Islam is the problem, not just the terrorists
It has been quite some time since my drivel graced these pages. I have just finished reading a book published in 2007, entitled "Infidel", written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, that demands some comments, so here I go again. I hope this incomplete review encourages people to buy or borrow and read this worthwhile effort. Ali, as a Dutch member of Parliament, was working with Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh when he was assassinated in 2004 in Holland by a Muslim murderer because he dared to release a film he made in co-operation with Ali, which told certain uncomfortable truths about Islam.
You might be interested in some excerpts from her book published by "Free Press", a division of Simon and Schuster, in 2007, entitled "Infidel". Ali is a Somali Muslim woman who moved from Africa to Holland [to escape a forced marriage], and who moved to the United States when Holland turned hostile and dangerous.
She has witnessed first hand the atrocities of ordinary, normal, mainstream Islam, and has made it clear that it is not "just" the "fanatics" and "radicals" that are responsible for the atrocities foisted on people throughout the world by Muslims and Islam. It is the ordinary, normal, mainstream adherents of the religion that are ultimately responsible for those atrocities. Fish must swim in the water to live and survive; just as terrorists operate freely and without easy detection because they are protected and supported within Muslim communities by those "ordinary" and "normal" Muslims throughout the world.
Of course, there are exceptions to the norm. It is dangerous to assume that every Muslim and every Muslim group are terrorists or terrorist supporters in disguise. There are schismatic sects among Muslims, as well as individual Muslims, who are not supporters of terrorism or who hold democratic values.
But that is only part of the picture. To ignore the main truth, however, is not only to be willfully ignorant, but to collaborate with terrorism, intolerance and backwardness. That, unfortunately, is the only fair way to describe those academics, left-wingers, liberals, and others who make excuses for terrorists and indiscriminately attack Israel, march in support of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, and even donate money to support their activities.
Ms. Ali makes it clear that those Muslims, like herself, who have walked away from, or no longer believe in or follow the common attitudes of Muslims to other religions, other sects, other human behaviours, are themselves in danger of being subjected to intimidation, violence and even death, especially if they are open and public about their attitudes and beliefs.
Her book is a personal history, beginning with her experiences as a child of a Muslim family in a Muslim culture, and continuing through her development into an adult, her education in Holland and her accomplishments as a believer in freedom and democracy in Holland and the U.S. She has been a victim of Islamic violence, beginning with the painful female circumcision and the sewing up of her vagina visited on her as a child, and continuing with the constant threat of death under which she still lives. Her book outlines the process of discovery and enlightenment she underwent, beginning with a deep desire to become a "good" Muslim and adopt an unquestioning loyalty to Islamic "values", and ending with her realization that so many of those values are anti-human and evil in their very essences.
Now, she says of Islam, for example, "It [death] catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who order their subordinates to hunt, torture and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. For many women, because of the perception of lost honour, death comes at the hands of a father, brother, or husband." [Page 346-347]
She lived in Saudi Arabia for a while and describes it as the place which is the source and quintessence of Islam and the origin of much of the fundamentalist vision that has spread so far today. There, she realized, every breath or step she took in practicing Islam was infused with concepts of purity or sinning, and with fear.
She says: "Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago. The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia, and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes the transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam. It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. It was difficult for my grandmother, and for all my relatives from the miye[acute accent on the e]. It was difficult for me too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason -- from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values. The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life. Life is better in Europe than it is in the Muslim world because human relations are better, and one reason human relations are better is that in the West, life on earth is valued in the here and now, and individuals enjoy rights and freedoms that are protected by the state. To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it -- that, for me, would be self-hatred."
In response to dismissals of her views as if she was treating rare behavior as the norm, she goes on to say: "The fact is that hundreds of millions of women around the world live in forced marriages, and six thousand small girls are excised every day. [Editor's note: Ali describes these things as going on regularly in Europe today among Muslims] My excision in no way damaged my mental capacities; and I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim. When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn't so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so."[pages 347 - 349]
Elsewhere in her book she described the attitude of Muslims [not just the terrorist radicals or fanatics] to Jews. She describes their beliefs [as taught to her by an Arab Muslim teacher in school in Kenya] that Jews had horns on their heads, and huge noses that resembled beaks, that djinns (demons) and devils flew out of their heads to mislead Muslims and spread evil, that everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews, that Saddam Hussein was really a Jew (because he attacked Iran), that the Americans were controlled by "the Jews", and that Jews controlled the world and Islam was under attack by "the Jews". If this is a mainstream attitude within the Muslim community, taught to children in school, it is easy to understand the implacability of Muslims in refusing to make peace with Israel. It is interesting that this tallies with the depiction of Azerbaijani Muslims' views about Jews in Sacha B. Cohen's movie, Borat. I thought he was exaggerating. I guess not. [See page 85]
Ali's book contains a wealth of her observations and recollections about Muslim culture; their beliefs, attitudes and behaviour towards women and others, as well as the sources of these things. It is both enlightening and horrifying.
Her book also describes in detail the danger to European countries of the great influx of Muslim immigrants and refugees, as well as the wilfully ignorant and stupid responses [or lack of responses] to that influx and its dangers to democracy and freedom.
These are not the rants of some right-wing Western racist or fanatic.
You might be interested in some excerpts from her book published by "Free Press", a division of Simon and Schuster, in 2007, entitled "Infidel". Ali is a Somali Muslim woman who moved from Africa to Holland [to escape a forced marriage], and who moved to the United States when Holland turned hostile and dangerous.
She has witnessed first hand the atrocities of ordinary, normal, mainstream Islam, and has made it clear that it is not "just" the "fanatics" and "radicals" that are responsible for the atrocities foisted on people throughout the world by Muslims and Islam. It is the ordinary, normal, mainstream adherents of the religion that are ultimately responsible for those atrocities. Fish must swim in the water to live and survive; just as terrorists operate freely and without easy detection because they are protected and supported within Muslim communities by those "ordinary" and "normal" Muslims throughout the world.
Of course, there are exceptions to the norm. It is dangerous to assume that every Muslim and every Muslim group are terrorists or terrorist supporters in disguise. There are schismatic sects among Muslims, as well as individual Muslims, who are not supporters of terrorism or who hold democratic values.
But that is only part of the picture. To ignore the main truth, however, is not only to be willfully ignorant, but to collaborate with terrorism, intolerance and backwardness. That, unfortunately, is the only fair way to describe those academics, left-wingers, liberals, and others who make excuses for terrorists and indiscriminately attack Israel, march in support of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, and even donate money to support their activities.
Ms. Ali makes it clear that those Muslims, like herself, who have walked away from, or no longer believe in or follow the common attitudes of Muslims to other religions, other sects, other human behaviours, are themselves in danger of being subjected to intimidation, violence and even death, especially if they are open and public about their attitudes and beliefs.
Her book is a personal history, beginning with her experiences as a child of a Muslim family in a Muslim culture, and continuing through her development into an adult, her education in Holland and her accomplishments as a believer in freedom and democracy in Holland and the U.S. She has been a victim of Islamic violence, beginning with the painful female circumcision and the sewing up of her vagina visited on her as a child, and continuing with the constant threat of death under which she still lives. Her book outlines the process of discovery and enlightenment she underwent, beginning with a deep desire to become a "good" Muslim and adopt an unquestioning loyalty to Islamic "values", and ending with her realization that so many of those values are anti-human and evil in their very essences.
Now, she says of Islam, for example, "It [death] catches the imagination of men in positions of authority who order their subordinates to hunt, torture and kill people they imagine to be enemies. Death lures many others to take their own lives in order to escape a dismal reality. For many women, because of the perception of lost honour, death comes at the hands of a father, brother, or husband." [Page 346-347]
She lived in Saudi Arabia for a while and describes it as the place which is the source and quintessence of Islam and the origin of much of the fundamentalist vision that has spread so far today. There, she realized, every breath or step she took in practicing Islam was infused with concepts of purity or sinning, and with fear.
She says: "Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam cannot interpret away this reality: hands are cut off, women still stoned and enslaved, just as the Prophet Muhammad decided centuries ago. The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia, and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values. It preserves a feudal mind-set based on tribal concepts of honor and shame. It rests on self-deception, hypocrisy, and double standards. It relies on the technological advances of the West while pretending to ignore their origin in Western thinking. This mind-set makes the transition to modernity very painful for all who practice Islam. It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. It was difficult for my grandmother, and for all my relatives from the miye[acute accent on the e]. It was difficult for me too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason -- from the world of excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values. The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life. Life is better in Europe than it is in the Muslim world because human relations are better, and one reason human relations are better is that in the West, life on earth is valued in the here and now, and individuals enjoy rights and freedoms that are protected by the state. To accept subordination and abuse because Allah willed it -- that, for me, would be self-hatred."
In response to dismissals of her views as if she was treating rare behavior as the norm, she goes on to say: "The fact is that hundreds of millions of women around the world live in forced marriages, and six thousand small girls are excised every day. [Editor's note: Ali describes these things as going on regularly in Europe today among Muslims] My excision in no way damaged my mental capacities; and I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim. When people say that the values of Islam are compassion, tolerance, and freedom, I look at reality, at real cultures and governments, and I see that it simply isn't so. People in the West swallow this sort of thing because they have learned not to examine the religions or cultures of minorities too critically, for fear of being called racist. It fascinates them that I am not afraid to do so."[pages 347 - 349]
Elsewhere in her book she described the attitude of Muslims [not just the terrorist radicals or fanatics] to Jews. She describes their beliefs [as taught to her by an Arab Muslim teacher in school in Kenya] that Jews had horns on their heads, and huge noses that resembled beaks, that djinns (demons) and devils flew out of their heads to mislead Muslims and spread evil, that everything that went wrong was the fault of the Jews, that Saddam Hussein was really a Jew (because he attacked Iran), that the Americans were controlled by "the Jews", and that Jews controlled the world and Islam was under attack by "the Jews". If this is a mainstream attitude within the Muslim community, taught to children in school, it is easy to understand the implacability of Muslims in refusing to make peace with Israel. It is interesting that this tallies with the depiction of Azerbaijani Muslims' views about Jews in Sacha B. Cohen's movie, Borat. I thought he was exaggerating. I guess not. [See page 85]
Ali's book contains a wealth of her observations and recollections about Muslim culture; their beliefs, attitudes and behaviour towards women and others, as well as the sources of these things. It is both enlightening and horrifying.
Her book also describes in detail the danger to European countries of the great influx of Muslim immigrants and refugees, as well as the wilfully ignorant and stupid responses [or lack of responses] to that influx and its dangers to democracy and freedom.
These are not the rants of some right-wing Western racist or fanatic.
posted by politicalcommentariescanada | 9:29 PM
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