On September 15, Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke at Yale, and you all remember that this was protested by a consortium of student organizations, including the Muslim Students’ Association, the Women’s Center, and the Yale Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics.
The talk was posted three days ago by the Buckley Program at Yale, so you can hear for yourself. It’s 80 minutes long with Q&A, and I haven’t listened to it all, but I will. After half an hour of watching, I haven’t yet seen her breathe fire or sprout horns. In the meantime, you can form your own judgment. The topic is “The Clash of Civilizations: Islam and the West.”
After some introductions, her talk begins at 10:30
And here are two comments I received this week (but didn’t let through) about my post whose link is above:
from “ggrainger”:
I like Hirshi [sic] Ali, but she’s absolutely wrong about us showing restraint. She must have missed the ongoing war of the past decade or so. Just go see Human Rights Watch website, or any other site that documents our actions and their effects and there is no way you could say we show restraint. I think she’s doing herself a great disservice by being ignorant.
Ali talks about the effects of “restraint” in her talk.
and from “Fred”:
Ayaan isn’t particularly bright, nor does she have any original or insightful ideas or analysis. She gained fame for being a female Somali critic of Islam. If a white or even middle eastern man had written exactly what she wrote, he would probably be ignored (as the ideas are tedious), and he could certainly not hope to be given the possibility for public speaking at Yale.
Ayaan shouldn’t be denied to speak at universities for moral reasons, however giving her all this attention and praise is also not justified. Should Islam bashing of any kind (even the most academically primitive type) gain an individual attention and praise? Without any requirements to substance.
Needless to say, these two won’t be posting here again.
Everything these two people say is wrong, and they debase themselves by calling this brave, bright, and eloquent woman “ignorant” and “not particularly bright”. She is famous for having overcome a horrible upbringing and devoting her life (after getting an education under daunting circumstances) to fighting against the misogyny and religious oppression that afflicted her. She is famous for becoming a member of the Dutch parliament, and using that platform to fight against religious malfeasance. She is famous for having recorded her life in two excellent books that move the genre of autobiography into the realm of religious criticism. She is famous for keeping on when she knows that many people want to kill her.
She knows whereof she speaks, and is a role model not just for women, but for everyone who wants to stand up for what’s right, but is afraid to. And she is a role model for all secular activists who want to actually do something to make the world better.
If you doubt any of this, just read her first book, Infidel.
Not particularly bright???? Is Fred blind?
Because doing a Masters degree in your third language is the sort of thing that not particularly bright… oh wait.
Indeed, or fleeing to a Western country, not knowing the customs, language or anyone else there and gaining a command of all those things to actually work in that country’s political system (and therefore demonstrate not just a pedestrian use of the language but an advanced command of it) – no that isn’t very brave or bright. Sheesh!
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is indeed an amazing person. It is all too easy for those of us who have never experienced the sort of indoctrination and threats of death to sit back and criticize her. I have no idea if I could have broken free, but from a statistical standpoint – most of us never would have escaped. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an improbability – and we should all be so grateful that she beat the odds.
“Islam bashing”?
Does this writer believe that Islam should be beyond criticism? If so, why? L
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Thank you for posting this. I’m just half way through, and it’s a really good talk. I’m glad she addressed the credentialing issue.
She communicates so clearly, and her final message about going after the extremists and not the dissidents/reformers is right on.
The commenter Fred writes:
“If a white or even middle eastern man had written exactly what she wrote, he would probably be ignored (as the ideas are tedious)…”
Interesting that Fred notes one group by skin color and the other by geography….
But my main point is that whether white or middle eastern or FRED, they are all men and consequently would have been spared the debasement, including genital mutilation, that Ms. Ali endured.
I’ve read and keep both Infidel and The Caged Virgin. This woman is brilliant, I really admire what she has achieved after her upbringing.
As for “Fred”, I had a Jack Russel terrier called Fred who died early this year. However, he had more brains than “Fred” who posted on WEIT.
So does my current black feline Fred. The other FRED is a disgrace to the name🐾🐾
I had a cat named Fred! I wonder what’s with the name “Fred” for animals? I was only 5 and I think I got the name from Fred Flintstone.
My son named him Fred when he, son, was in his teens. I Don’t remember he was much of a Flintstones fan. Fred’s predecessor was Shaq(uille), my son being a big basketball fan when young. Fred’s a good kitty name. Son’s dog is Lloyd, which is perfect for the big bundle of orange foxlike fluff, somehow.
I’m in love with a girl named, “Fred.”
b&
My Fred says Puleeeeeease🐯
I’d completely forgotten about that show Once Upon a Mattress( though have been accused by bf of having princess+pea tendencies..)
It was actually one of the first shows I ever played, way back in junior high school. Yes, every year, my junior high school put on a Broadway musical…the teacher was insane, but I was incredibly lucky to be one of her students….
b&
What fun! The high school I taught at put on West Side Story and Into the Woods, among others. Great drama and music teachers! And great for the kids. The results weren’t half bad;-)
I have an oval mole on my right forearm. I have always named it ‘Fred’ since I was a kid.
p.s., sorry about your Jack Russell. All J.Rs I have known were a little package of personality.
I have been reading about Ayaan for some time and have been very proud of her from my relatively safe position as a white, female citizen of the USA. I have yet to watch the video (I will), or read her books (they’re on my list to purchase), but have heard her speak at a secular event. She sounded extremely intelligent to me. She has been unbelievably brave for herself, and those like her in the world. If I had been born into her circumstances, I hope I would have had her bravery, courage and fortitude. But I doubt it.
Go, Ayaan!
This particular Fred strongly disagrees with that other one and admires Ayaan for what she has accomplished and her perseverance in speaking out against religious & cultural insanity. These are the same sort of apologists for inhumanity who would have decried Frederick Douglas for speaking out against the slave society he escaped from for trying to make “poor” put upon southern slave owners feel bad about their culture and beliefs and stirring up war to end their way of life.
The only “peace” too many religious fanatics are truly interested in one they hope to obtain by slaughtering or forcing into cowed silence everyone who doesn’t share their idiotic beliefs.
If ms. Ali is not qualified to speak about islam then Frederick Douglass was not qualified to speak of slavery. What she experienced needs to be widely communicated.
I greatly admire Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And, for that matter, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. None is perfect, just like the rest of us, but they’re all incredibly impressive people. The nasty streak so many display in their criticism of these people says more about themselves than their victims.
It is simply misogyny. About 30 years ago I went to a lecture/presentation by Dario Fo (when he was allowed back in the US) at the Yale Law School. He verbally massacred the pope, ridiculing his pope mobile, and demonstrating how he would kick him in his ass, and it was all received with no comment, although some of the people turned a little white during the presentation. So I repeat, it is misogyny, which is a fundamental element of the Abrahamic religions. Women have to shut up.
And a black woman besides….who does she think she is getting all uppity and everything 🙁
I don’t agree with ggrainger or Fred either, and I very much enjoyed Ali’s talk, but I don’t see where you get that they’re being misogynistic or that they belong to one of the Abrahamic religions.
@Jeffran: I don’t know who ggrainger is, and if he talks about “we,” does he mean he belongs to the “human rights watch?” But if you don’t see that Fred’s remark is not misogynistic, you must be quite unaware of things. But I don’t know who “jeffran” is either, so his remark is meaningless.
OK, I wasn’t trying to be flip by the way, I just don’t see how one can get misogyny out of the Fred’s remark. I didn’t like it either, but I just don’t know how you got there.
It’s her courage that so unnerves people clinging to the status quo. Many other traits irritate that group also, like her intelligence, resiliency, confidence, her talent, her success…but the courage thing, coming from a female, oh, no, we can’t have that.
and from “Fred”:
Ayaan isn’t particularly bright, nor does she have any original or insightful ideas or analysis. She gained fame for being a female Somali critic of Islam. If a white or even middle eastern man had written exactly what she wrote, he would probably be ignored (as the ideas are tedious), and he could certainly not hope to be given the possibility for public speaking at Yale.
I think I’m getting the hang of internet logic now:
We shouldn’t listen to white guys talking about Islam because they are white guys and they have no authority to speak on the subject; but we shouldn’t listen to black women speaking on the subject either because they’re just saying stuff that wouldn’t be interesting if it was coming from white guys.
Ayaan rules, simply brilliant and rational on all fronts/points. Honesty, humility, Humanity, compassion, knowledge – Ayaan has all necessary “credentials” going on.
Why, why, why are so many people eager to protect religion from criticism?
Not content with going after the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or our host Jerry, they even seek to silence and discredit people like Ayaan, who have suffered first-hand from the effects of religion.
How dare they tell her to stop criticising the faith that treated her so badly!
How dare they say that religion isn’t at fault in the face of her testimony!
Understandably, the faithful don’t like to hear their beliefs criticised, but so much of this religion-defending comes from people who aren’t themselves religious.
Don’t they stop and think for a few minutes that someone like Ayaan might just be a little more qualified than they are to tell us exactly how dangerous and damaging a religion like Islam can be?
I really liked the way Ayaan addressed the islamophobe canard waged against people who criticize Islam. When someone dislikes a another human being only because he or she happens to be a homosexual or of certain race, the terms homophobes and racists certainly apply. Religion, however, is just a set of beliefs, which should be absolutely open to criticism, like all other human ideologies, ideas, etc. The subject of criticism in this case is not the person, but that person’s beliefs.
Yes, she was excellent on that point.
I agree. The attempt to introduce the term Islamophobia into the language as if it were somehow comparable to racism or homophobia is appalling.
As you say, Islam is a set of ideas, and ideas should never be beyond criticism.
Unfortunately, we find that once again that many of the people complicit in this effort to inoculate Islam from criticism are not themselves religious. Very often, they’re people who I would normally associate with: generally nice, tolerant liberals. Sadly, they’ve let their tolerance extend to include some of the most regressive ideologies on the planet.
I’m honestly not sure what it would take for these apologists to realise that they’re defending a set of ideas that are very dangerous.
How many victims of religious violence and oppression, like Ayaan, need to speak up?
How often do the perpetrators of religiously-motivated violence and oppression need to shout “God is great!”?
What’s it going to take to convince them that religion, after all, might be a contributing factor?
>Sadly, they’ve let their tolerance extend to include some of the most regressive ideologies on the planet.
“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.” ― Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I wholeheartedly agree with you, but notice that in many societies religion is treated not so much as a voluntarily chosen set of beliefs, but rather as an almost innate characteristic, on par with one’s ethnicity or even skin color. Even the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (a noble and wise document, to be sure) lists in one breath: “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin”, ignoring the fact that one of these things is not like the others. There is, of course, some historical justification for this, coming from the time when to shed one’s religious upbringing was almost as difficult as to deny one’s ethnic or national affiliation. This is one of the reasons why even some otherwise objective people identify criticism of Islam with “racism”.
Excellent talk. There’s room for disagreement on the most effective response to the threats posed by the Islam of, as Ayaan calls them, “preacher teachers,” but her analysis of the situation is spot-on and well nuanced.
As the saying goes, we’re all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. And the only way to come to opinions worth having is with a good grasp on the facts. If you want to have a respectable opinion, you need to know what Ayaan knows.
b&
Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave a knowledgeable & civilized critique of Islam. I read that she is married to the historian Niall Ferguson since 2011. Niall Ferguson contradicted historian Tom Devine’s assertion that if Scotland split from U.K then relations would become more amicable between people of Scotland & people of England. Niall thought many relationships would be impaired.
At 37 minutes in on the video Ayaan Hirsi Ali notes that someone wrote in the Koran that, ” There is no God beside Allah ” I would contradict that view by saying, ” There is no God and Mohammad was mostly just making stuff up ” There are a lot of other texts in the Koran which I would hold opposite views to. I hope that if the people who wrote the Koran were given a decent modern education then they would realize that what they imagined was true has been shown by evidence gathered to be mostly in error. However it is interesting to compare the differences between the Koran and other variants on the writings that make up the Bible
The two main theories are that either the Koran contains inspired revelation or that it contains ideas from a pre-scientific & superstitious age that do not tell us anything crucial or even useful about our universe, certainly nothing that wasn’t easily observable by the common man. In fact many of its ideas are misleading.
The committee who agreed which of the pamphlets should form the Bible tried to prevent others altering its texts by putting a curse at the end, in Revelation 22v18-19.
Islam seems to hold that revelation ended with Mohammad. What ? Do they think that a living God would have nothing further to say ? That he would be unable to mature & grow up ? Seems to me that a real, loving, God would have added something like, ” By the way, my earlier thoughts were confused & mistaken, but in any case my ideas have been evolving, I now see my initial thoughts as to how to govern society were really barbaric and I can now offer some more civilized ideas. Look let’s start again. What actually happened was that the universe started from a Big Bang, there are trillions of sun like stars, I forget just how the first organic life forms got going but after they did life on Earth evolved by natural selection. I played no part in the whole thing. Sorry I don’t have any real powers to intervene but I recommend you make sand into transparent lenses to focus light beams to create magnified images so that you can see the very small things like bacteria & very far away things like stars in space. Also try to maximize human well being and minimize suffering. P.S. if I wanted someone to die they would be miraculously terminated, don’t try to claim I told any human to do it. Oh sorry to tell you this but there is no supernatural realm and I am just a figment of your imagination “
I have read both of Ali’s books and they are excellent. I think she is an inspiration to all of us.
As I recently learned over at The Friendly Atheist, defense of Islam seems to trump all other considerations for a whole lot of Atheists. Criticize Islam (especially if one compares it unfavorably to Christianity) and get ready for the firestorm.
I think it has to do with the fact that so many Atheists are also politically liberal, and the notion that Islam is made up of nothing but poor victims of Western… everything… that anything they do is somehow justified because it’s not really their fault. When there’s a cognitive dissonance, they resolve it in favor of the “Muslim victims” and are rendered incapable of seeing wrong in the excesses of Islam.
It gets to the point where a baker refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in the US is somehow *worse* than Muslim nations executing homosexuals.
I daresay if they didn’t have Christianity as their only example of what theism is, they might understand where Ms. Ali is coming from.
It is extremely sad that this brilliant person had to find sanctuary in the conservative community in this country. Sometimes the liberals ride on the stupid side of the bus.
Like her and I appreciate all she conveyed to us.
I’m just thankful that there are such brave & inspiring people as Ayaan Hirsi Ali in this world!
Thank you for posting this video!
I agree with you that Hirsi Ali is an amazingly courageous, inspirational woman. I agree with you that her devotion to the cause of improving the lives of women subjugated by Islam is heroic. But I also agree with the detractors that the quality of her analysis is often unimpressive. While the stories she tells of her life are a wellspring of useful insight into Islam (at least as practiced in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East), when she moves from subjective particulars to more objective big-picture analysis, in my opinion the insight all too often dries up and we are left with banalities.
Is this fairly moderate criticism now grounds for banning on this blog?
Banalities can be true, though. The word just means ‘unoriginal.’ Hirsi and those like her can certainly do a valuable service by repeating back to western audiences the things we’ve been told before and ought to care about, but don’t because caring makes us unformfortable or is inconvenient. FGM is a very banal subject. The fact that many Islamic countries restrict women’s right to move around, dress the way they want, hold jobs, etc… is equally banal. We’ve heard it all before. But it’s still worth repeating, with voices like Hirsi’s to lend it power and credibility.
I wouldn’t call it “banal.” I would call it “infuriating.”
I completely disagree.
She always puts her own experience in the broader context of Islamic depredations. And when exposing those, she simply sticks to the objective facts (such as the persecution of Muslims with ‘credentials’ who dared to call for a reform of Islam). She isn’t afraid of bringing the facts to light, and always strives to get to the heart of the problem.
That the heart of the problem happens to be the unreformed 7th century ideology is what pains her detractors, Islamic apologists, and cry-babies… their lament after her every speech is really distasteful.
“While the stories she tells of her life are a wellspring of useful insight into Islam (at least as practiced in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East)”
You must have missed the recent news about Muslims from the world over flocking to the Islamic State. About honor killings, and thousands FGM victims in the UK. The Islamic cancer is no longer a local malignancy. It has already spread.
One of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s best points IMO was at 1:17:00 where she says ~ we are dealing with documents like the Koran which were written a long time ago, in the 7th century, .. we are talking about the morality of the 7th century. These documents should be in museums but today it is disturbing that there are so many Moslems who use the Koran like a drivers manual.
Looking at the failure of priests of Abrahamic religions to predict useful discoveries & inventions I think that their abilities were more pathetic then prophetic.
They were myopic, knowing neither the distant past nor the far future. If they studied the history of religion they would see the idea of Hades started with the myths of ancient Greeks and Zoroastrians. How can they claim to know of an unseen heaven & hell when they were unable to know of the knowable material things around us?
If they claimed divine revelation then it should have been easy for them to know what their enemies were planning and so win in all the battles – yet history shows that did not happen
They failed to predict the industrial revolution & the technology of the 21st century.
How is it that that psalms do not praise God as ” evolving & adaptable, living, changing, improving, altering the message to deal with new situations on Earth ” but rather quite the reverse as ” unchanging, always the same ”
Perhaps “God” was used to mean, ” The set of ideas which are currently viewed as being most likely & correct ” so then in modern times “God” must be very different.
” I am who I am ” should have been written, ” I am who you are, cause i am you “
Yes!
Not just eloquent, but articulate, wipes the floor with opponents, more courage in her little toe than most of us in our whole body, and yet, forgiving and understanding… a pearl.
Brilliant, I have no words, really a true hero. She makes one proud to be human.