Jackie Danicki

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Originally uploaded by dynamist.

I finished Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali earlier today. It is a book that moved me to tears many times, tears of anger, sadness, and elation. But I was sad to come to the conclusion, so spent some time scouring the web for interviews with Ayaan. (Sadly, but perhaps necessarily, I also came across a photograph of Theo Van Gogh, lying in the street after being murdered, the death threat toward Ayaan stabbed into his chest.) I also scoped out the author’s critics, as I do after I finish every book, and was sickened by what I found. No wonder Ayaan must live under maximum security for the rest of her life (which, as one interviewer put to her, will most likely not end of natural causes). The whole story is also damning of Europe. As Andrew Anthony wrote in the Observer earlier this year:

In truth there is probably room for both what Hirsi Ali calls ‘Tariq Ramadan gymnastics’ and her more uncompromising approach. Though it may say something for our incurable self-loathing that it is Hirsi Ali, the most fervent admirer of European liberalism, that we’ve effectively sent packing.

Below, some noteworthy quotations from interviews with Ayaan, and a video interview.

I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage, for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values.

…When I was in Holland, the idea was, all cultures are equal and all are to be preserved. My idea was, no, all humans are equal but not all cultures are equal. In the culture of my parents, we never seemed to be able to succeed in such basic issues as getting food, interacting and living in peace with each other, or adapting to our environment, and the West, they’ve succeeded in all those. I’d been taught Western culture’s only bad. Maybe that’s good for your self-esteem, but it wasn’t taking us anywhere.

…Do tell me: what is not gentle about what I say? I don’t call for violence. I don’t call for the abolition of Islam. I don’t say that Muslims should be kicked out of the country. I don’t say that they should be attacked. All I say is that being a Muslim, having been brought up as a Muslim, could we please ask Muslims to look at ourselves, could we please look at the Qu’ran and acknowledge that there is an urge, that it urges us to be violent, accept that it’s in there and then change it. I don’t see anything that’s not gentle about that. It is not me who’s not being gentle; it’s the people who respond to that gentle nudge with violence who are not gentle.

…Of course there is an anger. If people’s hands are cut off… this jihadi bullshit is like, “Let’s all go back to the seventh century.” Now I don’t want to go back to the seventh century. And I know that many others like me in Islam don’t want to go back. But all these people are blackmailed into the dogma that you don’t argue with god. So you have to take the Qu’ran literally as the word of god forever, it never moves. You follow the example of the prophet as a moral guide, always.

…When people say that the values of Islam are compassion and 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.

She is certainly one of the most brave people on this planet, on a mission that I hate to imagine will fail. Women and homosexuals should be ardent in their support, as that is precisely who stands to gain most if she succeeds in forcing Muslims to re-evaluate what Islam says, daring them to ask questions about the Qu’ran and the hadiths.

The truth is that there is not one country in the world that is ruled by Muslims or which houses a Muslim majority which would allow Ayaan to say the things that she is saying. It is the world’s good fortune that she escaped to the west. All of us who consider ourselves liberals must support her.

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