open Democracy News Analysis - Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel', KA Dilday - Comments

xxx_3 on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

xxx_3 — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 12:34:15 +0000

I think the writer missed the point entirely of the events. Who cut off communication her or his reaction? After the writer doubted her faith I doubt she had to face death treats and personal attacks like Hirsi Ali did which might make her a bit wary too.

This sounds very much like a lack of empathy on the writer�s part. Next she�ll be telling battered women that she had a boyfriend that shouted at her so she knows what it feels like and the women should just confront their abusers. It is about as insensitive as this article.

spamgreg on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

spamgreg — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:17:43 +0000

There is a big misunderstanding of the "Charle Hebdo" trial, there. The muslims accused "Charlie Hebdo" of BLASPHEMY. Yes, the Middle-Age word for which people were burned.

There is of course no offense resembling blasphemy in the French law, since we headed off a few kings. So the muslims had to hide the accusation of blasphemy under a very light pretext of racism, they did not show themselves "french" in acknowledging some french aspects ; they just tried to get round an impossible accusation.

In fact, "Charlie Hebdo" is not and has never been racist, it is on the contrary a left-wing libertarian journal, full of sex and blasphemy, and very funny.

There is that piece also : >

That is completely false. We integrate most immigrants - but it takes time (in decades), and immigrants come each and every year. So there is always a lot of people engaged in the process for whom, apparently, it has failed. And, also, if failure there was, it would be the immigrants' as it is them who have to try and integrate, because after all, it is them only who want to come in.

Cole_2233 on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

Cole_2233 — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:38:48 +0000

What are you trying to say - I thought we were going to read about Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

This is typical American - you don't fully understand the Islam / Europe situation, but you are going to try to fix it. �Yeah�, bring Turkey in, the US needs an ally in Europe, which is connected to the Middle East. What ever happen to your commitment to grow sawgrass for fuel?!

If you are dealing with Islam in Europe you have got to deal with the fear factor. In the US you have Mexicans flooding across your border, but to this day, there has not been a single Mexican, who has either threatened or has actually blown themselves up in an effort to promote his religious cause. Once this happens, guaranteed, the relationship between you and the Mexicans will change. To date in Europe, there have been attacks in Spain and in the UK, and there have been many more, foiled attempts of assassination and bombing plots in Europe, that we hardly hear about.

I would agree that religion has its own illusion, but you seem to pedaling another type of illusion, somewhere in its lofty place.

I would bet without even having read Hirsi Ali's book, that her main objective would be to let people on the outside/ non-Muslims, know what this religion, which calls itself 'peaceful' is all about. Any free country, which has allowed Muslims in as citizens, needs to know what the objectives of these groups are.

The mistake we make is that because we live in a world, which we are trying move towards a state of political correctness, that when we hear of something that is not politically correct or outside of this view, we reject it as being untrue or ridiculous (bunk). The problem we have is that Islam and the Koran are not politically correct.

So maybe with Hirsi Ali, what you are really trying to do is to kill the messenger - who brings the politically incorrect news - in favour of an illusion, a lofty one, I might add.

tcp_1 on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

tcp_1 — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:40:26 +0000

Pamela Bone,

I find your outrage a puzzle. In her article, it seems to me that Dilday goes out of her way to make a _subtle_ comparison between growing up as women in the shadow of these 2 religions.

"it is outrageous to compare", you say, and then start complaining about _equivalence_. But comparison is not only used as a statement of identity.

Ayaan and KA are both - and aren't many of us reading this site? - on some path out of a traditionalism. Headed in the same direction? intersecting? Maybe none of these; but all leaving something shared. Comparison is not identity.

KA wants to argue that there is a place for some version of religious on the paths out of traditionalism. Ayaan may well be at a point where she disagrees - though she has not been there always.

But to reduce this, as you seem to, to a question of left-relativism versus right-moralism, does violence to thoughtful, careful, even delicate distinctions that matter hugely to constructing a good post-traditionalism.

D.Dimitrov, Hamburg on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

D.Dimitrov, Hamburg — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:33:22 +0000

Ayaan Hirsi Ali does sometimes attack Islam as a whole in an inappropriate way. But we have to give it up that she has the guts to criticize Islam on a very important issue: discrimination of, suppression of and violence against women.

She wants to cross a line, which needs to be crossed to spark attention and a debate about women and Islam, not Islam as a whole, although sometimes the peripheral fundamentalist character of Islam is inevitably addressed. This a political price, which she has to pay to get her point across, the way she wants to get it across, straight up.

Breeding resentment, polarization, yes this is also the result of her approach, but am I going to be killed for making a movie about "the crazy evangelicals", like her filmmaker was (by the way, she constantly faces the same danger)??? I do not think so!

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali and I were born the same year and share many of the same traits, yet while she was having her clitoris snipped and her labia sewn shut by a tribal "doctor", I was trying to figure out how to get out of violin lessons. It's easy for me to be tolerant."

Implying that Ali is "out for revenge" and questioning her objectivity is in my opinion a total underestimation of Ali's intellectual capabilities to reflect upon her tragic experiences and the "publicity strategy" she chose.

This is not about tolerance, because she addresses realities in the life of many, many women, which are not to be tolerated, especially from a "tolerant" point of view. By experiencing pervasive control over her body, her mind, the possibilities of experiencing love with someone she chooses and her "time on earth", she understood and felt the LIMITATION OF LIFE that many, many women experience. She wants to be free, she was back then brave enough and is now brave enough to live her life the way she wants to. She knows better than us "tolerant, enlightened peoples" what it is like. Therefore she is the one who can be objective, not us or Ms Dilday, because Ali experienced both ways of life.

What is driving her, I belief, is sympathy with those women, not revenge. Maybe she realized that Abshir is not capable of addressing the issue, the way it needs to be addressed. Abshir is involved in educating about Islam in the West and leading a theological debate within Islam. Ali is involved in changing the life of many women, by showing them that everything is possible.

The tragic ignorance about this whole tolerance thing is that Ms Dilday and some others project Ali's "campaign" solely on our western societies, not understanding that it is mainly about Ali's influence on societies were women face the same experiences like her, with or without clitorectomy. Tolerance is easy indeed, we actually do not have to deal with the injustices Ali addresses, we accept them and raise concerns about the influence of Ali's polarization tactics on our western societies, not paying attention to the fact that xenophobia and racism is not Ali's fault. We keep it down, hidden and forgotten about by making claims about our heroic tolerance.

Ali will serve as a "role-model" for the Muslim women who feel suppressed, the Muslim women who are happy with their lives, will not really pay attention to her and feel offended.

That the West has not educated his own people about Islam adequately (e.g. Sophism, Wahhabism, and so on) is the real source of generalization and resentment in Europe and the USA. That the West has not educated his own people about the realities in Muslim countries, and I do not mean showing fundamentalists allover the supposable informative media, so they are not really able to make the difference, ending up as a prejudiced lamb, that is not Ali's fault.

I respect her, just as I respect Muslim people, I understand her and I understand Muslims who feel offended. I think what she does is "right", but I realize it provokes a divide and that it is also not "right".

In this sense it can be "all AND nothing" at the same time.

Zaid Hassan on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

Zaid Hassan — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 12:27:24 +0000

"Even worse than a sheep, she was a lemming - being led to chattel marriage and a likely early death by Islam."

I've never met Islam. Who is he and where does he live? Is he a cousin of Somalia or are they unrelated?

sean.fox on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

sean.fox — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 12:07:09 +0000

I agree with tersastra that the issue of apostasy is one area where Islam collides with western human rights and and it hard to see any compromise possible (from the west anyway). This is symptomatic of the conflict between those who see religion as a purely private matter and those (of many religions) who see religion as the basis for laws which everyone should follow e.g. in relation to abortion, homesexuality etc.

I am unashamedly a secularist and believe that church and state should be entirely separate and that religious revelation has no place in making the law (although some of the religious arguments are not just based on revelation and may have other merits).

Finally I have to say that the posting by carline is ridiculous - there may well be those who dispute the official version of 9/11 but that in no way makes the conspiracy theory 'known facts'. That is just a perversion of language.

monitor on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

monitor — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:56:45 +0000

French Mulsims did take to the streets to protest. About 4,000 of them on Feb 11 2006 marched in Paris demanding that their beliefs be respected.

They were met by a brave counter-demonstration of 2, who nearly got themselves killed as a result.

http://www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk/?p=390

carline on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

carline — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:50:22 +0000

From the very first paragraph, KA Dilday's article (as also in part Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book) is based on a false premise - that the attacks of September 11th, 2001, were the work of 'fundamentalist' Muslims. They were not. The evidence is now overwhelming that the terrorists of 9/11 were in fact American (aided and abetted by the secret services of other countries) - members of the US administration and the US military in particular.

It is extremely frustrating to find the grand lie of the official conspiracy theory being routinely repeated on OpenDemocracy and used as the basis for political, sociological and other analyses. It is really time that OpenDemocracy accepted the evidence of the known facts and began to factor the reality of a long history of state-sponsored false-flag terrorism into its perception of the current state of democracy.

The Left's 'blowback' position on 9/11, 7/7 and other supposedly 'Islamic fundamentalist' terrorist outrages is simply not tenable in the face of the established facts.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali may well be right in her rejection of certain aspects of Islamic faith and practice, but her (and others') use of 9/11, 7/7, Madrid and Bali to support that rejection is invalid.

Democracy and individual liberty is under far greater threat from those who profess to champion it.

Paul Carline

pbone on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

pbone — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 02:31:57 +0000

It is outrageous of Ms Dilday to try to compare her own experience of leaving a religion with that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who as a small child was held down while her genitals were mutilated, and who fled to the Netherlands to escape a forced marriage. To make that attempt is typical of the cultural relativism that afflicts the Left, and which,thankfully, some Leftist thinkers, such as Nick Cohen, are now challenging. Contrary to what Ms Dilday says, Muslim religious fanatics do have a particular claim on "nasty business.' I am not aware that Christian fundamentalists are yet calling for adulterous women to be stoned. It is a great pity that brave Muslim women reformers like Hirsi Ali are branded as fundamentalist by the international sisterhood that should be most supporting her. Cultural sensitivities trump women's rights, again.

Pamela Bone

fuck my girlfriend on "Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'"

fuck my girlfriend — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 02:26:28 +0000

It is hard to determine where "overly devout" begins.

A muslim who lives his faith prostrates himself before Allah five times a day.

Is it overly devout?

Is a Christian who goes to church every sunday overly devout?

Ayaan, by becoming an icon of apostasy and betrayal is rightly called imprudent.

She deceived the Dutch authorities by giving false information about her plight and lost her residency there.

Her filmmaker lost his life.

The Western world is again confronted with its Achilles heel. It must remain tolerant to those that can't tolerate its liberality.

Liberal democracy must tolerate communist parties and enlightened society must respect religion. Even intolerant religion.

It should be mentioned that clitorectomy is not part of Islam. It is part of an African tradition.

On the other hand, apostasy carries the penalty of death under the shari'a.

That in the western world one should feel free to leave one's religion is enlightened.

Among muslims it is still largely a taboo subject.

This is where the phone gets hung up.

Sister in spirit: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel', KA Dilday

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

There is a moment in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's autobiography, Infidel, when she speaks on the phone to an old friend from Somalia, just after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. She has been living in the Netherlands for nearly a decade. Abshir, an imam, is about to have heart surgery in Switzerland. Hirsi Ali suggests that the Qur'an may in fact sanction such attacks; that it encourages Muslims to behave such a way against infidels.

Abshir, who has been attending lectures by the Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan, in Switzerland, says: "You're right, and I'm just as confused as you. I'm being operated on for my heart, but it is my head that is hurting." Hirsi Ali tells him that she is on the verge of leaving their faith. He's shocked, and tells her that he too is confused but that she shouldn't abandon their God. "We hung up awkwardly", she writes, "I knew I wouldn't be talking to him again."

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