As I’ve been pointing out, Ayaan Hirsi Ali gets misread by people who are convinced she’s a far-right racist, or people who want to convince others that she is. There’s “Loonwatch” for instance. Loonwatch gives a very warped version of the talk in which she mentioned Anders Breivik. The article is titled Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Sympathizes with Terrorist Anders Behring Breivik and it repeats the accusation in the text.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was invited to Germany to receive the Axel Springer Award, to recount her “escape” from Islam.
Sympathy for the Devil
In her acceptance speech, Ali expressed her sympathy for terrorist murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Her writings were included in Breivik’s manifesto and she took the opportunity of the speech to try and distance herself from his actions while squarely putting the blame for Breivik’s massacre on his targets.
That’s a lie. She didn’t express any sympathy for Anders Breivik. Here is her talk (thanks to Anthony K for the link), which is titled The Advocates of Silence.
“People ask me if I have some kind of death wish, to keep saying the things I do. The answer is no, I would like to keep living. However, some things must be said and there are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice.” I wrote those words in 2005. I was alluding to the plight of Muslim women who live in Europe, whose suffering inspired me to make the film Submission with Theo van Gogh. He was shot and stabbed to death by a radical Muslim.
Today, the problem of how to integrate Muslim immigrants into European society is, if anything, even more complex and challenging than it was then. There are, of course, still the advocates of silence. They say that an honest discussion of the challenges posed by some Muslim immigrants to European society will lead to a build-up of hatred against those immigrants: A hatred so vile and so strong as to translate into violence. A violence carried out by lone renegades like the Norwegian Anders Breivik, now on trial for his horrific spree in Oslo last year, or a more organized violence by neo-Nazi groups.
The advocates of silence also warn that honest discussion will encourage the emergence and rise of populist parties whose only political issue is immigration and Islam. They fear the election through non-violent means of politicians with a violent agenda that they will apply to Muslims as soon as they get into office. Advocates of silence conjure up terrifying visions of fascistic regimes that will implement mass deportations of Muslims, mass imprisonment of Muslims, the closing of their mosques, the shutting down of their businesses, the exclusion of Muslims from education and employment, and other types of discrimination.
I recommend reading the whole piece. She gives a careful and fair account of what the advocates of silence argue, so fair that she presents a convincing case.
The advocates of silence warn us that publishing these facts or debating them in the media and in parliament will transform the existing resentment towards Muslims into violent behavior. The sentiment of xenophobia, they argue, is irrational and cannot – or will not – tell the difference between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim. The xenophobes will persecute Muslims regardless of their guilt or innocence and hurt them.
Censorship and silence, we are told, are the best preventive remedies against hatred and violence.
I believe that the advocates of silence are wrong, profoundly and dangerously wrong.
I do not dispute that some Europeans are xenophobic, and that the tendency to scapegoat others is prevalent in many places. I understand that this tendency is more pronounced in times of economic hardship, such as much of Europe outside Germany is experiencing. I can see, too, that a major part of the difficulty if integration Muslims into European society has a social and economic explanation. Most immigrants of Muslim countries into Europe these days come from segments of society in their country of origin with little education and little or no job skills.
That’s a sample. You can see what I mean, I think – she doesn’t give a weak version of the argument she disputes, and she concedes many of its claims. Then she presents her arguments.
Secondly, silence empowers rather than weakens the populists and the extremists. When the political mainstream censors itself, the populists and extremists can represent themselves as the only people capable of addressing one of the major issues of our time. By breaking the taboo, they win trust and respect on that issue even as the parties of the establishment lose trust. Some newspapers – I will not mention them by name – may choose not to publish critical voices, but those in society for whom the presence of Islam is a problem can now simply click on their favorite blogs.
Thirdly, and perhaps most seriously, silence empowers the Islamists, the radical agents of hatred. The young Muslim dropout, who is morally confused, is approached by a confident Islamist with a not so hidden agenda. The Islamist’s potential rivals in the struggle of hearts and minds – the Christians and the humanists – have been silenced by the kind of inhibitions I have already described. Muslim ghettoes in Europe today are exposed without censorship to the siren song of jihad, of martyrdom, of Sharia law, of hatred and self-exclusion. Here is an extreme ideology just as abhorrent as the neo-fascism of a Breivik. Yet to speak out against radical Islamism is to be condemned as an Islamophobe.
Fourthly and finally, that one man who killed 77 people in Norway, because he fears that Europe will be overrun by Islam, may have cited the work of those who speak and write against political Islam in Europe and America – myself among them – but he does not say in his 1500 page manifesto that it was these people who inspired him to kill. He says very clearly that it was the advocates of silence. Because all outlets to express his views were censored, he says, he had no other choice but to use violence.
That last paragraph is the one brandished by people who loathe her as evidence that she was sympathizing with Breivik. She was doing no such thing.
Decades of informal censorship in Europe have led not to the promised integration of Muslim immigrants but to a culture of evasion and avoidance which has allowed extremism – both Jihadism and neo-Nazism – to flourish amid a general impotence of the established parties.
She does not like or want either of those.
Loonwatch is an Islamist propaganda site run by Islamist loons.
Yes, the final paragraph sums up the situation, but why do we need Ali to enlighten us, it’s obvious?
Institutionalised multiculturalism has become toxic.
I’d view accepting an award by the Axel Springer AG, the one publishing the infamous Bild tabloid, as a mistake, though.
Relatedly, SPLC has a report on Stormfront and how many of its registered users (including Breivik) have murdered people. This characterization of Stormfront users seems very consonant with Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s words, both on Breivik (who’s also talked about in the SPLC report — he was a Stormfront user) and Islamists (substitute “religion” for “race”).
Incidentally, you could also substitute “gender” for “race” and end up with a pretty good description of MRAs, Paul Elam and AVfM in particular.
I’d agree with you in this particular case but as in the other thread she does have extreme views (or chooses to express them without any nuance)
http://reason.com/archives/2007/10/10/the-trouble-is-the-west/singlepage
– Notice the leading question “militarily” and the response to it .
Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.
Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?
Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.
Reason: Militarily?
Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.
I know. I’ve said many times that I disagree with a number of things she has said recently. But that passage from the Reason interview has been trotted out a million times now – it’s not news.
As you say, what she says over and over and over in her writings is more significant than a comment in an interview.
What I find myself thinking about the interview comment is, “She’s lived through the oppression. She’s felt it on herself. She’s seen it destroy people, many many many people. There may be a reason she says ‘There’s a war.'”
One reason could be that she’s been hurt enough by it to become angry. That might not be real big of her, but those of us who haven’t dealt with the same deep shit have no standing to tell her to be cool with it.
Another reason could be that she knows her opponents way better than those of us who’ve never dealt with them personally. It’s not impossible that she knows something we don’t. Maybe we should listen and learn. I don’t mean in the sense of firebombing Muslims. I mean in the sense of actually grasping the degree of difference in viewpoints, grasping that maybe there is no nice, calm, reasonable, common ground.
quixote @#6: A good and thoughtful comment.
Islam is a proselytising and empire-building religion. Some of its adherents have emigrated to the west, seeking what the west has to offer by way of life’s amenities. But at the same time the custodians of the creed feel threatened and vulnerable: hence the simultaneous pushes for Sharia law and ghettoisation, particularly in education via separate Islamic schools.
It is not in an ideological two-way street. Islam may gain a few adherents by converting the odd Christian or other non-Muslim. But it stands to lose adherents in the West as the generations pass, and each successive generation loses a bit more contact with the old country and its culture.
Patching-up by immigration can’t go on forever. The history of Catholicism I think shows that attempting to create a self-contained and self-perpetuating ‘community’ is a lost cause in the medium to long term. They leak like old boats; people outwards, and ideas inwards.
I disagree with a number of things she has said recently.
I’d say that disagreement is too mild a term . We do not just disagree with people who discriminate against women or gay people – we actively oppose them . And someone who is fine with military action against an entire class of people , based solely on their religious views , whether mild or extreme – does it really matter whether she supported Breivik or not?
Yeah you are right. Let’s empty all mental hospitals and send these people to prison where they belong. Let’s be tough on criminals. There is no such thing as psychosis. Kevint1972, we need people with your insight into criminality in government.
EVEN if you had no other information to go on, other than the acts, do the sound like the sort of things that sane people do?