Friendly Hemant says PZ gets Ayaan Hirsi Ali all wrong, because she didn’t say that, she said the opposite.
I’ve seen complaints online about how Hirsi Ali was minimizing problems caused by conservative Christians, as if they weren’t as big a deal as those caused by extremist Muslims. PZ Myers called it “fatwah envy” and said Hirsi Ali was suggesting “we should meekly accept the lesser injustice because of the threat of the greater” and trying to “silence those who strive for respect and dignity in their lives.”
But when I watched her speech (because I actually did that instead of relying on a couple of sound bites and tweets), I didn’t get that impression at all.
Well what impression one got or didn’t get isn’t the issue. The issue is what she actually said. [Read more…]