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In "Free Radical: Ayaan Hirsi Ali infuriates Muslims and discomfits liberals" in Opinion Journal, Joseph Rago allows Ayaan Hirsi Ali to air some politically incorrect opinions that ordinarily the Journal, which on other occasions has touted Karen Armstrong, is itself too politically correct to feature.
NEW YORK--Ayaan Hirsi Ali is untrammeled and unrepentant: "I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet is a pervert and a tyrant," she declares. "But that is apologizing for the truth."
Query: what should a pious Muslim do in response to a statement like that? Threaten to kill Hirsi Ali? Burn down the Journal's offices? Denounce both Hirsi Ali and the Journal for "Islamophobia"? How about another option -- how about discussing honestly and forthrightly the elements of Muhammad's life that led Hirsi Ali to make that statement, and the effects that his example has had and still has in the Islamic world? In other words, why not engage in that "dialogue" that CAIR ostensibly wants, instead of vilification, dishonest pseudo-dialogue, and threats?
Statements such as these have brought Ms. Hirsi Ali to world-wide attention. Though she recently left her adopted country, Holland--where her friend and intellectual collaborator Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004--she is still accompanied by armed guards wherever she travels.Ms. Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in Mogadishu--into, as she puts it, "the Islamic civilization, as far as you can call it a civilization." In 1992, at age 22, her family gave her hand to a distant relative; had the marriage ensued, she says, it would have been "an arranged rape." But as she was shipped to the appointment via Europe, she fled, obtaining asylum in Holland. There, "through observation, through experience, through reading," she acquainted herself with a different world. "The culture that I came to and I live in now is not perfect," Ms. Hirsi Ali says. "But this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved."
Unease over Muslim immigration had been rising in the Low Countries for some time. For instance, when the gay right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn--"I am in favor of a cold war with Islam," he said, and believed the borders should be closed to Muslims--was gunned down in 2002, it was widely assumed his killer was an Islamist. There was a strange sense of relief when he turned out to be a mere animal-rights activist. Ms. Hirsi Ali brought integration issues to further attention, exposing domestic abuse and even honor killings in the Dutch-Muslim "dish cities."...
Hirsi Ali then discusses the film "Submission" and the murder of Theo van Gogh, and says:
The killing made clear just how apart its groups were. "Immediately after the murder," Ms. Hirsi Ali says, "we learned Theo's killer had access to education, he had learned the language, he had taken welfare. He made it very clear he knew what democracy meant, he knew what liberalism was, and he consciously rejected it. . . . He said, 'I have an alternative framework. It's Islam. It's the Quran.' "At his sentencing, Mohammed Buyeri said he would have killed his own brother, had he made "Submission" or otherwise insulted the One True Faith. "And why?" Ms. Hirsi Ali asks. "Because he said his god ordered him to do it. . . . We need to see," she continues, "that this isn't something that's caused by special offense, the right, Jews, poverty. It's religion."...
Not "religion," but one religion in particular.
Many liberals loathe her for disrupting an imagined "diversity" consensus: It is absurd, she argues, to pretend that cultures are all equal, or all equally desirable. But conservatives, and others, might be reasonably unnerved by her dim view of religion. She does not believe that Islam has been "hijacked" by fanatics, but that fanaticism is intrinsic in Islam itself: "Islam, even Islam in its nonviolent form, is dangerous."The Muslim faith has many variations, but Ms. Hirsi Ali contends that the unities are of greater significance. "Islam has a very consistent doctrine," she says, "and I define Islam as I was taught to define it: submission to the will of Allah. His will is written in the Quran, and in the hadith and Sunna. What we are all taught is that when you want to make a distinction between right and wrong, you follow the prophet. Muhammad is the model guide for every Muslim through time, throughout history."
This supposition justifies, in her view, a withering critique of Islam's most holy human messenger. "You start by scrutinizing the morality of the prophet," and then ask: "Are you prepared to follow the morality of the prophet in a society such as this one?" She draws a connection between Mohammed's taking of child brides and modern sexual oppressions--what she calls "this imprisonment of women." She decries the murder of adulteresses and rape victims, the wearing of the veil, arranged marriages, domestic violence, genital mutilation and other contraventions of "the most basic freedoms."
These sufferings, she maintains, are traceable to theological imperatives. "People say it is a bad strategy," Ms. Hirsi Ali says forcefully. "I think it is the best strategy. . . . Muslims must choose to follow their rational capacities as humans and to follow reason instead of Quranic commands. At that point Islam will be reformed."...
And yet contemporary democracies, she says, accommodate the incitement of such behavior: "The multiculturalism theology, like all theologies, is cruel, is wrongheaded, and is unarguable because it is an utter dogmatism. . . . Minorities are exempted from the obligations of the rest of society, so they don't improve. . . . With this theory you limit them, you freeze their culture, you keep them in place."
The most grievous failing of the West is self-congratulatory passivity: We face "an external enemy that to a degree has become an internal enemy, that has infiltrated the system and wants to destroy it." She believes a more drastic reaction is required: "It's easy," she says, "to weigh liberties against the damage that can be done to society and decide to deny liberties. As it should be. A free society should be prepared to recognize the patterns in front of it, and do something about them."...
Posted by Robert at March 10, 2007 5:52 PM
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There is more than a grain of truth in what
Ayaan Hirsi Ali says then , more than a grain...the silos full !!!
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at March 10, 2007 6:33 PM
"A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel!"
Posted by: Hugh at March 10, 2007 6:58 PM
I find it amusing that OJ would not dare allow anyone, apostate or scholar, other than Ali to make such statements about Islam and Mo. I am thankful that Ali has this cachet so at least the truth can be told, but it is such a shame that OJ and so many other MSM remain in denial.
Posted by: John Sobieski at March 10, 2007 7:17 PM
Fight dhimmitude and visit http://www.masada1234.blogspot.com !
Posted by: Bar Kochba at March 10, 2007 7:37 PM
History has shown us that it takes different people to open different doors. Let me ask you could a white man have lead the civil rights movement in the south? Me thinks no! Thus it will take a liberal atheist woman from a non-european backround to wake up western liberals and pc moderates in a multicultural 1960s haze. Many conservatives need to wake up also considering many in the Republican party are selling out America for all mighty dollar. It will no doubt take a Christian white male to open those doors of reality. To shake those cages of the "worlders" in the GOP. Everybody has a role to play.
Of course that might seem silly but then again that is a reality.
at March 10, 2007 7:39 PM
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is 100% correct.
Since this is about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, allow me to post an interview between herself and the Evening Standard (London Newspaper) that happened on 7th Febuary 2007 to promote her book Infidel.
It did not get on JihadWatch
Article is here:
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http://www.lawcf.org/index.asp?page=Evening+Standard+article+on+Islam+in+Britain
======================================
Date: 7/Feb/2007
Topic: Islam
VIOLENCE IS INHERENT IN ISLAM - IT IS A CULT OF DEATH
Human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali issues a stark warning about the growing threat of Muslim extremism in Britain
• Islamic faith schools must close • Sharia law could happen here • Multiculturalism has failed • Islam is the new fascism
By David Cohen
Evening Standard, 7 February 2007
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, never one to shrink from controversy, has some words of advice for Prime Minister Tony Blair. ‘Close the Islamic faith schools today,’ she says. ‘Britain is sleepwalking into a society that could be ruled by Sharia law within decades unless Islamic schools are shut down and young Muslims are instead made to integrate and accept Western liberal values.’
Hirsi Ali, 38, the Dutch-Somali human-rights campaigner who lives under 24-hour police protection and is in London to promote her provocative new book, Infidel, argues that Catholic and Jewish schools can stay because the values they teach are not a threat to liberal democracy. ‘I haven’t seen anybody coming out of a Catholic or Jewish school advocating violence against women or homosexuals, or wanting to murder innocent people in the name of their religion.’
Having grown up within Islam, Hirsi Ali believes she is uniquely placed to warn the British public that they are living under a ‘great deception’ about the true nature of Islam. ‘They have deceived themselves that the men arrested in the [alleged] beheading plot last week and the 7/7 bombers are a fringe group of radical Muslims who’ve hijacked Islam and that the majority of Muslims are moderate.
‘But they are not. The plot to murder Muslim soldiers in the British Army is consistent with the purest teachings of Islam, which encourages you to kill Muslims who join the infidel army. Violence is inherent in Islam - it’s a destructive, nihilistic cult of death. It legitimates murder. The police may foil plots and freeze bank accounts in the short term, but the battle against terrorism will ultimately be lost unless we realise that it‘s not just with extremist elements within Islam, but the ideology of Islam itself.’
But surely she must see, I counter, that the majority of British Muslims are moderates? Sitting in her publisher‘s office in an elegant grey-flannel trouser suit and pearl earrings, she fixes me with her lucid brown eyes. ’If the majority are moderates, why did the Muslim community never take to the streets to abhor the 7/7 bombers? Why is it that the only time we see Muslims protesting en masse is when Islam is allegedly insulted, like with the Danish cartoons, or the Pope’s comments?
’I‘ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate - a society ruled by Sharia law - in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren‘t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.’
Suddenly Hirsi Ali halts her no-holds-barred polemic, a quizzical look creasing her brow. ‘When will this interview be published?’ When I tell her, she breathes a sigh of relief and in a rare moment of caution, says: ‘Whew! Thankfully I’ll be out of the country! I don‘t know what’s possessed me, but I‘ve been more forthright with you than in any other interview so far.’
It is two years since I last interviewed Hirsi Ali and now, like then, I am struck by the contrast between her physicality - soft voice, waif-like figure, and perfectly manicured long fingernails - and the explosiveness of her rhetoric. If anything, she is more inflammatory and hardline now than she was then.
Yet, as she reminds me, a lot has happened since we met, including the murder of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker who made her film, Submission, in which verses from the Koran of a man‘s alleged right to beat his wife are superimposed on an actress’s body.
Van Gogh’s assassination in late 2004 propelled Hirsi Ali from being well known to world famous, because plunged into his chest by his Dutch Moroccan killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, was a knife with a letter addressed to her, warning that she was next. The political fallout from this public death threat has dramatically affected her life ever since and has made her into the new Salman Rushdie.
It costs the Dutch government about 8 3.5 million (£2.5 million) to provide armed guards for her round-the-clock protection, she says, and it means that she lives ‘in fear and looking over my shoulder’, but insists it‘s a personal price worth paying. Initially forced to flee to a safe house, her neighbours hounded her out, saying her presence put their lives (and real estate stock) in danger. The ball that began rolling that day has led, via a few detours, to her leaving Holland, where she’d served as an MP for the conservative Liberal Party, and taking a position as an analyst at the Right-of-centre American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC.
To some, like Time Magazine, which in 2005 proclaimed her one of the ‘100 most influential people in the world’, she is venerated almost as a prophet, certainly as a hero. But to others she is reviled as a troublemaker, Islamaphobe, and someone who simply transmigrated from one extreme position on Islam to another. She has certainly travelled far: from the privations of Africa to the West, from devout Muslim to apostate, from a five-year-old girl subjected to the mutilation of circumcision and arranged marriage to fervent defender of women’s rights.
But is it true, I ask, that she ‘regretted’ writing Submission, as claimed by a British national newspaper in its headline last week. She seems surprised to hear this. ‘I absolutely wish that Theo had not been killed,’ she says. ‘But I don’t regret that I made it. In fact, I‘m proud of that film. To feel otherwise would be to deny everything I stand for.’
Recently, says Hirsi Ali, she met Salman Rushdie at a writer‘s festival in Manhattan and confessed that as a Somali Muslim in 1989, she had supported the fatwa against him. ’Rushdie said that if I can believe he should be killed in 1989, and now believe what I do today, it fills him with optimism because hopefully other Muslims will follow the same path.’
When I ask Hirsi Ali why she‘s become even more outspoken since we last met, she says that it’s because she‘s realised that ’being diplomatic and politically correct‘ gets you nowhere. ’The world is now in a far more dangerous position than it was then. Hamas is in power in Palestine, Iran is ruled by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and in the West, we are engaged in a war against the enemy within as well as without.
‘The mistake that Blair and Bush made is that they called it a War on Terror, whereas in fact, it’s a War on Islamic Fascism. It‘s a war of values and the only way we are going to win it is to be honest about what we are fighting. This plot to behead Muslim army recruits is a warning to all potential recruits and it can be supported by what is in Islam.’
Hirsi Ali says that on current projections of immigration growth and birth rates, British Muslims will be the dominant group within the next 50 years. A recent poll, in which 40 per cent of young Muslims said they would prefer to live under Sharia law, and a majority said they were in favour of women taking the veil, should worry liberals.
‘We risk a reverse takeover. In 50 years, a majority Muslim society could democratically vote for Sharia law, and then what you face is that Britain will slowly start to look like Saudi Arabia. Women will be veiled, driven away from the public sphere, polygamy will be rife.’
She takes in my sceptical look and says: ‘You think it can’t happen? The problem with liberals is that we believe other people are as reasonable and tolerant as we are. How naive is the self-deception of the West to continue to talk of moderate Islam? We‘re trying to appease Islam, but we are headed for a terrible confrontation between fascist Islam and Right-wing fascists who will step in when liberals fail to do so. Why do Britons think that what happened in the Baltics,with fascist Right-wingers murdering Muslims, can’t happen here? It can, and it will, unless we stop burying our heads in the sand.’
But there is a glimmer of hope, she says, borne out of the increasing realisation that multiculturalism has failed in the UK. So what does she believe should be done?
‘We have to fight their values with ours,’ she says. ‘We have to persuade young Muslims that liberal democracy is superior, that what the Prophet Mohammed said is not right, that the Koran is a man-made brutal doctrine of death whose time has long passed. We have to show the next generation of Muslims, the children, that they have a choice and to do that - to have any hope whatsoever - we have to close down Islamic faith schools.’
Unsurprisingly, Hirsi Ali says she is much happier living in America than in Europe, because ‘people really appreciate what I do, and the personal risks I take, whereas here they prefer to shoot the messenger.’
When I ask how she sees her role going forward, she begins talking to me about her new book. Indeed, it is typical of her honesty - and infamous lack of tact - that, within earshot of her publishers, she tells me that Infidel, a book detailing her life story, is ‘far less interesting’ than the philosophical one she’s currently writing, called Short Cuts to Enlightenment.
‘Its about the Prophet Mohammed waking up in the New York Public Library and having his absolutist ideas challenged by John Stuart Mill, Frederick Hayek and Karl Popper, my favourite liberal thinkers,’ she says.
Do they convince him? She smiles. ‘No, they don’t. But something happens to throw the Prophet Mohammed into doubt so that by the end of the book, he‘s no longer completely convinced by his own dogma.’ She pauses. ‘I suppose that is the most I can do - creating chinks of self-doubt where previously there was none. I can start the revolution within Islam but it will be up to others to finish it.’
l Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is published by Free Press, Simon & Schuster, £12.99
at March 10, 2007 7:55 PM
Her antagonism to all religion and her outspoken atheism may offend (they do me somewhat) but oh, it is worth it. She can look the secular West multicultralists right in the eyes and call them the rankest of hypocrites. Her body and mind and heart bear the scars of Islam. Nothing 'hypothetical' about her beliefs.
Posted by: poetcomic1 at March 10, 2007 7:56 PM
Outlaw islam - globally and free the slaves of "the prophet".
Posted by: TINBH at March 10, 2007 8:17 PM
Ayaa Hirsi even warns us against what are perceived as moderate Muslims in most of her comments. Maybe we have watched the rise of multiculturalism to long in the West and somehow it has creeped into our pyche over the years.
Tell someone that this is the way it is or should be long and often enough(multiculturalism/political correctness) than we began to believe it and accept it as the way things are meant to be; but are they?
The irony here is that much of the perversion of multiculturalism has been developed and is driven by groups like the ACLU,trial lawyers, and special interest groups at every turn. I.E. say this or do that and you could be sued- ETC. Look at the current DW article below this one on San Francisco State University as just one of numerous examples that occur every day, look at the current JW article written by Diana West (she understands exactly where Ayaan Hirsi Aly is coming from.
But how do we deal with the warped religion of Multiculturalism when the driving force behind it is our own legal system which is full of trial lawyers waiting to pounce at any moment on someone who speaks the truth about Islam??
Groups like CAIR and their battery of willing lawyers are working everyday to spoon feed Islam to us in anyway possible which is mostly deception and half truths (taqiya, and kitman).
The West needs the likes of Ayaan Hirsi,Nonie Darwish, Wafi Sultan and the other Muslim apostates who can speak clearly about the myths that are presented as truths about the Islamic religion because they have been there.
Posted by: Mackie at March 10, 2007 8:45 PM
which cult figure is this? he has a huge cult following, enjoys sex with little children and claims to be the "leader"?
gary glitter?
no it's mohammed! or "the prophet mohammed" as the MSM refers to him. under fear the MSM will soon be adding (PBUH) after that crap.
Posted by: leonthepigfarmer at March 10, 2007 8:46 PM
These people with their tiny little minds are of the same DNA as those who ignored Copernicus and persecuted Gallileo. The Religion of Multiculturalism is as dogmatic as the 15th Century Catholic Church.
It is so weird that the most uninformed of the non-Mohammedan Islamic Apologists are the least informed. These people are so afraid of the truth, that they find fault with the messenger, and ignore the message. They must not allow any fissures in their beliefs, or else their house of straw will be blown away when the Big Bad Wolf huffs and puffs. In this case the Big Bad Wolf is a female, and her name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Posted by: Pelayo at March 10, 2007 9:25 PM
"But this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved."
And this, more than anything, threatens the Cult of Multiplicity. A cult that misunderstands the principle of equality - seeking instead to enforce totalitarian equivalency - despite merit, justice or truth.
My personal sense is that it's too bad she hasn't converted to Christianity or Judaism. A mind as rigorously inquiring as hers and a heart that is so capable of seeking truth just doesn't seem made for the ultimate limitations imposed by atheism - although I can readily imagine atheism being a great relief from Islam.
Posted by: Daisytoo at March 10, 2007 9:41 PM
It is so weird that the most uninformed of the non-Mohammedan Islamic Apologists are the least informed.
I cannot believe that I actually wrote that!
I need to fix it -
It is so weird that the most uninformed of the non-Mohammedan Islamic Apologists are the loudest.
Posted by: Pelayo at March 10, 2007 9:43 PM
Pelayo,
It happens :) .. and to your point .. "It is so weird that the most uninformed of the non-Mohammedan Islamic Apologists are the loudest."
Yes, because they are the most threatened - their delusions are being painfully popped by one of those who is supposed to be eternally grateful to be condescended to by the left. And instead of being grateful to be told her culture (that held her prisoner and tortured her) is as good as anything the West has wrought, Hirsi Ali holds the mirror of Western Culture up to them and they scream .. unable to bear their delusions breaking in front of their eyes .. what will they do if they can't condesend to others anymore?
Posted by: Daisytoo at March 10, 2007 10:00 PM
Pelayo:
It is so weird that the most uninformed of the non-Mohammedan Islamic Apologists are the least informed.
==
Sounds like Donald Rumsfelds "Known Knowns":
"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."
Posted by: UK Infidel Lover at March 10, 2007 10:24 PM
This is a perfect illustration of a lesson in what should now be apparent to those not like-minded i.e. liberal cowardice. Notice how the liberals/leftist (in every realm of society -be it European, American, Canadian, Asian, etc. react when confronted with islamic terrorism i.e. it/they -in general - submit -just as good dhimmi and future potential muslim should act per the relentless conditioning (i.e. terror and pervasive continual threats of).
"Dialogue" in general - is the limit of combat for the liberal (and to some degree the hard left -but it will resort to violent means - only if and when it has rendered its opponents defenseless (e.g. eliminating the Second Amendment of the US Constitution - which is the only provision giving the right to defend oneself in the USA). Therefore dialogue works but only to a certain point - and another lesson/illustration - which should now be apparent - the left/liberal are generally better at this aspect of persuasion than are non-liberals. However notice the liberal/left is moved to act - even in ways which are diametrically opposed to everything it supposedly stands for -human rights, women's rights, racial equality, economic equality, and on - one after another - is suspended by the left/liberal when faced with an opponent (which does not even consider the views of the left let alone implement such) who if not successful in dialogue or argument - will then move to physical combat (i.e. terror and violence) to achieve its objectives (e.g. jihaidist and global islam). In the non-muslim world - i.e. civilized world - dialogue defines the accepted limits to conflict (at least internally) so the opposition to the liberal/left cause - which generally loses - and will not go beyond these limits. Perhaps a look at alternative solutions -between left/liberal and non-left/liberal is now necessary.
at March 10, 2007 10:44 PM
TINBH
agreed, liberals do submit to islam when faced with islamic terror. i'd go further and state that they show signs of the "stockholm syndrome" when subjected to muslim terror.
example, after the london bombings i read many reports of liberals going to visit their local mosques for understanding, or the head of the metropolitan police (the other blair i think) stating that "islam literally means peace".
the MSM needs to be ended. how? the BBC is paid for by tax payers, we need to stop paying for this and boycott the BBC. start supporting right wing web sites and news agencies. not fox news.
boycott ABC, CNN, Fox news, sky news the BBC, al-jezeera, stop supporting charities with links to the U.N and other marxist orgs.
and boycott all muslim establishments, restaurants and organisations.
at March 10, 2007 11:42 PM
I can practically read the frustrations on the face of libs when faced with someone like Hirsi Ali. They would love to paint her as a typical right wing religious Christian Baptist fanatic but unfortunately for them she isn't one. Neither does she proclaim herself a republican bush supporter. She is very liberal in social values yet she is staunchly anti Islam. This confusion gives them a pause because they don't know how to attack her, an African minority immigrant Somali woman. She doesn’t behave like one, because she isn't attacking the west, Christianity, whites, and the rich. Confusion Confusion.
Posted by: desidude at March 10, 2007 11:52 PM
I read her new book "Infidel". Her nightmare life under Islam is brought home in a very personal way. She had--and has--tremendous courage and intellectual independence. Her intellectual independence took her out of Islam and out of religion altogether--an inspiring thread in the book. She's part of the Enlightenment and those who value reason--hardly fitting into today's America at all. Anyway, the book was very hard to put down and I highly recommend it to everyone.
Posted by: MelM at March 11, 2007 1:28 AM
leonthepigfarmer - very good points particularly the ‘Stockholm syndrome’ analogy and boycotts. Though liberals attempts to empathize can be a positive reaction in certain scenarios – this approach only works when dealing within the non-muslim world context – that is it does not apply when dealing with “those who submit” (i.e. muslims) – and in short – ends in utter failure and further – invites even more negative actions as it is received entirely as weakness to be further exploited by islamists/muslims/ and all other form of totalitarianism (i.e. leftists and their ‘utopia on earth’ via absolute control by any means). The liberals are completely dumbfounded every time they attempt to appease –as the aggressor –instead of ceasing hostility – only commits more and to greater degree. The Islamist completely understands that the West is currently controlled –in large part by liberal/left aspects – and tailors their actions accordingly. The islamists – understand the liberal/leftist mentality more than the fellow citizens do and – in fact are more adroit at using the tactics than the non-liberals are and in some cases –even better than the liberals (e.g. the use of MSM and legal organizations of the non-muslim world to wage subtle and effective campaigns which further the islamists overall and long term goals). They also understand and exploit to fullest degree that non-left/liberal –i.e. global freedom loving (and freedom understanding) populace are their main obstacle in their global islamization campaign and are also currently almost totally powerless.
This must change and widespread large-scale boycotts will help, but more must be done. The liberal/left -in addition to being cowardly – is also a psychological bully and thus acts as such as long as it can get away with this behaviour and as long as no one will stand up –against such. For example the liberal rails against the “right wing” because it is supposedly totally anti-homosexual, anti-feminists, anti-freedom-to-excess, etc., etc., while it gives a complete pass to the islamist, which –in liberal terms is to the right of the extreme right in the West. The only difference is – the liberal/left knows it can get away with its bullying/need to exert total control over every aspect of life when dealing with the West’s “right wing” (because for nearly 80 years its cultural Marxism campaign (a.k.a. “political correctness”) has successfully rendered its internal competition – impudent), while – it knows and understands –with bully instinct that it can not do so with regard to the islamist. In short – psychological bully meets combination psychological and physical bully – which in the animal world means – it is the submissive one. The left/liberal therefore submits to islamist – though not completely yet (liberals will be the first converts and many would have already done so (from cowardice) except they cannot yet give up their liberal values they supposedly hold so dear to heart ---not yet.
The non-islamist, non-liberal/leftist must stand up and against the liberals and the left as only then can any progress in stopping the islamist begin. They must be ceaselessly hounded and confronted with the fact and acts of their cowardice until they realize that they can no longer get away with their psychological bullying and their total hypocrisy vis-à-vis their relation with islamists and their own people. The liberal/left must be made to understand that it can either compromise with its own – and give up some of its liberalism - or –the only other alternative- it gives up all of its liberal ideals and sides with the islamist. It is nearing time-if not overdue already – that the streets should be filled with those who love freedom, who will not submit to totalitarianism –be it Western liberal/leftist or islamic variety.
at March 11, 2007 1:51 AM
Speaking of Muslims and their liberal friends, after all that, meaning after the whole "Islamaphobia" purge over ar Dean`s World, Ali Eteraz has decided to quit writing there.
Wonder if Dean is starting to feel a bit used since he lost at least a half dozen of his regular contributors and many other frequent comments writers.
Or, he probably still feels like a hero standing up for the poor oppressed minority as if Muslims are poor.oppressed and he is in a position to defend them from the meanies who want to submit Islam to logic and history.
Posted by: tokyobk at March 11, 2007 3:47 AM
How cool is Ayaan Hirsi Ali?? No really ...
Posted by: drk at March 11, 2007 6:30 AM
I agree that Islam is a problem. However, I cannot for one minute countenance Ayaan Hirsi's assault on private education.
Although I am a public school teacher, I see government near-monopolies in education as part of the problem, not part of the solution. It is the lingering influence of large, left-leaning teachers' unions, departments of miseducation, and the like that have foisted on America (and Britain, and Canada, and you-name-whoever) the idiotic multiculturalism that left us wide open to first Communist and then Islamicist subversion in the first place. It is the nefarious influence of John Dewey and similar folk that has brought us to a pass where everyone feels he has a right to insult Christianity and now, since the Left discovered the Falastin Arabs, resurrect the _Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion_ . It has left us defenceless again hypertribalist Muslim consciences deciding to bully everyone else.
No, the only reason why the USA has been slightly more awake than anyone else is because in the 1920's, our Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional an Oregon law that made all non-public schooling. (Pierce v. Society of Sisters).
We need more educational freedom, not less; less regulation of education, not more. Indeed, in the Netherlands, it's probably only because the few remaining Christlijke Gereformeerde and other traditionalist Christians are allowed to open schools of their own that there is any sanity at all left in that swampland.
Allowing the Muslims (and, yes, certain pseudo-Christian racist cults such as the Identity folks) to run their own schools is a buffer for the rest of us to have educational choice--including schools (probably private) that will teach the whole, unpleasant, religion-of-death truth about Islam.
Posted by: Kepha at March 11, 2007 12:46 PM
To the point raised by Kepha:
The Europeans are in a tough spot on this. Worse, in a sense, than the US.
Europe badly needs a free (from gov't control) education movement, to counter the undoubted crap that the kids are being fed in school. But the islamist movement is much stronger there, and would undoubtedly use the opportunity to ramp up the indoctrination and put in a full madrassah system.
In a sense, the gov't monopoly on education, where it exists there, is a protection against that probability.
My guess is that Ali is seeing the issue from this angle.
Remember, where democracy, untrammeled by protections for individual rights or limitations on state power, is introduced into mohammedan societies, the very next thing you get is oppressive islamist rule -- (most of the time anyway, we'll see how Afghanistan and Iraq go, I'm luke-warm about them so far).
Home schooling in the hands of the jihaddis would simply be a jihaddi development program.
I will probably be much the same here, but perhaps (and this is a point worth debating), just perhaps, somewhat less toxic, widespread and out-of-control.
==================
Until there is some legal framework and an enforcement framework in place, to limit the spread of jihaddi propaganda, the problem of jihaddis brainwashing kids will not go away.
Posted by: joeblough at March 11, 2007 2:58 PM
UK Infidel Lover
That was a great article in The Evening Standard thanks for that!
I don't suppose it recieved national coverage.
It's sad that Ayaan feels unsafe for saying certain things and makes me feel sickened and ashamed that MY country,this green and pleasant land has been hijacked by the muslim mafia.
I'm finding it harder to stop invoking The Knight's Templar daily.
There are legions of good men who would protect her.
We could have a joust for her favour..
I would win!
Posted by: ovinesongs at March 11, 2007 4:15 PM
joeblough: The point where I appreciate Ayaan Hirsii is her stance on individual liberty. It is precisely because I see individual liberty as an important political "good" that I oppose the increasing centralization and bureaucratization of schooling. Of course, Ms. Ali is coming from Europe, where government controls are stronger, and is probably thinking in terms of using this characteristic of European governance against jihad. However, I think a far better thing for all European states would be to let parents, localities, and smaller associations have a far larger say in educating their young.
Hence, I believe that Ayaan Hirsii who wishes to sell the UK on outlawing Muslim (and, perhaps, other "sectarian"?) institutions is betraying Ayaan Hirsi the classical liberal.
I am not seeing homeschooling and private schooling as inevitably good. We have plenty of unwholesome types in the Identity movement and other paranoid fringes who use these; but we have many more who simply want their children to learn the Bible, Latin, and Greek who are into alternative education, too. It is the latter who are perhaps saving a bit of Western civilization. But they could not exist without constitutional and legal protections for dissenting viewpoints and the schools that propagate them.
Frankly, the candidate I will wholeheartedly and enthusiastically back candidates who are for the abolition, or at least curtailment, of the federal Dept. of Education and scaling back much recent legislation that seeks to "help" education, but in fact harms it.
Posted by: Kepha at March 11, 2007 8:43 PM
I give credit to Ayaan Hirsi Ali for telling it like it is regarding islam. However, stating the obvious does not make her a genious anymore than I stating the fact that the earth is a sphere makes me a geographer or topographer.
Everyone here at Jihadwatch has said, more or less, the same things as she.
I do enjoy watching liberals squirm as a black, African victim of genital mutilation decries their adopted ideological weapon for what it is. After all, it would be just as much a violation of the canons of political correctness to attack Ayaan Hirsi Ali as it was for her to say what she said.
I am reminded of an essay by Fjordman (I think) entitled "Caucausophobia." Rather than rely on people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom I only agree with on this one issue and find most of her other beliefs as repellent; I would rather loudly, proudly, and rightly speak my own mind.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's comments are not legitimate because she is a black immigrant, they are legitimate because they are true. And their inherit truthfullness remains intact even if I, a white male member of the privileged whose bourgeois boots tread o'er the broken backs of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's ancestors, say them.
No, let us all speak the truth and call evil evil and good good and racist liberal liars the lying, racist liberals they are.
Posted by: senatortombstone at March 12, 2007 12:51 AM
I have found this web site run by Sikhs in the UK.
I am sure you all remember the "forced/coerced conversions story a short while ago.
This site has been set up as a response to this.
DesiDude have you visited
It really just refuses to face the issue of islam, the discussion forum is heavily censored and criticism of islam is not allowed.
It is sad that the left/liberals have sided with the islamists.Not only is it total moral cowardice it is because they beleive they have an "ally" against the "establishment" the USA, the UK, the west.
As somebody of Indian origin, born in the UK I just can't understand this self loathing, it is bizarre.
WE the anti islamists need to contact the Indian community via Sikh, Hindu,Buddhist/Jain temples form an alliance with them.
I have met Sikhs/Hindus who just will not countanance any criticism of islam.
at March 12, 2007 4:00 AM
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the best weapon we have against this stupid PC culture of the West. She can be the virus that takes the whole PC animal for a 10 count.
The leftist Jihad deniers cannot dismiss her as an Islamophobe. Heck, most won't be able to respond at all give a lack of knowledge and the un-PC aspect of taking on someone from a disadvantaged background
Step #1 to the defeat of Jihad: getting Ayaan as much TV time as possible. Even on shows like Bill Maher, she can have an amazing impact on those who are asleep but reachable.
My entire life (including my law school years in Ann Arbor Michigan---one of the regional PC headquarters of indoctrination), I have avoided thinking about people in terms of categories, in terms of the "boxes" they can put a "check mark" in.
She is a smart person, and I'm sure she realizes that the same PC culture that makes us vulnerable to Islam actually makes it easier for her to get her point across. It is an irony that mirrors in some ways how Western openness is missused by Muslims. The same thought process that allows the Muslims to get away with their bad behavior makes it impossible for anyone of the PC mindset to be dismissive of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
If only someone could convince her to ease up on the anti-religion thing, at least for tactical reasons.
If she ran for public office in the U.S., think of how much attention the Koran would get. She can never be President, but Congress and the Senate are possibilities. She would be the most viable anti-Islam candidate I can think of.
Posted by: JSobieski at March 13, 2007 2:45 AM
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