The liberal betrayal of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"My criticsim of the West, especially of liberals, is that they take freedom for granted. Hirsi Ali, this past weekend in NYC.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was in New York, that bastion of liberalism, where her host at PEN acted badly, the cognitive dissonance in the room belonged less to those who had paid to listen to her than to those who had invited her to speak.....

AN ENLIGHTENMENT FUNDAMENTALIST
By BRENDAN BERNHARD , New York Sun (paid only, so I am running it all)

Like an increasing number of immigrants in the West who refuse to have a “victim” label pinned to their lapels, the Dutch-Somalian actress, author, and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents something of a problem for liberal intellectuals. A short film she cowrote, “Submission,” was shown on Dutch television in August 2004. Its subject was the mistreatment of Muslim women at the hands of Muslim men.

Deliberately provocative, the film projected words from the Koran onto exposed female flesh. Just over two months later, the director, Theo van Gogh, was savagely murdered by a Muslim fundamentalist.Ever since, Ms. Ali, who is a member of the Dutch Parliament and the author of a new book, “The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam”, has had to live under the protection of armed guards. On Sunday, Ms.Ali was interviewed by the Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch at the New York Public Library as part of PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature.[Not so incidentally, Hirsi Ali was recently evicted from her home. Just to show how far Dutch tolerance goes: Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s neighbors have sued the Dutch state in order to get her to be removed from the apartment complex in which she is living under police protection. The request was initially rejected, but following an appeal a higher court has now ordered Hirsi Ali to leave her house within four months, Peaktalk translates here - Atlas]

Paul Holdengraber, the library’s director of public events, got things going with a brief introduction, pausing only to take a mandatory swipe at President Bush, before introducing the president of PEN American Center, Ron Chernow.

Mr. Chernow’s introduction was curiously ungracious. It consisted largely of a warning that the audience might find itself in agreement with only some of what Ms. Ali had to say, or perhaps just a small portion of it, or even none of it. Nevertheless, he assured us, we could all agree that she is a woman of uncommon courage and integrity.

A slender, dark-skinned woman with a pretty face and long-fingered, expressive hands, Ms. Ali, 37, smiled politely as she took this in. She is, after all, a politician, and accustomed to what in a few minutes she would term “the liberal betrayal” — namely, the failure of the West to defend its own Enlightenment values against those who openly seek to undermine or destroy them. On this particular afternoon, it would take an African refugee to remind a New Yorker writer (Mr. Gourevitch), a multi-lingual European intellectual impresario (Mr. Holdengraber), and the president of PEN American Center (Mr. Chernow) that courage and integrity are not necessarily at odds with rational, coherent thought, and might even be an integral part of it. At least Salman Rushdie, seated in the front row in what appeared to be a gesture of moral support for a co-religionist in trouble with Muslim radicals, seemed to understand.

    Mr. Gourevitch, the 45-year-old author of a critically acclaimed account of the Rwanda genocide, “We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families,” conducted the interview fluently and without the benefit of notes. His demeanor was cool and mildly skeptical. He didn’t place Ms. Ali in the dock, exactly, but he certainly didn’t put her on a pedestal. There was an unmistakable air of cognitive dissonance in the room — how do we deal with this woman? — given almost palpable expression by occasional loud bursts of electronic static that initially seemed to give the Dutch woman a fright. (She does, after all, suffer from continual death threats.) But she laughed it off.

“My criticism of the West, especially of liberals, is that they do take freedom for granted,” Ms. Ali responded. She noted that Western Europeans born after World War II are unused to conflict. “They have lost the instinct to recognize that there can be such a thing as an enemy or a threat to freedom, and that’s what I’m witnessing in Europe now,” she stated. “[There is] a pacifist ideology that violence should never be used in any circumstances, and so we should talk and talk and talk. Even when your opponent tells you, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, I want to destroy you,’ the reaction is, ‘Please, let’s talk about the fact that you want to destroy me!’” [That sums up the  American left -  Atlas]

    At this, the audience, which included a female student wearing a Little Green Footballs T-shirt, a reference to the pro-Iraq war Web site, burst into laughter. At the end of the interview, the Dutch politician and author was given rousing applause, and it became clear that whatever cognitive dissonance had been in the room belonged less to those who had paid to listen to her than to those who had invited her to speak.

UPDATE: Other bloggers who covered the event, check out Mary at Exit Zero  and Judith at Kesher Talk, which is where I found this pearl. SHE SPEAKS! LGF , T-shirt Teen in her own words:

I never post here (though I read quite frequently--LGF is my homepage! And I really should be commenting more often) but I'm very proud to say that I am the "female student wearing a Little Green Footballs T-shirt" mentioned here :)

I'm honestly thrilled that I was able to go hear Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak. As I remarked to my mother, this was the first time I've heard a speaker with whom I agreed on every point. I think she's incredibly inspiring and I wish more people had the opportunity to hear what she has to say. Surprisingly, hardly anyone in the elitist-NYC-liberal circle I go to school with every day knows about her--I told my U.S. Government teacher I went to hear her speak, and not only did he not know who she was, he'd never heard about Theo van Gogh! I think that's all pretty appalling.. .

. . And no, my t-shirt wasn't wet. I'm a respectable pro-Iraq-war-website reader!

There was never any doubt.

UPDATE: I took down the rest of the article until I receive permission from The New York Sun to run it all. Check back tomorrow.

Comments

[WesternMilitant]

It is sad at how gutless Western Civilization has become. We have to be lectured by non-Westerners about our own values. How many of the readers of this blog have even been in the military? How many readers of this blog have so much as been in a fist-fight? Weakness begets aggression. Ask the Kuwaities about this. But if the readers of this blog are looking to your leaders to save your ass, you are doomed. Both the left and the right are part of this global-vision/politically correct B.S. that permeates all government. The Ayaan Hirsi Ali's of the world are treasures. We do not deserve to have people like this fight for us.

[Pierre Legrand]

The problem of not recognizing the enemy is not exclusive to the Liberals. Witness President Bush continuing to insist that Islam is the religion of peace.

Course I have soured a great deal on President Bush lately so perhaps I am being too harsh on him.

[Doug]

Why are conservative women all so hot?

Atlas,

Oriana,

Hirsi,

Laura Ingrahm,

on and on....

[Account Deleted]

"a Little Green Footballs T-shirt, a reference to the pro-Iraq war Web site"

Bah. It's "the pro-Iraq freedom, by war if necessary Web site".

Doug: Because they know what they believe, and why they believe it. Self-confidence goes far!

[lowandslow]

Pierre Legrand

Course I have soured a great deal on President Bush lately so perhaps I am being too harsh on him.

No you're not, he doesn't have to come right out and say Islam is evil, I understand he has to play the diplomacy card. That said there is no reason he shouldn't be very vocal every time there is another atrocity committed in the name of Islam. He should be very vocal every time Islamic leaders make their threats to us or Israel. Don't worry about pacifing the left or anyone else, they're going to hate him no matter what but if he keeps up the drumbeat sane people will less apt to become complacent.
Invite Ms. Ali to the White House and listen to her life of oppression and her journey out, then meet with the press and tell them so they can tell us. Tell the people what horrors radical Islam is capable of. Islamic apologists would no doubt blow a gasket but so what? All he would be doing is telling the truth.

[Jeremiah]

She seems, really, a moderate. Moderate and dispassionate and nonetheless firmly committed to freedom. And this, in the conflict with Islamofascism, is rather revolutionary.

Good photo and good highlighted excerpts.

[ShannonKW]

WesternMilitant: "We do not deserve to have people like this fight for us."

I agree with most of what you say (and surprisingly with most of what Ali says even though I'm not a feminist) but I don't think you should assume she's fighting for us. She's trying to stiffen Western spines so she can use us for her purposes. From her point of view the West is like a big, strong, cowardly husband. She has to make us brave if we are to fight her battles for her, but this isn't done out of kindness.

[Craig]

I agree with most of what you say (and surprisingly with most of what Ali says even though I'm not a feminist) but I don't think you should assume she's fighting for us. She's trying to stiffen Western spines so she can use us for her purposes. From her point of view the West is like a big, strong, cowardly husband. She has to make us brave if we are to fight her battles for her, but this isn't done out of kindness.

I hope you're right! That would make her fit right in here. No man (or woman) should ever have to live for another man, or should ever ask another man to live for him. Everyone is happier when people work in their own self-interest, in a capitalist society, where working in your own self-interest pretty much means you have to provide goods and services to others to make your money.

She's giving us a well-deserved tongue-lashing, because she recognizes how useful this country can be to the world (and to her), and how impotent we've become.

[italy61]

In the battle of the ideas that it sees to us to intercross the blades with the Islam, the West and its defenders are themselves peck the accusation of being lukewarm if not coward. It is Ayan Hirsi Ali that declared dumbfound for the “shyness” with which connects western contrast - or at all does not contrast - the arguments of the Muslim foundamentalism culture. “Sense of uneasiness” that Ali felt already in 2004 during the crisis of the Danish cartoons and then in the vicissitude of declarations of Benedict XVI in Ratisbona. In both cases the international press advised to ask for forgiveness. “But because the westerners are therefore uncertain with regard to all that is therefore wonderful in the West: the political freedoms, free press, free of expression, the parity of rights between men and women, gay and heterosexuals?”, it’s asked, astonished Ali. She quote Tony Blair and his article “The battle for global values” on the pages of Foreign Affaris in February, in order to praise of the analytical feature that privileges the soft power, like tool of the comparison, but of critical the appraisals on the Corano that, practically, it’s considered “a reformist” text. In the review (The review of the reviews) that I edit for «Liberal Risk», in number 11, I had reviewed that article, emphasizing the same conceptual weaknesses: “Historical participation of the english premier, already resumed from the international press, is that one introduced on the Foreign Affairs pages. An interesting reading in order to emphasize the critical passages of it puts into effect the crash between the West and Muslim terrorism. Values and not emergency (security), soft power and not imposition of our culture to a world substantially pre-westfalic are the right choises. They are these - a lot synthetizes - characterizing points more of the long analysis; a turned appeal to the Islam, but from which shine through - perhaps - a suggestion for “evangelic” policy of Washington. To consider the Corano like a book “reformist” it can be a passage, a culturally useful key, in order to tie the distance of the birth of western modernity with the history of the muslim universe. It could be an attempt in order to pay compatible, therefore comprehensible to the parts in cause, two distances of civilization. It is a well known formulation many times over describing a Islam, in the Middle Ages, tolerant and crucible of cultures. The only weakness in this reading is perhaps theological; because he considered the sacred text of Muslims in the same way of the Bible, while it would be more right to compare it to the symbol of the Holy Cross. A fact that renders less agile the rational use of the contents of the Corano... (read more) http://difesadelloccidente.blogspot.com/