Prey
Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights
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Publisher Description
Why are
so few people talking about the eruption of sexual violence and harassment in
Europe’s cities? No one in a position of power wants to admit
that the problem is linked to the arrival of several million migrants—most of
them young men—from Muslim-majority countries.
In Prey, the
best-selling author of Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, presents startling
statistics, criminal cases and personal testimony. Among these facts: In 2014, sexual
violence in Western Europe surged following a period
of stability. In 2018 Germany, “offences against sexual
self-determination” rose 36 percent from their 2014 rate;
nearly two-fifths of the suspects were non-German. In
Austria in 2017, asylum-seekers were suspects in 11 percent
of all reported rapes and sexual harassment cases, despite
making up less than 1 percent of the total population.
This violence isn’t a figment of alt-right propaganda,
Hirsi Ali insists, even if neo-Nazis exaggerate it. It’s a real
problem that Europe—and the world—cannot continue to
ignore. She explains why so many young Muslim men who
arrive in Europe engage in sexual harassment and violence,
tracing the roots of sexual violence in the Muslim world
from institutionalized polygamy to the lack of legal and religious protections for women.
A refugee herself, Hirsi Ali is not against immigration.
As a child in Somalia, she suffered female genital mutilation; as a young girl in Saudi Arabia, she was made to feel
acutely aware of her own vulnerability. Immigration, she
argues, requires integration and assimilation. She wants Europeans to reform their broken system—and for Americans
to learn from European mistakes. If this doesn’t happen,
the calls to exclude new Muslim migrants from Western
countries will only grow louder.
Deeply researched and featuring fresh and often shocking revelations, Prey uncovers a sexual assault and harassment crisis in Europe that is turning the clock on women’s
rights much further back than the #MeToo movement is
advancing it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Somali-born political activist Hirsi Ali (Heretic) argues in this contentious account that liberal immigration policies have led to an influx of young Muslim men bringing regressive cultural ideas and sexual violence to Europe. She blames German chancellor Angela Merkel's 2015 suspension of European Union asylum protocols for Syrian refugees, and the criminality of failed asylum seekers, for increases in sexual violence in Germany; accuses European politicians of hiding crime data out of fear of losing liberal support; and argues that local law enforcement is too soft and unprepared to deal with sexually violent gangs. Western feminists don't understand the regressiveness of traditional Muslim attitudes toward women, Hirsi Ali claims, or comprehend that basic public safety is a feminist issue. She also explains modesty culture and attacks Muslim immigrants for creating "parallel societies" and utilizing state welfare rather than productively integrating into European communities. Her proposed solutions include changing the asylum system to better assess immigrants' likelihood to assimilate, tightening border patrols, and European military involvement in Iraq and Syria. Though she paints Islam with a broad and overly negative brush and risks intensifying anti-Muslim xenophobia, Hirsi Ali provides valuable, gut-wrenching testimony from victims of sexual violence. This harrowing polemic is sure to spark controversy.
