Reason, November 2007:
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 youdon’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of beingcrushed.
While I sympathize with Ms. Ali's plight under Islamist culture as a child, I don't believe that justifies her current support of an all-out war with the Muslim world. We are not at war with Islam. In fact, such a view is suicidal. How would it benefit the West to go to war with a religion adhered to by 1 billion human beings?
Hirsi Ali's views on the matter seem to be popular on the right-wing. Here some comments from athread at HotAir:
The interviewer was really tough on her, but she knocked most of them out of the park.
I got the sense libertarians are really hung up because she seems to be wanting to oppress one particular religion, and that is against the libertarian sense of leaving people alone to believe whatever goofy thing they want to.
And while I do agree with that, they have to realize we live in the real world, and live-and-let-live is not in the Muslim lexicon
[...]
We are NOT at war with Islam. ISLAM IS AT WAR WITH US.
One of these days we will start fighting back and THEN we will be at war with Islam. Until we start fighting back, we can’t be at war. But yes, Islam is at war with the West.
[...]
Ayaan Hirsi Ali understands that the death cult of Islam must be crushed or we will live with the consequence of being crushed. This is what the American people must wake up to. Islam is the enemy, it must be crushed in all forms, it must be denounced for the evil that it is. Attempts at appeasement will have the same result as Neville Chamberlain’s naive attempt to appease Hitler.
Islam must be recognized for the evil, akin to Nazism that it is, or we must prepare to be crushed. Those are the only alternatives. Americans must reject the lie that Islam is a "religion" and we must not allow this death cult to receive the Constitutional protections that were intended for religion.
Keep this in mind the next time someone tells you that Islamophobia "doesn't exist." It is a very real phenomenon that is allowing the current administration to engage in its warmongering and violations of human rights and civil liberties. The right-wing's demonization of Islam and its followers is a brilliant tactic designed to allow it to continue on its path of foreign imperialism and domestic tyranny. Of course, Bush isn't taking things nearly as far asmany of them would like:
[4] It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Shari'a.
[5] The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation (meaning, as set forth above, Shari'a-adherent Muslims).
[6] The President of the United States of America shall immediately declare that all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies under Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the US Code and shall be subject to immediate deportation.
Anyway, back to the interview.
Reason: Here in the United States, you’d advocate the abolition of—
Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist. I think 10 years ago things were different, but now the jihadi genie is out of the bottle. I’ve been saying this in Australia and in the U.K. and so on, and I get exactly the same arguments: The Constitution doesn’t allow it. But we need to ask where these constitutions came from to start with—what’s the history of Article 23 in the Netherlands, for instance? There were no Muslim schools when the constitution was written. There were no jihadists. They had no idea.
Reason: Do you believe that the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights—documents from more than 200 ago—ought to change?
Hirsi Ali: They’re not infallible. These Western constitutions are products of the Enlightenment. They’re products of reason, and reason dictates that you can only progress when you can analyze the circumstances and act accordingly. So now that we live under different conditions, the threat is different. Constitutions can be adapted, and they are, sometimes. The American Constitution has been amended a number of times. With the Dutch Constitution, I think the latest adaptation was in 1989. Constitutions are not like the Koran—nonnegotiable, never-changing.
Look, in a democracy, it’s like this: I suggest, "Let’s close Muslim schools." You say, "No, we can’t do it." The problem that I’m pointing out to you gets bigger and bigger. Then you say, "OK, let’s somehow discourage them," and still the problem keeps on growing, and in another few years it gets so bad that I belatedly get what I wanted in the first place.
In other words: Muslims are far too barbaric to have civil liberties such as freedom of speech and run their own schools. I'm not advocating the schools which preach jihad remain open, but the idea that we should closeall Muslim schools is simply appalling. It's easy to see how Hirsi Ali's views can be used by the right as an argument for denying Muslims due process andhabeas corpus.
Here's what I don't get: there's plenty of brave Muslim women out there who protest their conditions under the Islamic patriarchy, who do more to lift of the status of women in Islamic society than Hirsi Ali could ever dream of. They do it by organizing grassroots civil society groups, large demonstrations, and various charitable causes. We can see them on the web sites of numeroushuman rights organizations. These women, however, don't lump in all Muslims into one monolithic bloc and certainly do not advocate the start of World War III/IV/whatever. Some of them, such as theRevolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, actuallyoppose US intervention in the region. These women rarely, if ever, gain the attention of the US media, and certainly not the American right. The reason for that is simple: their struggles for human equality are not "useful" to those in power.
As Hirsi Ali calls for drastic cuts in the welfare state, a militaristic foreign policy, and repressive measures at home, it's not hard to see the reasons for the disproportionate amounts of attention she receives from our establishment media.
