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.
