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 punishments couldn't be utilized for equally sinister ends. i think there's a difference between faith and fundamentalism, and that those differences extend across all faiths. not because faith is good or god is great or people are fundamentally caring, but because belief systems are by-and-large handed down to people culturally (and my secularism is no exception). these systems chooses me as much as i choose emth, and my ability to make adaptations is as inevitable as it is crucial.

[olamina]

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

you make a lot of really valid points as usual. essentially, she is holding up a lot of enlightenment age ideals up and wielding them in much the same sinister selve serving ways that the islamisists she criticizes use the koran. in doing this, she is proving her point and at the same time making her point moot.

i was really excited when i first heard about her, but the more i read the more she comes off as this brash (somewhat immature) anti-islam chauvinist who makes thes inflammatory comments not in the name of reason but because she was personally wronged and has a bone to pick. i'd rather ride with someone who is really grappling with these questions towards some progressive agenda. anyone touting the capitalist neocon ideology as "the right choice" and/or the alternative to fundamentalism is not someone who's going to get my support. if she doesn't understand the ways in which neocon ideology works hand in hand with the (almost as--if not more--dangerous) Christian fundemantal agenda, then she really needs to drop the mic, go home, and read up.

in related news, Bengali feminist writer Taslima Nasreen is being run out of Calcutta by menacing Islamic fundamentalists.

[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.