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Dissenting opinions? ‘Drown them out, drum them out’

Apr 13, 2014 12:41 pm By Robert Spencer

ayaan-hirsi-ali4Many, many times I have noted here that Leftists and Islamic supremacists are growing increasingly authoritarian and thuggish, moving to silence forcibly those with whom they disagree, rather than engaging them in rational discussion and debate. The case of Brandeis and Ayaan Hirsi Ali is just the most recent and prominent example, but actually this kind of thing happens all the time. Whenever I’m invited to speak anywhere I have to warn event organizers that anti-free speech thugs from Hamas-linked CAIR and Reza Aslan’s Aslan Media will publish smear pieces and try to intimidate them into canceling the event. And I am not singular: the same kind of thing happens to everyone who dares oppose jihad terror. The worst thing about it is that because the mainstream media largely approves of this kind of censorship and is in lockstep with the Islamic supremacist agenda, most Americans have no idea how seriously threatened the freedom of speech really is.

“Dissenting opinions? ‘Drown them out, drum them out,’ by Elizabeth Renzetti in The Globe and Mail, April 12 (thanks to Shtev):

It seems odd that the big brains at Brandeis University were unaware of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s controversial views on religion, considering that her bestselling memoir is called Infidel.

Ms. Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born critic of Islam and campaigner for women’s rights. A fierce opponent of genital mutilation, she was herself cut as a child. She has been a member of the Dutch parliament, and author of the screenplay for Submission, a film about Muslim women’s oppression (its director was murdered). She was subject to so many threats against her life that she eventually left the Netherlands and became a U.S. citizen.

She has also, along the way, made inflammatory remarks about Islam, the religion she was born into and renounced. The quote that is most often brought up by her critics is one she made in 2007 to Reason magazine: “Once [Islam] is defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars.”

None of this was secret; it’s not as if Ms. Hirsi Ali was living in a basement for the past 12 years, scrawling her thoughts on a blackboard for an audience of mice. Brandeis, a small liberal college near Boston, thought highly enough of her work as a women’s rights activist to grant her an honorary degree at this spring’s commencement.

At least they were going to give her a degree, until Ms. Hirsi Ali’s critics among the faculty and students heard of the honour, organized a whirlwind campaign of letter-writing and an online petition, and the university crumbled like a tower of grated cheese. Actually, grated cheese would have shown more structural integrity.

The university’s statement read, “She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world. That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.” The university’s website lists some of those core values: “Students who succeed at Brandeis are self-motivated, curious and open to exploring new experiences that might test them.”

Unless those experiences test their delicate sensibilities, I guess. Ms. Hirsi Ali told Fox News what she had been planning to say at the commencement ceremony. First, she was going to tell the students how lucky they were to be the recipients of a privileged Western education, with its emphasis on free thought. “The way to get to a better world, a world of peace, is to learn the ability as young people to think critically … That’s exactly what universities are for. We send our kids to school so they can be confronted with ideas they’re not comfortable with.”

That’s what I thought too, although this sentiment is beginning to seem as quaint as an Easter bonnet. (Sorry, I shouldn’t say Easter, as this may offend atheists, pagans and rabbits’ rights activists.) These days, there’s a whole lot less “listen to dissenting opinions” and a whole lot more “drown them out, then drum them out.”

Last month, University of Ottawa professor Janice Fiamengo gave a campus talk on the incendiary topic of rape culture – or at least she tried to, over a cacophony of banging, hooting and shouting. “Why are you so frightened of hearing an opinion different from your own?” she asked. I don’t happen to agree with Prof. Fiamengo’s position, but I do want to hear what she has to say. It’s a core tenet of debating that you use your opponent’s arguments to strengthen your own, and you learn nothing from silence. You can’t whet your knife on air.

In 2011, a talk by George W. Bush at one of the University of Toronto’s colleges was cancelled after student protests, and near-riots put the kibosh on conservative polemicist Ann Coulter’s speech at the University of Ottawa. This is known as “the heckler’s veto,” a lovely phrase used by Josh Wheeler of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. Mr. Wheeler was quoted in The Washington Post last year after U.S. universities cancelled commencement speeches by figures who were not ideologically pure enough – former World Bank chief Robert Zoellick (Iraq war supporter) and neurosurgeon Ben Carson (gay marriage opponent).

The word “cancelled” is operative here. Like Brandeis, those universities extended invitations and then, after the inevitable tornado of indignation, cravenly rescinded them. “Too often, it’s easier to eliminate the problem than deal with the controversy,” Mr. Wheeler said.

These are censorious times, on campus and elsewhere. The Atlantic has nicely dubbed it “the culture of shut up.” That is to say: My freedom depends not just on my conviction in the sanctity of my opinion, but on your inability to express yours.

What happens to the opinions that are suppressed? They go under the floorboards, in the dark, and breed.

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Comments

  1. mileaway says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 12:48 pm

    IT’S TIME TO STAND AGAINST: “AMERICAPHOBIA”

    Americans have ALWAYS ALLOWED other groups or cultures to blast our culture with insults and abuses. We ALLOWED them the “Freedom of Speech” they didn’t dare in their homelands.

    Perhaps it’s time for Americans to cry out against this insensitivity towards us! Maybe it’s time to organize an AMERICAN “CAIR” like association to cry
    Anti-American everytime these people fart!
    Maybe it’s time for AMERICANS to rally at their doorsteps with threats of riots and bombings and beheadings!

    Maybe it’s time to strike the match of “AMERICANISM” and REBEL to stop the:

    “AMERICAPHOBIA” waged against us!!!

  2. Salah says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 12:54 pm

    “..most Americans have no idea how seriously threatened the freedom of speech really is.”

    We can fix that, here’s how:

    1- Media strike. We are paying them to lie to us.
    2- Tax strike. A peaceful way to bring down governments.
    3- Mass demonstrations. It worked in Egypt.
    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-end-of-muslim-brotherhood.html

    If we don’t do that we have two more “solutions”
    1- A bloody revolution.
    2- Total surrender to Islam.

    • Defcon 4 says

      Apr 14, 2014 at 1:29 pm

      “mass demonstrations” worked for whom in Egypt? It sure didn’t work for the Coptic Christians — as they are STILL being persecuted by muslimes in Egypt and the exodus of Coptic Christians from Egypt still continues due entirely to this fact.

  3. richard Sherman says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 1:18 pm

    The next there is freedom at Brandeis will be the first time.

  4. Jay Boo says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 1:23 pm

    NICE & EASY
    This is similar to the way Obama / Hillary so easily grasped at the Innocence of Muslims film excuse.
    It is easier for leftists to apologize profusely and hide whenever Islamist play victim than it is for them to simply state the ugly raw truth.

  5. Walter Sieruk says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 1:29 pm

    That so many Muslims object to Hirsi Ali speaking at that University may very well be yet another example of the fact the foundations and doctrines of Islam are so weak that it can’t stand up to or hold to criticism.

  6. Jay Boo says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 1:35 pm

    Who are these ‘concerned people’ who organized a whirlwind campaign of letter-writing and an online petition.?
    Can they be tracked individually to insure that they are legitimate?

    Where do such hypocrites stand against the ruthless persecution of Christians like the case of Asia Bibi ? (preceding article)

    Don’t Muslims have any shame at all?
    Islam is such filth.

  7. mortimer says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 2:16 pm

    The topic that is SUPREMELY important to discuss is what is causing so much JIHAD?

    The Leftists have decided jihad is explainable by Marxist theories, except that most of the jihadists are not poor or exploited in any way. Nevertheless, the Leftists doggedly refuse to examine the religious facts causing jihad; their minds are made up, and so a lie that supports Marxist theory is better for them than facts that contradict it.

    The Leftists are shown by the jihad issue to be profoundly dishonest and adept at self-deception. They are so emotionally invested in Marxist lies, they cannot admit to the incompatibility of Islam with Marxism.

    Meanwhile, the Leftists hunt down the common enemy they share with Muslims: the white European who defends freedom. These colonialist swine must be exterminated, but once that is accomplished both Muslims and Leftists will have no choice but to turn on each other in a fight to the death.

  8. duh_swami says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 5:28 pm

    Allah has provided me with the perfect self defense tool to deal with a hostile, belligerent, and possibly assaultive audience…pepper spray in a big can. it may seem a little unorthodox for a speaker to pepper spray his audience, but it really works to clear the room of hostiles . Allah is very wise, he thinks of everything.

  9. Wellington says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 5:44 pm

    As Dennis Prager has observed many times, there is most definitely a totalitarian element in modern leftism. This helps to explain in part why so many modern leftists have made an alliance with what is arguably the oldest totalitarian ideology still hanging around——-Islam.

  10. dumbledoresarmy says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 5:58 pm

    Quoted, above, from the University’s own website: “Students who succeed at Brandeis are self-motivated, curious and open to exploring new experiences that might test them.”

    Nota bene – those words “self-motivated, curious and open to exploring new experiences that might test them” are the **perfect** description of the kind of person that Ms Ali is. And it is, I think, one of the main reasons why, once she came in contact with curiosity-piquing non-Islamic ideas and practices, and friendly sensible non-Muslim people (such as the Ethiopian Christian girls who helped laugh her out of the hijab, in the Netherlands) – she was able to gradually free herself from the Islamic brainwashing in which she had been immersed from childhood. She spent a *lot*of time, in her late primary and high school years, in Kenya, once she learnt English, immersing herself in the classic (and also pop culture) children’s books and young adult fiction of the West…and she *liked* what she found. Books like the “Famous Five” showed her that brothers and sisters could trust each other, look after each other, be *friends*..Books like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm , not to mention lots and lots of lurid Harlequin romances surreptitiously devoured by the sackful, ‘reprogrammed’ her subconscious…and she was more than open to the reprogramming.

  11. dumbledoresarmy says

    Apr 13, 2014 at 11:55 pm

    Something for the newer posters who might not yet have encountered it : for those like “Bradamante”, and “Curious Teenager” and “Fiqh al Matter”, who shared their stories, above, of how they came to jihadwatch (Bradamante, for example, galvanised by the Boston jihad bombing) and how they came to recognise the Meaning and Menace of Islam, of the Ummah or Mohammedan Mob.

    A Hugh Fitzgerald classic essay from 2008, entitled “The History Boys”.

    http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/06/fitzgerald-the-unsung-history-boys.html

    “Fitzgerald: The unsung history boys”

    I’ll quote the first couple of paragraphs, and some other choice passages, just to encourage everyone else here who hasn’t read it, present and perhaps stumbling in via google in future, to click, and Read It All.

    “The keenest and most aware, in every part of the Western world, are now engaged in one vast, but not collective, History Lesson.

    “Those in this class are necessarily a class of autodidacts, given the failure of our governments to instruct us, and given the near-total monopoly over academic departments and courses on Islam by those engaged not so much in instruction as in apologetics…

    “So here we are, now rediscovering the history of India, even if we are not Indians, and perhaps learning more about it, reading more sympathetically about what Muslim rule did to India, than many Indians who, to prove their lack of parochialism, their freedom from “communalism,” overlook the real history, and continuing menace, of Islam in India.

    “Here we are, even those who until a few years ago hardly knew about the Ottomans in Europe, realizing why the Serbs need to be protected from Muslim demands, either by “Bosnians” or by Albanians.

    “Here we are, even those who up until recently had no real understanding of why the Arabs seemed incapable of making any kind of peace or accepting one Israeli compromise and surrender after another of Jewish claims, legal, moral, and historic, but always wanted more. Of course, according to Islam, they must always want more — as we have learned by teaching ourselves about the Treaty of Al Hudaibiyya, learning, since no one in the press chooses to mention, the basis for all Muslim treaties with Infidels…

    “Here we are, all over the world, the unsung History Boys.

    “And we are learning a lot. And passing it on. And we no longer accept the false authority of those whom, we realize, have been falsely instructing us on the nature of Islam… “.

    So there it is.

    Bradamante, Curious Teenager, Fiqh Al Matter: in this same thread, I welcomed Fiqh Al Matter to the de facto Order of the Phoenix, but now I will also say “Welcome to the History Boys”. And the History Girls.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Apr 14, 2014 at 12:06 am

      A little more. Hugh first posted that essay in the comments forum rather than as a stand-alone article. The earlier thread is here:

      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/07/pakistani-education-minister-jihad-an-integral-part-of-curriculum.html

      And within that thread, another poster replied to him, and Hugh in turn replied.

      Both comments are well worth re-posting, for the enjoyment, instruction and encouragement of newer members of the jihadwatch comments forum who may not have come across them before.

      Here is “Caroline”, who used to post here regularly years ago.

      “Yes Hugh – we can read all that [Hugh’s ‘History Boys’ essay, listing the sources and the scholars].

      “Or we can merely get one casual email post in our overflowing email boxes saying –
      “Hey! Did you know that the prophet Muhammad (whom Muslims worship as the most perfect man) was actually a mass-murderer? A thief? A rapist? A slave trader? A pedophile?”

      “And we “rubes” can think to our ignorant “rube” selves – no bloody way!

      “And then do about 2 hours of homework (1 solid day max for the skeptical) and confirm to ourselves – oh hell yes effing way!

      “And in several short hours (OK- a an entire day for the skeptical) put 2 and 2 together – what the Koran says + what the likes of UBL and Hamas and Hezbollah say + the massive obfuscation coming from the likes of CAIR and Tariq Ramadan and the MSA say (a 5 minute lesson in the meaning of taqiyya takes care of that ambiguity) + what a rapid perusal of world history would confirm (OK – to be fair – give that a whole extra day) – and one readily goes from no way in hell! to Holy s**t! This is for real!

      “It ain’t rocket science.

      “And seriously, infidels (both westerners and easterners) ought not to insult their dignity and intelligence by pretending it is.
      Old Hans Christian Anderson will no doubt live on as the wisest sage the west has ever known where Islam is concerned. A fairy tale ostensibly designed for children yes.

      “But once one realizes how really childlike we all actually are (look at the huge influence of Hollywood for example which is merely high school writ large in many ways), one won’t be so inclined to scoff at such a fairy tale.

      “Which is my blunt way of saying that by all means, those so inclined should read Schacht, and Hurgronje and Tisdall.

      “But also to point out that some of us won’t.

      “Some of us would just as soon look at the noses on the end of our faces and have no doubt whatsoever about what Islam is all about.

      “In the end, one need only look at Islam’s source – Muhammad – and confirm just a few facts about the man himself (and those facts are easily confirmed for those who are willing to look) – and all the rest just falls easily into place. ”

      Posted by: Caroline at July 25, 2006 9:48 PM.

      And now for Hugh’s response (which is all the more telling because Hugh, “Hugh Fitzgerald”, is manifestly someone who has been an old-fashioned scholar, life-long, a genuine intellectual of the old school.

      “You are right.

      “Whatever manages to supply enough of the truth, and to allow one to convey that truth convincingly to others so they begin to comprehend the nature of the belief-system (try not to call it a “religion”) of Islam, surely does not require all kinds of study.

      “But such study, when one has the time, merely deepens one’s horrified convictions.

      “Ordinarily, as you read more about something, you more and more see the thing in its complexity, and shades of gray, and are more and more hesitant to pass judgment.

      “With Islam, the more you find out about what it teaches, the more you find out about the example of Muhammad, the more you find out about what Islam does to its adherents, the more you find out about Jihad in time and space, the more you find out about the fate of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, the more horrified you become.

      “But it isn’t all necessary.

      “Sometimes a single thing will do it.

      “Here’s the single thing about Iran that often does it: the fact that when he came to power, one of Khomeini’s very first acts (perhaps the first) was to lower the marriageable age of girls to nine.

      “Tell that to people you know.

      “And then tell them why.”

      – Posted by: Hugh at July 25, 2006 10:41 PM

  12. dumbledoresarmy says

    Apr 14, 2014 at 12:14 am

    And finally, to pick up on something from the comment by “Hugh” that I reposted, just above.

    “Hugh” said:

    “Ordinarily, as you read more about something, you more and more see the thing in its complexity, and shades of gray, and are more and more hesitant to pass judgment.

    “With Islam, the more you find out about what it teaches, the more you find out about the example of Muhammad, the more you find out about what Islam does to its adherents, the more you find out about Jihad in time and space, the more you find out about the fate of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, the more horrified you become.”

    The *more* you find out about Islam, the more horrified you become.

    Another poster, in another thread, also some years ago (2008: *six* years ago!), said exactly the same, though in less measured language. But I think that poster spoke for many, many other curious and intelligent jihadwatchers who have gone looking for information and found out much, much more than they ever imagined was out there.

    The poster had made a statement re muslim use of zakat to fund jihad terror, and our longterm resident, duh-swami, had asked, “How do you manage to be right on the money so often?”

    To which the poster, one ‘jdamn’, responded:

    “Because, unfortunately, cynicism is usually the most correct perspective when it comes to Islam.

    “It’s awful, but whatever your worst suspicion is, that [that’s] what it always turns out to be, if not worse.

    “Then you find some codification of whatever abberant [aberrant] behavior it happens to be in Islamic texts.

    “**I started examining Islam because I was sure that my worst fears and preconceptions just had to be the result of my own ignorance.
    What I found was so much worse than anything I could have ever imagined.** ” {my emphasis – dda}.

    “Even what we see on TV about the Taliban is still a whitewashed version of Islam.

    “You don’t see the pedophilia, the sexual abuse, the beating, the animal abuse, the forced marriage, etc., etc.

    “And you get the impression that it’s not like that in every Islamic paradise…until you find out that it is.

    Posted by: jdamn at November 13, 2008 12:40 AM”.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Apr 14, 2014 at 12:20 am

      Post script.

      I forgot to give the link that provides the thread where that comment by ‘jdamn’, that I quoted, can be found. Here it is:

      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/11/union-of-good-goes-bad.html

  13. RodSerling says

    Apr 14, 2014 at 6:16 am

    Article written by Elizabeth Renzetti.

    Interesting who’s who trivia, in light of our recent dust-up with Doug Saunders. Renzetti is married to Saunders. They both write for the Globe and Mail. Saunders considers Robert and Pamela hatemongers etc. Robert and Pamela in turn are supporters of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and are pretty much in agreement with her criticisms of Islam. Yet Saunders says of Hirsi Ali:

    “I am in agreement with secular Muslims such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie, Mona Eltahawy and Fadela Amara when they argue that the instructions of the Koran and the cultural practices of many Muslim countries are enormously harmful to those who are subject to them, especially women.”
    p. 6 in The Myth of the Muslim Tide (Vintage Canada Edition, 2013).

    Interesting that Saunders agrees with Hirsi Ali, but not with Pamela and Robert, though they are all making quite similar criticisms, share many of the same values, and are working for the same causes (human rights, equality, freedom, etc.).

    I should add as a correction that Hirsi Ali and Rushdie are not Muslims but rather come from Muslim backgrounds.

    Renzetti asks: “What happens to the opinions that are suppressed? They go under the floorboards, in the dark, and breed.”

    That is indeed one of the points Hirsi Ali made that got her in trouble with CAIR and Brandeis. (They tried to claim she was expressing “sympathy” for Breivik).

    • Defcon 4 says

      Apr 14, 2014 at 1:52 pm

      I believe Rushdie is muslim. I believe he converted/reverted, maybe in the vain hope his death fatwah would be lifted (which it wasn’t).

      To call Aayan Hirsi a “secular muslim” seems a lie, as does the whole concept of
      secular muslim.

      • RodSerling says

        Apr 14, 2014 at 5:11 pm

        No, Rushdie and Hirsi Ali are both atheists. Rushdie did pretend to revert, under pressure from the fatwa etc., but he later admitted it was not genuine.

  14. PJG says

    Apr 14, 2014 at 10:46 pm

    “What happens to the opinions that are suppressed? They go under the floorboards, in the dark, and breed.”

    This sentence is a most peculiar way to end of the article. It almost equates all suppressed ideas with vermin, as if the suppressed ideas SHOULD be suppressed.

    Opposition to slavery was once an “opinion.” Did the idea go under the floorboards, in the dark, and breed? No. The idea forced itself out into the open to challenge the collective conscience of nations.

    What about opposition to jihad and dhimmitude? Now it is an unpopular “opinion”. Is this “opinion” breeding under grubby floorboards? Hardly; it is forcing itself onto society’s chosen path of cowardice and warning of the consequences of that cowardice.

    “Floorboards”, indeed! A spot of bad writing there, at least I hope that is all it was.

  15. profitsbeard says

    Apr 15, 2014 at 1:27 am

    It is a curiously self-destruction course chosen by those universities and their “progressive” and “liberal” members who defend a militant, illiberal, imperialistic, expansionist, and intolerant theocratic ideology like Islam. A dogmatic Death Cult (~ you try to leave, they try to kill you~) which would shut them down and silence their infidel dog opinions and un-Islamic classes once it gains the power they are trying brainlessly to assist it in securing.

    This self-congratulatory suicide of the West’s supposed “intellectual class”- all to promote the feckless appearance of “tolerance”- is the sick and increasingly grim joke of the 21st century.

  16. gravenimage says

    Apr 15, 2014 at 9:37 pm

    Overall, a good article—this describes a very disturbing and widespread phenomenon, that of drowning out any dissenting opinions.

    One thing that brought me up short, though, was *this*, which PJG also mentions:

    “What happens to the opinions that are suppressed? They go under the floorboards, in the dark, and breed.”

    This implies that every opinion thus stifled is actually a bad one, and that the only reason for allowing them to be heard is so they don’t ‘breed under the floorboards’.

    This might be true when regarding, say, neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan.

    But what about such unpopular but rational and decent opinions as opposition to Jihad?

    It seems that ultimately Ms. Renzetti, her admirable defense of free speech notwithstanding, regards Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s opposition to FGM, the oppression of women, and the murder of her director as of a piece with the above.

    Quite disturbing.

  17. RodSerling says

    Apr 16, 2014 at 8:00 pm

    Graven,

    I don’t think that’s what she meant. Renzetti, I think, is conveying in that line that opinions, good or bad and everything in between, are best aired out in the open where they can be subject to criticism and scrutiny within the free exchange of ideas in the wider society. Without that open and public scrutiny and competition (which the modern Western democracies are supposed to support) from a wide variety of viewpoints, some partisan opinions–including good ones–can become more narrow, extreme, fanatical, militant. (A discussion here of how some small social groups with particular opinions and having few if any naysayers can self-radicalize is perhaps relevant here, but I think you get the idea). Hirsi Ali herself has made the same point about suppressing opinions and the possible negative consequences. I suspect Renzetti, like Saunders, agrees with much of what Hirsi Ali has to say, both in terms of the activist causes (helping women and girls who are oppressed) and in terms of criticizing Islam. I suspect she is not comfortable with some of Hirsi Ali’s more “inflammatory” phrasing, but I don’t think she disagrees with Hirsi Ali’s main substantive ideas in the areas of human rights and of criticism of Islam.

  18. voegelinian says

    Apr 17, 2014 at 3:09 pm

    Diana West has (as usual) some important and revealing details about the Brandeis Branding:

    …Lori Lowenthal Marcus, writing in The Jewish Press, excerpted Facebook comments by Bernadette Brooten, a Brandeis professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, in which Brooten described the anti-Hirsi-Ali letter she and 85 other Brandeis professors signed. “We stressed that we recognize the harm of female genital cutting, forced marriages, and honor killings, but that this selection obscures the violence against women that happens among non-Muslims, including on our own campus,” Brooten wrote. “I recognize the harm of gendered violence wherever it occurs, and I applaud the hard, effective work of many Muslims who are working to oppose it in their own communities.”

    Whether Brandeis counts as a hotbed of “gendered violence” aside … Brooten has underscored the source of animus against Hirsi Ali. Her “selection” for university honors “obscures” non-Muslim violence against women, Brooten writes, but what I think disturbs the professors more is what Hirsi Ali has done – what her whole life experience signifies – to highlight the violence against women and children that is legitimized and inspired by specifically and authoritatively Islamic sources. Thanks in part to Brandeis, such sources are increasingly relegated to the list of post-9/11 taboos.

  19. chumachil says

    Jun 4, 2014 at 2:06 pm

    So, will we expect banning materials deemed “Islamophobic” from universities like “The Sarah Balabagan Story”?

  20. chumachil says

    Jun 4, 2014 at 2:08 pm

    So, will we expect banning materials deemed “Islamophobic” from universities, like the biopic “The Sarah Balabagan Story”?

    If these “intellectuals” have the guts to defend their logic, they should go to Syria, to Yemen, even to the jungles of Mindanao. Let’s see what will happen to them.

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