Sub-intellectual commentary at New English Review

Where did I get the idea that New English Review was an intelligent and civilized website as well as a seriously Islamo-critical website? Well, I didn’t just get it from the name New English Review, which sounds very tony, I got it from the fact that NER features among its contributors Andrew Bostom, Rebecca Bynum (who used to work at Jihad Watch and is a self-declared Separationist), Hugh Fitzgerald (who takes strong separationist positions but furiously denies that he is a separationist), and the renowned essayist Theodore Dalrymple.

Mary Jackson, another NER contributor, whom I had never heard of before, but who I learned today is NER’s senior editor, writes concerning my recent entry on Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

“Perhaps Hirsi Ali is a bit too uppity for Auster. She probably believes women should have the vote.”

“A bit too uppity”?

That piece of incisive criticism by NER’s senior editor was backed up by the following comment by “Morgan”:

“Lawrence Auster doesn’t like women much” Now that resonates with my experience.

I posted the following comment at NER:

I’m amazed to see this type of ignorant and stupid commentary at New English Review. I thought this was an, excuse the word, intellectual website.

As anyone would know who has read my many articles and blog entries on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I am critical of her because her main concerns so far have not been to protect the West from Islam but rather to advance leftism, advance feminism, attack Christianity (she’s compared Catholicism to Nazism), and outlaw immigration restrictionist parties in Europe.

Here are three of my many articles about her:

Hirsi Ali, the conservatives’ hero, lets it all hang out

(Ali equates Catholicism with Nazism)

Now we finally know for sure where Ali is really at

(Ali only opposes the promotion of sharia if it’s done by violence and intimidation)

What Hirsi Ali wants

(She doesn’t believe in the West, but in using the West to spread “the open society,” “a world-wide open field of radically liberated individuals.”)

Also, in my entry about Ali that Mary Jackson attacks as anti-woman I said that Ali’s statements about the oppression of women under Islam were “eloquent.” Jackson even quoted the passage that includes the “eloquent” compliment. Not only does Jackson not read, she doesn’t even read the stuff she directly quotes.

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KPA (who by the way is a woman who comes from the same part of the world as Hirsi Ali) writes:

Here’s a quote I gleaned from the post at the NER: ” together with Hirsi Ali’s stunning beauty, [her life experiences] draw in an audience.”

I don’t know what it is with modern people, but they have really lost their “beauty” meter. There’s also the whole world going on about Angelina Jolie’s “beauty.”

Also, why is a person considered to have something worthwhile to say because she is deemed beautiful?

Finally, doesn’t the irony strike them that if Ali’s femininity is part (and it seems like a large part) of what’s drawing the public into her “pity for Muslim women” movement, rather than any strong intellectual arguments she should have, what does that say about women and the vote?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 04, 2007 12:34 PM | Send