The West is Losing Its Nerve

Honor violence happens every day, and preventing it takes a courage we are losing.

Not long after I first escaped to the Netherlands in 1992, my husband—the man to whom I had been married off by my father—walked into the asylum seekers’ center where I was living with three other men and asked me why I had run away. I went to a staff member named Silvia and told her that I’d been caught. I was sure that this would end with my being packed off to Canada with my husband, but Silvia simply asked if I wanted to go with them. I said no. She asked if I was sure, because if I was, she was going to call the police. Silvia called the police, and I stayed in the Netherlands.

What Silvia did was unremarkable in 1992, and is, on paper, still unremarkable now. The laws protecting women’s rights and freedoms are still on the books across the West. But in the decades since Silvia intervened on my behalf, those similarly charged with upholding the law—judges and prosecutors, law enforcement, and social services—are increasingly likely to turn a blind eye in cases like mine. When the laws of Western societies conflict with the cultural norms of immigrant groups, too often Western officials avoid confronting abuses and violations that they would never otherwise permit. In the name of cultural sensitivity, vulnerable women in these communities are abandoned by the systems that should protect them.