Prey Quotes

“National and regional police forces need special units dedicated to the protection of women and girls, not to mention Jewish communities, LGB[sic] communities, and the dissidents of Islam.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Once settled arguments about women’s emancipation, individual rights, religious freedom, sexual freedom, animal rights, and freedom of speech are up for debate again in Europe.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“You have to deal with the world as it is and not as you want it to be”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Europe’s national governments must also review their criminal justice systems. They are simply too lenient toward violent offenders and permit unconscionable exceptions to the rule of law for migrants.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“They say to me, “Eskild, if you need to control your woman, one child is not enough. Two is a little better, then she is at home taking care of the family, and three is more or less okay. But when she has four, Eskild, four children mean you have total control of where your woman is. She is too busy with four kids to go outside.” A mother with four children is certainly not going to make it to work. Unless she has an exceptionally successful husband, she will likely remain on welfare most of her life. Eskild says that often he sees mothers who have four children by the time they are 38 or 39 having an extra one at that point because when their older children reach 18 years of age, they will no longer qualify for child support.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Women’s safety from predatory men is the issue around which all true feminists must rally and coalesce. We women can and must refuse to be relegated, as we have been in the past—as I have been in my own lifetime—to the status of prey.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“We must not forget that the very concept that women are equal to men is a relatively new one. It emerged only in the West and despite its advancements—from the right to vote to protection from discrimination in the workplace—has yet to achieve the complete equality to which feminists aspire. This fragile near equality, which exists in law if not in every home and workplace, has existed for only a fraction of time, and history has shown us that such achievements can be quickly reversed.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“They [feminists] did not accept that some women, simply because they were born into a patriarchal religion, were unworthy of the freedoms they themselves were fighting for. Today, by contrast, feminists steeped in multicultural ideology excuse the inequality imposed upon women across the Muslim world, including in the parallel societies of Europe. They pointedly “respect” this misogynistic culture rather than agitating for it to evolve. Western feminists have effectively relegated their Muslim sisters to the past. They are sleepwalking as their own rights begin to be eroded.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Europe must stop pretending that the stabilization of the Muslim world is somebody else’s problem. More than “soft power” is required to restore order to the countries from which so many immigrants are coming. EU member states must be willing to engage in leadership and, if necessary, to intervene militarily to restore order in international conflict areas rather than continuing to depend on the United States to deal with each crisis. As it stands, European defense budgets are unjustifiably low considering the rapidly escalating violence of the regions to the south and east of the Mediterranean.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Rather than focusing on where people come from and their motivations for leaving, I believe the main criterion for granting residence should be how far they are likely to abide by the laws and adopt the values of their host society.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“True white supremacists want to enslave, subjugate, or annihilate nonwhites—much as true jihadis think that those who refuse to submit to Islam ought to die. Ordinary Europeans who express concern that waiting lists for hospital services and housing will worsen as more migrants enter the country are not white supremacists. However, simply ignoring their concerns or labeling them racist will only create political opportunities for true racists.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“As the legitimate authorities shut down the free speech of those who seek to defend the open society, they inadvertently create an opportunity for forces that are not much more committed to liberal values than those they seek to expel or exclude from Europe.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“It may no longer be fashionable to make such comparisons, but the economic evidence is unequivocal: liberal democratic societies are more peaceful, prosperous, and tolerant than those that permit autocratic rule, as in Russia; one-party rule, as in China; or theocracy, as in Iran. Yet these days, those who advocate the superiority of Western civilization are demonized, especially on university campuses, as racists or white supremacists. Few within the establishment are willing to challenge the politically correct consensus and insist instead on upholding the core classical liberal values.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“In 2006, Egyptian bloggers witnessed hundreds of men thronging the streets to celebrate the end of Ramadan, harassing women with or without hijabs, ripping off their clothes, encircling them, and trying to assault them.48 Girls ran for cover in nearby restaurants, taxis, and cinemas. As protests continued in Tahrir Square in 2012, mob attacks against women became more organized. Men formed concentric rings around individual women, stripping and raping them.49 Some Egyptian women spoke out, taking their accounts and video evidence of sexual assaults to police, but little headway was made until laws against sexual harassment were introduced in 2014.50 The rape game crossed the Mediterranean in December 2015. During New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, as we have seen, more than a thousand young men formed rings around individual women, sexually assaulting them.51 When the victims identified the perpetrators as looking “foreign,” “North African,” and “Arab,” they were pilloried as racists on social media.52 The local feminist and magazine editor Alice Schwarzer’s dogged reporting established that the young men had coordinated and planned the attacks that night “to the detriment of the Kufar [infidels].”53 Schwarzer was vindicated twelve months later, when Cologne police chief Jürgen Mathies confirmed that the attacks had been intentionally coordinated to intimidate the German population.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“The extreme, yet perhaps inevitable, expression of all these beliefs and behaviors—polygamy, religiously sanctioned bigotry, unchecked sexual harassment, a lack of sex education, repressed sexual urges, and the honor/shame dichotomy—is taharrush gamea, “the rape game” in Arabic.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Rapists are created, not born” has become the accepted wisdom.39 But when it comes to migrants and minorities, pointing to cultural explanations for their behavior toward women is taboo. This seems contradictory. Indeed, when you consider how Muslim men are educated about sex—or not—it makes no sense at all.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Islamism has become the “go-to” haven for those seeking order amid such chaos. Sharia courts have been established in these countries, filling the void of social control. After the savagery of dictatorship and civil war, the promise of divine law is understandably welcomed by a population hungry for order and stability. When the Islamists come to town, they therefore reestablish order again with their own savagery. For example, the immodest woman is no longer considered simply immodest; she is an adulterous sinner who must be flogged and stoned.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“More than any other major religion, Islam formalizes the subordination of women. Islamic religious law, as codified by the “official” schools of Sunni Islamic law (the Hanbali, Shafi’i, Hanafi, and Maliki schools), insists on male guardianship over women. In Islam, “any woman must have a ‘guardian,’ wali; her closest male relative if she is unmarried, her husband if she is not.”16 This remnant of seventh-century Arab culture—which has spread through Islam to the other parts of the world that are now Muslim majority—has never been revised in official schools of Islamic law.17 Imams and other Islamic religious leaders today continue to chastise women for disobeying the modesty doctrine. They cite passages in the Quran to assign girls a position in the family that requires them to be docile, to depend on male relatives for money, and to submit to their husband’s dominion over their bodies. Marriage is typically arranged, and there is often an exchange of money in the process. Under the religious rule of Islam, it is still common today that a woman’s rights are essentially sold to a man she may not even know.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“There is a paradox at the heart of contemporary Western feminism. Ideological feminists insist on grandiose goals such as “ending the patriarchy.” Yet campaigns against men-only clubs or for female representation on corporate boards are elitist concerns far removed from the daily existence of the average woman. If we think back to the sociologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, the issues Western feminists prioritize today are in the realm of self-actualization: enhancing conditions at work, having access to state-sponsored child care, joining all-male associations, balancing housework duties with male partners, and gaining prestige. This is not to say that we should forgo laudable goals such as smashing the glass ceiling. But the freedom for all women to live free from violence should come first.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“When I lived in Holland, I would try to make myself physically shrink when Somali or other African men sat next to me on the train. They behaved in a proprietary manner, as though I were theirs to be subjected to lewd comments. Now I see that it is not just Somali girls editing themselves out of city streets. European women, too, are facing increased rates of sexual violence and harassment on public transit and are adopting coping mechanisms similar to those used by women in Africa and the Middle East.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Shrinking from men, being on guard, avoiding drawing attention to oneself: this is the daily life of women in Africa and the Middle East. As girls growing up in Mogadishu and Nairobi, my sister and I covered ourselves with hijabs to conceal ourselves from public view. Today, women in Europe must consider what manner of dress will best deflect the attention of the increasing numbers of men on the prowl.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“They will grow up in a cultural cocoon watching TV and movies from overseas, and vacations—if they have them—will be spent in their parents’ country of origin. They will go to the local mosque. When their parents decide it is time, they will be pushed into an arranged marriage, often with a distant cousin sourced from their country of origin, using a marriage certificate to enable the cousin to immigrate. Marrying outside their ethnic or religious community is proscribed. This cultural isolation creates what has been called in one UK report a “first generation in every generation.”41”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“[...] We need a new women’s movement, one that views the world not in terms of multiculturalism and intersectionality but in universal terms and that, in the spirit of John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill, is prepared to stand up for the rights of all women.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“The pendulum is swinging back toward misogyny as liberal Europe changes to accommodate migrant cultures. Adaptation is happening, but it’s happening the other way around. Progress is not only not inevitable; in this case, it is reversing.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“The social contract between citizen and state is breaking down in places where welfare schemes are accommodating large numbers of beneficiaries whose families have never contributed to the system. The original welfare state was predicated on a notion of reciprocity, but to newcomers it looks more like universal basic income. Welfare states are national, not universal. There must therefore be meaningful limits on what outsiders can claim based on the feat of having crossed a nation’s border.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“For decades Western authorities have turned a blind eye to unequal treatment of women in immigrant communities not only when it comes to marriage and divorce but also in regard to education. Examples of voluntary gender segregation at university student events may seem like minor encroachments on equal rights, but when university heads defend gender segregation, we should be concerned. In 2013, the University of Leicester’s Islamic Society seated women at the back of the room for a training course.21 Rather than condemning the discrimination, the head of Universities UK, Nicola Dandridge, defended it, suggesting that segregation of the sexes was “not completely alien to our culture.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Societies that permit the existence of parallelthe girl’s situation did not meet the requirements for coercive measures under the law, and if the girl would not voluntarily move away from her husband, it could not force her to. As a direct consequence of the case, the social services in Mönsterås had to move to a different location after receiving threats.14 This is a blatant breakdown in the rule of law. This girl’s rights were not protected by those who are paid by Swedish taxpayers to enforce the law against child marriage. And there are many more like her. In the United States, an estimated 248,000 children, some as young as 12, were married between 2000 and 2010.15 In Germany, too, the problem of child marriage arose as asylum-seeker numbers increased. In 2016, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community reported that 1,475 refugee minors were married, three-quarters of them girls and 361 of them under the age of 14.16 In response to these figures, the following year, the German government passed a law stating that the minimum marriage age is 18 years. In an attempt to pander to Muslim constituents, both the Left and the Greens voted against the law for being “too general.”17 SHARIA COUNCILS AND LEGAL DOUBLE STANDARDS Societies that permit the existence of parallel communities resign themselves to the growth of parallel legal systems. This is the case with sharia courts that apply Islamic law to the marital affairs of believers. Dutch researcher Machteld Zee’s study of sharia councils in the United Kingdom estimates that between ten and eighty-five sharia councils operate there.18 Zee documents cases of women seeking divorce being sent back to abusive husbands by sharia courts and being denied the legal protections that non-Muslim wives receive under UK law.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Young people in Western societies have grown up with the assumption that gender equality is a given. They did not have to fight for basic equality and are often oblivious to its being undermined around them. Even when they are confronted with the erosion of women’s rights in the street, they sometimes apologize for criticizing their attackers. In court, victims of sexual assault appearing on the witness stand have to insist that they are not racists. Almost every woman I interviewed in the course of researching this book felt obliged to begin with a caveat: “I’m not against migrants,” “I’m from the Left,” or “I am not racist.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Honor violence is a set of enforcement measures used to uphold the modesty doctrine. Girls and women who step out of line face injury and even murder at the hands of relatives if they drift too far toward emancipation. So-called honor killing is meant to remove a stain on a family’s honor caused by real or alleged sexual misconduct. In Western countries, the victims of honor violence also include Sikh, Hindu, and Kurdish women, but most appear to be Muslim.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights

“Dawa is happening not only in Muslim communities but also in Western prisons. Believing that religious education will benefit prisoners, the authorities mistakenly give agents of dawa access to Muslim prisoners. Like wolves in sheep’s clothing, they claim to be religious community representatives, all the while harboring links to terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and Hizb ut-Tahrir.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights