Political correctness, multi-culturalism without restraint, cultural relativism, moral relativism...

This is what I am talking about, when I make the claim that the goals of the left cannot be made by tearing down every and all institutions based on the bad apples that have (mostly) already been removed from the barrel. And removed Mostly by the very groups of people the left now seeks to punish.

Posted by: Gary at May 18, 2005 7:43 AM

Point being, it serves the islamists quite nicely- especially when some go on about the 'Dark Side' of Christianity.

And I am off... no links today. The only article in FrontPage on Academia was by Stephen Schwartz, and while it has some validity...

Posted by: Gary at May 18, 2005 7:48 AM

This would also be relegated to the age of ignorance:

http://bizetcarmen.tripod.com/pearl.html

For the listening pleasure of JW/DW readers.

Posted by: Silvester at May 18, 2005 8:03 AM

We'd lose:

Porridge
Man about the house (very dodgy, that)
Monty Python
Fawlty Towers
Ripping Yarns
The Two Ronnies
Dave Allen (very rude about religion)
The Office (bet the British version is better as we do ugly and incompetent better than you)
The Young Ones
Blackadder
Yes Minister (very un PC about the Arabs)
Spitting Image
Catherine Tate show
Little Britain
Nighty night
Ali G show (used a Muslim name deliberately so nobody dared challenge him)
Gimme gimme gimme (British original for Will and Grace, but much cruder, uglier and funnier)

But looking on the bright side, we'd lose Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother and all that other ghastly reality TV where Z list celebs hve colonic irrigation (true, that one). And Pop Idol. Come on Mohammed, we want you!

Posted by: Interested at May 18, 2005 8:47 AM

Hating to be placed in the role of the devils advocate, but I would appreciate if Hugh (or anyone else) could explain to me why Lisbon or the Rua dos Alfarrabistas would be endangered by the rapid islamization of Europe. The thing is, probably thanks to our poor economic shape we have been mostly spared from the plague of Muslim immigration. I can safely say that Portugal is by far the least islamic country in all of Western Europe. Most of our immigrants are eastern Europeans (Orthodox Christians), Brazilians (Catholics) and Africans from our former colonies (mostly Christians with the exception of the Guineans that are Muslims).

Rome is endangered, Athens is endangered, Madrid is endangered, Paris and the countless museums of that breathtaking metropolis are endangered, Oslo and Stockholm are endangered, but Lisbon? Not in a foreseable future.

Hugh did mention the Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam, which I fortunately visited during my stay in that city. Given its historic role (as a sidenote, the Jewish colony of New Amsterdam was founded by Portuguese Jews) it would be a tragedy of anything happened to that building, which given the state of affairs in Holland is probably one of the most endangered of the whole list.

Posted by: alex221166 at May 18, 2005 9:12 AM

We would lose the right to be independent human beings.

Islam is anti-human and rots the brain. A Muslim is about the farthest thing from being a living, thinking, curious, kind, empathetic, creative human being that exist.

Posted by: Ethelred at May 18, 2005 9:22 AM

Alex221166

Don't forget the Portuguese and Spanish Synagogue off Bevis Marks, London EC3.

Built in 1701 it it the oldest extant one in Britain (the Jewish community was expelled in 1281 by Edward I but let back in by Olly Cromwell ca 1650)

Posted by: Elephant at May 18, 2005 9:32 AM

Think of all those lovely pubs and restaurants. No alcohol and separate areas for men and women, thereby defeating the object of going to pubs and restaurants.

When I think about it, just about anything in my life that gives me pleasure is unislamic.

Posted by: Interested at May 18, 2005 9:37 AM

Wow! What a great list. I've been to about a couple of dozen or so of them too. Yeah, Prague and Budapest! Gorgeous! Two amazing surprises during one of my European treks. Ain't Western civilization grand? We're so good. So vastly superior to that Islamic rot. Everybody's vastly more superior to Islam.

What would the list of Islamic wonders be? LOL! Just a bunch of mosques (war rooms). Big deal. Of course, they don't want to be wasting time or effort on creating beautiful things. Takes their valuable time away from slaughter, oppression, fist-waving, hollering, rock-throwing, shooting in the air, and that ululululululu-ing!

Posted by: feralee at May 18, 2005 9:43 AM

INTERESTED! You left out the KING of them all:

BENNY HILL.

*********************************************

Hugh, once the French/Muslim Civil War starts in the 2020's or 2030's (IF the agitators can even wait THAT long) maybe the rest of Europe will wake up.

I think that we don't have to worry about Russia. They know a thing or two about handling dissent, and have VAST unpopulated areas (for Gods sake, they've got 12 TIME ZONES.)

Everyday that goes by without the Anne Frank Home being firebombed is amazing to me.

Posted by: kj at May 18, 2005 10:04 AM

Does anyone remember that old link about Paris, circa 2050, when the Muslim guy is preparing a burqua to cover the Venus de Millo so she and the rest of the Louvre can be destroyed? Has that your writing, Hugh? It would be good to see it again.

Posted by: kj at May 18, 2005 10:05 AM

GOOD THING NONE OF THOSE COUNTRIES HAVE NUKES.

Posted by: KAOSKTRL at May 18, 2005 10:34 AM

Give Islam time and there'd be no more Beer, Baseball, or Brats in America.

Posted by: nuh at May 18, 2005 10:40 AM

Hugh, while you mourn the loss of Europe, consider how much the West shrank before the colonization of the New World and Antipodes. Our view of history as linear and progressive was bequeathed to all of us--including the Marxists--by a man named Aurelius Augustinus who lived close to the border of what's now Algeria and Tunisia. I doubt there are a half-dozen people in that part of the world who even know who this giant of the Western intellectual traidtion was.

That goes for figures like Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and others, too.

Posted by: Kepha at May 18, 2005 10:44 AM

Nuh~ is that 'brats' or 'bratwurst'?

Posted by: Gary at May 18, 2005 10:45 AM

Europe would lose its sense of humour - literally.

'There is no humour in Islam.'
Ayatollah Khomeini

Posted by: Effractor at May 18, 2005 10:59 AM

Firebomb the Anne Frank house? That has to be one of the most dhimmified places in all of Europe. But yeah, you can forget about Amsterdam staying 'Gay Capitol' of the world. I also don't see the Muzzies look after the Dutch museums and other cultural high-brow facilities Amsterdam is famous for. The left is biting itself in the ass, Muslims have brought absolutely nothing to the table and yet the dhimmie liberals suggest we should trade in a christian holiday for an islamic one. Eurabia is right on schedule in Holland, they're making sure Muslims are seen and heard on all levels of society. On childrens programs they show a mother with headscarf reading to a child. When they show classrooms in the news the teacher has a headscarf. Headscarfs are invited almost every week to talkshows to talk about how wonderfully emancipated they are. It's sipping out of every one of society's pores. And they all sing the same refrain: it's fun to commit cultural suicide, put a bullet in your brain.

Posted by: Leveller at May 18, 2005 11:09 AM

'There is no humour in Islam.'
Ayatollah Khomeini

It would be even better if there were no F in Islam.

Posted by: Interested at May 18, 2005 11:11 AM

Hugh - thanks for the list.

Let's start the list of that which would be lost IF the rapid Islamification of America comes about as the Islamists are flexing their muscles with influence in Washington, in the universities and lower education, in Muslim outreach, and ....at the gas pump.

How soon do you think it will begin here?

Posted by: epg at May 18, 2005 11:16 AM

"Don't forget the Portuguese and Spanish Synagogue off Bevis Marks, London EC3."

And built by a Quaker, Joseph Avis, who refused to accept a fee as he would not profit from a sacred house.

Dads taking daughters to football.
Jellied eels.
Pie, mash and green liquor. Cookes for preference.
Lincolnshire sausages.
Lincoln Cathedral.
Lincoln Christmas Market.
Paddling bare legged at the seaside.
The Angel of the North
Whitby
Last of the Summer Wine
Fairport Convention/Steeleye Span/Jethro Tull
Led Zepplin/Deep Purple/Black Sabbath
Hot cross buns
Evensong and Holy Communion.
Advent Carols
Christmas trees in (nearly) every town centre
Our daughters walking with their heads up.
Our sons knowing the joy of friendship with their sisters.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 18, 2005 11:34 AM

Great British music from the Sixties, such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones etc etc.

Great British TV programs: one of my favourites being The Avengers, starring the very emancipated Emma Peel. I bet she could throw a muslim around the room.

Posted by: Voltaire at May 18, 2005 12:29 PM

Interested, I've seen just about all those shows (love 'em)
It is time for those in their ivory towers to consider what they will have to give up if their "victim of this century"** (my term) has their way.

** those who hate everything America stands for, have a "victim" - those who the US is oppressing. You know, we are such oppressive people./not

Posted by: Carolyn2 at May 18, 2005 12:38 PM

Interesting list.

A short time ago, Camille Paglia observed that the Western Canon could profitably be viewed as a binary structure - literary & visual [artistic].

She went on to say that the Conservatives tended to be very keen on the literary canon but woefully dismissive of the visual, and the Liberals tended to hold the opposite imbalance.

There's something to be said for this observation. Noting what artistic treasures are in danger of loss from Islamist dominance in Europe shows more than anything what you mean when you state “without Europe the West becomes comical”.

We lose at least half of ourselves.

Posted by: urthshu at May 18, 2005 12:42 PM

Is the Louvre burning?

Posted by: Hulegu Khan at May 18, 2005 1:43 PM

Gary - it's bratwurst. I was alluding to outlawing pork. I think brats have pork in them. I was going to say hotdogs but I got caught up with alliteration.

That being said, don't Muslim's behave like spoiled Brats? "Boo hoo, our Koran has been desecrated, etc.."

I've always thought that Islam needs a good "bitch-slap," but first it seems like our politicians and media needs a bitch-slap to come to their senses on the dangers that Islam poses to the free-world.

I'll sure miss having a brat with onions and musturd with an ice cold one, sitting in the friendly confines enjoying baseball if Islam gets a hold on America.

Posted by: nuh at May 18, 2005 1:55 PM

Nuh~ We should get together for a picnic- before the 'religion police' start busting them up.

I'll bring the Shepherd's Pie and LaBatts Blue. And some copies of the Koran for place setters.

Posted by: Gary at May 18, 2005 2:29 PM

Gary - sounds good. I love the place settings. I'll even offer pages from my namesake Surah as napkins to wipe our greasy infidel hands with. I'd offer them as tp to wipe my *** with.....but I'll refrain from that offer because I don't want Mr. Spencer to ban me from his glorious blog.

Posted by: nuh at May 18, 2005 3:10 PM

Hugh

I think you forgot Van Gogh. One of the first martyr's during this lastest Jihad phase. Theo, that is.

Posted by: nuh at May 18, 2005 3:22 PM

Hugh - thanks for the list.

Let's start the list of that which would be lost IF the rapid Islamification of America comes about as the Islamists are flexing their muscles with influence in Washington, in the universities and lower education, in Muslim outreach, and ....at the gas pump.

How soon do you think it will begin here?

Posted by: epg at May 18, 2005 11:16 AM

Epg,

Great idea; by creating a list of what we would lose under Islam, we would simultaenously create a list of the things we are fighting for.

Here are my initial contributions to the "List of Losses" America would suffer if Islam were to win:

1) Everything Hugh said, because Americans came from all those places

2) The Founding Documents of the United States, especially the Constitution

3) The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cal Tech, Julliard, etc. etc.

4) The Library of Congress,

5) The Smithsonian,

6) The Metropolitan Museum of Art etc. etc.

7) M.D. Anderson

8) The Mayo Clinic

9) Johns Hopkins etc. etc.

10) Football

12) Botanical Gardens

13) Professional Journals

14) Wall Street

15) The Free Market

16) The most robust economy in history

17) Research institutes of all descriptions

18) Intellectual inquiry

19) Debate

20) Joy

Posted by: Cubed at May 18, 2005 3:53 PM

Someone knows my beautiful country pretty well, methinks. Thank you. Personally, I would have laid more emphasis on the greatest of all Western achievements - our music. The notion that Beethoven or Schubert or Verdi might be banned is more than I could bear, and one thing I would genuinely die to prevent.

Posted by: Paolo at May 18, 2005 4:02 PM

Interested:

You forgot - The Good Life, Not the nine o'clock News.

Thanks for reminding us all of the terrific programs that came from the BBC till it was taken over by a bunch of sensitive Lefty PC imbeciles.

Hugh:

Leonardo, Michelangeo, Isaac Newton and Shakespeare, were all muslims. Its a fact.

Posted by: DP111 at May 18, 2005 5:08 PM

And another thing

Hugh posted:You don't care? They deserve what they get? But aren't you looking forward to the American version of a British original -- "The Office" -- tonight? You're not?

I have often wondered why it is that the original British version is not shown in the US. It cant be a language problem surely.

Posted by: DP111 at May 18, 2005 5:15 PM

FROM THE GUARDIAN....IS THE PENNY DROPPING ?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1485350,00.html

Danger woman

She arrived in the Netherlands as an asylum seeker and became a fiery critic of both multiculturalism and her own religion, Islam. Then last November the director of a film she wrote about the subjugation of Muslim women was killed, sparking a crisis over the country's attitudes to immigration. In her first British interview since the murder, Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks to Alexander Linklater

Tuesday May 17, 2005
The Guardian

Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Dutch parliament, surrounded by bodyguards. Photograph: AFP

In 1989, the year that Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a devout student attending the Muslim Girls' Secondary School in Nairobi. Her father, a Somali rebel leader, had the previous year led an insurgency into the Somali region of Ayl in a failed attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of Mohammed Siad Barre. The family continued to sit out their exile in Kenya. By the age of 20, Hirsi Ali had been wearing the full hijab for four years. When news of the Rushdie fatwa reached the school, she and her fellow students felt immediate solidarity with Iran and Khomeini, even although they were not Shias. They learned that people in Britain were indignant about the threat to one of their writers, which only seemed to confirm to the girls that the western world should be taught the consequences of denigrating Islam. "We had heard that there was this book," Hirsi Ali says, "and that the author had said something horrible about the Prophet, which was extremely blasphemous. And the first thought that came into my head was simply, 'Oh, he must be killed.' "

Article continues

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Now dressed in the open-necked uniform of a glamorous European politician, Hirsi Ali is in much the same predicament as the British writer she once wished dead. She has recently emerged from a period of deep hiding, following the ritualised killing in November of her collaborator, the film director Theo van Gogh. But she still lives under a strict security regime. We sit by the window of a restaurant on the 23rd floor of a hotel in Amsterdam - after her expressionless bodyguards have checked the place out. She has chosen this spot because the last time she stayed in the hotel her minders wouldn't let her show herself in the dining room. She still marvels at the canal-checkered view below, an image of orderliness and freedom which she found amazing on first arriving at the borders of this country 13 years ago, and which is no longer available to her.
Like Rushdie, Hirsi Ali has uttered offences against Islam, and has suffered the knowledge that a colleague was murdered as a consequence (the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death in Tokyo in 1991). But unlike Rushdie, Hirsi Ali's blasphemies have not been couched in postmodern literary formulations; they have been intentional, literal and graphic. In 2002, while still working as a researcher for the then conventionally multiculturalist Dutch Labour party, she publicly described the Prophet as a pervert (for taking a child as one of his wives) and as a tyrant. She took over where the eccentric populist Pim Fortuyn had left off, arguing that Islam was a backward religion, that it subordinated women and stifled art. "With the first commandment, Mohammed tried to imprison common sense," she told the Dutch liberal daily, Trouw. "And with the second commandment the beautiful, romantic side of mankind was enslaved."

The threats on her life began to accumulate, both via Islamic internet sites and from more personal sources around Europe. Hirsi Ali thinks the tipping point came when she told an interviewer on Dutch radio that while being a Muslim was part of her identity, she didn't believe in God - thus confirming herself as an apostate. By September 2002, she was living under guard.

It was towards the end of last year, however, that she became the source of a national crisis in the Netherlands. An 11-minute film, written by Hirsi Ali and directed by Van Gogh, was broadcast on television. It featured the stories of four women pleading with God for release from domestic, social and marital bondage. What many Muslims found intolerable were the images of naked female bodies onto which had been painted verses from the Qur'an authorising the subordination of women. By using the literal meaning of Islam - Submission - as the title of the film, Hirsi Ali was really following an old-school feminist line that, for women, uncritical submission to an Abrahamic religion means submitting to men. "I feel, at least once a week, the strength of my husband's fist on my face," one character, Amina, cries in the film. "Oh, Allah most high, life with my husband is hard to bear, but I submit my will to you."

On November 2, while cycling to work on a busy Amsterdam street, Theo van Gogh was shot eight times by a young, bearded man wearing a long jellaba. The portly film-maker staggered onwards and twice begged for mercy as his assailant approached. According to witnesses, van Gogh emitted the peculiarly Dutch plea, "Surely we can talk about this?" It was a dismal end for this ribald controversialist - well known in the Netherlands for his obscene broadsides against Muslims, Jews, Christians, liberals and conservatives alike. Most notoriously, Van Gogh had described Muslims as "goat-fuckers". Despite Hirsi Ali's pleas, however, he had refused to seek protection after Submission was screened, telling her: "I'm just the village idiot, they won't touch me; but you need to be careful, you're the unfaithful woman." In fact they were equal targets. The assassin drew two butcher's knives, slitting Van Gogh's throat to the spine with one and, with the other, pinning a letter to his chest. "Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you will break yourself to pieces on Islam," the letter, written in Dutch, declared amid a garbled discourse about a Jewish conspiracy in Holland. "You, oh America, will go down," it climaxed. "You, oh Europe, will go down ... You, oh Netherlands, will go down ... You, oh Hirsi Ali, will go down."

In the aftermath of the murder, the already fraught issues of Dutch multiculturalism, and of community relations with the country's 900,000-strong Muslim population, became incendiary. Twelve mosques were attacked, and an Islamic primary school was twice set alight. Back in 2002, the murder of Pim Fortuyn had occasioned outrage, and a blunt reappraisal of immigration policy in the Netherlands. With Van Gogh's killing, however, the arguments went deeper, tearing into the central tenets of Dutch national identity. Mohammed Bouyeri, the man arrested for his killing, had been in many respects a model of integration: he was of Moroccan descent, but Dutch-born and Dutch-educated, and this cast him in the role of the enemy within. The popular leftwing historian Geert Mak views the response as a gross overreaction to a one-off event. Unlike the dignified response of Spaniards to the Madrid bombings, he says, "we have only one murder, and everybody goes crazy".

It is possible that, as Mak puts it, Holland is "a small, provincial country," unable to bear the realities of globalisation, which has used a nasty murder as an excuse to conflate issues of Islam, immigration and security. But the country's problems are far from imaginary. Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali are not the only public figures to have been targeted with death threats. Amsterdam's Jewish mayor, Job Cohen - despite meticulous bridge-building with Muslim communities - also requires bodyguards; as does his Moroccan-born deputy, Ahmed Aboutaleb. Similarly singled out by Dutch Islamist radicals are the anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders, and the Dutch-Moroccan artist Rachid Ben Ali, whose work satirises the violence of extremists.

In many ways, the Netherlands is a crucible case within Europe, because the issues surrounding immigration are so stark. For example, the economic argument deployed by both leftwing multiculturalists and free-market conservatives - that immigration revives aging populations, provides new labour resources, and generates entrepreneurial activity - simply does not apply in the Netherlands. There has been no overall economic benefit to population change since unskilled guest workers were invited to the Netherlands in the early 1970s. According to Paul Scheffer, a leading critic of multiculturalism and professor of urban sociology at Amsterdam university, up to 60% of first-generation Turkish and Moroccan populations are unemployed. "It's a huge failure," he says, "everyone can see that."

Within a generation, the Netherlands has swung from blithe open-door immigration to anxious protectionism. During the 1990s, there was quite literary no immigration policy in the country, and a laissez-faire, multicultural orthodoxy reigned. Numbers of asylum seekers escalated annually from 3,500 in 1985 to over 43,000 in 2000 - pro rata among the highest in the EU. By 2001, 46% of the population of Amsterdam consisted of first- or second-generation immigrants. It is in the Netherlands that European multiculturalism, with its tendency to produce segregation, most dramatically flourished and died.

It is important to be cautious of the Dutch figures. In the Netherlands, an immigrant is classified as anyone with one or more parents born abroad. But within a generation, the shift in population has by any calculation been large, rapid and difficult to handle. Perhaps the most remarkable sign of the acceleration of change is that two thirds of schoolchildren in Amsterdam now come from immigrant backgrounds. Add to this the fact that nearly 1 million of the Netherlands' 1.7 million immigrants are Muslim and it is not hard to see how issues of Islam and migration have become entangled.

Which is why Hirsi Ali's full-frontal attacks on Islam generate such acute discomfort. The Netherlands, with an overall population of 16 million, has among the highest concentrations of Muslim inhabitants in the EU. Hirsi Ali argues that there is less a problem with migration in general, than with its Muslim component in particular, and that she should know, because she is herself a Muslim migrant. Hopes for a moderate Islam are only meaningful, she argues, if it is possible to chip away the theological brickwork - constructed, she believes, on a foundation of female oppression - which permeates the structure of the religion. But Islam, she says, is unable to endure criticism or change, and is essentially at odds with European values. With up to 20 million Muslims living in the EU, the journey she has taken in the past 16 years from Africa to Europe, from asylum seeker to politician, and from devotion to apostasy, has come to appear central to the story of the crisis of multiculturalism on the continent. This month, Time magazine selected her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world - an odd but remarkable acknowledgement for a 35-year-old Somali who four years ago was unknown, even in the Netherlands.

An interesting indication of the extent to which Hirsi Ali needles people are the lurid epithets and insults she draws from across the political spectrum. While internet extremists lent her a quasi-legendary status as the "Wicked Infidel Mortadda," even a figure from the Dutch liberal left such as Geert Mak will reach for phrases such as "Somali princess" and "Joan of Arc" to explain her unsettling charisma. From a free-market perspective, the Economist rather oddly defines her as a cultural ideologue of the new right. Other commentators have dismissed her as a politician of rage, a self-hating orientalist, a liberal jihadist, and an enlightenment fundamentalist.

While the name-calling tends to reveal more about Hirsi Ali's critics than it does about her, there is a more subtly personal line of attack that genuinely galls her. This is the idea that what she thinks and says is somehow born of the scars of a traumatised background. "Why are journalists obsessed with personal history?" she asks in her quiet, Africa-lilted English (one of six languages she speaks, including Somali, Arabic, Amharic, Swahili and Dutch). "From my background, being an individual is not something you take for granted. Here it is all you, me, I. There it is we, we, we. I come from a world where the word 'trauma' doesn't exist, because we are too poor. I didn't have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn't all that bad. I know that to some people I am traumatised, that there is something wrong with me. But that just allows them not to hear what I say."

The first biographical detail that those who have painted Hirsi Ali as a trauma victim point to is her extremely premature birth, shortly after the Somali government had been overthrown by Siad Barre. Her father had been jailed, and the family believed that the shock of this brought on the birth. Hirsi Ali was expected to die. "But I didn't die," she smiles. "I kept on living and crying. I got sick, and started crying, and I got sick again, and I started crying again - that's the story my mother told me. I remember bits and pieces of Somalia, with the memory of a child. I remember going to school and singing, and then my mother saying, 'When you go to school today, don't sing, because the songs that you sing are praise-songs for the man who locked up your father.' "

She remembers Siad Barre's soldiers coming to the door one day and the tiny figure of her grandmother, knife in hand, standing up to the men and being tossed to the ground like a doll, in startling contravention of traditions of respect for older women as the men ransacked hidden supplies of food smuggled in by her mother. "And that's what I associate with Somalia," Hirsi Ali says, "the picture of strong women: the one who smuggles in the food, and the one who stands there with a knife against the army and says, 'You cannot come into the house.' And I became like that. And my parents and my grandmother don't appreciate that now - because of what I've said about the Qur'an. I have become them, just in a different way."

From the age of six or seven, Ayaan Hirsi's life became that of an exile, her family moving from Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia and then, for 10 years, to Kenya. Cod-psychoanalysis might find other patterns of trauma in this journey, such as the time she received a beating from an imam for refusing to recite the Qur'an. But the problem for such an interpretation of Hirsi Ali is that a proper definition of trauma requires either blocking or repetition of memory, and the only people doing that have been her interviewers. Hirsi Ali corrects this oft-reported story, and turns it inside out. "He wasn't an imam," she says, "he was a mallim, a teacher, and I was a difficult girl. He caught me by the braids in my hair and began tossing my head against a wall, and then I heard a 'crack,' and he must have heard it as well, because he immediately stopped, gave me a warning, and went away. He was probably the one who was traumatised, because after that nobody wanted him back."

Yet the one dark subject that Hirsi Ali's critics are really hinting at when they describe her "trauma" is the issue that she has now made a matter of policy in the Netherlands, which is to say, female circumcision. It is the issue that most offends Hirsi Ali's Muslim opponents; not because she has spoken out against the practice - plenty of Muslims have done that before - but because her critics insist that she has described it either as a universal feature of Muslim life, or one that is explicitly sanctioned by the Qur'an. Neither is the case. Rather, Hirsi Ali views it as a product of specific tribal practice combined with a broader cult of virginity, which is indeed upheld by the Qur'an (as it is by the Old Testament).

It is a subject that, again, forces her back to her Somali childhood, if only to dispel cliches. "From experience, I would say it is mostly women trying to protect other women from pain," she explains. "Not physical pain, but the pain of people being suspicious that you are not a virgin. That is more traumatic, perhaps, than the physical pain. In tribal life, the only way a male, particularly high up in the clan, can give his name to someone else is if he knows for certain that it is his child. And the weak link is the woman. The one way to guarantee that a woman is not going to have other people's babies is if she remains a virgin. In Arab countries, which segregate men and women, they do it by keeping women in the house. But we were from a semi-desert area, where if, like my grandfather, you have nine daughters, you need the labour of women outside. So you cut off the clitoris of the woman, sew together what is left, and you know that she will not be seduced. It is a matter of control."

In Hirsi Ali's case, her father had instructed her mother not to circumcise their daughters because, having studied in America, he had decided to reject the whole clan principle. But when her grandmother heard about this she was appalled and it was organised while her mother was away, when Hirsi Ali was about five. "As a child it is something you are proud of," Hirsi Ali says. "I remember the celebrations. I remember the goodies and the gifts. And I remember being caught by these two women - one of them my grandmother. But they couldn't find a woman to do it. They found a man, and fortunately for those girls circumcised by men, it's much milder. So I wasn't circumcised in the way that I should have been."

Despite his opposition to female circumcision, Hirsi Ali's father, on his return from the US, contracted his daughter to marry a cousin living in Canada. "My father had been away for 11 years," Hirsi Ali laughs. "Who did he think he was, marrying me off? But because I also love and admire my father, I spoke to the man he wanted me to marry, and I asked him what kind of life we were going to have together. And he said, 'Well, you're going to have six sons for me.' And I told my father I didn't want this, and he said he couldn't go back on his word." When Hirsi Ali refused to attend, they carried out the ceremony without her. "Clan members came together, papers were signed, and I was married."

That, very nearly, was Hirsi Ali's life settled. The only problem was how to get her into Canada, and the solution was to go via a cousin in Germany, who could organise the papers. Hirsi Ali spent two nights in Germany and then, on a whim, bolted. She took a train to the Netherlands, and walked out on her husband, her family and her culture. "I thought, if I don't try it now, I'll never know. I thought, if they discover me in Holland, and take me to Canada, then I'll live peacefully with my husband. But I had to try. And, I must admit, it was easy. You just had to take the train anywhere. And I asked for asylum under another name - my name is Ayaan Hirsi Magan, and I told them that my name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali."

Hirsi Ali describes the process of her own immigration into the Netherlands when we next meet, this time in the Hague, where she is a member of parliament for the VVD liberal party, one of the three-party coalition currently in power. In 1992 - having deleted the story of her life in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya; and having gained entry as a single Somali woman fleeing danger - she was sent to an asylum seekers' centre in Leintern, in the municipality of Ede, which a decade later would become famous in the Netherlands as the place where the kids cheered the 9/11 attacks. At that time things were made comparatively easy for asylum seekers. She was designated as an A-status refugee, which allowed her to stay indefinitely (this designation is almost impossible to get now). She stayed in her centre for 11 months, doing cleaning jobs and helping other Somalis with their own procedures, translating for women who had been rejected by their families after losing their honour (virginity), translating for social services, and interviewing battered wives. She was not allowed a paid job, but housing and food were taken care of by the government, and when she left in 1993 to do a secretarial course, she was receiving 20-30 gilders a week from the state, as "pocket money".

It is hard to gauge what Hirsi Ali's flight really cost her. Her father has since forgiven her, and told her that she is officially divorced (he still hopes that she will return to the Muslim fold), though at the time he wrote what she describes as "an extremely cruel letter," declaring that he would never have anything to do with her again.

By contrast, the main difficulties Hirsi Ali encountered with the immigration system, were just dreary bureaucracy and the ponderous well-meaning labour officers who kept directing her to work she didn't want. The idea that she might go to university was dismissed so she called up a social academy herself, was allowed to enrol, gained a diploma and, in 1995, got a place at Leiden University to study political science. The choice of subject speaks for itself, she says. "I wanted to understand why all we asylum seekers were coming here, and why everything worked in this country, and why you could walk undisturbed through the streets at night, and why there was no corruption, and why on the other side of the world there was so much corruption and so much conflict."

At university, Hirsi Ali's world-view was turned upside down. "It was like being in paradise," she says. "Imagine. Everybody is reasonable. Everybody is tolerant. Everybody is happy. Your biggest worries are, 'Will I get my points?' and 'Do I have a boyfriend?' and 'Did I party well last night?' And then you have vacations." Suddenly, she found herself able to earn money and travel freely. She went to China, wandered Europe, and returned to Africa. And her Muslim observances slowly fell away. She took off her headscarf, began eating during Ramadan, found herself a boyfriend and began to avoid other Muslims who reminded her of her fall. One day, some students declared they were going to take her drinking. "And I said, 'I can't; it's forbidden by God; I'll go to hell.' And they said, 'Wooah, that's cool!' And my first drink was a martini. After one glass, I was completely drunk."

Hirsi Ali's frolic in the pastures of Dutch liberal education was not to last long, however. In 2000 she read an article by the well-known leftwing writer Paul Scheffer, entitled The Multicultural Drama, which was to mark the beginning of a convulsion in the Dutch immigration debate. Scheffer's argument was that unemployment among immigrant communities was bringing the Netherlands' welfare system to a point of crisis, and that the country's failure to integrate large numbers of new citizens was turning cultural diversity into a social problem. At the time, it was widely dismissed as racist scaremongering by the political classes of the then ruling Labour party. Hirsi Ali herself remembers reading Scheffer and thinking, "He doesn't live in the same country that I live in. He's exaggerating. And the unemployment statistics - living in Leiden, I couldn't see them."

But shortly after leaving university, Hirsi Ali found herself researching precisely this issue for the Labour party. Working for a leftwing thinktank, she says, was a bit like an extension of student life, with everyone agreeing with each other. But the Labour party itself was increasingly divided over immigration, and the rising popularity of Pim Fortuyn was stripping away the party's support. "There were those who said we have to keep the welfare state intact, and we don't want newcomers taking the jobs of old labour members," Hirsi Ali recalls. "And there was the other side which said, no, we must accept other cultures." Unsurprisingly, the policy unit assigned its bright new Somali researcher to an immigration brief. No one expected her to come back with proposals for a reversal of 100 years of Dutch history.

What Hirsi Ali found herself confronting was the central feature of social organisation in the Netherlands, known as "pillarisation". It is a principle that dates back to the 17th century when Amsterdam was Europe's busiest mercantile centre and when common sense dictated that, if business were to thrive, religious differences had to be set aside and antagonistic groups kept physically separate. Article 23 of the Dutch constitution, which established rights for the setting up of separate schools and institutions, is itself a central pillar of the Dutch system, and, in the 1960s, was conveniently reinterpreted as the standard of a new multicultural orthodoxy - officially expressed as "integration with maintenance of one's own identity". It was in this respect that Dutch society found itself in seeming harmony with the new Muslim populations who began to arrive from the 1970s - partly from the former colony of Surinam, but mostly from Morocco and Turkey. Muslims wanted their own schools and mosques, and the Dutch government happily provided for and funded them. Just as there had been Catholic, Protestant and secular "pillars" in the Netherlands, there could now be a Muslim one too.

Hirsi Ali's recommendations to the Labour policy unit were blunt and radical: close all 41 Islamic schools, put a break on immigration and change article 23. Jaws hit the table. The reaction she got indicated how badly she had started trampling on taboos. Job Cohen, who would emerge as one of the key bridge-builders in Dutch-Muslim relations, suggested that Hirsi Ali focus on integration. Influenced by the events of September 11, however, she began to publish articles arguing that Islam was not capable of integrating into a society that was itself not very good at integration. Furthermore, she concluded, if you looked into the condition of women in Muslim communities you found an intractable problem, one which liberals and multiculturalists refused to address. "I called it the paradox of the left," she says. "On the one hand they support ideals of equality and emancipation, but in this case they do nothing about it; they even facilitate the oppression."

The petite researcher who had been sent off to look into immigration had turned into a mighty handful, even before she started attracting death threats. In 2002 she accepted an invitation to stand as a member of parliament for the opposition VVD party and - disillusioned with the Dutch left - accepted. After the death of Fortuyn, Labour suffered a historic defeat at the polls. Hirsi Ali found herself in government, under guard and in the middle of a dispute about Islam and democracy which continues to rattle through Europe.

While it may appear easy to dismiss Hirsi Ali as the migrant who has reacted against her "traumatic" background and become a reactionary as a result, it is only possible to do so without actually listening to her. This is what she says: "You have to understand why people move, the type of people that move, how they do it, the expectations involved. It is about being in a small place somewhere in the world and thinking 'I want out'. It's about coming here and ending up in a kitchen, and being exploited, and having the choice of going back, but deciding to stay. And then you have to discover why these people want to say. And what you discover does not make you a chauvinist pig. If you understand that, you can really understand what globalisation is about, and adapt and modify migration laws.

"I am not against migration. It is simply pragmatic to restrict migration, while at the same time encouraging integration and fighting discrimination. I support the idea of the free movement of goods, people, money and jobs in Europe. But that will only work if universal human rights are also adopted by the newcomers. And if they are not, then you run of the risk of losing what you have here, and what other people want when they come here, which is freedom."

And yet, for all that, Hirsi Ali has become associated with the politics of migration generally, what really interests her is Islam - specifically, the conflict between "universal" human rights and the theological rigidities of traditional religion. There are others in the Netherlands who support some of her broad aims, but reject her tactics. Haci Karacaer, the widely respected leader of the Dutch-Turkish Milli Görüs organisation, agrees with her that "pillarisation" in the Muslim community needs to be broken up, just as it does in the Netherlands as a whole. He sympathises with her advocacy of women's rights. And he agrees with her also that fundamentalism is not being tackled properly from within.

"The average Muslim, the moderate Muslim, doesn't speak," Karacaer says. "So you can't see the diversity in Islamic society in Europe. In Britain and France, it's better. There, Islamic society is much more differentiated." It is when Hirsi Ali universalises her attacks on Islam, Karacaer says, that she alienates those she should be winning over. "Her style has unnecessarily polarised a lot of things."

So is Hirsi Ali tarring all Muslim cultures with one definition of the meaning of Islam? "People who ask me that question assume that geography is more important for Muslims than what is contained in the holy Qur'an. Of course the circumstances in which people live in Turkey are different from those in Morocco or Somalia. But when it comes to the relationship between men and women, in all these countries there is a red line of the woman being subordinate to the male. And most Muslim men justify this subordinacy with the Qur'an. There are so many meanings Europeans miss. We Muslims are brought up with the idea that there is just one relationship possible with God - submission. That's Islam: submission to the will of Allah. I want to bring about a different relationship, in which you say, 'Dear God, I would like to have a conversation with You.' Instead of submission, you get a relationship of dialogue. Let's just assume it's possible."

The idea of dialogue with God, of challenging God, is a leitmotif threading its way through Hirsi Ali's declarations. And it may be this theme - the one that Protestantism, particularly in its Calvinist and Presbyterian manifestations, unleashed on Christianity - that drives her. What she is really talking about is reformation, but of a religion that has no church, no Caliphate. Hirsi Ali is an activist, for sure, but her targets are not so much political as theological. And what she wants to do now is to produce a follow-up to Submission - this time, the story of the men. She has just won a court case, brought by a group of Muslims aiming to prevent her going ahead with the project. The final hearing was a classically Dutch scene of strenuous consensus-building, in which the Muslims had done the proper civic thing by bringing their complaint to the courts, and where the judge rejected their attempt to inhibit artistic expression, but only after he had warned Hirsi Ali that she was pushing - albeit not crossing - the "boundaries of what is tolerable."

It is painfully moving to think of this smart, quiet Somali woman, who looks so small walking away between her bodyguards, believing herself to be dangerous. But she is. Anyone who wants to work with her will have to calculate the risk. "I don't want somebody else to be murdered," she says. "But if I stop doing what I'm doing, it will be like another murder. That's the real trauma, perhaps, the thought of going through what happened to Theo van Gogh again. We told each other we would make part two, and the thing that keeps me going is the thought, 'I have to do it, I have to do it, I have to do it.'"

Posted by: apostate_islam at May 18, 2005 5:19 PM

Paolo,
And don't forget all the literature burning on the pyre including the recent publications of Oriana Fallaci, of course.

Posted by: Liz at May 18, 2005 6:43 PM

DP11 - actually, biased though the BBC is in its current affairs, it does some fantastic comedy and drama - I think it's a totally separate department. Many of the shows I mentioned are fairly recent. Nighty Night is the most un-PC, sick show around.

Forgot to mention Brass Eye and The Day Today.

Also Have I Got News for You, and People Like Us.

All recent stuff, still fighting fit.

Someone mentioned Not the Nine O' Clock News. Rowan Atkinson, also of Blackadder, has been very vocal in denunciation of the proposed Religious Hatred legislation, saying it might have prevented the famous joke years ago about the Aytollah. The one where millions of Muslims are doing the arse in the air thing and a voiceover says, like he's reading the news headlines, 'Meanwhile the search for the Ayatollah's contact lens continues.'. This is followed by a song: Ayatollah, don't Khomeni closer...

Posted by: Interested at May 18, 2005 7:49 PM

E-mail those lists of precious art that would be lost under Islamic rule to your state's Senators and Congressional rep.s today. You'd think the currators of those museums would at least have a clue that their collections of irreplaceable works of art are in danger by Islamic aggression.
Wouldn't you?

Posted by: Freedom1 at May 18, 2005 9:19 PM

Interested:

Knock Knock.
Who's there?
Ayatollah.
Ayatollah who?
Ayatollah you once, ayatollah you twice, and I'm-a not-ta gonna tell you again!

Posted by: Kepha at May 19, 2005 12:24 AM

Kepha - great haram joke!

Perhaps we could have halal versions of shows, eg instead of Gimme Gimme Gimme, we could have Dhimmi Dhimmi Dhimmi....

Posted by: Interested at May 19, 2005 5:41 AM

Interested,
Dhimmi Dhimmi Dhimmi.... That's very good.
Did you ever get sent a copy of the Taliban TV e-mail? It was doing the rounds about 3 years ago and I did post it on JW a few months ago. Stop me if you've heard it before.....

Only available on Sky Digitaliban......
TALIBAN T.V.

6.00 G-Had TV. Morning prayers.
8.30 Talitubbies. Talitubbies say "Ah-ah". Dipsy and Tinky-Winky repair a Stinger missile
launcher.
9.00 Shouts of Praise. More prayers.
11.00 Jihad's Army. The Kandahar-on-Sea battalion repulse another attack by evil, imperialist,
Zionist backed infidels.
12.00 Ready, Steady, Jihad! Celebrities make lethal devices out of everyday objects.
12.30 Panoramadan. The programme reports on Americas attempts to take over the world.
13.30 Xena: Modestly dressed Housewife. Xena stays at home and does some cooking.
14.00 Only Fools and Camels. Dhal-Boy offloads some Chinese rocket launchers to Hamas.
14.30 Green Peter. The total of Kalashnikovs bought by the milk bottle top appeal is revealed.
15.00 Madrasah Challenge. Two more Islamic colleges meet. Bambah Kaskhain asks the questions.'Starter for ten, no praying.'
15.30 I Love 629. A look back at the events of the year, including the Prophet's entry into
Mecca, and the destruction of pagan idols.
16.00 Question Time. Members of the public face questions from political and religious leaders.
17.00 Koranation Street. Deirdrie faces execution by stoning for adultery.
17.30 Middle-East Enders. The entire cast is jailed for unislamic behaviour.
18.00 Holiday. The team go on pilgrimage to Mecca. Again.
18.30 Top of the Prophets. Will the Koran be No.1 for the 63,728th week running?
19.00 Who wants to be a Mujahadin? Mahmoud Tarran asks the questions. Will contestants phone a mullah, go 'inshallah', or ask the Islamic council?
20.00 FILM: Shariah's Angels. The three burkha-clad sleuths go undercover to expose an evil scheme to educate women.
21.30 Big Brother. Who will be taken out of the house and executed this week?
22.30 Shahs in their Eyes. More hopefuls imitate famous destroyers of the infidel.
23.30 They think it's Allah over. Quiz culminating in the 'don't feel the Mullah' round.
0.00 When Imams attack. Amusing footage shot secretly in mosques. The filmers were also secretly shot.
12.30 a.m. The West Bank Show. Arts programme looking at anti-Israel graffiti art in the occupied territories.
1.30 Bhuffi the Infidel Slayer.
2.00 The Gaza strip. The adult hour where couples discuss their favourite strategic positions
3.00 A book at bedtime. The Koran. Again

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 19, 2005 7:47 AM

PS I like your knock knock joke too Kepha.

Who spoofed the My Fair Lady song with the line I've grown accustomed to her fez? Not Tommy Cooper, was it Eric Morecombe?

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 19, 2005 7:53 AM

You forgot the Haufbrauhaus in Munich. When I was a college student, I thought it was the epitome of European cultural icons. Not only is the cavernous building unique and ancient, you can become a connoisseur of fine beer, an aficionado of oompah bands, an expert at dancing the polka, and develop a insatiable appetite for gourmet sauerkraut. I learned more at the Haufbrauhaus in one night than in a week of classes.

I love the beautiful cathedrals in Frankfurt, enormous structures of Gothic architecture with ornate stained glass and antique pews. Many of them have bars in the basements, cozy little taverns that seem so far removed from the palatial sanctums just a few steps away. It took a while to digest, but I learned to love the European attitudes about so many things we Americans are hung-up on. Where in America would you ever find a church with a bar in the basement?

Without Europe, the West would indeed be boring. And Europe has so many treasures that aren't famous landmarks; they are countless. My mind simply cannot bear the stress of contemplating what the muslim savages might attempt to do in Europe. I just can't deal with it right now. Surely the Europeans have considered the possibility of a muslim mega-riot targeting their most treasured sites. Surely they have a contingency plan for such an event, which is certainly inevitable.

Posted by: Susanp at May 20, 2005 1:09 AM

Forgotten in the list

Canterbury cathedral, St Pauls, Rhiems

Magna Carta, Runnymede, Bill of Rights

Westminster Palace - House of Commons.

Posted by: DP111 at May 20, 2005 4:38 PM