[Vision2020] Brave Somali Woman Rejects Islam with a Vengeance

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Greetings:

This is my column/radio commentary for this week.  The full version with a photo of Hirsi Ali and a provocative clip from her film "Submission" is also included in the PDF file.  One cannot for a minute accept the violent judgment against her by militant Muslims, but you can understand why even moderate Muslims are upset with her.

I first saw the film "Priest," a sympathetic portrayal of a gay Roman Catholic priest, in Australia, and I was shocked to learn that the RC Church had succeeded in limiting the screening of the movie in the U.S.  In stark contrast, however, is the fact that the neither the Church nor even extreme Catholics called the death of its director or producer.  Here is there is no comparison to the dangers of militant Islam.

Read my other columns on Islam at www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/IslamPage.htm and read about secular fundamentalism at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/SecFund.htm  Please note that I no longer placed periods at the end of references to URLs.  They simply don't execute if the periods at included.

Nick Gier

BRAVE SOMALI WOMAN REJECTS ISLAM WITH A VENGEANCE

Ayann Hirsi Ali is on a crusade against her former religion, claiming that Islam is inherently violent and is particularly destructive of the lives of women. As a teenager living in exile in Kenya, Hirsi Ali came under the influence of Wahabi Islam, which is officially promoted by Saudi Arabia and is embraced by jihadists around the world. She wore the hijab and attended meetings sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that assassinated Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat.

Hirsi Ali's father was a high profile Somali rebel leader. When he arranged a marriage to a prosperous Canadian Somali, Hirsi Ali reluctantly agreed. On her way to Canada in 1992, she had a lay over in Germany, and there she decided that she could not go through with the marriage. 
Slipping away from her Somali relatives in Düsseldorf, she boarded a train to the Netherlands.  Once there she received political asylum, learned Dutch, became a Dutch citizen, received a master’s degree in political science, and, incredibly enough, was elected to the Dutch Parliament in 2003.

The suicide attacks of September 11 were the turning point in Hirsi Ali’s life.  Contrary to all the evidence and reasoning, she insisted that the attacks were not result of Muslim extremists: "This was the core of Islam . . . [this was] not frustration, poverty, colonialism, or Israel: it was about religious belief.”

All the major American Muslim civic and professional organizations rejected the idea that Islam could justify such an abomination. The governments of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iran condemned the attacks. The King of Morocco convened a service of solidarity for the victims in the Catholic cathedral in Casablanca. At a soccer match in Iran, 60,000 fans observed a moment of silence for the victims. 

When Hirsi Ali read some of Osama bin Laden’s writings, she was afraid to consult the Qur’an because she was certain that she would find the verses he used therein.  This should not be so suprising. The pastor of the second largest church in my town cites Bible verses to justify that Southern plantation owners were right to hold slaves, that homosexuals should be executed, and that women should not be allowed to vote.  

In 2002 Hirsi Ali denounced her Muslim faith and became an atheist.  Christopher Hitchens, one of the “new atheists,” has taken up her cause.  Writing the Foreword for Hirsi Ali’s best selling book "Infidel," Hitchen supports her belief that there is no such people as moderate Muslims.  Hitchens mocks Tariq Ramadan, the most famous European Muslim intellectual, as a fraud.

Hirsi Ali has debated Ramadan (you can see the debate on YouTube), and she, although very quick on her feet, is unable to refute the fact that Islam has a history of scriptural interpretation older than and just as sophisticated as the Christian tradition. For her the only Islam is the Saudi Wahabi version, which is as absurd as saying that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are the essence of Christianity.

I have called Hitchens and the other new atheists “secular fundamentalists,” because of their insistence that every aspect of human nature must be held up to the scrutiny of reason.  As a result, they show no understanding of things of the heart and why people might find religious faith important to them. I agree with Hitchens that many religious doctrines are irrational, but that does not mean that we should disrespect people who believe in them, and then rudely call for them to give up their faith.

Reading about Hirsi Ali has given me a new insight about secular fundamentalists.  Just as the religious fundamentalist maintain a literal reading of scripture, so, too, do secular fundamentalists. In their rejection of all religion they, whom one would think would the last people to be this simple-minded, insist that scripture be taken literally.  While it makes their critique of religion easier, I think it makes them look rather foolish.

In her courageous fight for justice for Muslim women in the Netherlands, Hirsi Ali has done much to advance their cause.  Working as a member of the Dutch Parliament, she was able to get $40 million for women’s shelters.  Her greatest victory was convincing the police to give full details surrounding the deaths of women. In a survey of two of 25 Dutch police precincts 11 of the female deaths were “honor killings,” girls or women murdered because of extramarital sex usually not at their own instigation.

Hirsi Ali’s most provocative act was to team up with Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh to make a 10-minute film entitled Submission.  The film features an actress on whose half naked body verses from the Qur’an are projected.  The woman tells of being beaten by her husband, and then raped and impregnated by her uncle.  She told her father about the uncle’s first advances, but he told her to keep quiet so as to preserve his brother’s honor.

Reaction to the film among European Muslims was understandably very negative.  Two months after the film was shown on Dutch TV, Van Gogh was stabbed to death by a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent.  Using the murder weapon the man pinned a note on Van Gough’s chest calling for the death of Hirsi Ali. Since then she has been on the run and in hiding, constantly being watched by the Royal Dutch Protection Services.

Hirsi Ali’s views do, however, resonate with a growing number of Europeans who believe, sometimes with very good reasons (honor killings is one of them), that many Muslims have not integrated very well into their culture.  Political parties with anti-immigration policies are gaining in the polls, and the Danish minority government depends on the votes of such a party.  
These serious problems, however, will not be solved by the extreme and misleading rhetoric of provocateurs such as Hirsi Ali.  

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. 
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