Asrat on Ali

(Note: see comment, below, about Mark Steyn’s criticism of Ali.)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has yet another book out, and the subject once again is—herself. As I have been saying for a long time, Ali is no friend of the West, but a left-libertarian feminist who wants to turn the West into an open-borders laboratory for the self-realization of Muslim women. Just what we need! Also, as Kidist Paulos Asrat writes in her review of the book, Ali has not moderated her virulent opposition to Christianity (she once equated the Catholic Church with Nazism), but has intensified it, as shown in an interview on the Colbert Report which Kidist links and quotes. Further underscoring Ali’s hostility to Christianity, the main blurb on the cover of her book is from that arch-atheist and hater of Christians and conservatives Richard Dawkins, who calls her “a major hero of our times.” So she’s not even pretending to appeal to conservatives any more. I pointed out Ali’s radical anti-conservatism several years ago, while other conservatives were still lauding her as their heroine.

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Daniel S. writes:

Mark Steyn too recently wrote an article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali. After showering the usual praises on Ms. Ali, Mark Steyn notes:

Which brings me to my big philosophical difference with Ms. Hirsi Ali: in 2006, she was one of a dozen intellectuals to publish a manifesto against radical Islam and in defence of “secular values for all.” Often in her speeches, she’ll do a heartwarming pitch to all of us—“black, white, gay, straight”—to stand firm for secular humanism. My problem with this is that, in Europe and elsewhere, liberal secularism is not the solution to the problem but the vacuum in which a resurgent globalized Islam has incubated. The post-Christian, post-modern multicultural society is too vapid to have any purchase on large numbers of the citizenry. So they look elsewhere. The Times of London recently interviewed a few of Britain’s many female converts to Islam, such as Catherine Huntley, 21, of Bournemouth (“I’ve always been quite a spiritual person”) and Sukina Douglas, 28, of London (“Islam didn’t oppress women; people did”).

It is good that Steyn realizes that liberal secularism is the problem, not the solution. I only wish he would be more consistent and more vocal on such points instead of making them only occasionally and with much ambiguity.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 11, 2010 01:35 PM | Send