by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Restoring the West
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
RtW: Since fleeing Somalia and building a life in the West, how have your views on the family evolved and how do you see the relationship between religion, family and the preservation of freedom?
AHA: My views on the family have evolved significantly since coming to the West. When I was a Muslim, I saw family as the most important unit in society. Beyond the individual, then, the next most meaningful collective is the family.
My attitude to family was shaped in the Islamic context, where a family is formed at marriage. In my early years, marriage was [never] the question of if, it was only a question of when. My only problem with my Islamic upbringing was that I wasn’t allowed to choose my husband.
After moving to the Netherlands and living there for fourteen years, I adopted the prevailing view that starting a family doesn’t necessarily require getting married. Two people can freely choose each other, live together, and raise their children.
RtW: You have first-hand experience of family structures in other cultures, such as Islamic Forced Marriage. Why is the Christian vision for family so remarkable and a bedrock for Western civilisation?
AHA: As a Muslim, I was not allowed to choose my own husband. My father was my guardian, and if I got married, [he] would be my guardian. In the Christian tradition, the man and the woman are equal before the eyes of God, and both of them are created in the image of God. Having children is not instrumental either, unlike in the Muslim household, where you have to have as many as possible–especially boys–so that they can fight for your clan.
Yusuf al-Gharadawi says to use the mother’s womb to conquer. It’s quite the opposite of what Christianity preaches. In Christianity, you bring forth life, which is the most sacred thing in the eyes of God. You shape that life, protect it, feed it, and do everything to ensure the best possible conditions for it.
Christianity teaches that parents do not own their children, but instead guide them to follow God’s laws. One of the biggest differences I noticed between Christian and Islamic teachings is how children develop their conscience.
In Islam, your conscience comes from outside, so family members use social pressure to make you do what is right. In Christianity, parents are supposed to help their children build an inner sense of right and wrong, teaching them that they answer to God and that these values are their own.
Islam and Christianity disagree on many things in terms of what is right or wrong. That is, if you want to understand Christian morality I often point to the example I like most, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Also, the Old Testament part of it is the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. Almost everything that the West has produced, morally speaking, is inspired by that.