Ayaan Declares War

[olamina]

Interesting interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (former Dutch MP and now a resident scholar at the neocon American Enterprise Institute) from The Spectator. I'm really conflicted aabout her, but nonetheless it is definitely enlightening to hear her insight considering she is coming from a very informed point of view.

‘Yes, I am at war with Islam,’

Comments

[danschank]

i'm a little perplexed by this myself. granted i'm not familiar with this woman outside of the article (when i see the words "american enterprise institute", i'm generally not compelled to explore), but she seems like she's taking some pretty broad generalizations about the enlightenment, and using them to make a sweeping condemnation of an entire religion.

it's an argument i've heard before. martin amis has been pushing a more nuanced variation on it through a series of essays recently (resulting in a rather dramatic public quarrel with terry eagleton that makes for entertaining reading). and christopher hitchens as well, although he goes further, condemning (more or less) ALL formalized religions (which i must confess strikes me as more convincing if we're going to accept this kind of draconian "call to reason"-- which i'm not).

i'm really tired of the argument where the koran justifies 9/11 too. as if the bhagavad-gita or the parable of abraham and issac or thus spoke zarathustra or any number of old testament plagues and

[olamina]

wow you didnt hear about the whole theo van gogh debacle? That whole thing really brought Hirsi Ali onto the international radar

[danschank]

i heard about the theo van gogh thing, but never really delved into it (until wikipedia-ing hirsi ali after running my mouth off in the above, haha).

anyway, you sound a lot less conflicted about her than i'd imagined in the above, actually. the neo-con allegiance is a tough one for me to swallow. especially since the american enterprise type crowd is the one beating the drums about iran, and iran (as far as i can tell... and the american press doesn't make it easy) is one of the few places in the middle east where a real movement exists against fundamentalism. these arguments also make me think of the refugee crisis in iraq, and how many more thousands of refugees ended up in syria and lebanon than in the "enlightened" west. sometimes i wonder if the notion of "barbarism" is taken too simply for granted when i read these "let's-keep-it-real-islam-is-evil" type arguments. as you mention above, i'm not sure these people are taking a big enough look at the picture.

[danschank]

these systems chooses me as much as i choose emth

my computer trips up in really strange ways sometimes. that should say "them" obviously. weird.

[masculin]

I think Terry Eagleton is my favourite public intellectual... the debate you mention and the write-up on Dawkins are amazing...

[danschank]

there's a GREAT eagleton piece on william blake in the guardian right now:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2218250,00.html

kinda meets up to both of our outlooks, no?

also, i must confess that i too equate kant's categorical imperative to "the golden rule"... in fact, while i was reading groundwork for a metaphysics of morals, i kept thinking to myself "this is kinda like the golden rule"... i'm a little embarrased to say this though. there's obviously more to it, but i'm not sure i always understand why.