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Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Here’s What I Would Have Said at Brandeis

Apr 11, 2014 10:49 am By Robert Spencer

ayaan_hirsi_ali3“We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking, where all ideas are welcome and where civil debate is encouraged.” Indeed. But instead, they are dreary factories of conformity, where a spurious “diversity” of everything except thought and ideas is celebrated. And thuggish individuals and groups with ties to jihad terrorists are allowed to be the arbiters of what the thoroughly indoctrinated students will hear and not hear.

This will not end well. It can’t.

“Here’s What I Would Have Said at Brandeis,” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Wall Street Journal, April 10 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

On Tuesday, after protests by students, faculty and outside groups, Brandeis University revoked its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at its commencement ceremonies in May. The protesters accused Ms. Hirsi Ali, an advocate for the rights of women and girls, of being “Islamophobic.” Here is an abridged version of the remarks she planned to deliver.

One year ago, the city and suburbs of Boston were still in mourning. Families who only weeks earlier had children and siblings to hug were left with only photographs and memories. Still others were hovering over bedsides, watching as young men, women, and children endured painful surgeries and permanent disfiguration. All because two brothers, radicalized by jihadist websites, decided to place homemade bombs in backpacks near the finish line of one of the most prominent events in American sports, the Boston Marathon.

All of you in the Class of 2014 will never forget that day and the days that followed. You will never forget when you heard the news, where you were, or what you were doing. And when you return here, 10, 15 or 25 years from now, you will be reminded of it. The bombs exploded just 10 miles from this campus.

I read an article recently that said many adults don’t remember much from before the age of 8. That means some of your earliest childhood memories may well be of that September morning simply known as “9/11.”

You deserve better memories than 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing. And you are not the only ones. In Syria, at least 120,000 people have been killed, not simply in battle, but in wholesale massacres, in a civil war that is increasingly waged across a sectarian divide. Violence is escalating in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Libya, in Egypt. And far more than was the case when you were born, organized violence in the world today is disproportionately concentrated in the Muslim world.

Another striking feature of the countries I have just named, and of the Middle East generally, is that violence against women is also increasing. In Saudi Arabia, there has been a noticeable rise in the practice of female genital mutilation. In Egypt, 99% of women report being sexually harassed and up to 80 sexual assaults occur in a single day.

Especially troubling is the way the status of women as second-class citizens is being cemented in legislation. In Iraq, a law is being proposed that lowers to 9 the legal age at which a girl can be forced into marriage. That same law would give a husband the right to deny his wife permission to leave the house.

Sadly, the list could go on. I hope I speak for many when I say that this is not the world that my generation meant to bequeath yours. When you were born, the West was jubilant, having defeated Soviet communism. An international coalition had forced Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The next mission for American armed forces would be famine relief in my homeland of Somalia. There was no Department of Homeland Security, and few Americans talked about terrorism.

Two decades ago, not even the bleakest pessimist would have anticipated all that has gone wrong in the part of world where I grew up. After so many victories for feminism in the West, no one would have predicted that women’s basic human rights would actually be reduced in so many countries as the 20th century gave way to the 21st.

Today, however, I am going to predict a better future, because I believe that the pendulum has swung almost as far as it possibly can in the wrong direction.

When I see millions of women in Afghanistan defying threats from the Taliban and lining up to vote; when I see women in Saudi Arabia defying an absurd ban on female driving; and when I see Tunisian women celebrating the conviction of a group of policemen for a heinous gang rape, I feel more optimistic than I did a few years ago. The misnamed Arab Spring has been a revolution full of disappointments. But I believe it has created an opportunity for traditional forms of authority—including patriarchal authority—to be challenged, and even for the religious justifications for the oppression of women to be questioned.

Yet for that opportunity to be fulfilled, we in the West must provide the right kind of encouragement. Just as the city of Boston was once the cradle of a new ideal of liberty, we need to return to our roots by becoming once again a beacon of free thought and civility for the 21st century. When there is injustice, we need to speak out, not simply with condemnation, but with concrete actions.

One of the best places to do that is in our institutions of higher learning. We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking, where all ideas are welcome and where civil debate is encouraged. I’m used to being shouted down on campuses, so I am grateful for the opportunity to address you today. I do not expect all of you to agree with me, but I very much appreciate your willingness to listen.

I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women’s and girls’ basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight.

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

Is such an argument inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews.

The motto of Brandeis University is “Truth even unto its innermost parts.” That is my motto too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of the sexes.

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Filed Under: academia, free speech Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    The Leftists have decided that ordinary Muslims do NOT support terrorism or the imposition of Sharia by force or by stealth…when in fact the majority of Muslims so! They want a CALIPHATE which will do PRECISELY that…impose Sharia by stealth and by force and annihilate all other cultures and peoples.

    The Leftists have decided that white male Europeans are the problem that must be resolved by an endgültige Lösung through Muslim immigration. They will then quickly turn the tables on the Muslims and force them to abandon Islam and indoctrinate their children as devout Marxists.

    • john spielman says

      Apr 11, 2014 at 4:43 pm

      unfortunately the muslims will slaughter the leftists as they did in Afganistan when the proSoviet govt of Najibullah was ousted and the Taliban took over.

      • PJG says

        Apr 11, 2014 at 7:12 pm

        Why would people kill their slaves?

      • Bluelilly says

        Apr 11, 2014 at 11:03 pm

        One Muslim on a forum admitted to their agenda. That they know they have the leftists in their pocket,and well aware of their loyalty to them ( which they see as weakness) and that they will fight for the muslims fanatically against the patriot, their own people !
        When their side wins, he continued , they plan to fight the leftist useful idiots too for supremacy. He ended with a smiley.

        There is a book by a Pakistani “The downfall of the Netherlands-Land of the naive fools ” who lived in the Netherlands. His book was taken off the shelves and he was fined for writing it back in 1996 because it was not politically correct, and ” incited hatred”
        In it he warned the Dutch whom he genuinely liked and appreciated that the muslims all laughed at their gullibility. They are raised knowing this and to exploit the kindness of the people whom they fool all the time.

        Other former Muslims have also issued similar warnings.
        Chilling, like some horror sci-fi plot !

        • Jay Boo says

          Apr 11, 2014 at 11:56 pm

          A useful dhimmi dummy when no longer needed is just a disposable kafir.

        • nothosaur says

          Apr 12, 2014 at 12:56 pm

          All the present day leftists who defend muslim supremacists will have died of old age by the time the West falls. They will die comfortable and happy.

          The next generation will absorb the damage.

      • Defcon 4 says

        Apr 12, 2014 at 2:24 pm

        Same thing happened to the Iranian communists, one of the first groups disappeared when the Islamic “republic” of Iran was founded.

  2. Melvin Muskrat says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 12:43 pm

    That would have been a very fine speech Ayaan. So unfortunate that it was too much for Brandeis administration and students to handle. Very sad.

    • john spielman says

      Apr 11, 2014 at 4:58 pm

      these Brandeis U staff and students are willfully ignorant of the danger they are in and probably will not change even when their muslim overseers eventually lead them into the new gas chambers in the Islamic “FINAL SOLUTION”

      • Bluelilly says

        Apr 11, 2014 at 11:11 pm

        Bob Beckel of Fox News reckons the University is being funded by CAIR with Arab money.
        Sounds the most probable explanation

        Must all be leftists then, as hypocrites of the first order, all they care about is money.

    • Jay Boo says

      Apr 11, 2014 at 9:56 pm

      Because Islam is so indefensible Muslim organizations resort to slander in order to avoid scrutiny of their debased ideology.

      Islam is overrated even by its enemies.
      Islam is not the well-constructed lie that we give it credit for being.
      Once we remove the (Willful Ignorance and Vanity) it can no longer (Play the Victim).
      It actually falls apart quite easily.

      • Defcon 4 says

        Apr 12, 2014 at 2:32 pm

        “It actually falls apart quite easily.”

        Tell that to the Christians of Lebanon. Tell that to the Zoroastrians of
        Iran (who were once the Persians). Tell that to the najjis kaffir that are being (or have been) ethnically cleansed from Afghanistan, 40% of Cyprus, the Sudan and everywhere islam0nazism holds sway.

  3. Henry says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 1:20 pm

    Brandeis has shamefully not lived up to its motto “Truth even unto its innermost parts.” May I suggest a new one: Truth will not have the final word in our reality!

    Praise to Ms Hirsi Ali, a great speech deserving to be heard.

  4. George Kirkpatrick says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 1:24 pm

    The fact that the university cancelled the speech by Madam Hirsi Ali is sinful! She write and speaks the truth and for Brandeis to take the action they did tells me they SHOULD NOT be teaching youth.
    George Kirkpatrick

  5. Wellington says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 2:09 pm

    It’s a great speech by a very courageous and highly intelligent woman. One reservation I would like to register about it is Hirsi Ali’s call for a “Muslim Reformation” to mirror those that took place with Judaism and Christianity. I don’t think you can reform rotten and Islam is rotten to its core, contra Christianity and Judaism. I suspect Hirsi Ali knows this, however, but is just hitting the ball into Islam’s side of the court here for form’s sake, much as others like Robert Spencer and Geert Wilders have done from time to time, though I want to be clear that I don’t speak for any of them, just myself.

    • Champ ✿ says

      Apr 11, 2014 at 3:33 pm

      I don’t think you can reform rotten and Islam is rotten to its core, contra Christianity and Judaism.

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      I *completely* agree, Wellington! …evil cannot be reformed, and islam is wholly evil; beginning, but not ending with, muhammad.

      The Bible teaches us to hate what is evil and cling to what is good–not try to reform evil:

      “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” — Romans 12:9

      • Wellington says

        Apr 11, 2014 at 6:22 pm

        Hi, Champ. Thanks for your post. Hope you’re doing fine.

        I just wanted to comment on the passage from Romans you cited about love having to be sincere. I’ll make the comment short. It’s this: Not only is the obvious requirement that love should be sincere absent from Islam but love in toto is absent from Islam. I see no love anywhere in Mo’s creed—-not love of a higher power (fear and submission but not love), not love of one’s fellow man, not love of oneself, no romantic love, just no love at all. How sad—–and how deficient.

  6. Rob says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 4:33 pm

    Thank you Ms Ali.
    Sadly, Western feminism was only ever an economic movement. It had its roots in the post WW1 era when ‘Rosie (who had been) the riveter’, while the men were in battle, liked and wanted to continue to receive a pay packet.
    The British National Health Service has a workforce that is heavy with women.
    I saw a recent stat that 600 young Muslim women living in Greater London had been admitted to emergency departments in just one year suffering from complications of FGM.
    Where was a the rage from women medical workers about this?
    If asked, would these women have described themselves as ‘feminists’ – very likely.
    Was it deflected like so much else by the morass of multiculturalism?
    A useful addition to the speech would have been:
    ‘I’m addressing the women in this audience. Don’t shift uneasily in your seats and cast an accusing glance at the male students around you. This is both your failure and your mission. no one else’s’.

    • older feminist says

      Apr 12, 2014 at 11:09 am

      Well, American Feminism goes back at least to the Seneca Conference in 1848 in NY, hosted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton was an early leader in the women’s movement, but has since been wiped out of the Feminist history because she felt the role of motherhood was a valid choice and her passion.

      Her contributions to the welfare of wives and mothers has been devalued in order to accommodate the more radical aims of the 3rd wave of Feminism, aligning it with the LGBT agenda, the leftist socialist agenda, etc.

      Women should reassert Elizabeth Cady Stanton back into the 4th wave of Feminism, which is coming and embracing pro-life sentiments.

      • Rob says

        Apr 12, 2014 at 5:53 pm

        Let’s hope the 4th wave will be a little more ‘universal rights’ oriented and include militancy against the things AH Ali is talking about.
        FGM, child marriage, honor killing etc

  7. RodSerling says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 5:18 pm

    This controversy shows once again how much of the mainstream media doesn’t bother to research someone’s actual views, but instead make statements on the basis of accusations and assumptions (like Brandeis did in this case).

    OT: CBN: One in five white Frenchmen have been victims of Muslim immigrants
    http://topconservativenews.com/2014/04/cbn-one-in-five-white-frenchmen-have-been-victims-of-muslim-immigrants/

  8. tama says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 6:27 pm

    Aaand coming to my school next week:

    http://s28.postimg.org/qkljax1rx/1458546_10152351919835763_8394498923065950517_n.jpg

    http://s28.postimg.org/drxfazq65/485562_10152351919440763_1652029442502162403_n.jpg

  9. Tom W Harris says

    Apr 11, 2014 at 8:43 pm

    Sad and frightening cave-in. Antisemitism is truly an inside job.

  10. profitsbeard says

    Apr 12, 2014 at 3:02 am

    Intellectual cowardice and this current version’s dreary orthodoxy always trumpets itself as “freethinking” and “progressive” and “fighting for diversity” when it is really rigid and weak and fearful.

    A parody of the mental and social and [fill in the blank] liberator that it proclaims itself to be.

    Any actual critical intelligence will naturally conclude that Islam is a threat to the freedom of all humans.

    Why? ~these “diversity university” types would demand to know

    ~Because of Islam’s throwback choice of The Sword as a sanctified tool of conversion.

    And its Death Cult behavior toward apostates.

    Proof that Islam demands criticism, not coddling by collegiate geldings.

    Those who blindly protect something as brutally retrograde as “Submission” [Islam] are naive fantasists, at best.

    Or fatally-naive dupes, looked at from the point of self-preservation.

    Islam has as much to recommend it as cancer.

    For the soul.

    • EYESOPEN says

      Apr 12, 2014 at 5:32 am

      Excellent post, Profitsbeard. Very well stated. Thank you.

  11. Shushi Banana says

    Apr 12, 2014 at 5:39 am

    It is some kind of liberal arts university, so what you expect? they are leftist, many secular middle class westerners are like this anyway they throw red carpet to people who call them kaffirs, they think the Islamists will leave them alone if they be nice to them, maybe in the future they will open a mosque at Brandies campus just to make them happy. Anything is possible the 20th century is different then the 21st century because of the Islamists pushing, they are pushing their ideology to the West. “There was no Department of Homeland Security, and few Americans talked about terrorism”. True, in good old days. This is good speech. Thank you Ayaan.

  12. Jay Boo says

    Apr 12, 2014 at 10:54 am

    Brandeis University is a misnomer
    For those who speak out against Islam’s evil.
    ‘ BRAND US’ University

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