Hirsi Ali is a member of the VVD, a Dutch political party that combines conservative views on the economy, foreign policy, crime and immigration with a liberal stance on drugs, abortion and homosexuality. She states that she is a great admirer of one of the party's ideological leaders, Frits Bolkestein, a former Euro-commissioner. Ali received substantial criticism as a result of her defection from the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) to the VVD. By way of response she asserted that she would show greater loyalty to the VVD.
She states that her personal views are for the most part inspired by her change from Islam to atheism. Hirsi Ali is very critical of Islam, especially of its prophet Muhammad and the position of women.
Islam
Hirsi Ali is very critical of the position of women in Islamic societies and the punishments demanded by Islamic scholars for homosexuality and adultery. She considered herself a Muslim until 28 May 2002, when she became an atheist. In an interview with the Swiss magazine
Das Magazin in September 2006, she said she lost her faith while sitting in an Italian restaurant in May 2002, drinking a glass of wine: "...I asked myself: Why should I burn in hell just because I'm drinking this? But what prompted me even more was the fact that the killers of 9/11 all believed in the same God I believed in." Despite that, in the television program
Rondom Tien of 12 September 2002 she called it "my religion". She has described Islam as a "backward religion", incompatible with democracy. In one segment on the Dutch current affairs program
Nova, she challenged pupils of an Islamic primary school to choose between the Qur'an and the Dutch constitution.
In an interview in the London
Evening Standard, Hirsi Ali characterizes Islam as "the new fascism". "Just like Nazism started with Hitler's vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate — a society ruled by Sharia law — in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and "apostates like me are killed." Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism." In this interview, she also made it clear that in her opinion it is not "a fringe group of radical Muslims who've hijacked Islam and that the majority of Muslims are moderate. [...] Violence is inherent in Islam — it's a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder."
At the Sydney Writers' Festival in June 2007, she balanced her arguments, saying "I am a Muslim" because she understood why Muslims were silent when the Qur'an was "invoked to behead captured aid workers, journalists and other Western wanderers," as silence is "better than an argument with the author of the Holy Book who has given the command to behead infidels." Hirsi Ali stated that she was also "not a Muslim" as she had lost the fear of the Qur'an and of Hell and lost respect for "its author" and messenger; and that she felt a "common humanity" with those she once "shunned", such as Jews, Christians, atheists, gays, and sinners "of all stripes and colours."
Muhammad
Hirsi Ali criticizes the central Islamic prophet on the grounds of both his morality and personality. In January 2003 she told the Dutch paper
Trouw, "Muhammad is, seen by our Western standards, a pervert", as he married, at the age of 52, Aisha, who was six years old and nine at the time the marriage was consummated. These and other statements led to a lawsuit by a number of Muslims in 2005. The civil court in The Hague acquitted Hirsi Ali of any charges, but mentioned that she "could have made a better choice of words".
She also has stated her opinions about his personality. When
Trouw asked her about him, she answered, "Measured by our western standards, Muhammad is a pervert. He is against freedom of expression. If you don't do as he says, you will be punished. It makes me think of all those megalomaniacs in the Middle East: Bin Laden, Khomeini, Saddam. Do you think it strange that there is a Saddam Hussein? Muhammad is his example. Muhammad is an example for all Muslim men. Do you think it strange that so many Muslim men are violent?" In a 2003 interview with the Danish magazine
Sappho, she explains parallels she sees between the personality of Yasser Arafat and that of Muhammad.
Clitoridectomy and circumcision
Hirsi Ali opposes not just the genital cutting of girls, but also the practice of circumcision of boys as practiced by Jews and Muslims, as well as the routine infant circumcision practiced in the United States. In her autobiography,
Infidel, she writes: "Excision doesn't remove your desire or ability to enjoy sexual pleasure. The excision of women is cruel on many levels. It is physically cruel and painful; it sets girls up for a lifetime of suffering. And it is not even effective in its intent to remove their desire."
A quotation from her on the subject: "girls dying in child birth because they are too young [...] The rise of radical Islam is an important part of this. I feel I have the moral obligation to discuss the source. I think if I think you are enriching the debate if you question it, you are not the enemy of Islam. We can look elsewhere using reason to discover answer to these problems, and we do not have to abolish religion. But we must do it by finding a balance."
When in Dutch parliament, she has proposed obligatory annual medical checks for all uncircumcised girls, who originate from any country where female mutilation is practiced. If a girl turned out to have been circumcised, the state would report this to the police. The protection of the child would in this event prevail over respect for her privacy.
On debate
On August 31, 2006, while addressing the Dutch press on the occasion of her departure for the United States to work for the think tank the American Enterprise Institute, Hirsi Ali said: "...with like-minded people one cannot discuss. With like-minded people one can only participate in a church service, and, as is widely known, I do not like church services."
Freedom of speech
In a 2006 lecture in Berlin, she defended the right to offend, following the
Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. She condemned the journalists of those papers and TV channels that did not show their readers the cartoons as being "mediocre of mind" and of trying to hide behind those "noble-sounding terms such as 'responsibility' and 'sensitivity'". She also praised publishers all over Europe for showing the cartoons and not being afraid of what she called the "hard-line Islamist movement", and stated "I do not seek to offend religious sentiment, but I will not submit to tyranny. Demanding that people who do not accept Muhammad’s teachings should refrain from drawing him is not a request for respect but a demand for submission."
Political opponents
Hirsi Ali supported the move by the Dutch courts to abrogate the party subsidy to a conservative Protestant Christian political party, the Political Reformed Party (SGP), which did not grant full membership rights to women and still withholds passive voting rights from female members. She stated that "any political party discriminating against women or homosexuals should be deprived of funding."
Hirsi Ali has also stated that she wants the Belgian authorities to ban the (non-Muslim) Flemish Vlaams Belang party, claiming that "it hardly differs from the Hofstad Group. Though the VB members have not committed any violent crimes yet, they are just postponing them and waiting until they have an absolute majority. On many issues they have exactly the same opinions as the Muslim extremists: on the position of women, on the suppression of gays, on abortion. This way of thinking will lead straight to genocide."
Vlaams Belang leaders and press statements reacted to her allegations by denying the party rejects in any way the rights of women or in any way promotes genocidal policies, instead pointing out Vlaams Belang's support for Shoah and Armenian genocide commemorations. Vlaams Belang party leader Frank Vanhecke responded to Hirsi Ali's allegations by writing an open letter to her, stating that she is "closer to the Vlaams Belang with her viewpoints than to the Flemish Liberals." He also rejected the likeness with the Hofstad Group, saying that his party "has never and nowhere called for violence." The Vlaams Belang reacted to Hirsi Ali's retirement from Dutch politics by stating that the party has "respect for the way she has conducted and promoted the debate in the Netherlands with respect to Islam, female oppression and failed integration."
Opposition to denominational or faith schools
In the Netherlands about half of all education has historically been provided by sponsored religious schools, most of them Catholic or Protestant. Ayaan Hirsi Ali said in November 2003 that no religious school should receive government financing, which brought her into conflict with Hans Wiegel, a prominent former VVD leader.
She went further in an interview with the London newspaper the
Evening Standard in 2007, saying "Close the Islamic faith schools today. [...] Britain is sleepwalking into a society that could be ruled by Sharia law within decades unless Islamic schools are shut down and young Muslims are instead made to integrate and accept Western liberal values. [...] We have to show the next generation of Muslims, the children, that they have a choice, and to do that — to have any hope whatsoever — we have to close down the Islamic faith schools." However, she said, ‘I haven’t seen anybody coming out of a Catholic or Jewish school advocating violence against women or homosexuals, or wanting to murder innocent people in the name of their religion.’
Development aid
The Netherlands has always been one of the most prominent countries that support aiding developing countries. As the spokesperson of the VVD in the parliament on this matter, Hirsi Ali said that the current development aid policy did not work to increase prosperity, peace and stability in the developing countries: "The VVD believes that Dutch international aid has failed until now, as measured by [the Dutch aid effects on] poverty reduction, famine reduction, life expectancy and the promotion of peace."
Immigration
Public statements
In 2003 Hirsi Ali worked together with fellow VVD MP Geert Wilders for several months. They questioned the government about immigration policy. In reaction to the UNDP Arab Human Development Report Hirsi Ali asked the following question of Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and the Minister without Portfolio for Development Cooperation Agnes van Ardenne. Together with parliamentarian Geert Wilders she asked the government to pay attention to the consequences for Dutch policy concerning the limitation of immigration from the Arab world to Europe, and in particular the Netherlands.
Although she always publicly supported the policy of VVD minister Rita Verdonk regarding limited immigration, privately she was not supportive, as she explained in an interview for
Opzij. given shortly after she had moved to the USA. In parliament, she supported the way Verdonk handled the Pasic case, although privately she felt that Pasic should have been allowed to stay. On the night before the debate, she phoned Verdonk to tell her that she herself had lied when she fled to the Netherlands, just like Pasic. Verdonk responded that if she had been minister at that time, she would have had Hirsi Ali deported. Subsequently, when the matter came to a head in public with Verdonk it led to the challenges over Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship and ultimately to her leaving the parliament and the country (see above). One of the issues brought up by this was how Hirsi Ali could embrace policies of response to migration and national identity which, had they been enforced when she arrived in the Netherlands in 1992, would have prevented her from gaining residency or making a living.
In the
Opzij interview, Hirsi Ali said she supported a general pardon and the granting of Dutch citizenship for a group of 26,000 refugees, who had spent more than five years in the Netherlands without hearing about the status of their asylum. The VVD forbade her to speak her mind on this issue.
Since leaving the Dutch parliament, Hirsi Ali has made further statements in support of restrictive immigration policies. She made her statements on this subject on 1 November 2006 in the television program
Aspekte on the German TV station ZDF. She said that she feared that Muslim immigrants, once in the majority, would introduce Sharia legislation.
Writings
Hirsi Ali has expounded on her view on immigration in Europe, in an article, published in the
Los Angeles Times in 2006. Noting first that immigrants are over-represented "in all the wrong statistics", she sees as consequences of the European Union's current immigration policy the trade in women and illegal arms, and the exploitation of poor migrants by "cruel employers", to which she adds that "Muslim migrants are receptive to the seduction of the Islamist movement".
She draws the attention to the numbers of illegal immigrants already in the Union. In her view current immigration policy will lead to ethnic and religious division, nation states will lose their monopoly of force, Islamic law (sharia) will, in fact, be introduced at the level of neighborhoods and cities, and exploitation of women and children will become "commonplace". To avoid this situation, she proposes three general principles for a new policy:
- Admission of immigrants on the basis of their contribution to the economy. The current system "is designed to attract the highest number of people with truly heartbreaking stories".
- Diplomatic, economic and military interventions in countries which risk causing large migrant flows.
- Introduction of assimilation programs which acknowledge that "the basic tenets of Islam are a major obstacle to integration".
Israel and the Palestinians
"I visited Israel a few years ago, primarily to understand how it dealt so well with so many immigrants from different origins", Hirsi Ali says. "My main impression was that Israel is a liberal democracy. In the places I visited, including Jerusalem as well as Tel Aviv and its beaches, I saw that men and women are equal. One never knows what happens behind the scenes, but that is how it appears to the visitor. The many women in the army are also very visible."
"I understood that a crucial element of success is the unifying factor among immigrants to Israel. Whether one arrives from Ethiopia or Russia, or one's grandparents immigrated from Europe, what binds them is being Jewish. Such a bond is lacking in the Netherlands. Our immigrants' background is diverse and also differs greatly from that of the Netherlands, including religion."
As for Israel's problems, Hirsi Ali says, "From my superficial impression, the country also has a problem with fundamentalists. The ultra-Orthodox will cause a demographic problem because these fanatics have more children than the secular and the regular Orthodox."
On Palestinians: "I have visited the Palestinian quarters in Jerusalem as well. Their side is dilapidated, for which they blame the Israelis. In private, however, I met a young Palestinian who spoke excellent English. There were no cameras and no notebooks. He said the situation was partly their own fault, with much of the money sent from abroad to build Palestine being stolen by corrupt leaders".
"When I start to speak in the Netherlands about the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the role of Arafat in the tragedy of Palestine, I do not get a large audience. Often one is talking to a wall. Many people reply that Israel first has to withdraw from the territories, and then all will be well with Palestine."
On the way Israel is perceived in the Netherlands: "The crisis of Dutch socialism can be sized up in its attitudes toward both Islam and Israel. It holds Israel to exceptionally high moral standards. The Israelis, however, will always do well, because they themselves set high standards for their actions.
"The standards for judging the Palestinians, however, are very low. Most outsiders remain silent on all the problems in their territories. That helps the Palestinians become even more corrupt than they already are. Those who live in the territories are not allowed to say anything about this because they risk being murdered by their own people."