Maclean Magazine Interview With Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali She Says Muslims Must Assimilate Into Western Cultures.

On why Christians should try to convert Muslims

Maclean’s talks to writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali about living under a fatwa

by Kate Fillion

Photograph by Steve Simon

Born Muslim in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, fleeing to the Netherlands at the age of 22 to escape an arranged marriage. Ten years later, she was elected to the Dutch parliament. A prominent feminist and critic of Islam, she received numerous death threats when she renounced her faith following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In 2004, Theo van Gogh, the director of a short film she wrote protesting Islam’s treatment of women, was murdered in Amsterdam by a Muslim extremist who threatened that she would be next. Since 2007, the bestselling author of  Infidel, a memoir, has lived in the U.S., where she is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. In her new book, Nomad, Hirsi Ali writes about her struggle to assimilate into Western society and proposes remedies to help other immigrants resist the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism.

Q: Are you, after eight years with a security detail, inured to death threats? It’s hard to imagine you could continue to function if you felt constant fear.
A: It’s not a great way of leading your life, but like everything else, you get used to it. Presidents, members of royal families, diplomats—anybody who’s subjected to live under a security protocol does function. And I’m not the only one [with a fatwa]. There’s a whole class of people who live this way. I think, look, they can kill me physically—or I could die of a heart attack or whatever. Life is short. What they cannot kill are my ideas. The fact my books have been published and are out there—there are limits to silencing.

Q: Journalists frequently comment on your courage. Is “brave” how you think of yourself?
A: No. I think of all of us as being potential victims of the jihadist threat. I mean, look at the Times Square attack that was foiled. If it had succeeded, and on that Saturday night you were going to the theatre, you would’ve been injured if not killed. It’s not a question of who’s brave and who’s not, it’s an attack we all are under. Every time you take a train, step into your car, walk into the shopping mall, go to the airport—every single time, something could happen. That’s how terrorism works.

Q: You view the West as being at war not only with terrorists but with Islam itself. Who do you think will win?
A: The West will be victorious because the ideas of life are just far superior to the ideas of death. The question is what price we want to pay to win. How many people should die before victory? How much money and resources should we spend? We’re just not being effective now because we are being nice and avoiding the subject of Islam. We need to talk about Islam, about what’s in the Quran. The debate right now among Westerners is very defensive; all people want to prove is that they’re not Islamophobes.

Q: Consequently, according to Paul Berman in his new book The Flight of the Intellectuals, you’ve received “dreadful treatment” from, and have been trivialized by, the intelligentsia. Do you agree?
A: He’s addressing a debate within liberalism. He is, just like me and I think many others, surprised—and that’s an understatement—that some liberals choose to defend ideas that are very illiberal and choose to look away from practices that are even more illiberal. Why are they excusing radical Islam? That fascinates Berman and it also fascinates me, what the presence of Islam does to the liberal psyche in the West.

Q: What does Islam do to the liberal psyche?
A: Confuses it. The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals. They’ve convinced themselves that the best way to do that in general is to defend the cultures that are non-white. But what they forget, and what they’re being confronted with, is that non-white cultures contain misogynistic, collectivist, tribal, gay-unfriendly and female-hostile traditions. And so they’re confused: on the one hand, they’re looking at minorities as groups they need to save and speak up for, and on the other hand, they’re confronted with the ideas and practices of individuals within those minorities that are very undemocratic and appalling, really.

Q: You believe there is no such thing as moderate Islam. If that’s true, why do so many Muslims in the West say they’re horrified by violence perpetrated in the name of Islam?
A: I haven’t heard anybody say they’re horrified. Just to compare, many Americans, Canadians and Europeans protested the war on Iraq; they gathered themselves, they sent lots of emails, there was a lot of activism, they marched against this war. I haven’t seen that kind of thing from Muslims saying, “We’re against the numerous terrorist attacks all over the world carried out in the name of Islam.” No marches, no organizations, nothing. There are individuals, like Irshad Manji, like me, born into Islam, who stand up and say, “Hey, we don’t like this.” But we haven’t seen any kind of institutionalized protest by Muslims. That is the big question mark: are Muslims silent because they agree with the terrorist attacks? Or because they don’t know how to express themselves?

Q: One of your arguments in Nomad is that European countries have enabled homegrown jihadists by not insisting Muslims assimilate. I assume you support the proposed burka bans in Belgium and France?
A: I think to demand to cover your face in a public place in an era of terrorism is preposterous. For the French government, and other governments, to say, “You can wear whatever you like, but we would like to see your face”—I think that’s reasonable. I’m not talking about the face covering as a manifestation of religion, just in terms of safety. Every time I go through an airport I have to remove my shoes, my belt, my coat. After the attempted underwear bombing in the name of Islam, we have to go through a machine that scans us. So for someone to come around from that religion and say, “I demand that I cover myself”—it’s unreal.

Q: Are Muslims in North America better assimilated than in Europe?
A: Yes and no. Economically and in terms of education, yes. But I haven’t seen any hard data to prove that Canadian and American Muslims are more patriotic than Dutch and German Muslims.

Q: Do you think Barack Obama has moved the U.S. forward in terms of engaging constructively with Muslim countries?
A: Muslim populations and countries don’t like us any more than they did under Bush. In Obama’s administration so far, there have been more terrorist attempts than under eight years of the Bush administration, not including the 9/11 attack. The problem is clearly growing. The argument of, “Okay, they do this because they are poor”—that doesn’t apply anymore. In Western democracies, the young men wanting to kill themselves and kill others to get to the Muslim paradise are middle-class, well-educated and have the potential for a good future. The argument that Muslims are persecuted in North America is also not true. Muslims want to be in North America; they get jobs, they can have businesses and live wherever they want. If you just look at that argument empirically, you see that Muslims lead a life that is free and they can do whatever they want. As you go through these arguments, you see it’s not really about which administration is in the White House, it’s about convictions, not just the convictions of individuals but of states like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, which have, as their constitution, the Quran.

Q: One of your more startling arguments in Nomad is that Christian churches should proselytize in immigrant communities to try to convert Muslims.
A: Look at the amount of money Saudi Arabia spends on coming into Muslim communities in America and Europe, building schools and also taking leaders and training them in Mecca and Medina, then replanting them. It’s surprising that no other group of people is targeting the same communities. If you look at Western civilization, at the institutions [and movements] that were engaged in changing people’s hearts and minds—the Christian Church, humanists, feminists—they are doing next to nothing in these Muslim communities. When I was in Holland [recently], I heard about a Christian mission that had been proselytizing in Morocco. The government kicked them out and sent them back to Holland. I thought, “You don’t have to stop proselytizing—just go to the Muslim community in Amsterdam west and carry on there.” But of course there, they’re not only going to face the radical Muslims as opponents, they’re also going to face the multicultural opponents, saying they’re not supposed to be telling people to leave their religion.

Q: So how would they do it?
A: Next to every mosque, build a Christian centre, an enlightenment centre, a feminist centre. There are tons of websites, financed with Saudi money, promoting Wahabism. We need to set up our own websites—Christian, feminist, humanist—trying to target the same people, saying, we have an alternative moral framework to Islam. We have better ideas.

Q: But you also argue that children are indoctrinated very early in Islam. How would you even get them to listen to such a message?
A: They only get indoctrinated if they go to Muslim schools. I would, if I had the power, abolish Muslim schools. Children born to Muslim parents in North America or anywhere else in the West would get Islamic teachings at home, which is fine. But when they go to school, they would get the regular education that’s going to enable them to be absorbed into our society and become law-abiding, well-established citizens.

Q: In a multicultural and democratic society, how could we ban Muslim schools?
A: It depends how we weigh this problem of jihadism and terrorism. If we think it’s a chronic disease we have to live with, and I think that is actually the dominant opinion, people will take more trouble to look at what is going on in these schools and abolish them. If we think of these children as kids who, when they finish school, will be hostile to our society, then I can compile a whole host of arguments why they can and should be abolished.

Q: Let me ask a question you once posed. You said, “Western civilization is a celebration of life—everybody’s life, even your enemy’s life. So how can you be true to that morality and at the same time defend yourself against a very powerful enemy that seeks to destroy you?”
A: That is the big question for the open society today. We want to be distinct from closed societies, have less authoritarianism, allow people to make their own choices. And what we’re seeing now is that as far as that applies to an Islamic subset of society, there are other factors at work that are frightening. To have a whole generation of people just indoctrinated with this jidhadist mentality and for us to do nothing about it, and then every time there’s a terrorist attack, we panic—it’s not viable.

Boston Globe Article: Is Sarah Palin A Feminist?

Right to be feminist

A left-wing litmus test risks losing valuable allies for the women’s movement

By Cathy Young June 9, 2010

E-mail this article

THE LATEST Sarah Palin controversy has to do with feminism. In a recent article in the Washington Post, feminist author and blogger Jessica Valenti blasted the former vice presidential candidate for “adopting the feminist label.’’ Valenti believes that any talk of a conservative version of feminism is a cynical right-wing ploy to fool women into supporting reactionary antiwoman policies. But while Palin may be far from the best spokeswoman for conservative feminism, the idea itself is essential to feminism’s health.

If feminism is typecast as a left-wing movement, this automatically limits its appeal in a country with center-right politics. Feminist writer Naomi Wolf noted this nearly two decades ago when she urged the movement to drop litmus tests that excluded millions of women because of their positions on environmental policy, guns, gay rights, or abortion. Wolf argued that the beliefs of conservative and Republican women who champion female autonomy and achievement should be “respected as a right-wing version of feminism.’’

Many women’s response to Palin’s emergence as a major political figure highlights this need for ideological diversity. Shortly after the election of 2008, at a lecture I gave at Touro College law school in Long Island, a student in her late twenties made a powerful statement about what Palin’s candidacy meant to her personally. “I’m a professional woman who is also a wife and a mom, and a pro-life, conservative Christian,’’ she said. “I have always felt that feminism did not speak to me or for me. When I saw Sarah Palin, I felt I could finally call myself a feminist, because here was a feminist like me.’’

But is a feminist like Palin, who has pursued an ambitious career and raised a family, really a feminist? In her autobiography, “Going Rogue,’’ Palin writes, “I didn’t subscribe to all the radical mantras of that early feminist era, but reasoned arguments for equal opportunity definitely resonated with me.’’ She voices a sentiment most American women would embrace.

Valenti accuses Palin of pretending to support feminism while disparaging the actual women’s movement and its pioneers; but, ironically, one of the pioneers she names is Betty Friedan, who was herself virtually excommunicated from the movement in the 1970s after criticizing its antimale, antifamily excesses.

Who owns feminism today? Many feminists are incensed when the label is appropriated by women who question the Violence Against Women Act, or who argue that the pay differential between women and men is due largely to women’s more family-focused personal choices, not discrimination. Yet critiques of the conventional feminist paradigms of such problems as domestic violence and the gender gap in pay have been made both by many dissident feminists and by many scholars and researchers. To reject them out of hand as incompatible with feminism is not only ideologically intolerant, it also suggests an unwillingness to even consider factual claims that are at odds with dogma.

Above all, Valenti is incensed that women who don’t believe women are oppressed dare call themselves feminists. Feminism, she says, is “a structural analysis of a world that oppresses women, an ideology based on the notion that patriarchy exists and that it needs to end’’ — presumably in America and not, say, Afghanistan. But this definition dismisses out of hand the can-do feminism that celebrates female strength and achievement and appeals to vast numbers of women. It also suggests that feminism has an interest in portraying women as oppressed to perpetuate itself.

Palin may not be a particularly good spokeswoman for conservative feminism. Earlier this year, when giving a talk on politics and women’s issues at a conservative Christian college, I found that most women were disappointed in Palin, seeing her as ill-informed and lacking in ideas (as opposed to incendiary sound bites). But let’s not fool ourselves: feminists like Valenti would not be any more tolerant toward a conservative woman of Margaret Thatcher-level qualifications.

Yet the audience for a different kind of feminism — one that seeks individualistic and market-oriented solutions, rather than big-government-driven ones, and focuses on women’s empowerment rather than oppression — is clearly there. The women who embrace it are likely to transform both feminism and conservatism. The feminist movement ignores them at its peril.

Feminist Writer Naomi Wolf Interview On The Riz Khan Show About American Fascism!

Feminist Author Naomi Wolf Talks About Her Breakthrough Book The Beauty Myth.

Deadline.com Article: Sanaa Lathan Will Star on HBO Show Tilda.

Sanaa Lathan rounds out the cast of HBO’s comedy pilot Tilda, from Bill Condon. The project stars Diane Keaton as Tilda, a powerful female online Hollywood journalist with a no-holds-barred style. Lathan will play Sasha Litt, a mysterious new head of operations that RMG head Andrew Brown (Jason Patric)  brings in to work at the studio.

The cast of the pilot, which Condon wrote with Cynthia Mort, also co-stars Ellen Page, Wes Bentley, David Harbour and Leland Orser. Filming will begin shortly in Los Angeles. Lathan, who just came off the West End revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof where she played Maggie, voices a character on The Cleveland Show. She is repped by WME and manger John Carrabino.

Article: Gabrielle Union’s Got A New Acting Job On Spin Off of Army Wives.

Gabrielle Union joins possible “Army Wives” spinoff

James Hibberd

Mon Jun 14, 2010 3:50am EDT

• 
  
  Fri, Jun 11 2010

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Lifetime is taking another step toward launching an “Army Wives” spinoff, casting Gabrielle Union in a pivotal role and planning an “embedded pilot” that will air this season.

The women’s cable network has been developing a “Wives”-inspired crime drama during recent months. Now the project is moving to the next level, with Lifetime airing a special “Wives” episode near the end of the current fourth season that will set the stage to launch the potential series.

In the episode, “Wives” regular Pamela Moran (Brigid Brannagh) returns to her former career and becomes a detective with the Atlanta police department. Union will play her partner, Detective Gina Holt. Union recently played Zoey in ABC’s “FlashForward” and also was featured in NBC’s “Life.”

Embedded pilots have become an increasingly common way to shoot without significantly adding extra costs. “Wives” averages 3 million viewers an episode and ranks as the top-rated original drama on ad-supported cable among women aged 25-54.

Article: Sarah McLachlan Talks About Her Career, Children, & Divorce From Ashwin Sood.

Sarah McLachlan works through divorce and recovery

Sarah McLachlan performs at the opening ceremonies for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Friday, Feb. 12, 2010. (Jonathan Hayward / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Updated: Mon Jun. 14 2010 2:23:25 PM

Nick Patch, The Associated Press

TORONTO — For the past seven years, Sarah McLachlan has largely remained silent while her personal life turned public and she sought to endure the breakup of her marriage.

Tuesday marks the release of “Laws of Illusion,” the Vancouver-based songstress’ first album of new material since 2003’s “Afterglow.”

And if it seems as though the lovelorn lyrics on the oft-wrenching record were inspired by real-life events, it’s because they pretty much were.

McLachlan says her personal struggles fuelled her work — once she got around to dealing with them directly.

“There’s creative licence, but certainly, the emotional rollercoaster of the past couple years played heavily,” McLachlan said in a telephone interview.

“I find it very difficult to write, typically, when I’m happy. It’s a fleeting, light-hearted experience and you don’t want to analyze it because I’m sure you’ll find something wrong with it if you look hard enough.

“Whereas when you’re sad, or heartbroken, or angry, that’s meaty, visceral stuff. You can really sink your teeth into it. And there’s a lot of good juicy bits to grab hold of and dissect and figure out.”

McLachlan split with drummer Ashwin Sood, her husband of 11 years, two years ago. They have two daughters: eight-year-old India and Taja, who turns three next week.

As she tried to recover and take care of two children as a newly single mother, McLachlan didn’t find herself immediately compelled to sit down and write about the pain she was going through.

“My world sort of fell apart, and I just had to work to figure out what the heck I was going to do next,” she said. “You know, I don’t tend to write when I’m in the thick of the emotional angst.

“It’s a lot easier for me to do it after the fact, when I have a little more objectivity.”

Yet, once the 42-year-old began writing — which she did, in earnest, in March of last year — she found that the ideas flowed.

Opening track “Awakenings” is a distorted rush, with ear-candy electronics adding texture to a nakedly emotional rant.

The clatter mostly fades out in time for McLachlan’s key final pronouncement: “I’m not the girl I was but what have I become?/ I’m not so willing anymore to bend/ Still pleasing and conceding/ But I’m not gonna lose myself again.”

“It opens the record for a reason for me,” McLachlan says of the track. “It’s meant to sort of encompass the mood of what’s to come…. I love that song because it is so raw emotionally, and for me, I’m kind of really laying myself out there. Like: ‘Hey, I’m really angry, I’m really pissed off, I’m really hurt, I’m gonna blame everybody.’

“We all do that, and then at a certain point, you sort of have to look at yourself, where’s my responsibility in all this? And how do I move forward?”

Moving on is an idea she explores throughout the record. For instance, in the lilting piano ballad “Forgiveness” (in which she sings “I don’t believe when you tell me your love is real/ ‘Cause you don’t know much about heaven, boy/ If you have to hurt to feel”) and the languid “Rivers of Love,” which McLachlan calls a “love song to yourself.”

While you might expect a record exploring the fresh wounds of a painful rift to sound as gloomy as its subject matter, the music is surprisingly upbeat — from the sprightly hop of “Loving You is Easy” to the uptempo jangle of “Heartbreak.”

“There’s certain rules,” explains McLachlan, who worked again with long-time producer Pierre Marchand. “When you wear a short skirt, you cover up your top. if you’re going to have really happy lyrics, the music has to have some sort of tension or aggression to it, or if you have really, really sad lyrics, there … has to be a bit of a twist to it.

“‘Heartbreak’ is a good example, because it’s so light and effervescent and fluffy musically, but when you listen to the lyrics, it’s all about denial.”

McLachlan professes to have a tough time analyzing her own music, even though she’s able to describe the feelings behind each song more clearly and directly than most artists.

So when she’s asked how the past years — so fraught with personal turmoil — have changed her, she pauses.

“God, I hope I’m a little bit wiser,” she says. “I certainly feel like I’ve been through the wringer the past couple years. And I feel like, all these experiences, good and bad, are where we grow — especially the hard times. That’s where you find out what you’re really made of.

“And so I feel a bit wiser in some ways, and I feel a lot dumber in other ways. You get cocky and complacent and you think, ‘OK, I’ve got this figured out.’ And that’s just when you get the rug pulled out from underneath you.

“So, I’ve learned not to be complacent.”

Toronto Star Article: Homosexual Men & South Asian Men Are The Targets Of Hate Crimes In Canada!

Gay men targets of violence as hate crimes jump

Published On Mon Jun 14 2010

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA—Police services are reporting a big jump in hate crimes, and they say gay men are being targeted more often and in the most violent incidents.

Statistics Canada says police logged 1,036 hate crimes in 2008, up 35 per cent from 2007.

Just over half (55 per cent) were motivated by race or ethnicity, 26 per cent by religion and 16 per cent by sexual orientation.

The agency says all three major categories of hate crime increased in 2008, but the largest increase was among crimes motivated by sexual orientation, which more than doubled from 2007 to 2008.

Hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation were also the most violent in nature: 75 per cent of them were violent compared with 38 per cent of racially-motivated incidents and 25 per cent of religiously motivated incidents.

Among violent incidents motivated by sexual orientation, 85 per cent of the victims were male.

StatsCan reports hate crimes motivated by religion increased 53 per cent, while those motivated by race or ethnicity were up 15.

Mischief offences such as vandalism to property accounted for 47 per cent of hate crimes, while other non-violent offences comprised 11 per cent. Violence was a factor in 42 per cent of hate crimes.

Among the hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity, almost four in 10 were committed against blacks. Police reported 205 hate crimes against blacks in 2008, up 30 per cent over 2007, but still lower than the 2006 total of 238.

South Asians, which includes East Indians and Pakistanis, were the next most commonly targeted group, accounting for 12 per cent of hate-crime incidents motivated by race or ethnicity. Incidents targeting South Asians increased by 21 per cent in 2008.

As in previous years, about two-thirds of religiously-motivated hate crimes were committed against the Jewish faith. The agency reports 165 hate crimes targeting the Jewish faith in 2008, up 42 per cent.

Police reported 30 hate crimes against the Catholic faith, double the total in 2007. The 26 incidents against the Muslim faith represented a slight drop from 2007.

Vancouver and Hamilton reported the highest rates (6.3 hate crimes per 100,000 population) among Canada’s 10 largest census cities.

Police reported 143 hate crimes in Vancouver in 2008, nearly double the total from the previous year.

There were 271 hate crimes reported in Toronto, a rate of 5.4 hate crimes per 100,000 population. Montreal, where police reported 38 hate crimes in 2008, had the lowest rate, at one per 100,000.

The agency says the number of hate crimes reported by police in any given area may be influenced by the presence or absence of specialized hate-crime units or initiatives.

Is The political group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Important To Toronto’s Gay Pride Or Not?

 

Some people are upset at the political group Queers against Israeli Apartheid, they believe the group is hijacking Toronto’s gay pride. What do you think?

Here are some comments from NOW Magazine’s website some people are very angry at the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid.

Posted by Jennifer on 06/10/2010, 03:16 AM

The QuAIA can lick my fat, juicy clit. Pride is supposed to be about LGBT acceptance, not Israel/Palestine bullshit.  Instead of having a nice Pride week this year, it has to be infected by Middle East garbage. If these people dislike Israeli apartheid so much, why don’t they travel over there and do something about it?

Posted by Chris on 06/10/2010, 09:17 AM

Get Middle East Politics out of my Pride! It has no business being here. The inflamed rhetoric being used by both sides is the reason we don’t have free speech.

I wish Pride had just ignored the Apartheid people because their fucked up politics is ruining an amazing event.

Posted by NOW Never Listens or Learns on 06/10/2010, 10:14 AM

Give it up already! This isn’t a free speech issue! QAIA is more than welcome to tell the world what they think. They’re just not welcome to march in a specific parade run and funded by a specific group (the City and the Pride organizing committee) that doesn’t believe in their position.

Guess what, a group which wants to tell kids that there’s no Santa Claus won’t be welcome in the Santa Claus Parade either! Nor will Nazis be welcome at a holocaust memorial. Nor would Sri Lankan military have been allowed to march with Tamil protesters.

Get over it!

Posted by NOW Never Listens or Learns on 06/10/2010, 05:24 PM

@DJ What you fail to appreciate is that QAIA can deliver all the free speech it wants, just not in a parade which is heavily financially supported by the City. They have not been denied the right to speak, and, in fact, are doing a lot of it and getting plenty of media coverage!

The City has every right not to fund the participation of political groups that it doesn’t agree with. The right to free speech does not include the right to public funding of every viewpoint! The City is not funding a parade which includes Queers in Support of Israel, or some such similar group.

Of course, Pride had every right to tell the City to shove off. However, without the City’s support, the parade’s existence would be threatened or at least its finances would be drastically affected. It looks like the Board decided that the better course was to exclude one group in order to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Posted by Roz on 06/10/2010, 06:31 PM

The Israeli consulate has plenty of space near and around it where Qu-AIA can go protest. No? Not good enough. Then it never was about free speech and Ms. Cole you fell for it. This isn’t about the poor abused gays, lesbian and trans communities in Israel because they have rights in that country. Yes the march and the Parade are about political protests and community protests, after all the march started when the guys got pissy because the lesbians wanted equality, but that’s not what this group’s agenda is about now is it. This group should be all about the G-20 and those protests because that is the proper arena to use. When Israel starts being abusive to it’s queer communities then the proper protests can be made. Until then I commend the government and Pride committee for not allowing Pride to be used to further a NON PRIDE agenda that is politically motivated, and not to further the rights of the Israeli queer community.

Posted by J on 06/11/2010, 12:08 AM

I agree keep this middle east use ageist them bashing out of pride. Dont bring your political hate/racial hate here to Canada. You came here for a new life, your only alienating your selfs by making everyone resent your presence not only at Pride, or in this city but in this country. These people like the Tamil protesters who threw bikes at the Toronto Police fuel an intolerance towards new Canadians.