Ayaan Hirsi Ali : Why are Muslims hypersensitive?

[ilbonito]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an extremely controversial, and I believe very important, woman. She is a fiercely intelligent and articulate writer, a fomer Muslim extremist who is now a vocal critic of Islam. Her main contention is that the idea that Islam is fundamentally peaceful and it is only a "radical fringe" threatening Western democracies, is a lie that Western liberals to tell to comfort themselves.

She belives Islam is, in a fundamental way, broken and unhealthy and that it is the duty of those interested in personal liberty to confront it.

There is a very long, but interesting interview with her in the Guardian newspaper:

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/08/ayaan-hirsi-ali-interview

[lagatta]

I think she is being most disingenuous. And my progressive women friends of Muslim backgrounds, some believers but absolutely anti-fundamentalist, some as atheist as Ali, detest her. Oh, they certainly don't want her killed, just as they were shocked by the killing of Theo Van Gogh. But they don't find her approach useful in the struggle against fundamentalism, and how can she expect not to be judged for the company she keeps?

[bixaorellana]

Absolutely my reaction to her, LaGatta. Not to deny her accomplishments, but there is something shrill and misguided about her stance, which seems to spring more from personal anger than from political conviction. And sure, it doesn't hurt to make a positive impression if one is in the public eye, but she comes across as too much of a publicity-seeker.

I think that Emma Brockes did an excellent job of trying to be even-handed, although I got the strong impression that she was not convinced of her subject's sincerity.

What I find distressing is that Ayaan Hirsi Ali's strident denouncing of her former faith is more likely to call down more prejudice against Muslims and by extension, the very women for whom she claims concern.

[ilbonito]

I disagree. I read her book "Infidel" and what stuck me was how rational her arguments were. I don't think she is "lashing out" against her former religion because of abuses she suffered. I think she has come to the same logical conclusion that I would would have come to in her place - she believes in the freedom of the individual and she simply doesnt see that value reflected in the Muslim cultures she has experienced.

She believes in freedom of religion. Don't we all? Yet Islam doesn't. And she rejects that, (hence the name of the book).

[lagatta]

Neither do pre-Enlightenment Chrisitanity or Judaism. Surely you don't think the current Pope does, or the nutcase Israeli settlers who annoy the hell out of other Israelis and are gaining demographically and in power?

(To say nothing of more Eastern religions, which I freely admit to not knowing enough about. I've done several university courses on the history of the Abrahamic monotheisms).

Personally, I don't believe in any religion, but I know many fine people who have acted humanely on the basis of religious belief - in the Western Christian world, we can think of religous people who struggled against slavery.

I don't think the "resentment" or "irrationality" in predominantly Muslim countries is necessarily so different than you'd find down in Buenos Aires. Hebe de Bonafini, a leading spokeswoman for las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo actually initially proclaimed that the 9-11 terrorists were anti-imperialists or some such nonsense, and la Sra de Bonafini is of the same nominal faith and pretty much the same ethnic background as I am. (Many other progressive Argentines said ... whoa!) You can't blame Islam or some alien culture for that reaction - it can and must be criticised, but should be understood. Her children were murdered by the régime, with active and tacit support from the global North.

People really don't like to be invaded or bombed because they are sitting atop a pot of oil. And some kind of peaceful and just solution really must be found to Israel-Palestine. I have Israeli and Palestinian friends - it is my dearest hope that some kind of decent solution can be found there, for one thing they are all brainy as all hell and could produce a wonderful place.

I don't like Muslim fundies any more than you do - they have dragged those societies centuries backwards in a few decades - but I don't think there is more difference than similarity among the Abrahamic monotheistic religions.

[ilbonito]

I think that is a key point - the Church may not have been historically any more tolerant than Islamic movements, but Western culture has come to accept it should be separated from the state, and certain individual freedoms should be protected.

Many, in fact, most Islamic societies have been unable so far to do this . And this is exactly what Ayaan Hirsi Ai is arguing for.

And she asks, why is it that it has been so hard for Muslim societies to accept concepts like democracy, and separation of state and religion? According to the human rights monitoring group Freedom House only three of the fortyish Muslim states in the world rate as "free" - Turkey, Indonesia and Senegal. Ayaan asks "is there something inherent in Islam that prevents it from accepting these "modern" notions?" And her answer is: yes. It is the emphasis on submission, and the brute suppression of critical thought. And that, she believes, must be changed.

I think her importance is that she is not a Westerner, a "colonialist" telling Muslims how to reform their societies. She is "one of them", an insider, a product of a Third world Islamic society, someone who grew up accepting Islamic beliefs and has now come on her own terms to question them. She is calling for reform of her own culture, and a need for change.

[fumobici]

Her professed ideology strikes me as seeming PTSD tinged and thus of compromised rationality. Not so much guilt by association as the company one keeps, I find her associations with Fallaci and the American Enterprise Institute damning.

That said, common fundi Islam, like all other fundamentalisms that all boil essentially down to "Obey me because God told you to", is obviously an insult to rationality and a invitation to opportunistic corruption.

As someone who views all religion as essentially a scam, I'd expect any religion to be just as bad if they thought they could get away with being so.

[lagatta]

The current Pope certainly would.

[bixaorellana]

May 9, 2010 18:52:18 GMT fumobici said:

Her professed ideology strikes me as seeming PTSD tinged and thus of compromised rationality. ...
I find her associations with Fallaci and the American Enterprise Institute damning.

You are kinder than I, Fumobici, as she strikes me as smugly narcissistic. She has the same air of puerile satisfaction in the attention she receives that marks all conservative spokespeople. Her conservative allegiances make the motivations for all her utterances suspect.

May 9, 2010 6:56:44 GMT ilbonito said:

I think her importance is that she is not a Westerner, a "colonialist" telling Muslims how to reform their societies. She is "one of them" ... She is calling for reform of her own culture, and a need for change.

She is calling for it from without and in a way that only adds to the current Western prejudices against Islam that have and will lead to "justified" invasions of Muslim countries.

[imec]

Isn't religion (strict adherence to a set of principles or beliefs for which exists not a shred of evidence) by it's very nature, fundamentalist?

[bixaorellana]

An excellent OP for Charting a Course, Imec!