What A Fool Believes
Unfortunately, a lot of people think this particular fool is laudably smart. In Macleans, Mark Steyn shows what a deluded child of a thinker Nicholas Kristof can be, vis a vis Kristof's ridiculous review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book, Nomad (a brilliant and insightful work I just mowed through):
"She has managed to outrage more people--in some cases to the point that they want to assassinate her--in more languages in more countries on more continents than almost any writer in the world today. Now Hirsi Ali is working on antagonizing even more people in yet another memoir."That's his opening pitch: if there are those who wish to kill her, it's her fault because she's a provocateuse who's found a lucrative shtick in "working on antagonizing" people. The Times headlines Kristof's review "The Gadfly," as if she's a less raddled and corpulent Gore Vidal. In fact, she wrote a screenplay for a film; Muslim belligerents threatened to kill her and her director; they made good on one half of that threat. This isn't shtick.
But Kristof decides to up the condescension. Of the author's estrangement from her Somali relatives, he writes: "I couldn't help thinking that perhaps Hirsi Ali's family is dysfunctional simply because its members never learned to bite their tongues and just say to one another: 'I love you.' " Awwwww. Group hug! Works every time.
But maybe not so much in Somalia. This isn't a family where they bite their tongues but where they puncture their clitorises. At the age of five, Ayaan was forced to undergo "FGM" (female genital mutilation), or, in the new non-judgmental PC euphemism, "cutting." When she had her first period, her mother beat her. When she was 22, her father arranged for her to marry a cousin in Canada. While in Germany awaiting the visa for her wedded bliss in Her Majesty's multicultural utopia, she decided to skip out, and fled to the Netherlands.
All she wanted was a chance to do what Nicholas Kristof takes for granted--to live her own life. What difference would saying "I love you" in a Lifestyle Channel soft-focus blur accompanied by saccharine strings make? As they see it, the perpetrators of "honour killings" love their daughters: that's why they kill 'em. Would Kristof wish to swap his options for the set menu served up to Muslim women? How would he like it if, just as he was getting ready to head to Oxford on his Rhodes Scholarship, his dad had announced that he'd arranged for him to marry a cousin? Oh, and in Canada.
...Deploring what he regards as her simplistic view of Islam, Nicholas Kristof rhapsodizes about its many fine qualities--"There is also the warm hospitality toward guests, including Christians and Jews."
Oh, for crying out loud. In the Muslim world, Christians and Jews have been on the receiving end of a remorseless ethno-religious cleansing for decades. Christian churches get burned, along with their congregations, from Nigeria to Pakistan. Egypt is considering stripping men who marry Jewesses of their citizenship. Saudi Arabia won't let 'em in the country. In the 1920s, Baghdad was 40 per cent Jewish. Gee, I wonder where they all went. Maybe that non-stop "warm hospitality" wears you down after a while . . .
Hirsi Ali, page 129 of the hardcover:
It's true that I have had to pay a price for leaving Islam and for speaking out. For instance, I have to pay for round-the-clock security because of the death threats against me. But because Islam demands that anyone who leaves the religion be punished by death, this constant fear is to some extent shared by all Muslims who leave the faith as well as those who practice a less strict form of it.
And read this sick stuff, page 153, about how women, in Islam, are:
"the breeders of men, and women's honor lies in their purity, their submission, their obedience. Their shame is to be sexually impure, and it is the worst shame of all, because a woman's sexual disobedience defiles herself, her sisters, and her mother, as well as the male relatives whose duty it is to control her.No Muslim man has any standing in society if he does not have honor. And no matter how much honor he builds up through wise decisions and good deeds, it is destroyed if his daughter or his sister is sexually defiled. This can happen if she loses her virginity before she's married, or if she engages in sexual intercourse outside of the marriage -- and that includes rape. Even the rumor that she may have had sex is reason enough to label her "defiled" and lead to loss of honor for her whole family. A father who cannot control his daughters, a brother who cannot control his sisters, is disgraced. He is bankrupt socially and even economically. His family is ruined. The girl will not fetch a bride-price, and neither will her sisters or her cousins, because the mere suspicion of independent feeling and female action in their family taints them too.
Page 164:
When well-meaning Westerners, eager to promote respect for minority religions and cultures, ignore practices like force marriage and confinement in order to "stop society from stigmatizing Muslims," they deny countless Muslim girls the right to wrest their freedoms from their parents' culture. They fail to live up to the ideals and values of our democratic society, and they harm the very same vulnerable minority they seek to protect.
I don't know about Westerners, but as an minority atheist asian, living in a predominantly islamic asian culture, I always felt and still feel very alienated, uneasy and uncomfortable living in their predominantly islamic society. Without the cash, it would be even worst for me. Luckily, I have some cash to move around quite independently in their society. I just hated having to bow down to a totalitarian alien culture.
WLIL at June 11, 2010 11:31 PM
Personally, I am of the opinion that peoplel should be dealt with in the same way they deal with others.
You want to kill others for belonging to a differnt faith? Then you should have no complaints when we kill you.
Quite frankly we need a really good plauge. SARS, bird flu and swine flu were all a bust. One really virulent pathogen and given the conditions in most muslim dominated countries would solve alot of the worlds problems
lujlp at June 12, 2010 5:56 AM
It is one's own private business if one wish to move in or move out from their faith. If it was really dangerous for Hirsi to convert from her islamic faith, she should keep her whatever conversion private and should not announced to the whole wide world. I just hope this is not another publicity stunt. As it is, I just had enough of their islamic society imposing their totalitarian islamic culture on a nonbeliever such as myself who have nothing in common with them and wish to keep a safe distance from them as much as possible.
. WLIL at June 12, 2010 7:07 AM
Unfortunately the Judeo-Christian view is that we shouldn't kill people wholesale. A few nukes could do wonders for the world.
Jim P. at June 12, 2010 7:09 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/06/12/what_a_fool_bel_1.html#comment-1722800">comment from . WLILSorry, but why should any person have to have their life and speech directed by what you admit is a "totalitarian" culture?
She speaks out, at her peril, in hopes of changing things. Read her book and see how incredibly far she's come, and with so much courage.
Amy Alkon at June 12, 2010 7:12 AM
Amy,
My book list is getting too long. ;-)
What the people on this side of the border(s) need to realize that all is not milk and clovers on their side iof the fence. And then fight back.
Jim P. at June 12, 2010 8:30 AM
The view from the European left:
A Dutch acquaintance, pretty far to my left, was almost entirely unsympathetic to Hirsi Ali. He thought it ironic that an illegal immigrant would become a member of an anti-immigration party, and thought that her expulsion from Parliament was well-earned. His opinion of Hirsi Ali was that she was primarily an opportunist and self-promoter.
Christopher at June 12, 2010 9:07 AM
FIrst and foremost, I cannot affod to buy her book. Secondly, nonbelievers who have nothing in common with islamic people(in their previous life or present lifes) who have no choice but to live in a predominantly totalitarian islamic society deserved much more sympathy.
WLIL at June 12, 2010 12:39 PM
Arrgghhh.
Western culture is tolerant, and proudly so.
I wouldn't want it otherwise.
However, this produces a problem when dealing
with other cultures that are inherently INTOLERANT.
Western culture also believes that rights
belong primarily to INDIVIDUALS, not to groups.
This point is expressed over and over in Western
Civilization, maybe nowhere as clearly as in the
Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator ..."
Thus, if you believe in Western Civilization,
you must to a large extent REJECT ideologies
that deny individual rights, such as Communism,
Nazism and indeed Islam. I stand with Ayaan Hirshi Ali in stating that all ideologies (or religions, but Islam, not making the distinction of giving to Caesar what which is Caesar's etc,
is more an ideology than a religiion) are somehow of "equal worth". They are NOT!
Enforcer
Enforcer at June 12, 2010 4:39 PM
Arrgghhh.
Western culture is tolerant, and proudly so.
I wouldn't want it otherwise.
However, this produces a problem when dealing
with other cultures that are inherently INTOLERANT.
Western culture also believes that rights
belong primarily to INDIVIDUALS, not to groups.
This point is expressed over and over in Western
Civilization, maybe nowhere as clearly as in the
Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator ..."
Thus, if you believe in Western Civilization,
you must to a large extent REJECT ideologies
that deny individual rights, such as Communism,
Nazism and indeed Islam. I stand with Ayaan Hirshi Ali in stating that all ideologies (or religions, but Islam, not making the distinction of giving to Caesar what which is Caesar's etc,
is more an ideology than a religiion) are somehow of "equal worth". They are NOT!
Enforcer
Enforcer at June 12, 2010 7:24 PM
The "warm hospitality" is that Islam allows Jews and Christians to remain alive without converting, as long as they behave like proper Dhimmis (not quite slaves). Everyone else must convert or die.
Sabba Hillel at June 14, 2010 1:13 PM
Indeed, there is nothing warm about those "islamic hospitality". The fact is they have bad ulterior motive when it come with regard about their socalled "warm hospitality".Most of the time, those islamic people were just arrogant, hostile and grasping for our hard earned money or tried to force us nonbelievers to eat their horrible halal food without gving us nonbelievers a choice. Their islamic culture is really very deceptive and virulent.
WLIL at June 14, 2010 2:06 PM
And in reply to page 164 contents:
WEsterners or any other nonbelievers are not oblige to help islamic girls, not especially when they don't appreciate any kind of help from us, nonbelievers, outsiders. Anyway, I need to help myself first and prevent myself from being suck further into their foul, deceptive islamic system.
WLIL at June 14, 2010 3:06 PM
The problem with Hirsi Ali, is that she kept on expecting westerners, christian to help her islamic community. What about us nonbelievers who got stucked in an islamic ghetto? What about she coming to a nonbeliever aid in a predominantly islamic hellhole? It is very selfish of her to keep harping on aid for her islamic community. I already know, as a nonbeliever, and most nonbelievers already know islam is bad. For a change, she should come out and help lone nonbeliever who have difficulty coping in predominantly dreadful islamic place.
WLIL at June 14, 2010 3:25 PM
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