place among people from a “different culture,” the authorities are extra reluctant to intervene, and clear choices cannot be made.

Plenty of mission statements have been produced in recent years. Apart from perfunctory declarations disapproving of and condemning violence, numerous promises have been made over the years to the Dutch House of Representatives, reports are published at regular intervals, and domestic violence has been the theme of dozens of symposia and conferences. The above figures come from a report circulated in March 2002 by the then outgoing government. At an international level the Dutch government even managed to get a resolution on honor killings accepted by the General Assembly of the United Nations. This resolution calls on member states to “take preventive action against this kind of crime and to combat it, through legislative, educational, social, and other measures.” This is all rather unconvincing when you realize that none of the successive cabinets have managed to turn their declarations of intent into actual policy. Since the initial acceptance of the motion against domestic violence, in 1981, no coherent plan of action has been proposed, and the campaign against domestic terror is still unformed, insubstantial, and ineffectual.

Despite several studies, the Counsel for the Prosecution has no idea, for example, how often honor killings occur in the Netherlands, because the police still record them as homicides. We also know far too little about genital mutilation of women and forced marriage. An added problem when dealing with domestic violence is that different cultures do not necessarily view it in the same light. Because the native Dutch population generally regards domestic violence as immoral, the approach of certain local authorities, to subject perpetrators of domestic violence to a fixed plan of treatment, has had some good results. Sadly, however, the government has not been able to develop these local methods (a good example is Utrecht) into one national policy.

T
HE MURDER OF
Zarife, a Turkish girl, living in the Dutch city of Almelo, by her father, illustrates a category of domestic violence that is tolerated on cultural or religious grounds. The offender’s conduct is morally acceptable within his own community. What is more, the offender will often feel under pressure from others to use violence. If he fails to fulfill his duty, he can be literally “gossiped out” of the community. An offender who takes action with the knowledge and approval of his family and saves his honor, actually goes up in the estimation of his community. For the girls and women in this culture this is a strong deterrent, which thwarts the government’s emancipation policies.

At the root of the problem is the Islamic concept of premarital sex. What we need is a coherent cultural campaign to promote discussion about sexuality. Sex before marriage, as long as it is between adults, is not illegal. And although you may disagree about whether this is morally acceptable or not, violence should not be the response under any circumstances.

It is naive to think that organizations representing the target groups should lead such a campaign. Dutch social workers who take advice from these organizations are inclined to disguise the real issue. They reassure the parents of girls who have been threatened that their daughters are chaste virgins, while at the same time their colleagues in the medical clinics are helping girls to have their hymens restored.

Everybody agrees that domestic violence is a highly complex issue, but the Dutch government’s approach to the problem is just too fragmented. At least six departments dealing with no fewer than twenty-one laws are involved. At the local government level is a jungle of institutions, each responsible for a different aspect of domestic violence. Thus, there are different organizations for each of the following: identifying and reporting domestic violence, investigating the crime, supporting the victim, tracking down offenders, prosecuting, and preventing. None of these organizations sees it as its main task to prevent and tackle domestic violence. In this labyrinth a victim will feel easily lost. She already needs all her courage and strength to break away from the violent environment, for fear of further violence shrouds the problem in shame and secrecy.

In April 2003 the House of Representatives accepted a motion that demanded that the government set out its vision for the campaign against domestic violence by September 1 of that year. Typical of what normally happens, the presentation of this plan has so far been postponed twice.

In order to tackle domestic violence, a number of measures need to be in place.

 

There should be a central help desk for victims, one service that coordinates all the organizations involved. This institution should be responsible for the preventing, identifying, and reporting domestic violence, referring those involved, gathering information, giving advice, tracking down offenders, preparation for the prosecution, and probation. Utrecht is one of the places that has had good experiences with a coordinated service along these lines, although the various links in the chain of preventive measures remain spread over a number of institutions.

 

 

The overall budget and coordination should be in the hands of one government minister or secretary.

 

 

The safety of the victims must be guaranteed by placing the offender, rather than the victims, outside the home, and by legally obliging the offender to undergo treatment.

 

The emphasis should move from aftercare to prevention. Following the example of the United States, the Netherlands should set up family courts that specialize in the criminal prosecution of perpetrators of domestic violence. The benefits of this approach lie in the fact that collaboration between police, the public prosecution, and social services can be speeded up, and thus become more pragmatic, efficient, and cost-effective. Moreover, this would, at last, allow us to measure the result of the government’s policy. Finally, a more effective approach to dealing with domestic violence will be a positive influence on the problems of the oppression of women and underage delinquency. How many women will have to undergo Zarife’s fate before the government can fight domestic violence effectively?

POSTSCRIPT: THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN JULY 2004

Since this chapter was first written, a majority of the elected members of the House of Representatives has voted in favor of registering honor killings and domestic violence on the basis of ethnic origin. This should finally allow more insight into the problem. Recently, a report commissioned by the Ministry of Justice revealed that one in four women will experience domestic violence at some point. I suspect that the true figure is higher, as corporal punishment is seen as justifiable on educational grounds by most families from Muslim countries.

Minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner has said, under pressure from the House of Representatives, that he will consider appointing a committee that will look at how accessories to the crime (from the wider family) who may have assisted in (the planning of) an honor killing could be brought to trial.

Minister of Social Affairs Aart-Jan de Geus and Minister of Integration and Immigration Rita Verdonk have agreed that by the end of this government’s term, there will be a structure that covers the nation (i.e., a national help desk), allowing the government to clamp down on domestic violence more effectively. The ministers have promised to see to it that culturally legitimized violence against women in immigrant circles will be firmly dealt with.

In addition, the present government has promised to take prompter and more effective measures against the trafficking of people. This kind of trade is a monstrous and well-hidden form of violence against women. Girls (from as young as eight years old in Asian countries) and women are kidnapped or lured away from their birthplaces in poor regions (Albania, the former Yugoslavia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Congo, various countries in Latin America, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, et cetera) to be sold as sex slaves and exploited in the rich West. Asylum seekers who have been refused a residence permit are enticed by pimps, who promise them “work” and then send them to the red-light districts of European cities, where they are forced to offer themselves as prostitutes. The money earned by these women goes to the so-called organized crime networks. An unintended effect of European asylum policy in combination with the constant stream of immigrants arriving from non-Western countries, is that countless girls fall victim to the sex industry. Given the international character of the trafficking in women, a joint plan of action from the European countries is called for. The harmonization of European asylum policies would at least allow us to get a clearer picture of the scale of the trade in women. It is precisely in this area that a joint European approach is so necessary.