Today’s Los Angeles Times has an interview with the heroic Ayaan Hirsi.
Ayaan Hirsi
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Put a fatwa on her and tell her to cover up her face! Allah akbar!!!! Right muirdog?
Anyways she’s a very courageous lady, and I felt the interviewer was slightly hostile. How can white American liberals just say “oh it’s their culture” when it goes against their entire belief system? I thought women’s rights were at the very top, no?
Really, isn’t it the Libertarians who believe in “letting other people be, it’s none of our business what other people do in other countries”? Slavery may be alive and well in Sudan but that doesn’t justify people clamouring to the U.S. Government that they must intervene? Likewise unless Ayaan Hirsi is leading a recruitment drive for a private volunteer army to overthrow the tribal leaders of Africa who support FGM then she’s a Champagne Libertarian who wants government to do her bidding or merely wants to steal the spotlight to feel important.
It’s horrible stuff. But it doesn’t justify me digging into your bank account. And it certainly doesn’t justify me dragging you from your house, tossing you into a uniform, dropping a gun in your hand, and shipping you off to harm’s way.
But if you want to form a private mercenary force to go off on your own and try to protect the innocent, maybe I’ll choose to cut you a check.
I agree with you. I might consider writing a check myself, but the omnipotent state might put you in prison for aiding and abetting terrorist organizations.
Were you agreeing with me, vv?
I can’t speak for all libertarians, but I agree many think as you say. But what you say isn’t the same as what I said in my reply.
With all due respect, I think you misunderstand libertarianism. Don’t confuse libertarianism with being libertine. The latter says anything is acceptable the former does not. The former can make value judgements, the latter cannot.
I just had this same issue with a friend, trying to explain exactly that difference.
What American liberal signs off on genital mutilation because it’s “their culture”? That’s news to me, although I’m sure you could dig up a couple.
Patt Morrison (the interviewer) certainly isn’t in favor of female circumcision, but if she could create a religion, all the women would wear silly hats. See this Google image search on her name.
Hirsi doesn’t get the obvious neo-liberal support she deserves because she violates the rules of class and racial discipline. Her criticisms of Islam are like Michael Steele not agreeing with everything Obama says. How strange that Feminism still (ever?) aligns itself with critical theory.
Steele and Ayaan are the same? In what way? Michael Steele has political quarrels with Obama. Ayaan is broadcasting the crimes of much of Islamic society. I don’t know if you’re trivializing Ayaan or aggrandizing Steele, but I don’t think they’re comparable.
Michael Steele has black skin. I don’t know if you have many liberal friends, but this tends to make them uncomfortable because he doesn’t fit the ideological model. See also Thomas, Clarence. I’m offering a similar explanation for the lack of reception that Hirsi is getting. I’m trying to be charitable.
An alternative explanation is that the left generally realizes this stuff is true but doesn’t want to be provocative. It just seems inconceivable to me that liberal feminists think they can resurrect comparable worth in an entrepreneur dominated economy and lack the testicular fortitude to call out honor killings or even just stand up for sexual freedom. These are the same people who get hot and bothered about Chinese factory workers working long hours to support a life much better than their parents had on collective farms. And China has nukes. The lack of outrage makes no sense.
I’ve just been under the impression that Ayaan Hirsi has been extremely well received in the U.S., so I suppose the point of your statement wasn’t clear. Granted, the Islamic world isn’t a big fan of hers, and neither are a lot of the Dutch – but I haven’t heard of any major criticism of her in the U.S.. She’s been celebrated for what she stands for, and rightfully so. I guess I think you’re overusing this “racial discipline” meme.
The answer becomes clear when you realize that American Liberals aren’t really interested in the philosophies they espouse. That would mean actually following their statements through to their logical conclusions.
The two-fold purpose of their statements is (A) To make themselves look [to others] and feel [to themselves] compassionate. (B) To apply Critical Theory to attacking the paternalistic institution that they feel is responsible for their own unhappiness.
Mistake: That was of course meant to fully say, Look Compassionate (to others), and Feel Good (themselves).
A brave woman fighting a good fight. She lacks Western support because she calls evil where she sees it without regard to politically correct multicultural sensibilities.
I don’t see her as particularly heroic. She’s basically the same as Wafa Sultan, someone who gets lots of press because she’s a Muslim woman who basically says in public that Islam is a barbarous religion practiced by evil people. It’s an easy way to get publicity but it’s a rather silly position. Genital mutilation, for one, isn’t even remotely Islamic – it does not correlate with Muslims beliefs in any way. It’s clearly a cultural practice, in that in certain areas (e.g. Egypt and Western Africa) both Muslims and non-Muslims practice it. But you get more points bashing Islam than you do making reality-based statements about, say, Egyptian Copts.
Islamic and Eastern culture are one and the same. So the point you were trying to make was no point at all.
ArrowSmith, I don’t mean to be insulting but you’re embarrassing yourself with comments like that. First of all, I don’t know what “Eastern” culture (or the “East”) is. You mean everything East of Europe? That’s a rather large swath of territory that includes China, India and plenty of other countries that are overwhelmingly not Muslim majority (I assume you realize that no reasonable person would call India or, especially, China an “Islamic” culture).
Second, Hirsi is from Somalia, which is not Eastern in any sense but African. Most of Africa is not Muslim, especially sub-Saharan Africa in which Somalia lies (Somalia itself is one of the few Muslim-majority countries in the region).
If you think that non-Western = Muslim then I don’t know where you’re getting your facts from but you might want to consult another source.
I just love when non-Muslim western know-it-alls presume to lecture us as to how courageous women (Hirsi, Sultan and many others) who were born and lived in Muslim cultures get Islam all wrong. There might actually be a difference between your book learning and their real world, lived experiences.
As for Ayaan Hirsi, the fact that she has put her life on the line to bring her message about those experiences to us speaks volumes about her. She had to flee to the U.S. when the spineless Dutch chose to placate all those “peaceful” Muslims who were threatening to kill her, just as they had already killed her film-making partner (Van Gogh).
“I just love when non-Muslim western know-it-alls presume to lecture us as to how courageous women (Hirsi, Sultan and many others) who were born and lived in Muslim cultures get Islam all wrong.”
You’re assuming a lot about me in that one paragraph. Anyhow, I don’t think it would take much time with the Intertubes to find a few women “who were born and lived in Muslim cultures” with very different viewpoints from Hirsi and Sultan. But I guess any woman who’s not ready to trash Islam as a religion of monsters must be brainwashed.
Incidentally, Hirsi had to leave the Netherlands not because of Muslims but because it turned out there were problems with her immigration status. So she came to the US. Risking your life for your convictions may be courageous, but you can risk your life for an bad idea – that doesn’t make it a good one.
What are you talking about? Islamic and Eastern culture are completely different – indeed Islamic culture’s semitic roots in many ways make it closer to Western culture than Eastern culture. The problem is that Islamic societies didn’t liberate themselves from many of the chains of their religion the way most of Europe has.
Copts? Are you kidding? Okay, let’s hear some moral equivalence Copt bashing.
No, I’m not kidding. Do you really believe that FGM committed by Egyptian Muslims worse than that committed by Egyptian Christians? Or West African Muslim FGM worse than West African animist FGM?
I fail to see how the same act committed by one person is anything but morally equivalent to the same act, committed under the same circumstances in the same way with the same goals, committed by another person. Change nothing but the perpetrator’s religion and the moral repugnance of the act remains the same.
“Do you really believe that FGM committed by Egyptian Muslims worse than that committed by Egyptian Christians?”
No, I was referring to the general treatment of Coptic women versus Muslim women, based on accounts by my Coptic acquaintances. But in the process of finding a link, I’ve decided to defer to, rather than rely upon them.
To a large extent it’s a question of magnitude. Radical Muslims are responsible for more violence than radical Copts.
But it’s also how that violence occurs, as Christopher Hitchens often points out. Violence by radical Muslims is justified by their faith. That does disturb me a lot more than violent animists who just hate a neighboring population because, well because humans are prone to hating each other. Both are terrible – but one is particularly terrifying. It’s the same reason why KKK lynchings are more terrible in my mind than black-on-black crime. Both are tragic and the act is equally wrong. But the fact that one is motivated by ethnic cleansing and a perception of sub-humanness is, for me, a lot more terrifying and repugnant.
Daniel, if you want to that with just a little effort you could embrace a very, very violent interpretation of Christianity. You just need to focus more on the Old Testament than the New Testament. Likewise, if you want to read the Quran as an incitement to kill everyone, everywhere you can do so. You can also read it as a call for peace. What people choose to emphasize is up to them.
It doesn’t say anywhere in the Quran that women shouldn’t go to school or that they should be cut at a young age or that they should be covered head to toe. If you really want to, you can read all that in. But it’s not there and there are many, many people who would argue the opposite – that the Quran calls for people to seek knowledge, that the human body is sacred and should not be mutilated and that women should dress modestly, but no more – as should men.
I can’t believe some of you. There’s real oppression going on and you wipe your hands of it. Give libertarians a bad name.
What do you think is the libertarian thing to do about it?
Libertarianism != isolationism. Any self-respecting libertarian would not tolerate any peoples existing in tyranny.
Does too! Libertarians don’t envisage volunteer armies marching around the world stamping out what they think is ‘evil’ (moral imperialism?). Suppose A is beating up B – does that give the right for C to beat up A? Does A have the right to self-defence against C as it has nothing to do with A? After all, C has no idea why A is beating up B. A might have a valid reason.
When Lord Grey, the Prime Minister, was moving toward a foreign war, Sydney Smith wrote the following letter to Lady Grey, in 1832: “For God’s sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself. I am sorry for the Spaniards – I am sorry for the Greeks – I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Baghdad is oppressed, I do not like the present state of the Delta; Tibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people? The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy? We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid the consequence will be, that we shall cut each other’s throats. No war, dear Lady Grey! – No eloquence; but apathy, selfishness, common sense, arithmetic! I beseech you, secure Lord Grey’s swords and pistols, as the housekeeper did Don Quixote’s armour. If there is another war, life will not be worth having.
Hirsi Ali is not agitating for wars. Just support. But you apparently are not even for that. In fact it’s people like you that seem to be apologists for Muslims!
One’s perspective on intervention is different if the world is viewed as happy pocked with sorrow, rather than sorrowful pocked with happiness. If you see it as the latter, then happiness, when it is found, is far too precious to sacrifice.
Great post, RL.
What do you think is the libertarian thing to do about it?
For starters speak truth to power.
Arrow,
It is not my job in life to give libertarians a good or bad name.
Ayaan is an inspiring woman – thanks Don. I didn’t realize she was becoming a U.S. citizen – that’s great.
To Gil:
Women in the 1880s in America were not:
* female genital mutilated
* stoned
* honor-killed
Next straw man?
Well ArrowSmith who mentioned the U.S.S.R. out of the blue? Wasn’t me. Well Methinks stoning women wasn’t too popular in the West but torturing and burning them at the stake was all the rage.
Until the very late 19th Century and even into the 20th Century Western women did not have the right to:
* wear revealing clothing.
* own property.
* take out a loan.
* hold down mainstream jobs.
* not allowed into politics.
* not allowed to vote.
Perhaps Methinks you should wonder about Founding Fathers who talk of “the rights of all men before God” yet for some reason exclude women.
Man, are you obtuse or what? There are degrees of oppression. Women in Islamic countries would be overjoyed to just be oppressed by 19th century American standards. You just come off as an apologist for Wahhabism.
And I suppose on another day you’ll say “a tax slave is a tax slave is a tax slave, there are no degrees when you’re enslaved to the government”. Besides “all Islamic countries” as in “all countries where Islam is the primary religion the men oppress with their women with equal harshness” or “Islam is a fundamentally oppressive religion with no reprieve and therefore must be abolished”? “Islamic women be overjoyed” or would they see Victorian Western women being in similar circumstances – men get first dibs on everything whereas women are always considered second-class citizens?
However, the original issue is with FGM and most Muslims don’t practice it and find it deplorable. In other words, it’s an ancient cultural practice that predates Christianity and Islam and has survived despite the introduction of both religions in the particular areas were it is practiced.
An article that may be of interest to some given the subject of the thread.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/indian-couple-brutally-separated-by-caste/article1330017/
Unfortunately, no one group invented misogynist brutality and no one group will end it. Very sad.
Why don’t you setup an automating payment from your checking account to Hirsi Ali, the account where your pay check gets directly deposited? Why don’t you give her your time? Why don’t you give her your life? You can do all or one or many of these and much more.
Which translates into . . . ?
I love how any opposition to Islam is “trashing” it.
Genital mutilation is not Islamic, but the Muslim Ullema is far more interested in issuing fatwas about nail clipping during Ramadan than in stopping such barbaric practices. The good Muftis of Egypt have even devoted air time to the mental gymnastics of how its okay to beat your wife and how genital mutilation of women is really quite alright.
In Muslim culture saying ANYTHING remotely unflattering against Islam is fitna and amounts to risking one’s life. So, who cares under what circumstances she came to the US? The fact that publicly stating her personal and unflattering opinion of Islam puts her life in danger remains – and says a lot about Islam.
When you call someone’s integrity into question, in this case women who grew up within Islamic cultures, because you think they’ve misrepresented their own experiences and observations, the burden of proof is on you. You have provided none other than to accuse them of attacking Islam for their own profit and notoriety. I assumed nothing about you, just read what you wrote.
Here are some other women who are, I suppose, making things up for their own aggrandizement: Seyran Ates, Zeinab al-Suweij, Anat Berko, Nonie Darwish, Manda Zand Ervin, Roya Hakakian, Nancy L. Kobrin, Marnia Lazreg, Azar Nafisi and Maryam Namazie, to name just a few. And I guess all the Afghani womens’ groups who met with Code Pink to encourage them to support a continued U.S. presence to protect them from the Taliban are all misinterpreting Islam? Code Pink, by the way, has backed away from its call for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan (not sure if that’s because of the pleas of these Muslim women or because “The One” is now running the occupation).
Also, the Dutch officials dug up the problems with Ali’s immigration status when they had to decide whether to back her or give into the radicals who where threatening to kill her. They chose the easy way out.
Methinks, I’m not talking about “any opposition” to Islam. I’m talking about the kind that Hirsi and (especially) Sultan spew. They pretty much call the entire belief system a pack of vicious, evil lies spread by barbarians. Obviously I’m not quoting verbatim, but that’s the thrust of their position. If you want to condemn ALL religion (c.f. Hitchens and Dawkins), that’s one thing. But to speak as though Muslims invented repression and ignorance – which exist quite happily without Islam – is just wrong.
Incidentally, the scholars at al Azhar have issued rulings (fatwas) against FGM. But people don’t much care, and anyhow there aren’t many countries where this practice is prevalent that have anything like the resources to enforce a policy against it.
I was correcting the circumstances under which she came to the US for the very reason that we’re talking about – EVERY freaking thing gets blamed on the “Muslims” – even Dutch immigration law. Come on. Muslims are responsible for enough crimes committed in the name of Islam without inventing more. A bit like when Arabs blame the US and Israel for absolutely everything that’s ever gone wrong, in history. It’s not like there aren’t any legitimate grievances. But they’re not responsible for the shortcomings of Arabs or Muslims themselves.
I don’t know how much Hirsi’s position says about Islam but I do know what it says about a lot of Muslims: they live in ignorance, backwardness and barbarism. But that’s not the religion, unless you want to call ALL religions such because all religions have, at one time or another, been practiced in this way. Even then, the fascists and the communists are pretty instructive as to how irrelevant religion is to evil in this world.
The fault, unfortunately, lies in the individuals who choose to “practice” Islam in the way that they do. If Islam was an inherently violent belief system, it would have flamed out long ago in war and destruction, much as did the aforementioned fascists (or maybe it would have died the quieter but no less real death of communism). Ideologies that require you to kill or be killed don’t last very long.
RE: “I’m talking about the kind that Hirsi and (especially) Sultan spew. They pretty much call the entire belief system a pack of vicious, evil lies spread by barbarians.”
Hirsi probably could qualify her statements more – the Islamic world is not monolithic. But (1.) as she points out, “mainstream” Islam enables “radical” Islam – as with many religions. In that sense Islamic society could potentially be criticized more broadly, and (2.) given what she’s been through I’d give her the benefit of the doubt if she generalizes in some cases where she shouldn’t. Ultimately, even if that generalization is inaccurate she’s clearly not the bad guy here. She’s the one calling out the bad guys.
You are quite the apologist for vicious evil Islam.
Name,
You may disagree with Hirsi’s characterization of Islam and so may other Muslims, but she has a right to her opinion of it without threat to her life. Even is she loudly proclaims her opinion. Neither you nor Al-Azhar gets to define the limits of her verbal attacks. THAT’S what’s telling about Islam – the intolerance. And I’m very narrowly defining intolerance as the willingness to physically harm people who disagree with you, however verbally viciously.
Why should all religions be condemned if Islam is condemned? What’s the logic behind that?
You say it’s not the religion that puts Muslims at the back of the world. I’m not so sure. Islam commands its followers to “listen to the Ullema”. Of course, the religious scholars have redefined “ullema” (scientist or scholar) to mean only religious scholars. This gives institutions like the Al-Azhar and the Wahhabis as much power in the Muslim world as the Vatican had before the reformation. The Al-Saud clan can’t rule Arabia without the Wahhabis, for instance.
These religious scholars benefit from keeping the population ignorant, destitute and miserable. It increases their power. In fact, when Egypt was a more liberal country before 1952, the Al-Azhar had a lot less power. The fault is not in the individuals but in the institutions because no individual has a CHOICE in how they practice the religion in most countries for fear of their lives. Just try to engage in individual practice of Islam in Arabia.
Fascists and communists were instructive only because they turned the state into a religion. When blind faith and obedience crowd out reason, one makes room for evil and evil men.
Yes, all religions have at one time or another been practiced in a vicious way. The problem with Islam is that it’s still practiced this way HUNDREDS of years later. Well after other religions grew out of brutality. Islam is accused not because it’s the only one that condones and even encourages violence as the solution for everything but because it STILL does it in the modern age.
I know plenty of Muslims who view the religion as a spiritual journey. They are rarer and rarer in the Middle East, though. There is more than Islam that’s wrong with the Middle East, but Islam sure is a handy tool – especially since the first half of the Koran is completely in contrast with the second half and the Ullema gets to decide which Haddith are “strong” and “weak” at will and when Qaradawi’s word is as strong as God’s and there’s no separation of religion and state (even in the states that officially are separate).
Daniel, I agree that she’s not the “bad guy” here as compared to the people (and I use the word loosely) who are throwing acid at girls trying to make their way to school. But I suspect that rather than helping, she is doing a great deal of damage because instead of trying to show Muslims that there is another way, she is simply calling them and their religion barbaric. You aren’t going to convince anyone that way. If anything, you’re going to convince them that it’s either the Taliban or total rejection of their faith and forced conversion to Christianity by the crusaders. I don’t see that as creating a safer world. If Luther had rejected Christ and the Bible – rather than simply the Vatican – I doubt that his movement would have gotten anywhere.
If the Name-bashers actually looked up the history of FGM on Wiki they would find that the practice predates Christianity and Islam. Unfortunately people of either Christian and Islamic faith both engage in this practice because it’s a tradition they want keep in spite of both religions.
Crawdad, you’re missing my point. Incidentally, when I said you’re assuming things about me I meant that you are assuming that I’m a non-Muslim, western know-nothing.
I don’t know all those names you mentioned. I am NOT saying that there isn’t a lot to criticize – adamantly – about the behaviour of modern-day Muslims. But there are two ways to deal with it: encourage them to adopt a more peaceful approach to their faith, rooted in the religion itself, or tell them that Islam is a backwards, violent, cruel religion that they have to get rid of.
It’s pretty clear to me which of these is more likely to get somewhere.
Whether these people do it for their own aggrandizement or because it’s their honest belief is besides the point. Just go to MEMRI and watch a clip of Wafa Sultan on Al Jazeera and ask yourself if she’s helping to fight Islamist terror or just confirming every ugly stereotype of the crusading intentions of the West.
I suppose I’m just of the position that if her thoughts are really that outrageous they should be easily dismissed. Nobody should threaten her life over an outrageous thought. Nobody should feel they have to choose between Christianity and the Taliban because she made a strong statement.
If Muslims are offened that she called Islam barbaric, challenge her on it. Are we children? I don’t know her well enough. My guess is she probably over-generalizes and on some occasions she’s probably wrong. She can’t do damage with her words and her arguments. What does damage is the instinct to destroy or denounce someone that offends you, rather than ignoring them or providing them with a counter-argument.
RE: “If anything, you’re going to convince them that it’s either the Taliban or total rejection of their faith and forced conversion to Christianity by the crusaders.”
Hirsi never said anything that would convince them of that. They may convince themselves of that, but that’s on them, not her.
You liken Hirsi’s stance to Luther rejecting Christ. It’s not. She rejects Islam. He rejected Catholicism. Neither rejects God.
If Muslims are stupid enough to still hang on to the crusader and forced conversion meme, then they are too stupid to be convinced by more gentile methods. Besides, I don’t think one woman’s opinion is going to convince anyone of anything. It’s her opinion. I’ve never heard her say that her hope is to convert everyone out of Islam (she may have, I’ve never heard it).
Re: “You just need to focus more on the Old Testament than the New Testament.”
You don’t even need to do that: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.”
It was the violent cosmic justice of the New Testament and the emergence of the idea of a Hell that gave Christians the vision to be some of the greatest imperialists in world history.
But you’re correct, the Old Testament suffices as well.
RE: “Likewise, if you want to read the Quran as an incitement to kill everyone, everywhere you can do so. You can also read it as a call for peace. What people choose to emphasize is up to them.”
That’s ridiculous. You could insert passages in Mein Kampf about the necessity of Aryan brotherhood and peace, but it doesn’t negate the other directives in that book. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying Mein Kampf, the Koran, and the Bible are equivalent. What I’m saying is that directives for violence don’t get erased if it says nice, sweet things too.
I agree with your last paragraph, and perhaps that means I disagree with Hirsi insofar as I think a lot of this may not be inherent in Islam. But as far as the fundamental violence and the fundamental reliance on faith rather than logic and verification – that is most definitely there.
Daniel, if you want to that with just a little effort you could embrace a very, very violent interpretation of Christianity.
Yes, but he’d have a very hard time to get anyone else to go along with him. You tell him he needs to focus on the old testament. Why? Nobody else does. This isn’t 615 B.C. That’s what the Muslims don’t seem to grasp. If I had a dime for every time I heard that things are so bad because we’ve strayed from the path and no longer live the perfection of 7th century Muslims (this reason is second only to the conspiracy theories about crusaders), I would be richer than Bill Gates.
The Koran only asks men and women to dress modestly and cover their bosoms from all but their husbands. Fatima taught in the mosques, etc. The problem is the haddith. 250 years after Mohamed’s death, Bukhari “miraculously” remembers everything Mohamed said. Purda is not in the Koran, it’s in the Haddith. Convenient. And if you reject the Haddith as not obligatory? Then, you’re spitting on the Sunna. You’re apostate and apostasy comes with a new and modern feature these days – a death fatwa. Practicing Islam as you wish is a lot harder if you’re not in the United States than you’re making it out to be.
Once again immaterial where FGM was invented. It’s Muslims who are ones doing it in 2009. Deal with reality. Stop kissing Muslim ass.
I never said FGM was inherently Islamic.
I’m saying if she’s wrong, offer a counter-argument. Don’t get all weepy for Muslims that would rather get offended and self-righteous than provide a counter-argument for Hirsi. Hirsi should be paying people to communicate her message to the Muslim world, not paying people to defend her life.
Violence predates Islam and Christianity too. It doesn’t mean Islam and Christianity don’t sanction violence.
Daniel, as usual obtuse. If Hirsi didn’t pay those people to protect her life, she’d be dead already. Are you that unfeeling?
But it’s saying nothing about “the west” or our intentions. Sultan’s voice of opposition, even though she is now a naturalized (I believe) U.S. citizen, comes from the perspective of an insider or at least, a former insider. I do go to MEMRI all the time (was once an Arab linguist in the military with extensive time spent in the Middle East). I still keep an eye on goings-on over there. Actually, some of the harshest criticisms I’ve heard come from Muslims themselves. I can’t remember his name right now, but I watched a video some time ago where a famous poet decried how in his view Islamic culture, as lived today in Arab countries, is at a dead end. And he did not see a way out of it. It goes without saying that he was putting his life on the line by doing this, and that speaks volumes.
Name, you know as well as I that those who want to believe that they are living in shite because of the “crusaders” don’t need any encouragement.
Blaming Hirsi and others for “pushing” people further into violent, pre-historic behaviour is ludicrous. Women haven’t much voice in Islamic culture anyway. No amount of soft speech is going to convince anyone of anything.
I hope you were saying that sarcastically and it just didn’t translate over the internet… needless to say I agree with you
I’m seeing a lot of Muslim apologists on this thread. I knew that there is a strain of antisemitism in the libertarian party, just didn’t think they’d come here.
Anti-semitism? How do you figure?
ArrowSmith, everything I’ve said is reasonable and defensible. If you’ve been reduced to calling me an “apologist” for “vicious evil Islam” and an anti-Semite (I didn’t even realize that we were talking about Jews), then I guess you’re more interested in vitriol than thoughtful discussion.
But, OK, you win. Muslims are scum. Nuke ‘em all.
Happy?
Daniel, as you say the Quran is not Mein Kampf. Mein Kampf is a call for violence (as is, for example, the Communist Manifesto). The Quran is a book telling Muslims how to live. Some of it is violent, some of it is not. Just as is the case with the Bible, there is plenty to pick and choose from. Most Christians these days choose to emphasize the peaceful aspects of their religion. Many (most?) Muslims seem to prefer the violent side of theirs. These things are cyclical and if we have this conversation again in 100, 500 or 1,000 years we might be saying the exact opposite (just as if we were having it in, say, 1209 instead of 2009).
Oh so Islam is a dickhole of a religion regardless of what form it takes? FGM is currently practiced by the people who doggedly hold onto their ancient tradition. Whilst a lot are Muslims, others are, wait for it, Christians! So both post-Judaism God-believing religions are scumbag beliefs then? At least when I was reading about Waris Dirie, who is a spokeswoman against FGM because she too was a victim, did actually bother to point out that neither the Bible nor the Koran advocates FGM.
You didn’t get the point of the Mein Kampf reference at all. The point is, if you added another thousand pages of peaceful text it wouldn’t change the fact that the book advocates violence – just like the Bible and the Koran.
The Koran IS a book that tells Muslims how to live. And it tells them to live violently, just as the Bible tells Christians to live violently and the Torah tells Jews to live violently.
Could they be salvagable? Maybe – just like Europeans socialists these days have seemingly ignored the militant Marxist passages. I’m not saying burn the Korans and the Bibles (nor am I saying burn the Mein Kampfs and the Communist Manifestos). I’m saying don’t dodge the fact that those books tell their followers to live a violent life.
Gil,
Islam is intolerant of everything. Why it tolerates FGM is a real question. Also, since converting to Islam is supposedly coming into the light of truth, then those practicing FGM should obey Islam and not practice it. There’s a divergence between what the religion claims and reality.
It would help you tremendously if you stop equating modern Islam with ancient Christianity and Judaism. Just because it was acceptable once doesn’t mean it is now.
Yeah! Mr. Smith accused me of anti-semitism, because I said the U.S government shouldn’t have a closer relationship with Israel than the one it has with Easter Island.
Methinks, you’re being a bit over the top when you say that either Muslims get with the program or they’re stupid. When you send people the message that your religion is backwards and you need to abandon it to become civilized, you are telling them it’s either reject your identity or to hell with you.
Of course Hirsi isn’t The One who’s going to determine what happens in the Muslim world. No one is. Incidentally, I’m baffled by your claim elsewhere in the comments than Islam commands people to obey the ulema. Islam couldn’t be a more decentralized religion – in Islam, there is no intermediary between you and God and no one is entitled to tell you how to worship. People being the sheep that they are, Muslims tend to follow those who have managed to force religious credentials (however tenuous), in the same way that Catholics follow priests. Shia Muslims especially have invented a hierarchy out of pretty much nowhere. But Hirsi is one voice and as such what she says can have an effect, however minor. My point is that while her words are music to the ears of AEI types, they’re unlikely to convince any Muslim to reform.
Muslims aren’t “stupid” if they think that it’s either conversion or war. That’s the message that many in the West send, so if you’re a Muslim who’s never been to the West, never met a Westerner, never been encouraged to think for yourself, who will you believe? The cleric who tells you to fight the infidels who are trying to destroy your religion… or the infidels who say they’re trying to destroy your religion? The more voices in the West who say something that sounds like “Islam is backwards and needs to be eliminated” then the more we’re pushed into a clash of civilizations. You say elsewhere that those Muslims who see Western action as a crusade need no encouragement. That’s simply incorrect. The more the West makes its actions seem like they’re targeted at Islam, the more Muslims will think it is. Ironically, George W. Bush was one of the better voices at insisting that this was NOT a war against Islam but of course his actions reinforced the opposite viewpoint.
If soft speech didn’t make any difference, then how does any Muslim thinker make any difference whatsoever?
Methinks, my whole point is that in another time you would have had no problem whatsoever getting lots of Christians to come join a religious war. The reason I said that you either condemn all religions or none of them is that Christianity has had its violent periods just as Islam has one of its own today. If the religion is what it is, for all time, then either Christianity was violent then and remains so today, or Islam was peaceful before and remains so today. If the religion changes depending on what its practitioners do, then it’s not about the religion any more. It’s about the followers. Christians used to execute homosexuals. Now Christian countries recognize same-sex marriage. The religious texts didn’t change. What people choose to follow and not follow changed. Why is Islam any different? Why can’t the hadith’s importance fade? There are Muslims thinkers who say they should. At the very least, we can’t give ammunition to those who oppose those thinkers to allow them to be accused of simply being stooges for the West.
My point is simply that there’s every reason to believe that Muslims can remain Muslims and live peacefully with other people. The more voices say that there is another, authentically Islamic, path to follow – one that is peaceful -the closer we’ll be to ending this war on terror. Hirsi and her compatriots are not helping anything. To the extent they make any difference at all, they’re making things worse.
“Islam is intolerant of everything.”
Methinks, that statement is beneath you. It’s just wrong.
“It would help you tremendously if you stop equating modern Islam with ancient Christianity and Judaism.”
Ancient? Christianity was the justification for a tremendous amount of bloodshed for most of its history until very, very recently. Islam, unfortunately, still is. Time will tell whether it can evolve like Christianity did. But to say that it’s irredeemable because it hasn’t is rather silly.
Name, it was a bit of poetic license to make a point.
Splitting hairs about what constitutes “ancient” doesn’t make most modern Muslim behaviour more palatable. By “very very recently”, you’re talking about hundreds of years since Westaphalia. Most people don’t consider that terribly recent. Islam has had nearly 400 years to catch up. To be fair, Islam and the way it is taught and practiced today is only part of the problem. What drives people to such death grip interpretation is the subject of long discussion. Egypt, for instance, was not this scary in the modern age until Nasser decided to adopt the socialist model and started kicking out all the foreigners. The bad economy drove Egyptians into the Arabian oil fields and infected them with Wahhabism. That’s simplistic, but this isn’t a dissertation, so I’m limited.
Methinks, I’m (literally) running out of space to reply, but a non-trivial objection I have to your last post is that Christianity hasn’t been used as a justification for violence since Westphalia. I doubt that the Victorians would agree with you, since Europe’s civilizing (and largely “Christianizing”) mission continued at least until World War I and even then, didn’t fully end until probably the 1950s.
The point isn’t to bash white people or Europeans or Christianity, it’s just to note that it wasn’t so long ago at all that something resembling the problems we see today in Islam existed in another major world religion. And since Islam is almost 700 years younger than Christianity, maybe it just need the time to catch up. Although I certainly hope it doesn’t take nearly that long.
OK, well if you’re going to put it that way then I can’t really object. We agree.
Get with the program or they’re stupid? What program is that? I said if people are stupid enough to believe that Christians are launching Medieval Crusades, they’re stupid enough to believe anything. They don’t need encouragement. Where do you get “program”?
I’m baffled by your claim elsewhere in the comments than Islam commands people to obey the ulema.
No. The Koran says “listen to the Ullema”. The Ullema is not a central body. They are scientists. The institutions such as Al-Azhar have re-interpreted the meaning to “listen only to religious scholars” and that’s how we have idiotic fatwas from Tantawi on economics – a subject he clearly knows nothing about. Then, there are the medical fatwas by similarly ignorant clerics at Al-Azhar. You can’t separate the institutions from the religion. The religion may not compel, but first you have to define the religion and the people who do that are the ones who usurped the name “ullema” and encourage the population to believe in Crusades and the holiness of the Umma (until your Sunni daughter wants to marry a shiite and then, suddenly, there’s no Umma).
We can talk all day about the stupidity contained in every religion. But, the other religions have lost the power to rule. The problem is, Islam hasn’t.
in Islam, there is no intermediary between you and God and no one is entitled to tell you how to worship.
In theory. Now, convince the guys with the guns of this view.
Name, those Muslims who see Westerners as Crusaders will interpret anything and everything the West does in its self interest as a crusade against Islam. And the Ullema and the dictators love it because they can ask for and get complete obedience from the population. The Communists used the same trick in the Soviet Union. Worked wonders.
There are few voices in the West who say that Islam is evil and should be irradiated because there are few in the West who give two craps about Islam. You mostly hear about it from Muslims and ex-Muslims.
You tend to put all the blame and responsibility on the West. Ostensibly, if only the West would stop doing anything that the Umma objects to, then everyone can live in peace. I’ve been exposed to way too much Egyptian television to believe that. Why not the other way around? If Muslims don’t want Islam to be called an evil religion then why don’t Muslims stop stoning women to death, flying planes into civilian buildings and immediately taking to the streets to kill each other when someone draws a cartoon?
If soft speech didn’t make any difference, then how does any Muslim thinker make any difference whatsoever?
That is the question we ponder, isn’t it? I don’t think it will be a thinker. I think, like the Christians in the past, Muslims will have to reach a critical point where there are enough who agree the cost of violence becomes too high.
I think we’re getting off point with regard to Hirsi. I think that most of the people here are simply saying that regardless of whether you think she’s helping the cause or not (and I understand you don’t and I see your point even if I don’t always agree), she should be able to state her opinion without fear for her life. The fact that she must fear for her life sort of proves to her, other on the fence Muslims and the West that she’s right.
Methinks, my whole point is that in another time you would have had no problem whatsoever getting lots of Christians to come join a religious war.
That’s a useless statement. We’re not in another time. In another time, slavery would have been considered perfectly moral. Does that justify my owning slaves today?
The religion is the followers – or leaders, to be more precise. The religion does not exist outside of the practice. So, in condemning the religion, people are actually condemning how its practiced. You’re obfuscating.
You ask why Islam is different and I don’t know that it has to be. That’s not a question for non-Muslims. That’s an internal question for Muslims. The burden of the change should be on Muslims, not Christians, Jews, Hindus, etc. But you and I both know that change is not on the horizon. Consider the “blemish free history of Islam” taught by certain prominent clerics as well as that teaching the Jews are pigs and apes. Rape is most often forgiven and often blamed on the woman. “Honour killings” are softly treated or ignored even by countries that forbid them. On what grounds to you object to people calling those things barbaric and the people who engage in those acts barbarians?
I think Islam will only have a hope of changing when it becomes a religion – a spiritual practice, rather than a lifestyle. That is not the current trajectory and that is not what is currently taught by the prominent schools of thought. Those people have far more power than Hirsi.
Methinks, there’s no question that she should be entitled to speak her mind without fear, just as a Danish newspaper should be entitled to hurt the feelings of as many Muslims as it wants without so much as a stone being thrown or a threat of same.
Just for the record, I don’t put much blame on the West. This is 95% a problem of Muslims and Muslim society. I do put some blame on those who encourage the view that the only way forward for Muslims is to reject Islam wholesale. I put no blame whatsoever on the religion itself. Islam isn’t socialism or communism; it’s not an ideology that is simply impossible to put into practice without coercion. Islam can be peaceful or violent; it’s up to individual Muslims which path they want to choose. For the most part, there’s not much the West can do about that.
“That’s a useless statement.”
It’s not. It’s actually a very important statement. It would be a useless statement if the issue was whether Christians or Muslims are more peaceful and respectful of differences. But it’s not (at least, to me). The issue is whether Christianity or Islam is more peaceful and respectful of differences. My point is that neither is – or both are. Either way. But the fact that Christians have gotten their act together and are a lot more civilized than they used to be doesn’t mean that Christianity was a barbaric religion for more of its history and suddenly became peaceful. It means that both options were always available; one just happened to become more prominent than the other very recently. That’s great, and it gives me some hope that the same can happen in Islam.
“The religion does not exist outside of the practice.”
Am I? Then is Christianity a completely difference religion today than it was, say, 700 years ago? The texts haven’t changed. Christ hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed except people’s behaviour.
I have no objection to calling the behaviour of so many Muslims barbaric, or calling those who engage in the behaviour barbarians. But if you try and find any justification for many of these practices anywhere in the Quran, you’re going to be flipping pages for quite some time.
Name,
I disagree that Christianity was the driving force behind colonization or that Christian Missions were anything as brutal as what the Muslims inflict on each other in the name of Islam.
But, even if I agreed, this doesn’t solve the problem Islam has today. “They did it to” isn’t going to change anything for the better. I sense we agree on this point.
Name, you can change the practice without changing the texts. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to prove with your references to Christianity’s past? The texts haven’t changed. The behaviour has – and that is what is meant by “practice”.
My problem with the Quran is that the first half is all about forgiveness and peace and coincided with Mohamed and the early Muslims being in a position of weakness. The second half is all about retribution and violence and coincided with the Muslims’ position of power. When Muslims question the call to violence based on specific surahs, the Ullema often simply reply that this surah was abrogated by a later, more violent surah. Convenient. Stuff like this often drives Muslims to feel that they either have to follow the main line or become apostate. You claim that it’s the likes of Hirsi who claim that it’s all or nothing, but the truth is that those in power declare that it’s all or nothing.
It’s largely irrelevant to modern Islam and Muslims that Christianity is also contradictory and has a violent past. Nobody would care what the texts say if the behaviour were less violent – toward others and each other. Really, only Muslims can solve this problem. Besides, I think the rise of more violent Islam is rooted in things other than the texts and that those problems can only be solved by Muslim countries. Just my opinion.
It’s not. It’s actually a very important statement….The issue is whether Christianity or Islam is more peaceful and respectful of differences..
It’s a useless statement because comparing modern day Islam to historical Christianity is useless. That’s what I was referring to, not whether or not Christianity or Islam is more peaceful or respectful – which was not what you were discussing, as you’ll see if you follow the thread. Personally, I think most of the defanging of Chrisitanity happened because Christianity lost the power to be a theocracy. There’s a separation of religion and state that exists in the West in a way that it doesn’t exist in the East. And by “East” I’m including non-Muslims as well.
Whether or not Islam can be put into practice entirely without coercion depends on how someone defines Islam. Communism and socialism don’t have to be forced on others either – behold the Kibbutz. That there are definitions of Islam that exist without coercion, I do not disagree.
I am sympathetic to Hirsi’s view of Islam because I don’t think it’s insane to separate all the good in a religion and the way it’s practiced. You may disagree with that and I respect your opinion.
I don’t think for the most part we disagree. Coercion has no place in religion and there’s not much (I would say nothing) the West can do to change Islam. Of course, you forgot to mention that coercion in Islam is actually fitna and the mental gymnastics some go through to justify it are truly astounding.
Methinks, we clearly agree on what the problem is today. But I see much more value in the example of Christianity than you do. Simply put, the fact that a religion whose practitioners exhibited such barbarism eventually came to be practiced in a peaceful manner gives me a lot of hope. From my limited knowledge it seems to me that what was done in the New World (say, by the Spaniards), in Africa (notably the Belgian Congo) and South and Southeast Asia was done in the name of Christ and spreading Christian values. It was beyond barbaric and was certainly at least as evil as throwing acid at children or blowing up public buses. And yet, look at the West today: there’s still plenty of violence but I don’t see much of it committed in the name of Christ and the overall level is far, far less than it used to be.
This isn’t going to make a lick of difference in changing the way Muslims behave. It’s only interesting as a reminder of just how much change is possible – as I say, without the religion itself changing, without a new Quran or a Third Testament or anything else. Just by new ideas infiltrating society and gaining more and more credence.
That’s where the West can make the difference in this fight, less so by giving particular ideas credence than by robbing them of any credence whatsoever by making them appear in a bad light. It’s not much, but it’s something and it’s very important. In all things, first do no harm. People like Hirsi do not, in my opinion, follow that advice.
Yes, I see your point – Christian history as a guide to what’s possible for Muslims. I guess I was looking at it from the perspective of telling Christians that they were no better at some point in history. That changes nothing for Muslims.
I really don’t think the West can make that big a difference. The acceptance of immigrants is one thing that I think can make a difference. Muslims who immigrate here find the population much more inviting and inclusive than Muslims who immigrate to Europe – despite lip service to all this “multi-culturalism”. The way they are received either makes the visiting or immigrating Muslims more or less open to new ideas. That’s been my observation, anyway.
I think you’re entitled to think that Hirsi is hurting the cause. However, in fairness, nobody has the right to force Hirsi to shoulder the cause. She is one woman and she never took an oath to do no harm in voicing her opinion. It’s unfair to hold her to an oath she never took.
Good luck fighting the good fight.
Gee Methinks lucky that you, a woman, weren’t born in the West in the 1880s because you’ll find you’d have to live a life similar to a Muslim woman does today. Every notice the joke of how a woman exposing her ankle in the 1800s was considered shocking? In other words, women were expected to be covered from head-to-toe in clothes just like a great many Muslim women today. The freedoms enjoyed by the West have been achieved by forcing Christianity away from positions of power and into the outskirts of modern society. On the other hand, Iran was a modern society before the Ayatolla however it was a liberal, Muslim society!
Methinks you must dense and haven’t bothered to read the Bible. Stoning a woman to death for adultery is part of the Bible. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” sent tens of thousands (if not far more) women to death throughout the Middle Ages. Homosexuality is a capital crime in the Bible. Thomas Jefferson was excommunicated by bishops who wanted the U.S. to be a Christian State. To say Christianity is somehow above other religions is utterly false. Freedom came from rejecting Christianity from society not its acceptance.
Yeah. In the USSR, men and women were treated as equals. All slaves were equally oppressed.
When you can find me an example of one woman who was buried in the ground up to her chest and stoned to death for showing her ankle, then we’ll talk.
The statement that the US was “founded on Judeo-Christian values” ignores the fact that centuries of monarchical, feudal, and late Roman imperial Europe was dominated by the Christian Church. There is more of early pre-Christian republican Rome in our country’s founding than anything Christian.
Gil,
I usually don’t read your posts and now I am reminded why.
What part of “we are no longer living in the middle ages” do you not understand? Where but in your tiny jumbled brain did you imagine I said Christianity is a superior religion?