Hirsi Ali says Muslim immigrants threaten to conquer Europe

(Note: several comments have been posted.)

I thought the question was closed, but now it must be opened again: Where is Ayaan Hirsi Ali really at? Two days ago I virtually wrote her off, saying that she cannot be expected stand for the West against Islam. But yesterday’s Palm Beach Daily News quotes the strongest Islamo-critical statements I’ve heard from her. She even warns about the threat to the West of Muslim immigration—something she has never done before to my knowledge. In fact, she used to call for the banning of European political parties that wanted to stop Muslim immigration.

I’ve abridged the piece, just leaving in the parts about Ali and her statements, without the parts about the Islam defenders and their familiar lies.

Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk
By JAN SJOSTROM
Palm Beach Daily News
Saturday, March 21, 2009

PALM BEACH—Anyone who believes that Muslims can be assimilated into Western societies is in for a rude awakening, according to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Ali, who spoke at The Society of the Four Arts Tuesday, has reason to suspect Muslims’ good will. She was born in Somalia, suffered genital mutilation as a child and was forced into an arranged marriage, according to her official biography. She rejected her Muslim faith and fled to The Netherlands, where she became a member of the Dutch parliament.

Today she lives in the United States and is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. She’s written a memoir, titled Infidel, and co-founded the AHA Foundation, which works to combat the oppression of women by fundamentalist Islamic regimes.

In his introduction to her talk, Winston Churchill, a Palm Beach resident and the British prime minister’s grandson, called her “quite the most courageous woman it’s ever been my privilege to meet.”

There are two schools of thought in the West regarding Islam, she said. One says that radicals have hijacked Islam and that peaceful co-existence is possible with adherents of the faith.

Ali subscribes to the second point of view.

“Islam is not a religion of peace,” she said. “It’s a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.”

In her opinion, European society is in danger of being hijacked by a rapidly growing population of Islamic immigrants, who lack the means or the inclination to assimilate and are supported by Muslim nations in their efforts to undermine their host countries.

Islamic thought and practice is incompatible with that of the West, because in Islamic societies, religious law is supreme, she said.

“All aspects of the life of a person in public and private, down to the most intimate details, are regulated,” she said. “In liberal democracies, laws are not made by God.” [LA replies: she never, ever, speaks of the Christian basis of the Western secular culture she praises, because she’s anti-Christian.]

Many people believe that prejudice accounts for the high number of Muslims in Europe living on welfare, when the truth is that poorly educated Muslim women are ill-equipped to help their children succeed in school, and many Muslims use religious objections as an excuse not to work, Ali argued.

Negotiating with radical Muslims won’t succeed, she said.

“Every accommodation of Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that Allah is on their side,” she said. “They see every act of appeasement as an invitation to make fresh demands.”

Ali warned that European societies are in danger of being subverted by Muslim immigrants as European populations age and decline and the number of young Muslim immigrants explodes.

“The most pressing question of our time is this: Is European society to be taken over by a radical invasion of Muslim immigrants?” she said.

[end of article]

- end of initial entry -

Richard H. writes:

You write

“She even warns about the threat to the West of Muslim immigration—something she has never done before to my knowledge. In fact, she used to call for the banning of European political parties that wanted to stop Muslim immigration.”

The two aren’t mutually exclusive. She may want to stop Muslim immigration but want to ban parties that agree with her if they also push for social conservatism and European racial consciousness.

Reading your article again, it’s not even completely clear that she wants to end Muslim immigration. She warns that Muslims immigration may overwhelm Europe but her answer might be the standard Neo-Con one of forcing them to accept the tenants of liberalism. It’s not a very coherent position (especially when she calls Muslims unassimilable. What’s she expecting, a mass conversion to atheism?) but there are others on the PC right who hold it.

LA replies:

Yes, you’re quite right to point out the possible ambiguities. Ali is not exactly a coherent thinker. She tends to wander from point to point. At the same time, if we were to go over her published statements of the last couple of years, there does seem to be a movement toward greater realism about Islam. That doesn’t necessarily mean that she will ever become an ally of Western conservatives. But it is nevertheless interesting to watch this evolution. And if it turns out that her evolution is not going in a straight line but is more of an oscillation, isn’t that what Stephen Jay Gould said evolution was like?

LA writes:

Paul Nachman reminds me of Hirsi Ali’s interview in Reason in October 2007, which he quoted at the Vdare blog.

However, the big deal in the Reason interview is there is that she dispenses with “moderate” versus “radical” Islam business and says Islam itself is the problem. She doesn’t say anything in the interview about immigration. So this latest statement in Palm Beach paper does seem to be a step forward. (Though whether in the “Darwinian” or the “Gouldian” sense we can’t know at this point.)

James W. writes:

The most pressing question of our times is not whether European society will be taken over by a radical invasion of Muslim immigrants. No sound first world society could possibly be taken over by third world immigrants.

So the pressing question is, what makes European society, which has no enemies left, so sick that it imports enemies?

The answer is found in the self-hating or misanthropic left, which is also agnostic to militantly atheist.

Ali is an atheist, and lacks the humility and wisdom to see the likely theoretical end of such philosophies, and the concrete results.

Without the presence and force of Christian believers, her life would have ended long ago.

Mark A. writes:

Unspoken in the constant debate over immigration from the Third World is why there are so many Third Worlders to begin with. Most Muslim and Africans nations can’t successfully build homes with right angles or maintain indoor plumbing let alone develop pharmaceuticals and surgical equipment. I think traditionalists in the West need to re-examine our nation’s belief that it is immoral to restrict food and medical supply exportation to these countries. These are given away en masse by charity groups. This is an unpleasant thought, but I think it gets to the heart of the matter—the population of the Third World is exploding and nothing stands in its way.

LA replies:

I tend to agree with Mark. For a country on one side of the world to maintain a basic living standard in a country on the other side of the world that is not able to do it for itself is senseless, counterproductive, and wrong. It’s welfare on a global scale, with all the resulting harms.

Kidist Paulos Asrat writes:

I just read the post on Ali’s speech in Florida. I don’t think she’s saying anything new.

Here is a quote from a 2005 article in the Brussels Journal:

[Ali] started her political career in the Dutch Labour Party, but when the Socialists objected to her demands that Muslims should be forbidden from entering the Netherlands, [she was] offered a place in the Liberal Party.

This same article’s main focus is Ali’s proposal to abolish all religious schools, mainly as a reaction to Muslim schools which prevent Muslim children from integrating in Dutch society.

This is just one example from many, but Ali knows the violence that Islam is capable of in order to reign supreme. She has experienced it in her own life, and she has denounced the religion.

But, each time she makes progress in fighting Islam with strong positions like she has voiced in her Florida speech, then she does something like sign a secularist manifesto, or make feminist-centered statements regarding Muslim women.

Also, the new book she has planned is a strange, narcissistic-style autobiography. I guess she’s trying to tell people her “journey” up to now, but I have a feeling she’s doing it to sell her book rather than to propose anything serious. It also follows along her usual feminist line. And she confusedly tries to reconcile Islamic and Western values*, which if her strong stance against Muslim immigration is true, then she should know that such reconciliation is not possible.

I’m not saying that she isn’t useful, but I think she will always be contradictory, and will ride on some kind of celebrity-style popularity rather than become a true leader against Islam (and in support of the West), like Geert Wilders.

So if people now at least listen to her about restricting/banning Muslim immigration to the West, then she would really have done something useful.

*Rather than a serious, philosophical/theological book she had originally planned, she has opted for a more anecdotal, personal story. I find this also troubling, since it shows that she will probably always continue to reconcile the irreconcilable. What does this mean for her loyalty to the West, to Islam even as a non-believer?

March 23

Charles T. writes:

If Ali rejects the Christian basis for Western civilization can we count her as an ally? Shoud we count her as an ally?

If she wants to change Western civilization into her own feminist image, then she is not an ally. She may hate Islam, but I am not convinced she will like us any better.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 22, 2009 06:00 PM | Send