Nomad (38 page)

I would prefer, as a fourth option, to offer Muslims who cling to the idea of a creator and eternal life a religious leader like Jesus, who said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” rather than a warrior like Muhammad, who demanded that the pious seek to gain power by the sword.

To help ground these people in Western society, the West needs the Christian churches to get active again in propagating their faith. It needs Christian schools, Christian volunteers, the Christian message. The Saudis have no hesitation in converting Jean-François and Gustav to become “born-again” Muslims. The pope should be spreading his faith too. For Islam isn’t a genetic inheritance. A child born in Holland is not bound to be a Muslim just because his parents come from Morocco.

In the blighted neighborhoods of Europe where the jihadis currently have free rein, there is no special reason why Christians should not set up after-school programs, peer programs for teenagers, sports clubs, and homework help. Religious people are generally more effective than state-salaried caseworkers because they give more time, and when the beneficiaries of this kind of very practical help realize that it is coming from volunteers, that in itself is impressive. For a Muslim housewife who feels her family is falling apart, who has no idea how to bring up teenagers in a modern society, whose child has begun stealing or breaking windows, and who receives constant demands and reprimands from social workers, teachers, and policemen, for such a woman it is an intense relief to have a volunteer who comes to help with cleaning, who says, “I know what you’re going through,” and who comes back again and again. The housewife no longer feels alone.

In the same way, I believe, we now need a Christian school for every madrassa, the Quran schools where children and young adults learn only to drone the Quran and the message of the Brotherhood. Christian schools are often poles of excellence in an otherwise blighted educational landscape, particularly in inner-city neighborhoods. They are schools that teach more than how to recite a sacred book by heart. They teach not only the full range of sciences and humanities, but also about a God who created reason and told humankind to let reason prevail.

This is a contest that Christians have every chance of winning. The belief system of the Muslim Brotherhood stems from a very narrow, Arab culture; that, it seems to me, is its weak point. My own country, Somalia, has always been Muslim, but it was never Wahabi until the mid-1980s. Previously, for most Somalis, Islam was more a question of tradition and occasional ritual than daily practice. Women frequently went bare-headed and wore Western clothes. But when people feel alienated and lost, when fundamental changes in their society make the world strange and unrecognizable, they can become vulnerable to foreign influences.

Many people who allow themselves to be drawn into Wahabist Muslim groups are looking for spiritual solace and a strong sense of community in a cruel and troubling world. I was one too, as a teenager. What they are getting, though, is a toxic mix of Arab imperialism and a violent, revolutionary cult in the guise of religion. If you suggest to a Somali woman in Whitechapel that she become an Arab, of course she’ll reject you. But if you show charity and generosity and help her develop a sense of order and goodness, if you terrify her with the punishments and proximity of the hereafter, and if you are the only religion on the market, then she too may be tempted to join the Muslim Brotherhood, and her children may be indoctrinated and recruited for jihad. This is the successful method used by Hezbollah in Lebanon and increasingly by radical Muslims all over Europe.

Religious belief gives you companionship in adversity, the security of fixed rules, and the tempting feeling of self-surrender and submission. I remember the comfort of that feeling. Islam frightens you into submitting. I remember that fear too. The churches should do all in their power to win this battle for the souls of humans in search of a compassionate God, who now find that a fierce Allah is closer to hand.

The critical question is this: Does the United States have Christian networks comparable in their strength to that of the Roman Catholic Church that can be used today to combat the next phase of the expansion of fundamentalist Islam into America itself?

I am not a Christian and have no plans to convert. But I am intrigued by religious institutions and the role they play in socializing young
people. So on a few occasions since coming to the United States I have accepted invitations to go to church. When I was a Muslim, of course, I used to go to the mosque. Although both churches and mosques are religious institutions, I soon learned that they are as different as day and night.

A mosque is an island of gender apartheid. As a girl in Nairobi I used to go to the beautiful mosque at the city center, where I had to use the obscure entrance at the back of the building. I slipped in quickly with all the other girls and went up the narrow staircase that led to the female-only prayer hall. This hall was a far cry from the men’s hall, with its calligraphic decorations, marble pillars, and curved ceilings with miniature domes. The women’s prayer hall was painted in a dull off-white color, and its floors were covered with plain mats and carpets.

Once we got to our modest hall we did our ablutions. (In those days, unlike now, female worshippers had the choice of veiling in the mosque and then removing their veil after prayer. Due to the strict social control and the popularity of the orthodox-minded, however, that is no longer an option.) Then we lined up in rows. Electronic speakers carried the voice of the imam to our room. We prostrated ourselves. After the formal prayer of many bows we sat down for the supplications. We responded “Amen” to every plea that the imam made to Allah. On Fridays and during Ramadan there were sermons in Arabic to which we quietly listened. At the end of the prayer and sermon we slipped out of the mosque as quietly as we went in.

The contrast with the churches I have attended in America could not be more complete. Men and women, children and adults, people of all races intermingle. Their attire is no different from what they might wear on the streets. There are no ablutions. The members of the congregation take their places on long wooden benches. Once in a while people stand up to thank God or to pray, and some kneel down with their heads bowed and their hands clasped together. The sermon is in English, accessible and easy to follow. The central message is one of love.

Before I continue I want to make it very clear, and with the greatest possible emphasis, that not all American Protestant churches are so laudable. Watching some charismatic preachers on television, I have
heard overt animosity toward science, rants about the horrors of abortion, and celebrations of the ignorant superstitions of “creationism.” I have seen “faith healings” and people “talking in tongues.” Unfortunately such freak-show churches are growing in popularity. They are not the kind of allies I would wish to have.

The churches I am referring to are the mainstream, moderate denominations who emphasize personal responsibility and repudiate the notion that faith and reason are in some kind of conflict. These churches are already well established in America and dedicate part of their time and resources to educational and poverty-relief projects. Some of them are already involved with the new and resettled groups from Africa and elsewhere.

Unlike the Islamists, these moderate churches do not offer spiritual guidance but only practical help. I think they should do both. They need to step up to the challenge of providing new Muslim immigrants with the concept of a God who is a symbol of love, tolerance, rationality, and patriotism. They need to organize, to map the Muslim communities and start a tireless campaign to convince Muslims that a constitution of freedom is preferable to a constitution of submission, that life’s challenges can best be overcome with the traditional Christian values of hard work, individual responsibility, frugality, tolerance, and moderation.

Some readers may still be skeptical that the clash of civilizations can be won through religious competition. But I know it can work because I have seen it with my own eyes.

The asylum-seeker center in Lunteren where I lived when I first went to the Netherlands was on the outskirts of the small, close-knit town of Ede. Dutch people from the town’s many Protestant churches came by frequently to offer language classes and many other kinds of assistance. They welcomed refugee families into their homes. They didn’t do this for other immigrants, but the word
asylum
has a strong, almost spiritual pull to it, suggesting suffering in a way that the word
guest worker
does not. So the Moroccan and Turkish guest-worker community of Ede was left to its own devices.

Ede’s refugees had Dutch classes, sports groups, help with their kids. Whole congregations helped them out in all kinds of administrative and practical ways, small and large. A few refugee families actually
converted to Christianity and were absorbed into the local churches, and it was soon apparent that these people were far more successful than their counterparts in the immigrant zones. Mostly, however, the volunteers would take into their fold only the Christian immigrants but respect the refugees’ faith and not attempt to proselytize. Many refugees later moved on to Holland’s big cities, as I did, retaining the memory of the goodness and kindness of the many Dutch people who had helped us in the country. I would be willing to bet that those people, and their children, have been subsequently far less receptive to the hateful message of the jihadi Muslims.

The contrast between our experience as asylum seekers and that of Ede’s swelling population of guest workers was revealing. The guest workers did not receive the tireless individual help that we refugees did, because their community of voluntary migrants was seen as set apart. Community leaders, usually imams, received grants from the Dutch government to set up community centers, where the jihadis lectured people on the West’s “crusade” against Islam. In other words, the country paid for its own undermining. As a result Ede was the little Dutch town where CNN cameras, who happened to be filming in an immigrant community on September 11, 2001, showed young Muslim kids cheering for the hijackers who brought down the Twin Towers.

But that was only one face of Ede.

When I became a member of the Dutch Parliament the government was sending home asylum seekers whose refugee status had been rejected. In the big cities, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, it was common to meet Dutch-born children of Moroccan origin who could barely speak the language properly even after years of schooling; in contrast, many rejected asylum seekers who had lived in small towns like Ede were completely integrated, sometimes after just three or four years. Whole congregations would defend “their” asylum seekers and try to prevent them from being deported. They would say, “They are part of our community, their children were born here, they are assimilated.”

Thanks to the Christian churches who had taken such care of them, this was true. There is a lesson here not just for the Netherlands, and not just for Europe, but for all of the West, America included.

In many ways my life has been a matter of time travel: I have traversed the centuries between clan culture and the modern, liberal societies of the West. But my grandmother, Ibaado, the daughter of Hassan, the son of Ali, and the grandson of Seed, also traversed centuries. She moved from an ancient nomadic culture to a more contemporary one, to which she never became reconciled. In a sense it has been the work of my lifetime to put my grandmother’s ghost to rest.

As soon as I could speak I learned to call Grandma by her formal title,
Ayeeyo
. It was never just you; I had at all times to employ the word
Grandmother
to show respect. She was fearsome in policing this, as in most other matters. And she did not appreciate curiosity.

When Grandmother taught me how to milk goats and make fires, and cursed me for failing in these tasks, I would sometimes find the courage to ask her how old she was when she made her first fire and who taught her to milk. When she lamented that sending me to school was a sinful and terrible mistake, I would ask her if there were schools in her time. Questions about her life met with verbal and sometimes physical punishment. “The end of times is nigh!” she would scream. “You disrespectful child, you have the audacity to question me? May the forefathers shorten your life! Why do you want to know my age? Would you like me dead? Am I in the way, perhaps?” Her voice would rise from a hiss to a screech and fall back to a hiss. She would pace around the room with her robe tucked under one arm and loom over me like a hawk over her prey. Then she would use her free hand and grab me by my hair or ear. I learned to duck. As I grew taller and less able to wriggle past her I learned to edge over to the door when Grandmother’s anger rose.

“Ayeeyo, Ayeeyo, forgive me, forgive me, please,” I would bleat. But my grandmother was teaching me judgment and circumspection. I learned to hold my tongue.

Then, in times of her choosing, she would start talking about herself. These moments were arbitrary; we did not see them coming. She occasionally told us stories of hardships she had encountered, droughts or epidemics. But I gleaned most of my information about her life, and most other subjects of interest, when I eavesdropped on her conversations with one of our female relatives, or when she scolded Ma, in whispers, about Ma’s choices and practices that Grandma disapproved of. That’s how I learned about the tensions between her and my grandfather, how she had dealt with her feelings about his other wives, and her most difficult dilemma of all: year after year bearing daughters instead of another son.

That was the hardest burden of all. Grandma used expressions like “I swear by my only child,” meaning her only son. Although her daughters had always looked after her, she completely dismissed them. To me she would say, “If you were
my
daughter you would shape up or I would personally bury you deep in the ground, in the way that is reserved only for those who bring shame.” The only values that she cherished were nomad values. The only traits of character that counted were nomad characteristics.