My articles on Ayaan Hirsi Ali

First the senior editor of the New English Review said that the reason I have criticized Hirsi Ali was that I find her “too uppity.” Now a commenter in the very long thread at What’s Wrong with the World says that I have criticized Ali for not being a “serious commentator on Western society and Christianity,” and for not being a “deep thinker.” Now if my problem with Ali was that she was “too uppity” or that she was not a deep thinker, I would hardly have had occasion to write almost 20 blog entries about her over the last few years. I don’t want to shock anyone, but what I have criticized Ayaan Hirsi Ali for is her stated positions, namely:

• she is anti-Christian (attacking Christianity as “theocracy,” which she sees as the equivalent to Islam, and equating Catholicism with Nazism);

• she is a radical secularist, seeking to remove religion from society;

• she opposes by totalitarian means attempts to reduce Muslim immigration in Europe (calling for the outlawing of immigration restrictionist parties in Europe);

• her real aim is not to defend historical and modern Western society from Islam, but to turn the West into the radical left vision of the Open Society and a laboratory for the liberation and empowerment of Muslim women, something which, since it can’t be done in the Islamic world, she wants to do here. In other words, Islam is unable to reform itself, so let’s bring all the Muslims here and help them create a new, modish, feminist Islam in the West.

My underlying concern in all the above is that American conservatives, by celebrating Ali and imagining that she is an ally of the West against Islam, are being suckered into a position where they will allow the Islamization of the West to continue.

Here are several of my articles about her:

Hirsi Ali, the conservatives’ hero, wants to ban Belgian conservative party as Nazi-like
(Ali contra the Vlams Belang)

Hirsi Ali, the conservatives’ hero, lets it all hang out
(Ali equates Catholicism with Nazism)

Hirsi Ali’s anti-Christian agenda

Why does Robert Spencer, a Christian conservative, support Hirsi Ali?

Secularists who oppose religion instead of Islam
(The secular anti-Islamist and anti-Christian manifesto signed by a group of European leftists and secular Muslims including Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, and Bernard-Henri Levy)

Draft manifesto: Together facing the new Islamic jihad
(My alternative manifesto to the secularists’ manifesto)

Now we finally know for sure where Ali is really at
(Ali only opposes the promotion of sharia if it’s promoted by violence and intimidation)

What Hirsi Ali wants
(She doesn’t believe in the West, but in using the West to spread the open society, a world-wide open field of radically liberated individuals.)

Ali’s devastating view of Islam
(The first piece I’ve seen by Ali that contains a straightforward critique of Islam and how it threatens non-Muslims. Ironically it was in response to this piece, in which I treated Ali favorably, that Mary Jackson of New English Review said that I “don’t much like Hirsi Ali” and find her “too uppity.”)

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Charles T. writes:

LA wrote: “Ali only opposes the promotion of sharia if it’s promoted by violence and intimidation.”

Incredible. This one point alone should cause anyone to question Ali’s motives. Sharia law is, by its very nature, violent and anti-female. The application of Sharia to family law in Islamic life favors men only. There is no peaceful Sharia. There is only domination with Sharia. Ali is a hypocrite.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 13, 2007 07:16 PM | Send