Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs. Islam

January 7, 2008

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a compelling figure.. as anyone who watches her in an interview will concede. The above interview with Glenn Beck is striking because she is much smarter than him.. and even as he works to corral her into his narrow view of events in the Middle East it is clear that she has a broader, more nuanced view. Although Hirsi Ali can express her opinions about Islam in philosophical language, her opinions should not go unexamined.

Take her recent review in the New York Times of The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the Enlightenment by Lee Harris. She summarizes the author's position as follows:

Harris does not regard Islamic fanaticism as a deviancy or a madness that affects a few Muslims and terrifies many. Instead he argues that fanaticism is the basic principle in Islam. "The Muslims are, from an early age, indoctrinated into a shaming code that demands a fanatical rejection of anything that threatens to subvert the supremacy of Islam," he writes. During the years that this shaming code is instilled into children, the collective is emphasized above the individual and his freedoms. A good Muslim must forsake all: his property, family, children, even life for the sake of Islam. Boys in particular are taught to be dominating and merciless, which has the affect of creating a society of holy warriors.

Anyone who has spent any time in the Middle East or who even knows any Muslims will laugh at this. I imagine the people I have met in Cairo.. could they be called "a society of holy warriors"? That's absurd. The Muslims I have met in the Middle East are largely consumed with the difficult prospect of making a living and raising their families.. like most people in the world. Sexism and machismo are no doubt alive and well in the Middle East, but that is a long way from a world in which boys are taught to become "dominating and merciless." There is no shortage of gentle and kind Muslims in the Middle East.

Hirsi Ali is here reporting the opinions of Harris, but she never challenges those statements. She disagrees with Harris concerning the notion that the Enlightenment notion of reason must be challenged if Western civilization is to survive. For Hirsi Ali reason is the power that allows individuals to change and move away from previously held religious views. She defends the Enlightenment from Romanticism. But all this philosophical talk is worthless in the context of a charge against Islamic society that is absurd. All the philosophical positioning in the world cannot cover the baselessness of the idea that Muslims create "a society of holy warriors."

This review highlights Hirsi Ali's willingness to be co-opted by the most alarmist of American writers about Islam. Her writing appears to exist above the fray and she makes careful distinctions, but she is subservient on the larger issue as to the nature of Islam. Her silence discredits her.