RUTHFULLY YOURS

Najia Karimi is executive director of the Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan, a partner of the global women’s group Donor Direct Action.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — I was born in Kabul, raised in Pakistan and returned home after the fall of the Taliban to work in what is now the most dangerous country in the world to be female.

My parents’ generation had much more freedom than I and the other girls in my family did, and the downward trend continues. Young girls today are even more limited in their choices than I was. In Afghanistan, 60% of us are forcibly married by age 16. Only 15% of our girls are educated, and fatwas have been issued in some regions banning girls from going to school at all. Women and girls are punished for any “immoral act” that “brings shame” to the family, including elopement or perceived sexual misconduct. Acid attacks, stoning, rape and murder are all deemed acceptable punishments when a man’s “honor” has been threatened.

Invasions by Russia and the United States, alongside the ever-present threat of the Taliban and other groups, has meant that Afghan girls and women are in danger both inside and outside our homes. And the situation is only getting worse. Women who try to change the system by entering politics are particularly at risk of being targeted with violence. There is almost nowhere safe for us to go, and when we try to make things better, we put our lives at risk.
There is almost nowhere safe for us to go, and when we try to make things better, we put our lives at risk.

Since unlike so many others I’ve had the benefit of an education, I’ve put my privilege to use by working for an Afghan women’s group that runs an emergency women’s shelter in Kabul. We provide a refuge for women and girls fleeing sexual or domestic violence.

Zarmina is one of the many girls who have sought our assistance. Now 14, she was only 2 years old when her mother sold her off to a 22-year-old Taliban member. Four years ago, he forced her to move in with him. Between then and last September, when she came to the shelter, Zarmina was given food only once a day and was raped on a regular basis. When we met her, she was ill and deeply traumatized.

We helped her get urgent medical treatment and support in the shelter. She soon went back to school, but with nobody else to support her, Zarmina is dependent on us. If she returns to her village, the Taliban will stone her to death.

Another girl, Mah Jabin, was 10 years old when she was handed over to a man who beat and raped her over the course of three years. In despair, she poured a gallon of gasoline over herself and lit a match. Her mother found her just in time and put the flames out. She spent a month in the hospital with life-threatening burns and lived with us for a year under continuous medical treatment. We helped her get a divorce and a warrant was issued for her husband’s arrest. She is now also back at school.

These are just two of the roughly 200 cases that we take on every single year.

When French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month, the conversation turned to a question bedeviling Europe’s political establishment. How could they halt the rising tide of nationalism across the Continent?

Mr. Macron, who is fighting right-wing euroskeptic Marine Le Pen for the lead in Sunday’s election for France’s top office, had an answer. He said the European Union needed more integration, not less.

For years, mainstream leaders, faced with a rising populist movement, relied on a strategy of containment. That involved ignoring its rhetoric, dismissing demands to dismantle the EU as a recipe for turmoil, and at times mimicking its language. The limits of that approach have been laid bare by Britain’s decision to leave the EU, Ms. Le Pen’s rise in France, and recently the surge of a euroskeptic French candidate on the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

With elections in France this weekend and in Germany later this year, pro-EU forces are adopting a new approach: a full-throated defense of the economic bloc and its place in their countries’ future.

The shift is embodied by Mr. Macron, who has defined himself in opposition to Ms. Le Pen, figuratively wrapping himself in the blue and gold-starred EU flag she would remove from government buildings.

“Our fight for fraternity will be our fight for Europe,” Mr. Macron told a February rally in Lyon organized across town from where Ms. Le Pen was declaring her candidacy. “Europe! Europe!” the crowd of thousands chanted.

Where Ms. Le Pen wants to reinforce France’s national borders, Mr. Macron says the solution to its terrorism fears is to bolster the frontiers of the EU. She wants a more independent defense policy for France; he wants tighter military coordination across the bloc.

And where Ms. Le Pen sees the euro as the root of France’s economic woes, Mr. Macron touts the EU’s single market as the key to French prosperity. CONTINUE AT SITE

Europe continues its rousing election year on Sunday with a first round of the French presidential contest that will decide if the center can hold or a blood-and-soil nationalist will square off against a throwback socialist. What could go wrong?

For months the smart money thought the first round would set up a final match pitting Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front against a reform-minded centrist. That could still happen if the other leading finisher is François Fillon, the nominee of the center-right Republicans who touts a free-market platform; or center-left, independent Emmanuel Macron, who doesn’t go as far as Mr. Fillon but still promises to reform labor and tax laws. Either would be favored against Ms. Le Pen in a runoff.

But suddenly the two reformers might be surpassed by far-left independent Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is telling the French they can grow richer by working less and spend more by earning less. He’d cut the work week to 32 hours from 35, cut the retirement age to 60 from 66, prevent companies that have laid off workers from paying dividends, and ignore European Union limits on fiscal deficits. On foreign policy he is anti-American, anti-NATO and pro-Vladimir Putin, and he has written a book subtitled “The German Poison,” which should make for pleasant summits in Berlin.

Ms. Le Pen is hoping to vindicate her long-running effort to transform her father’s National Front into a respectable party. Her views on Europe, America, Russia and the state role in the French economy are distinguishable from Mr. Mélenchon’s only by nuances.

The National Front’s toxic history of anti-Semitism and its hostility to minorities and immigrants has traditionally put a ceiling on Ms. Le Pen’s vote, especially on the left. But that might not hold if Mr. Mélenchon doesn’t make it to the final round and his supporters must choose between Ms. Le Pen and one of the centrists.

Mr. Fillon’s agenda comes closest to what France needs to revive its stagnant economy, notwithstanding his affinity for Mr. Putin’s Russia. He promises to balance the budget within five years, cut €100 billion ($106.72 billion) in spending, slash the corporate-tax rate to 25% from nearly 35%, end the 35-hour work week and liberalize labor laws to encourage hiring. All of this is a hard sell in France at any time, but Mr. Fillon’s credibility has been compromised by news that he put family members on the public payroll.

Mr. Macron’s reforms don’t go as far as Mr. Fillon’s, but he’d also cut the corporate-tax rate to 25%, reform the work week and reduce labor-related taxes for entrepreneurs. But the 39-year-old has never held elected office and failed to sell this program to the National Assembly when current Socialist President François Hollande made him economy minister.

All four major candidates are polling at around 20%, but Mr. Mélenchon has momentum and the highest personal favorability. A Le Pen-Mélenchon finale would be a political shock to markets and perhaps to the future of the EU and eurozone. The best result would be for one or both centrists to make it through, but the fact that both could lose to the radicals is an indictment of the main political parties.

By a razor-thin margin, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has won the referendum to expand exponentially the powers of his office. The results have been challenged for voting irregularities, but they’re unlikely to change the outcome. Given Erdoğan’s record-setting jailing of reporters, his mass arrests after an aborted coup, and his frankly expressed ambitions to Islamize Turkey, these changes will result in a much more authoritarian and Islamic government incompatible with the West.

No one should be surprised, as Erdoğan has always been up-front about his ambitions. At the beginning of his political career in the mid-nineties he said, “Thank God Almighty, I am a servant of the Sharia.” A decade later he said, “Democracy is like a streetcar. You ride it until you arrive at your destination and then you step off.” In 2007, Erdogan said of the term “moderate Islam,” “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” And last May, referring to democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, he proclaimed in a television address, “For us, these phrases have absolutely no value any longer.”

If Erdoğan prevails in the referendum, then, Turkey is likely to move closer to the model of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and farther from the Western-style secular democracy created by Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey. Such a development will be a blow for about half the Turks, but also for the widely held thesis that the endemic tyranny and violence within the Muslim Middle East has little to do with Islam, and more to do with the autocratic and illiberal governments that have dominated the region. If Turkey fails after nearly a century of effort to create a secular democracy, then there’s little hope that any other nation can succeed in being true to both liberal democracy and the precepts of Islam.

More important, an Islamized Turkey will confirm what Erdoğan said about “no moderate or immoderate Islam.” For decades the West has indulged a pernicious fantasy that vaguely defined “extremists” unrelated to true Islam are responsible for the carnage afflicting the world. These “extremists” are products of tyrannical governments, poverty, Western historical crimes, the neo-imperialist “Zionist entity,” Israeli “settlements” in the “occupied West Bank,” Western disrespect for the “religion of peace,” and numerous other specious pretexts. Fourteen centuries of jihadist doctrine and action are ignored or rationalized, with a myopia that would have astonished our Western ancestors who fought for centuries against Muslim invaders, colonizers, occupiers, and slavers.

Examples of this delusion are legion. One of the most consequential jihadist organizations has been the Muslim Brotherhood, from which descended al Qaeda. Hassan al Bana, the Egyptian founder of the Brotherhood in 1928, expressed its clearly classic Islamic supremacist ambitions: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its laws on all nations, and extend its power to the entire planet.” For al Banna, jihad remained the time-honored means of achieving this end: “Fighting unbelievers involves all possible efforts that are necessary to dismantle the power of the enemies of Islam including beating them, plundering their wealth, destroying their places of worship, and smashing their idols” ––precisely what ISIS is doing with its genocidal attacks on Christians.

On Friday, the news media were so sure North Korea would conduct a nuclear test over the weekend to celebrate the 105th birthday of Kim Il-Sung that they almost started a countdown clock. The test never happened. Some experts said this was because President Trump caused North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to “blink.”

On Saturday, North Korea did attempt a celebratory ballistic-missile test, which failed seconds after launch. There has been speculation in the media that this failure was due to U.S. sabotage, possibly a cyberattack.

While I believe the above explanations of both events are unlikely, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs still pose serious and growing threats because they represent an unstable regime developing and testing increasingly advanced WMDs based on poor engineering and badly inadequate R&D. This is why a new U.S. approach to the threat from North Korea is long overdue.

I did not believe a nuclear test would occur as part of North Korea’s weekend celebration. I was not convinced by commercial-satellite imagery cited by some experts as evidence of an imminent nuclear test, since there is constant activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site that often leads to predictions of nuclear tests that do not occur. On the other hand, when North Korea actually conducts nuclear tests, these same experts are usually caught off guard.

Predicting North Korean nuclear tests is difficult, because Pyongyang is aware it is being watched by U.S. spy satellites. North Korea probably engages in subterfuge at its test site to make the world think nuclear tests are imminent when they are not, and to conceal preparations for actual tests.

North Korean nuclear tests during major celebrations like the 105th birthday of Kim Il-Sung are unlikely because, as North Korea’s nuclear program becomes more sophisticated, the chances of failed tests increase. North Korean leaders probably wanted to avoid the humiliation of a failed nuclear test on an important holiday when the eyes of the world were fixed on the Hermit Kingdom.

There also is a more likely and simpler explanation for North Korea’s April 15 missile test and its subsequent failure. North Korean officials probably decided to conduct a missile test as a demonstration of their nation’s military might that had a higher likelihood of success than a nuclear test.

While some experts are speculating the missile test failed because of U.S. sabotage or cyber warfare, the more likely explanation is that the failure was due to the poor state of North Korean science and engineering. Arms-control expert Jeffrey Lewis is “deeply skeptical” that the U.S. was responsible for the failed missile test, and he said in a recent Axios.com interview, “The failures we’ve seen are better explained by the pains of the R&D process. There is a reason that ‘rocket science’ is a metaphor for something that is hard to do.”

About 50 percent of North Korean missile tests — and 88 percent of its intermediate Musudan missile tests — have failed. This is what happens when a brutal totalitarian regime tries to pursue a complex weapons program using borrowed and stolen technology and relies on third-rate scientists.

It goes without saying that the world’s leading experts in rocketry and physics are not flocking to North Korea to work on the WMD programs of an evil totalitarian regime with a serious job-security problem — Leader Kim may have you executed if your project encounters failures or setbacks.

Editor’s Note: The following piece is adapted from “Preserving the Values of the West,” the remarks delivered by Ayaan Hirsi Ali upon accepting the 2016 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education alongside her husband, Niall Ferguson. It is reprinted here with permission.

The specific example I would like to address today is the relationship between men and women. All cultures have strong views on marriage, family, divorce, promiscuity, and parenting. Not all cultures are similar or interchangeable, however.

Within Islam today, I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims in the world based on how they envision and practice their faith, with important consequences for women.

The first group is the most problematic — the fundamentalists who envision a regime based on Shariah, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version and take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.

I call them Medina Muslims, in that they see the forcible imposition of Shariah as their religious duty, following the example of the Prophet Muhammad when he was based in Medina. They exploit their fellow Muslims’ respect for Shariah law as a divine code that takes precedence over civil laws. It is only after they have laid this foundation that they are able to persuade their recruits to engage in jihad. There is no equality between men and women in their eyes, either legally or in daily practice.

The second group — and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world — consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence or even intolerance toward non-Muslims.

I call this group “Mecca Muslims,” after the first phase of Islam and the peaceful Qur’anic verses that were revealed in Mecca. In this group, the position of women is contested.

More recently, and partly in response to the rise of Islamic terrorism, a third group is emerging within Islam: Muslim reformers — or, as I call them, “modifying Muslims” — who promote the separation of religion from politics and other reforms. Although some are apostates, the majority of dissidents are believers, among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence. Reformers generally favor equality between men and women.

The future of Islam and the world’s relationship with Muslims will be decided by which of the two minority groups — the Medina Muslims or the reformers — can win the support of the rather passive Meccan majority.

It is interesting to consider what would happen were anyone to demand the same standards of these campaigners against free speech as they demand of others. The people who make such claims rarely if ever exercise the same civic hygiene they demand of everybody else.

If it furthered their political and other goals then Malia Bouattia and the National Union of Students (NUS) would most likely be currently calling for arrests and prosecutions for incitement, “hate speech” and more. Of course, nobody could be so ill-mannered as to play this political game back at them. But if they were to, they would certainly find far greater evidence of cause and effect than Bouattia and her colleagues have produced to date in their war on free speech.

It could be said that Bouattia engaged in “hate speech” as well as “racist speech” when she said the words she did. It could further be claimed that what Bouattia said in fact constituted “incitement” and an “open invitation to violence”. It could be argued that the words which came out of her lips led directly to a Palestinian man thinking that a British student could be killed on a tram in Jerusalem in a legitimate act of “resistance” against a representative of a “Zionist outpost.”

The great effort of the present-day censors on campuses across the West is to make speech synonymous with action. Campaigners against free expression claim that words not only “wound” people but actually “kill”. They claim that people associated with any group being criticised are not only suffering a verbal “assault” but an actual “physical” assault. Those who campaign against any and all criticism of Islamists, for instance, not only claim that the attacks are “Islamophobic” and target “all Muslims”. They also claim that such words cause violence — including violence against any and all Muslims.

One of the notable things about their objection is that the people who make such claims rarely if ever exercise the same civic hygiene they demand of everybody else. It is interesting to consider what would happen were anyone to demand the same standards of these campaigners as they demand of others.

Consider the case of one Malia Bouattia. This is the young woman who is currently president of the National Union of Students (NUS) in Britain. The NUS has long been a campaigning organisation less interested in standing up for the rights and welfare of students as a whole than campaigning for the sort of issues that preoccupy a portion of the hard-left in Britain, at the forefront of which is anti-Zionism. Since her election as NUS president last year, a number of British universities have sought to disaffiliate from the organization in apparent recognition that it has taken an especially virulent turn.