Refugees,Islamophobia,and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Abstract

As global discourses on refugees and Muslims become more exclusionary, the ethics and traditions of our profession mean social workers arguably have a particular responsibility to work for transformative change. This column argues that social workers need to be wary of direct complicity with harsh policies through implementation roles and, indirectly, through co-option into dominant discourses about refugees and Islam more generally and Muslim women specifically.

Watching the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics in August 2016, we were heartened to see the standing ovation given to the refugee team. But translating this microcosm of world support into global and local political realms is a vexed question.

At the same time that our hearts warmed with the applause, we read leaked documents that The Guardian procured from Australia’s outsourced immigration detention site in the small island nation of Nauru. These files documented 2,000 incident reports compiled by employed staff, including social work caseworkers, providing “care” in a hostile environment. Exposed was a litany of abuse, particularly pertaining to children. The reports included examples of sexual assault of children, observations of disturbing behavior in children, mental health issues, and acts of self-harm. International media reporting that followed, as well as criticism by human rights bodies, have failed to produce change.

As Western countries bunker their borders, social workers arguably have a particular responsibility to work for transformative change. As a profession that aspires to an ethic of care, to human rights, and to social justice, we are obliged to challenge harmful policies. In working with marginalized groups, including asylum seekers, social workers are witness to both despairing narratives and hopes.

But carving out a social work role as global citizens and as local practitioners is surprisingly complex and multilayered. Real and imagined constraints external to social work are a warning sign of potential co-option of social workers. Our co-option concerns are two-fold and interconnected: direct complicity with harsh policies through implementation roles and, indirectly, through co-option into dominant discourses about refugees and Islam more generally and Muslim women specifically.

Policy Co-Option

Here in Australia as we observe the global upheaval of forced migration and constricting responses from many nation states, the role of social work requires interrogating. It is our view that there are worrying trends of social workers taking up jobs in “offshore” immigration detention such as Nauru, where many work with women, children, and family groups. With restrictions on workers from speaking out about human rights violations witnessed, the role of social work as a human rights and social justice profession comes into question. Some courageous social workers have spoken out anonymously, but this is only a partial answer to dealing with systemic abuse and silencing when bearing witness.

In 2012, the then Labor government, in response to an increase in asylum seeker arrivals by boat, announced the reopening of detention centers in both Nauru and Papua New Guinea (Manus Island) where asylum seekers can be “warehoused” indefinitely. Contracts with private providers required employment of health and welfare personnel. Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) such as the Salvation Army and Save the Children received lucrative contracts for their roles.

Social work as a profession has not had a robust conversation about whether a boycott should take place on working on such sites where human rights organizations have exposed a litany of abusive practices. I have previously written with social work academic colleague Chris Goddard (Briskman & Goddard, 2014) that transporting children to Nauru constitutes trafficking in children. We find it puzzling that members of a moral profession signed up to work in environments where security concerns overrode welfare concerns and where they confronted loyalty conflicts. Arguably, there have been social workers with altruistic motives, but anecdotal evidence suggests that others were lured by a sense of “overseas adventure” and high incomes. Whatever their motives, social workers were totally unprepared for what they confronted, including dealing with high rates of mental illness among the detainees and their inability to alleviate the despair of people who faced uncertain futures. Although social workers have been among those in the asylum seeker support movement, there are others who have been co-opted into dominant discourses that are enshrined in tenets of border security rather than human security.

Ideological Co-Option

The second form of co-option, rhetorical and ideological, relates to the rise of Islamophobia and the prospect of social workers unwittingly being captive to influential worldviews that are antithetical to the value base of the profession.

One argument increasingly being made against providing refuge to Muslims in Western countries is that there is a “culture clash” between Western and Islamic values, particularly in relation to the treatment of women.

One of the most effective proponents of this idea is Somali-born ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former politician for the right-wing Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. She has told her life story in four best-selling books and generalized her life experiences to all Muslim women. Now an atheist, she sees herself as enlightened but describes Muslim women as prisoners, slaves, submissive robots, and frightened birds. One of her books argued that Muslims should convert to Christianity. Unsurprisingly then, she receives virtually no support from the Muslim community despite describing herself as an advocate for Muslim women.

Yet some social work publications seem to have uncritically accepted the broad inaccurate generalizations Hirsi Ali makes about Muslim women and Islam. For example, one book calls her “a champion of free speech and human rights” engaged in a “passionate fight against Islamist oppression against women” (Mohan, 2007, p. 243). A review of her book Infidel reports that Hirsi Ali “became uncertain about the fundamentalist Muslim faith and the requirement of women’s will to be submissive to that of men” (Saturno, n.d.).

The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation focuses on female genital cutting, honor violence, and forced marriage and has recently made webinars and online courses available, which it is targeting to professionals including social workers.

Social workers are attuned to the suffering of vulnerable groups and how exclusion based on illogical stereotypes and narratives are in stark contrast to guiding principles that meld social justice, antiracism, critical constructions of whiteness, and social work codes of ethics. As a feminized profession with a largely female clientele, social workers are in a sound position to challenge assumptions that are in the public domain including by using Leila Ahmed’s idea of colonial feminism, defined as the cynical practice of preaching concern for the well-being of women in order to advance colonial interests.

Ahmed explains that Lord Cromer, the British governor of Egypt from 1883 to 1907, led an effort to “de-veil” Egyptian women to help “enlighten” them. However, his appetite for women’s rights was limited. He increased fees for education in Egypt, thereby reducing access for both boys and girls, and dismissed women’s wishes to use female doctors, restricting women’s previous general medical training to midwifery. He was a leading member of the English Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage (Ahmed, 1992). Despite this, Western feminists supported his efforts in Egypt.

Western interest in Muslim women’s welfare is part of a long history of classifying Muslims as culturally inferior “others.” While historically used to justify colonialism, summed up famously by Spivak (1988, p. 297)—“white men saving brown women from brown men”—this idea has also been used more recently, for example, to justify Western wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Commentators like Hirsi Ali who perpetuate stereotypes of Muslim women as having no agency almost never advocate that structural issues, fundamental to social work reasoning, be addressed through wealth redistribution, an end to Western wars and increased refugee intakes.

Our concerns about the increasing tendency for Muslim women to be seen this way in the West are largely derived from experience. We both spend considerable time in the Islamic Republic of Iran, tallying 20 visits between us. Linda has collaborated with other academics and organizations in Tehran, while Susie’s husband’s extended family lives in a small rural town. Whether it is highly educated Persian women in Tehran or rural Arab minority women in the south of Iran, we see women doing it for themselves. We observe that the best forms of change come from within the society and that Western versions of feminism do not necessarily capture the hearts and minds of Iranian Muslim women. We hear exasperation at colonial feminist ideas.

The Way Forward

We conclude by arguing that in the light of current debates, many of which are highly adversarial, social workers have a responsibility to be informed, to examine competing arguments, to engage in challenging dialogue, and ultimately to present a nuanced collaborative response. Social workers are witness to the effects of harmful practices and ideologies in their day-to-day work. As critically reflective practitioners, it is beholden on us to mediate the interlinking of forced migration with questions of racism, bigotry, and stereotypes.

It is not enough to condemn refugee policies and practices per se, without delving into the ideological devices that allow them to remain in place. Being bystanders to harmful practices and rhetorical devices amounts to professional co-option that has no place in a humanitarian profession.