PERIOD! Please do your homework if you contend otherwise. Both persons have personal grievances with Islam and have build their political success on hatred and a baseless theory of “Clash of Civilizations”. Nationalism and purity of ethnicity as a guidance to the future of nations. Many are riding on a global wave of racism, insecurity and fear. I have seen this develop from a trickle before 9/11 into a surge afterwards, dividing families, communities and nations. Thanks to the financial crisis of 2008/2009 it has become part of everyone’s lives due to politicians without a vision. Fortunately, there are and will be more voices to the contrary. The Dutch election is a tremendous democratic boost to halt extremism and nationalism. I consider myself a globetrotter with a tolerant perspective on people with a different religion than mine or being agnostic.
Paul Belien Goes to Work for Geert Wilders | Gates of Vienna – 2010|
Regular readers will be familiar with Paul Beliën, the man in charge of the invaluable Brussels Journal website. I’ve had the privilege to work with him on a number of occasions, most notably on the planning and execution of Counter Jihad Brussels 2007.
Therefore it gives me great pleasure to announce that Geert Wilders has taken on Paul Beliën as his personal assistant. Paul is Belgian, but he is also Flemish, which means he speaks the same language as Mr. Wilders. As I understand it, Flemings and Dutch people can communicate as easily as, say, Texans and Canadians — though perhaps without as much mutual ridicule.
Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from De Wereld Morgen about Paul’s new assignment.
On Hirsi Ali’s advocacy about FGM …
○ FGM – Historical and Cultural
○ WHO – Prevalence of FGM
« click for more info »
Unfortunately, girls in European nations with African roots undergo female genital mutilation while taken on “holiday” to their native country. The practise had been outlawed in many nations.
More below the fold …
Islamism: How should Western intellectuals respond to Muslim scholars? | The New Yorker – 2010 |
Is the prophet Muhammad a pervert and a tyrant? Does Islam promote terrorism and enslave women? Does Islam oblige its followers to wage jihad on Westerners whose roots lie in the secular Enlightenment? Should Muslims consider converting to Christianity? For the Somali-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the answer to all these questions is a resounding “Yes!”
Hirsi Ali, who renounced Islam in her thirties, speaks from experience of bigotry and intolerance among her former co-religionists: she was genitally mutilated as a child in Somalia, briefly radicalized by a preacher of jihad in Kenya, nearly forced into a marriage, threatened with death in the Netherlands by the Muslim assassin of her collaborator, the filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and is still hounded by murderous fanatics in her new home, America. In her latest book, “Nomad: From Islam to America”, she reminds her readers of the West’s tradition of intellectual revolt against clerical tyranny and warns of the insidious, intransigent enemies in their midst. “The Muslim mind today seems to be in the grip of jihad,” she writes.
She is not hopeful that Americans will heed her warning. Her initial job interviews in the United States were discouraging: the Brookings Institution, she writes, worried that she might offend Arab Muslims. (The conservative American Enterprise Institute, however, immediately appointed her as a fellow.) On college campuses, Muslim students accuse her of wanting to “trash” Islam, while Western feminists, convinced that white men are “the ultimate and only oppressors,” lack the “courage or clarity of vision” to help her knock down the mental “hovels” of the East. Pointing to Major Nidal Malik Hasan‘s murderous rampage in Texas, last November, she deplores the “conspiracy to ignore the religious motivation for these killings” in America.
Muslims today, Hirsi Ali believes, must be forced to choose between the darkness of Islam and the light of the modern secular West. In her new book, which bears the additional subtitle “A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations,” she takes an uncompromising line with her own relatives, who remain faithful to their benighted religion. The book opens with an account of her visit to her father’s deathbed, in Whitechapel, in London’s East End, in 2008. Her father, a highly respected political opponent of Somalia’s Soviet-backed military dictator, became more religious during exile and old age.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali began her political career as a MP for the Conservative Liberal VVD party, together with Geert Wilders. Hirsi Ali had worked for the Labour party’s renowned think-tank Wiarda Beckman Foundation, setting future policy for Dutch politicians of the PvdA. Ayaan’s circle is round, in the US she married Niall Ferguson.
are you now going to write a long diary proving that water is wet?
yes they are, and they both make a good living as professional islamophobes.
Countering some views in an otherwise progressive community of bloggers …
“Re Ayaan Hirsi Ali, … an effective public debater countering Muslim hardliners and faux moderates.”
oh… yeah, i did see that yesterday. it needed pushback.
Oui, some brief comments. I found your post less about making a good argument in favor of your position than just an exercise in name-calling. Charging someone with “Islamophobia” — and those who agree with her — seems only an attempt to stifle debate.
Like dismissing someone as a “conspiracy theorist” while failing to deal with the substance.
I thought liberals were supposed to be open-minded and, well, tolerant of other points of view? Especially the self-congratulating “globetrotting” internationalist sophisticated types …
If you want to try again and actually make an argument in favor of why respectable liberals should dismiss Hirsi out of hand, then have at it. I’ll look at it and see if there’s anything to respond to.
I’ll again make my position clear: Hirsi overall has done far more good than harm — certainly in the sense of truth telling being a virtue — in describing Islam as practiced today in most places as antithetical to women and to Western values. Her public exposure of the FGM practice is especially noteworthy. Her view that Islam in particular must be called out for special attention as a noxious religion in these respects (the doctrine of Islam, that is, and not necessarily all its adherents) is, in my view, merely stating the obvious fact.
I also applaud her, she being mostly a woman of pro-Western and liberal beliefs, for the way she’s called out cowardly liberals in the West for their failure to speak truth as they hide behind feeble notions of tolerance and political correctness. Bill Maher et al have it right on this one.
I happen to agree with most/all the quotes you’ve provided from Hirsi. I do believe we’re at least in the early to middle chapters of a clash of civilizations, one which seems to be trending against the West as of this writing.
I’m not sure however why sharp and even harsh criticism of Islam by Hirsi means she’s automatically thrown out of the liberals club. Time was when liberals could be heard loudly denouncing those who demeaned and abused and diminished women wherever it was found. But when it comes to mistreatment of women in Islam, silence from the libs. Or name calling those as Islamophobes who dare to call it out. This is insane.
Overall I give strong marks to Hirsi for her public comments in this area. It matters not a bit to me, but apparently does to you, whom she chose as her mate. At least it was her choice made from a freedom to choose. So unlike the marriage her devoutly Muslim father had arranged for her, from which she had to flee to Holland.
Hey Brodie … I’ve lived in Holland throughout the years of Hirsi Ali and Wilders. I know exactly for what they are and represent. I’ve seen and heard Hirsi Ali as a politician in the news and tv reports of her views about Islam. I view her as a nutcase in her views and lacking empathy talking to children about Islam. She is a liar.
Until 16 May, 2006, Hirsi Ali’s was a classic story of a successful immigrant. But on that day she was forced to resign from the Dutch parliament due to the controversy over the legitimacy over her Dutch citizenship. It was claimed she had provided inaccurate information to the authorities at the time of her asylum application. The then Dutch Immigration Minister, Rita Verdonk decided to revoke her citizenship.
In the era of Trump, Ayaan Hirsi Ali would be deported to her homeland Somalia as an illegal immigrant who lied to federal immigration authorities.
○ Asylum case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
My personal contacts with Muslim families in Holland are diametrically opposed to Ayaah Hirsi Ali’s bigoted view. I have been in close contact with a Muslima who was in a forced marriage, taken to her parent’s home country on a “vacation” as a high school graduate. Was raped in marriage, became pregnant, fled te Holland, gave birth to a beautiful daughter, raised her, continued her education, is now a highly professional woman living in Amsterdam. During the last two years I have been able to coach her through some tough moments in family court matters. I have deep respect for her. This woman has forgiven her parents and lives in Western style, although still a practising Muslima. No headscarf, although some of her sisters do wear one.
Ok, personal anecdotes. Not terribly persuasive, but I wanted to let you respond.
As for her misrepresenting certain facts on her Dutch immigration, going only from what she said in a recent interview and not a deep background investigation of this, she did so because (recall she fled Somalia to avoid the arranged marriage) she feared her arranged husband and his family would try to track her down, and wanted to fudge the record a bit to make it more difficult. (as it turned out, husband arranged/family did in fact go to Holland to look for her soon after she arrived.) She altered her birth year slightly and her last name (taking another name from her birth family).
Her citizenship was later restored, and (iirc) I think the pol(s) in govt who had revoked it paid a political price, leading to the govt being dissolved.
I’m bothered because you’re presenting these issues as part of the “doctrine of Islam” when they are cultural issues in various regions, sometimes overlapping Islam.
FGM is not in the Koran. it is a cultural practice in some countries.
arranged marriages are AFAIK not in the Koran. they are cultural practices in some countries (until fairly recently in most of Europe too). I don’t accept the argument that “arranged” crossing the line to forced is unique to Muslims. Nor is forced marriage unknown in America, I think we invented the expression “shotgun wedding”.
Yes, for sure. But I didn’t say FGM was in the Koran. I do contend it’s a widespread practice in many countries where Islam is the dominant religion and Sharia the law of the land.
But whatever culture might have preexisted in a given country, FGM seems consistent with other Islamic practices, e.g. forcing women to cover up, allowing husbands to beat their wives, granting women in court only half the witness value as men, etc.
Nor did I contend forced marriages are unique to Islam. Just commonly found in Muslim communities.
you said this above:
“Her view that Islam in particular must be called out for special attention as a noxious religion in these respects (the doctrine of Islam, that is, and not necessarily all its adherents) is, in my view, merely stating the obvious fact. “
i continue to maintain that Ali’s complaints are NOT connected to the Islamic faith. neither FGM nor forced marriage is any part of “the doctrine of Islam”.
if FGM was in any way “the doctrine of Islam” it would NOT be absent in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Neither of these countries are paragons of how they treat women, but at least the atrocity of FGM is not part of their otherwise very conservative views of Islam.
as far as respect for women’s rights, none of the Abrahamic religions have anything to brag about.
I’m no fan of any religion but very uncomfortable picking out Islam as uniquely noxious.
>FGM seems consistent with other Islamic practices, e.g. forcing women to cover up, allowing husbands to beat their wives, granting women in court only half the witness value as men,
please. wife-beating is as old as marriage, and older since cave men hadn’t invented a word for “wife” yet. it wasn’t considered an issue let alone a crime even in the US until within our lifetimes. It is NOT an “Islamic” practice.
also remember that “forcing women to cover up” is in most Islamic countries only a headscarf. Orthodox Judaism requires men to cover their heads, does that bother you?
Heck, even Russia seems to have a soft spot for wife beaters.
yeah. and it’s not because Russia has Islamic law.
First academic hit I got when searching for a regliigous connection:
Female Genital Mutilation in a Young Refugee: A Case Report and Review
My bold. It is a regional and cultural problem, much much more then a religious one.
Hirsi Ali is a rightwing opportunist.
Non-sectarian feminists have been highlighting, railing against, and working to end FGM for decades. Alice Walker, obliquely in The Color Purple (but quite clear to those who were informed of the subject) and directly in Possessing the Secret of Joy. It’s a piece of the sexual violence perpetrated on women. Another piece taken up by Dr. Denis Mukwege.
Conservative or rightwing women, such as Hirsi Ali and Rama Yade may support anti-FGM or Dr. Mukwege’s clinic, but they do so while discounting the roots of women’s oppression that leads to the existence of these horrors. Championing these women because in one area they diverge from conservatives or rightwingers is like applauding GWB for funding AIDs medicines and ignoring that his other policies contributed to the problem.
I know little of Hirsi’s views outside of the Islam discussion, except to note that in her recent published interviews (I have not read her books) she espouses the sorts of views on women’s rights that liberal feminists in the west would applaud, and declares herself a liberal “on most issues”.
What she thinks about Putin, Trump* and a thousand other things I have no idea. Doesn’t matter. She’s good for this one thing, imo.
Whether she’s a closet RWer, I have seen no proof, just allegations (and of course being married to a righty — but so is Jimmy Carville and probably millions of others).
Not sure what you’re getting at. For her it was Islam. But even assuming the cultural practice there preceded Islam’s arrival, so what. It’s a practice adopted in many (most?) countries governed by Islamic law.
* There was a similar ex-Muslim , now rather anti-Islam, public advocate for women on Maher recently. Alas, I can’t remember her name. Liberal views, but definitely firm about calling it straight on Islam.
It was I believe her second appearance on his show, the first rather well received by the audience and Bill. The last time, she sat on his panel, post-election, and seemed to stun and annoy Bill when she announced she’d voted for Trump.
Giving her the benefit, I assumed it might be because she was tired of PC liberals failing to call out the extremism that runs rampant in Islam today, and thought a straight-talking Trump might suit her better on that all-important issue for her.
It happens. People vote one issue and hope for the best on that and the rest because the other party has disappointed them far too often.
I was positively impressed with Canadian writer Irshad Manji’s book The Trouble With Islam Today. She calls herself a Muslim but strongly dissents from orthodoxy.
Yes I recall reading that last decade I think, a book which probably got her a lot of grief from the community. Another one who used to appear on Maher frequently (then), but haven’t seen her much lately.
Thx for reminding me about her — I might want to check later to see what she’s up to lately, get her views on Trump, etc.
Mainly just from wiki, looks like she’s authored a book more recently, 2011, which offered some ideas for reform in Islam, but one academic reviewer quoted at the cite thought the prescriptions very thin and not adequately fleshed out. In any case, that book failed to make the splash her Trouble w/Islam book did, and generally she seems to have fallen off the larger public radar in recent years.
But I understand she still gets death threats (note, most likely not from Quakers or Mormons or Buddhists) and has to go around with armed bodyguards.
I wish her well in her efforts at promoting reform in her religion, but am very skeptical it will produce results.
>>It’s a practice adopted in many (most?) countries governed by Islamic law.
even if this were true that does not make a connection between FGM and Islamic law.
I don’t have any idea how many of the countries on the map above would describe themselves as “governed by Islamic law”. At least a couple IIRC are best described as not governed by any law at all.
But at least one country that proudly proclaims itself Islamic (Iran) has nothing to do with FGM. Nor does the most populous Islamic-majority country, Indonesia. It’s cultural not religious.
Seems a common enough practice in many Muslim-dominant countries, is my assessment. And again something like Islam adopting FGM could be viewed as a not unexpected outcome for a religion which is so invested in the men controlling the women.
I know little of Hirsi’s views outside of the Islam discussion, …
What she thinks about Putin, Trump* and a thousand other things I have no idea. Doesn’t matter.
Yes, it does matter. Almost all politicians, writers, thinkers promote one of two issues that a large number of people will agree with. Stopped clocks come packaged with other bits and often very nasty big bits.
I was totally taken in by Samantha Power’s public highlighting of the genocide in Dafur. Until someone pointed out to me that she was totally silent on the US destruction of Iraq. As UN Ambassador which Samantha Power was in that role? The second.
What would Hirsi Ali be without FGM? Another Pam Geller? Is Hirsi Ali vital or even necessary to advance the awareness of FGM? How disrespectful to those that have spent decades working to increase awareness and efforts to end this practice.
From Max Blumenthal:
I wouldn’t at all put Hirsi in the stopped clock category, and unlike others like, say, S Power, Hirsi has walked the walk in Islam and living in Somalia. For Power, her interventionist tendencies strike me as feel-good liberalism and not based in anything deeply personal let alone well thought out.
Re FGM and Hirsi, it could be seen as the most visible way for her to introduce herself to audiences,or the media chose to play it up a bit, but she’s been more than just a one-note anti-FGM proponent. And say what you will, but she was one of the most important voices in the public arena to call attention to it, and do so with credibility given her background. Therefore, I don’t quite understand the “disrespect ” charge. Do opponents of the practice have to pass some political purity test of remain silent because they might not be the first to comment on it?
As for the MB cite, thx. I gave it a quick read and will go back later to look up one of his cites. Normally a guy with cred, but a few areas of that article concerned me — some perhaps pre-baked bias against the subject given his own views on Islam leading to a one-sided presentation; some guilt by association undertones, Breivik citing Hirsi, her working for the American Enterprise Institute group of mostly conservatives, linking her with Theo Van Gogh’s over-the-top quote about Muslims and goats, etc.
For the other side of the story (not sure if MB tried to contact her), here a 2014 interview by Sam Harris w/Hirsi Ali. Harris of course is an impressive public intellectual with a strong background in science and reason, a true independent thinker, hardly a RW wacko, who shares Hirsi’s view of Islam and mine.
Here’s a choice quote from Harris (one of many) from the above interview worth citing in this thread:
Re AEI (also discussed in the interview), Hirsi says she tried to get a job at a think tank when she arrived in the US, and contacted Clinton’s former Ambassador to the Netherlands for help. All rejected her — she thinks because of her views on Islam — until her Clinton contact arranged for her to meet w/Norm Ornstein, friend of Al Franken, a fellow at AEI (and one of very few left-leaners there) and she was given a job.
Re Hirsi, she seems overall a rather complex figure, hard to pigeonhole, certainly a free thinker. Unlikely to meet political purity tests from some here.
(now, I’ll go look more at the MB cite, and maybe comment later. otherwise I need to move on from this thread.)
You’re echoing the likes of Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, Richard Spencer here.
I’d say this explains your Putin admiration very well with notions of defending (true) Western (white) civilization and traditions.
Normally, I’d entertain your thoughts on the need to defend Western civilization from the Muslim hordes but you unmask yourself in that you generalize about the treatment of women in Islam in a manner that informs me that you know nothing about the religion or how it is primarily practiced and experienced by women in the United States.
As always, every religion and community has its share of.. deplorables. But what you’re talking about is prejudiced nonsense.
I’m also echoing the likes of Bill Maher and to a slightly lesser extent Irshad Manji (who remains in the faith but wants it radically reformed), neither of whom can be characterized as RWers.
In 2003 I echoed the likes of Pat Buchanan on Iraq.
Your statement re Putin is idiotic, a considerable reach. My position on Putin, which has nothing to do with how he handles his internal matters in a very difficult to govern country of many cultures, has been clear from the beginning: show me the fucking evidence instead of engaging in McCarthyesque tactics that dangerously risk an imminent major crisis and possibly world war. I refer of course to the many libs — some of whom I once read or watched devotedly — involved in this year-long tribute to the methods of Tailgunner Joe as they happily run with unsubstantiated leaks from spooks at Langley.
I’m not the first to point out how topsy-turvy the political world has become, and so both sides on these issues of Islam and Putin find themselves fighting alongside some unexpected faces.
And along with the pathetic McCarthyism, the Dem Party in its embrace of the neocon world view, has become more like the Henry “Scoop” Jackson Memorial Democratic Party (hereinafter HSJMDP).
Here we go again with the PC libs trying to tap dance around and avoid calling out a glaringly obvious phenomenon. Sorry, but you’d have to be willingly blind not to notice there’s a slight difference out there with many followers of Islam. Not just the mistreatment of women but in the major defensiveness and extreme overreaction of its adherents to any criticism of their religion, and most obvious of all in the overall extreme violence of terrorism they have brought to the world.
Obviously followers of other faiths have had their moments of violence — just not remotely as many incidents of terrorism and as in as many countries and for as long as with adherents of Islam.
There’s a musical group I’ve seen perform a couple of times, white American converts to Sufi Islam. They play sacred music that is mesmerizing with traditional south Asian instruments. I also know that Sufis have been targeted by violent fanatics.
I wonder how much of the problem with Islamist violence fundamentally derives from the fact that Islam has never experienced anything akin to the Reformation, which I think was the first wedge separating religion from the state in Christendom.
I noticed that oui linked to an article from the Gates of Vienna website. If you have never looked at it, it is worth doing so to see Islamophobic rhetoric thinly disguised as otherwise, and to get a taste of a certain mindset. An article from there about the Dutch election results is worth a look.
I’m glad he did. In this case it was very helpful to do so, and he did us a service. We should know our enemies, and Islamophobes are definitely among them. Peruse Gates of Vienna and a few other websites (especially anything publishing Pamela Geller’s drivel) and you will at least be inoculated when faced with their tired arguments.
Oh likewise.