Somali-born women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali begins her book by asking, “Where are all the women?” and goes on to explore why women in European cities like Paris, Stockholm, Brussels, and Berlin feel increasingly vulnerable in certain public spaces where they had once walked freely and confidently. Ali distances herself from what she considers progressive denialism on one side and harmful alt-right exaggeration on the other, hoping for a resurgence of constructive conversations about Islamic immigration and its effect on women’s rights. According to Ali, Europe’s dilemma can still be mended and should serve as a warning to the United States.

Attempting to speak about the realities of immigration is like traversing a minefield. It is difficult to cover this topic without being accused of spreading or encouraging alt-right causes. Unfortunately, there is plenty of that already happening, between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s concerted efforts to destabilize liberal democracy through misinformation about immigrants and far-right groups telling misleading or completely false stories to propagate a vicious nativist narrative.

There has to be a reasonable, middle way forward: one that does not fuel alt-right fabrications but also does not deny the very real and pressing problems that Europe’s immigration policies are creating, as many progressives have been apt to do. Contrary to progressive fears, being honest about what is really happening is the best antidote to the alt-right unrealities.

Otherwise the problems will persist and the alt-right clamor for repatriation will become increasingly shrill. It is precisely because many European nations are not willing to discuss immigration-related issues that radical far-right groups are gaining traction. Their actions and rhetoric—however problematic—are attempts to fill the vacuum that European passivity and reticence have left.

If we want to uphold a cultural tradition of tolerance and freedom, if we want to find paths to meaningful immigrant integration, if we want virulent alt-right forces to dissolve, and the fragile, recent phenomenon of women’s rights to continue, then there have to be open conversations about the changes European officials need to implement.

There have been five mass migrations to western Europe since 1945.

The first wave involved immigrants displaced after the Second World War, including Jewish survivors and Russian and Eastern Europeans escaping Soviet rule.

The second wave involved so-called “guest workers” fleeing recently liberated European colonies like French Algeria and Caribbean immigrants from former British colonies coming to the United Kingdom during the late 1940s, 50s and 60s.

The third wave was comprised of Turks who were invited to Germany in the 1970s to cover labor shortages, but many guests chose not to return home.

The fourth wave began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite governments in 1991. Not long after, there were also brutal civil wars in Bosnia and Somalia, which added to the number of displaced people looking for asylum in Europe.

The fifth wave, with which this book deals, has been far and away the largest. Over a 10-year period beginning in 2008, 3.5 million immigrants crossed illegally into the European Union, along with 5.8 million new asylum applications. Between a vicious civil war in Syria, the dissolution of al-Qaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2011, Russian military interventions in Syria in 2015, ISIS, and neighboring nations like Turkey and Iran fighting by proxy, millions have been displaced.

This influx of fifth-wave migrants have been disproportionately young (80 percent under the age of 35), male (67 percent), and from war-torn Muslim-majority countries in North Africa and the Middle East (e.g., Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, Afghanistan). Nine of the top 10 “sender” nations are predominantly Muslim. 2015 was the peak year for fifth wave immigration. That year alone, about 2 million people came to Europe. Between 2010 and 2016, Europe’s Muslim population grew from 19.5 million to 25.8 million.

These statistics form a vital framework for the discussions of immigration-related questions. It helps us explore the questions of whether there is a connection between recent mass immigration and European women feeling increasingly unsafe.

Coinciding with the fifth wave of immigrants has been a wave of violence against women in Europe. Investigating rates of violence in large populations is a complex undertaking.

One challenge is that official records only show us reported incidents. Statisticians estimate that the vast majority of sexual assault and rape incidents go unreported, between 80 and 90 percent in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden. Many women never report the incidents, and of those who do, the cases usually get dropped and those that proceed rarely end in conviction. We have to view official records with some skepticism, since there is good reason to believe the reports represent only some of the sexual violence committed against women.

Moreover, the definitions of rape, assault, and harassment change from country to country, so if we are looking at Europe’s population, it is difficult to compare rates in one country against the rates of another. The best you can do is track trends of violence toward women within individual countries over time, using the definitions that each country goes by.

The best we can do is couple official police reports with data gleaned from polls and self-reporting services like hotlines. But even taken together, we have an incomplete record of violence.

The bottom line is that violence against women is difficult to measure, but it is still not impossible to get a sense of changing norms. Let’s set aside domestic violence between intimate partners and family members, which is common but difficult to track well, and focus instead on violence in public places. Since the fifth wave of immigration in Europe, violence against women in public places has been trending upward since the peak year of immigration in 2015.

For example, Denmark’s sexual offense rates were stable from 2010 to 2014, but between 2014 and 2017, the rates of rape doubled, as did sexual offenses more generally.

In England and Wales, rapes increased by 48 percent between 2015 and 2017.

In France, there was a 17 percent increase in rapes between 2017 and 2018.

German rape and sexual coercion cases were stable from 2000 to 2015, but in 2017 there was a 41 percent surge.

Sweden experienced a similar phenomenon: relatively stable numbers of sex crimes against women in the early 2000s, but then a doubling of those crimes between 2014 and 2016.

Just because alt-right trolls hyperbolize the problems caused by immigration does not mean the problems are non-existent. The fact that the fifth wave of immigrants were mostly young, male, and Muslim is not a trivial detail. Of course, not all Muslim men are violent, nor are non-Muslim men free of all misogynistic, violent impulses. But many of these men are coming from societies that are hyper-patriarchal, in which women have far less self-determination and mobility than men. Some of them believe that women are inferior and available for their pleasure should the opportunity present itself. It is this segment that is problematic; this segment is altering certain public spaces in such a way that European women feel increasingly afraid to walk about, erasing themselves from public life in the interest of safety, avoiding catcalls, lewd comments, being groped, or worse.

It is misleading to label attempts at connecting trends in immigration and trends in misogynistic behavior “racist.” Ultimately, the connection is not a question of race (which is a permanent, unchangeable feature of a person’s identity), but a matter of culture, which is dynamic and subject to change. In the past, the author had hoped that European traditions of tolerance, freedom of speech, and respect for women would transform immigrants who came to Europe’s shores, but it is Europe’s culture and institutions that have changed dramatically and begun to resemble the cultures of developing nations that refugees are attempting to flee.

One Swedish politician was taken to a predominantly Muslim immigrant section of his city, and was asked what was missing. What he failed to see was that women were entirely absent from public spaces in that neighborhood.

In addition to poring over police records, court rulings, and self-reports, another line of inquiry that sheds light on the changing street-level realities in Europe are in-depth interviews with European women and journalists who have been maligned for attempting to voice concerns about women’s safety. After a series of lengthy interviews with numerous women in European cities with the greatest influxes of immigrants, common themes begin to emerge. When asked for honest opinions about their home cities, many of them report a rapidly shifting cultural landscape.

Anonymous self-reporting and official records give us big picture abstractions and we can further supplement them with on-the-ground reports from women.

According to one Swedish journalist (who has since been unjustly maligned for reporting the facts), Stockholm is a very different place. Businesses and public amenities are adjusting their protocol to accommodate immigrants. Stockholm’s largest public swimming pool for example has implemented alternating time slots for men and women looking to use the jacuzzi after a string of sexual assault incidents. There are now security details, cameras, and bilingual “hosts” to help resolve any further issues. Women are finding it necessary to change their habits. There are certain streets women will not walk down anymore.

In response to a growing sentiment that women are not safe in some sections of Paris, two female filmmakers went undercover in a suburb outside Paris and were barred entrance to a cafe, informed that only men were welcome. When the women objected on grounds that it wasn’t the French way, a man in the cafe replied, “You are not in Paris! The mentality is different! It’s like back home.”

Many women in Europe are responding to the fear of harassment (or worse) in predominantly male immigrant-dominated areas with strategies very similar to those adopted by women in Middle Eastern and African countries: Make yourself scarce. 

Some women that Ali’s team interviewed in major European cities cautiously admitted that they were afraid to talk about their safety and the safety of their communities because the biggest threats, as far as the people they were encountering and harassed by, were immigrants. One woman said she wished the men who had harassed her earlier had been white European-born men so that she could have more frank conversations about her safety. But she admitted that having conversations with her left-leaning friends about harassment were virtually impossible because of where the harassers were from.

So strong is the fear of appearing racist that some native-born European victims are almost apologetic about coming forward and sometimes even apologize to their violators for pursuing justice. There is a strange clash between immigrant rights and women’s rights, and European women increasingly feel that they must be silent to accommodate immigrants—even those acting in violently misogynistic ways.

Women are covertly developing their own safety measures. There are apps that map out so-called “no-go zones” in major European cities. One of the author’s researchers working in Germany found pepper spray for sale at a pharmacy—placed in a rack between women’s magazines and women’s hair products. After the wave of sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, in 2015, one entrepreneur invented Safe Shorts, which are padlocked to the body, made of extremely durable fabric, and also have an alarm that sounds if anyone tries to meddle with the shorts. Another business in the Netherlands invented a bracelet that gives off a noxious odor when the trigger is activated. Even if the media is reticent and police and courts are forbidden from mentioning race or religion of perpetrators, on-the-ground realities are revealing women in fear and new products and services popping up to reassure them—even if the government will not.

It is bewildering that Muslim women living with curtailed freedom and mobility and European women getting gang raped more and more frequently elicits less sympathy from modern feminists and media personalities than a handful of Hollywood celebrities being sexually assaulted. The #MeToo movement readily crossed the Atlantic and took root in Europe. In France, for example “Squeal on your pig” became the trending equivalent. A number of regular offenders were fired and disgraced. A few were taken to court. But there is much less attention given to victims of roving migrant gangs, even if far more women in Europe are complaining and reporting violations. The truth is that most modern Western feminists do not grasp how profoundly misogynistic some of the Muslim-majority cultural patterns are, or what they will do to equal rights they want to fight for.

Again, media reticence does not help immigrant communities. It certainly does not help immigrant women or European women. The silence also fails to sidestep or subdue alt-right angst. Only honest conversations about the realities women now face will help.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of the most powerful women in the world in a moment in history where women have more power and say over their lives than ever before. In 2015, when Merkel made the controversial decision to allow more than one million refugees into Germany, she was one of 17 women leading countries. We might fail to appreciate how unusual a state of near-equality between men and women is. But we also might miss the irony that this powerful woman’s decision has disempowered many women in Europe, as the ripples affect the relatively new and fragile tradition of rights and freedoms for women.

Originally, Merkel held a tougher line on the immigration question. She argued that Germany simply could not accommodate a massive influx. “We just can’t manage that,” she famously told a young Palestinian girl whose parents were on the verge of repatriation. There is a great deal of speculation over what might have catalyzed Merkel’s pivot. Was it an attempt to make up for Germany’s steely austerity in the face of Greece’s financial insolubility during the 2008 Euro Crisis? Or was this Germany’s chance to assuage its collective guilt over the Holocaust and their hostile bid for world domination last century? Some speculated that her Christian background pulled her toward caring for the foreigner. Others smelled more political motives: Hardline immigration policies in the 1990s in the face of the fourth wave refugee crisis had cost Merkel’s party political influence and popularity.

But the answer might be simpler than that. It could be that Angela simply lost her head. As one official reported, at the moment when she and top German officials gathered on September 12, 2015, to sign a hard-lined, closed-border policy into effect, she could not bring herself to endorse it. Neither could the other officials. And at first, most Germans were thrilled, welcoming immigrants with cheers and signs at metro stations and public squares. And then tens and hundreds of thousands of immigrants kept pouring into Germany, and it was not long before the nation was clearly overrun.

The darker side of a well-intended decision fell on Merkel’s head on December 31, 2015, in Cologne, a now world-infamous night on which 1,500 men (mostly of Arab and North African descent) sexually harassed and stole from hundreds of women. The local police could not quell the onslaught and opted instead to downplay the incident. What we do know is that 661 women reported sexual assault. The incident has become symbolic of the German state’s struggle to meaningfully incorporate its immigrants, as well as the government’s inability to speak honestly about the problem.

Migration rates have dropped since the three-year immigration surge from 2015-2018, and fell even further in 2020 thanks to a global pandemic. But Europe’s policymakers would be mistaken to believe the crisis is over. A Gallup World Poll revealed that about a third of people from Sub-Saharan Africa and almost a quarter of North Africans and Middle Easterners would come to Europe if they had the chance. A number of nations from those regions (Iraq, South Sudan, Congo and Somalia) topped the Fragile State Index, which ranks the instability of countries, which means refugee-creating conditions are ripe.

And then of course there is natural population growth. Muslims tend to have far more children on average than Europeans. The Muslim population will probably double or triple by 2050, even if Europe tightens its borders.

These are figures that Europe cannot ignore. European leaders’ decisions to play ostrich politics by keeping their heads in the sand will likely lead to serious, ingrained encroachments on women’s rights in the next decade or two.

Local organized crime finds recruits from rejected asylum seekers and those illegally entering the European Union. Even though there are obvious risks to a life of crime and staying off the grid, many still prefer it to the undeveloped violent villages and small towns they hail from.

Denialism is a loss for everyone: It harms the asylum seekers, prevents the development of an integration process, and it erodes trust in the government to maintain borders and streets effectively. Rule of law itself is undermined, which further degrades social trust between citizens. The biggest losers, however, have been women and feminist movements, who have only for the past several decades enjoyed an unprecedented, near-equal freedom to men.

In the 1990s, when the author first came to Europe, she never would have dreamed that Europe would open its arms to the attitudes and culture of places that systematically curtail the freedoms of women, but that is exactly what is happening.

The hope is that European leaders will take seriously the challenges and consider a revamp of immigration-related institutions—instead of just tinkering with micro adjustments that only further complicate the process and segment society. This segmentation will only harm immigrants (the very group that these leaders ostensibly want to assist), because it leaves more space for sharia law, honor killings, and other harmful cultural imports to thrive.

The alt-right proposals of iron-clad borders and ruthless deportation are unconscionable, but so is doing nothing. What European policymakers can do is create probationary systems that tie acceptance of an asylum seeker to their ability to meet certain integrationist benchmarks, like language acquisition, maintaining a clean record, and attending classes that teach Western values.

The welfare state only functions when those who benefit from the system are also buying into it. As it stands for many immigrants, there is benefit without buy-in. This is a recipe for dissolving citizen-state bonds. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman was absolutely right that you can have open immigration policies or a welfare state but not both.

Austria took flack for trying to create a more reciprocal relationship between incoming immigrants and the state. Since 2018, new arrivals have had to sign documents stating that they will fulfill requirements of the state within a certain amount of time, including learning German, learning Austrian values, and getting a job.

Those who fail to comply with the expectations within two years are repatriated, but those who do can continue their path to citizenship. It is the stick as well as the carrot, and it works. Upon the announcement of Austria’s new policy, immigrants came in droves to sign up for German classes and seminars on the country’s central values. Interestingly those most ardent about bringing immigration-related problems to the forefront of European consciousness are not xenophobic nativists or alt-right fanatics, but immigrants who have successfully integrated into European society.

Europe needs to rethink immigrant integration efforts as Austria has done, and policymakers need to take a serious look at the refugee-creating factors in sender countries, and see what can be done to encourage stability in those regions. The idea that it is someone else’s problem won’t make the problem go away, abroad or at home.

If you do an online search for women in Kabul in the 1960s, you will see photos of women in dresses, exposing their legs and arms. You will find photos of women walking through the streets without a male accompanying her. You will see stylish haircuts, boys and girls sitting together in classrooms. There was a time in Saudi Arabia when women enjoyed similar freedoms. They did not have to cover their heads, and they could mingle with men in restaurants. The Taliban has turned back the clock in Afghanistan, as have Wahhabi mullahs in Saudi Arabia. Egyptian policymakers laughed at their president in 1953 when he warned that the Muslim Brotherhood would mandate women wear hijabs in public.

Obviously, not all segments of these societies enjoyed these kinds of freedoms, and these countries still lagged behind equality in the West, but it is remarkable that this level of freedom existed in any segment of societies in the Muslim-majority world. It is also sobering how quickly clerics and autocrats stamped those liberties out.

Some progressives look askance at evangelical Christianity as the force that will usher in a real-life Handmaid’s Tale, but the dystopic Gilead from Margaret Atwood’s story that they fear so much already exists in Europe, where a spirit of equality is gradually eroding thanks to imports of sharia law and fiercely patriarchal cultural sensibilities. Women are paying the price for it. If modern feminists claim to care for women, they cannot just care for the most recent case of an actress calling out a film producer; they must stand with their Muslim and European sisters and reject the encroachments of misogynistic systems in Europe.

There is no inexorable march toward progress as many progressives assume. What is unfolding in Europe reveals more a pendulum than an ever-improving social evolution. Social devolution is also a possibility, and it must be taken seriously.