Tolerating the Intolerant

"If Muslim immigrants lagged so far behind even other immigrant groups, then wasn't it possible that one of the reasons could be Islam? Islam influences every aspect of believers' lives. Women are denied their social and economic rights in the name of Islam, and ignorant women bring up ignorant children. Sons brought up watching their mother being beaten will use violence. Why was it racist to ask this question? Why was it antiracist to indulge people's attachment to their old ideas and perpetuate this misery? The passive, Insh'Allah attitude so prevalent in Islam -- "if Allah wills it" -- couldn't this also be said to affect people's energy and their will to change and improve the world? If you believe that Allah predestines all, and life on earth is simply a waiting room for the Hereafter, does that belief have no links to the fatalism that so often reinforces poverty?"
"The Dutch government registered the number of drug-related killings and traffic accidents every year, but not the number of honor killings, because no Dutch official wanted to recognize that this kind of murder happened on a regular basis."
"Even Amnesty International didn't keep statistics on how many women around the world were victims of honor killings. They could tell you how many men were imprisoned and tortured, but they couldn't keep tabs on the number of women flogged in public for fornication, or executed for adultery. That wasn't their subject."
"When I approached Theo [van Gogh] to help me make Submission, I had three messages to get across. First, men, and even women, may look up and speak to Allah: it is possible for believers to have a dialogue with God and look closely at Him. Second, the rigid interpretation of the Quran in Islam today causes intolerable misery for women. Through globalization, more and more people who hold these ideas have traveled to Europe with the women they own and brutalize, and it is no longer possible for Europeans and other Westerners to pretend that severe violations of human rights occur only far away. The third message is the film's final phrase: "I may no longer submit". It is possible to free oneself -- to adapt one's faith, to examine it critically, and to think about the degree to which that faith is itself at the root of oppression."
"I am told that Submission is too aggressive a film. Its criticism of Islam is apparently too painful for Muslims to bear. Tell me, how much more painful is it to be these women, trapped in that cage?"
Excerpted from Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In this Monday, Feb. 5, 2007 photo, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writer of the film "Submission," which criticized the treatment of women in traditional Islam and led to the murder of Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh, talks to a reporter in New York. Brandeis University in Massachusetts is taking heat from some of its own about plans to give an honorary degree to Ali, who has made comments critical of Islam. Photo: Shiho Fukada, AP 

"[Ms. Ali is a] compelling public figure and advocate for women's rights. That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values."
Brandeis University, Massachusetts, statement of explanation

"What was initially intended as an honour has now devolved into a moment of shaming. [What is] deplorable is that an institution set up on the basis of religious freedom should today so deeply betray its own founding principles. I can only wish the Class of 2014 the best of luck -- and hope that they will go forth to be better advocates for free expression and free thought than their alma mater."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, women's rights advocate

Ms. Ali, well recognized internationally for her strenuous attempts to inform the world of Islam's excesses, its inner-directed violence against women, and its outer-directed violence against non-Muslims, has been seen as a warning beacon, her quiet, firm voice that of someone who has been exposed to all that it means to be Muslim, and found it sadly wanting. She claimed in a 2007 interview that Islam requires "defeat" in all its forms.

"I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars." Islam, she stresses, is not the religion that the West desperately tries to be open-minded and 'fair' in judging, preferring to believe that "Islam is peace and tolerance", to what their ears and their eyes inform them on a daily basis, through the jihad waged against the faithful of Islam by other Muslims, and through the jihad terrorizing the West through its threats and violent attacks.

Brandeis University had invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak at the university's May 18 commencement, and at that time to receive an honorary degree in social justice. A strange thing happened on the way to that forum, the university administration now states it was "not aware" of Ms. Ali's "controversial" campaign to inform the world of Islam's true face. It was no longer prepared to award her an honorary degree. How inexpressibly sad. More, how disgustingly outrageous.

How is it even remotely possible that the bright lights comprising the academic community at Brandeis might have been innocently unaware of her ten-year, hugely acclaimed campaign for women's rights, and the mission she has set herself to ensure that Islam is truly understood for what it represents? It is, of course, not possible. It is, however, more than possible that pressure from within succeeded in persuading the university to backtrack.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was forced to flee Amsterdam and her position as a member of the Dutch Parliament when Theo van Gogh was butchered by an Islamist fundamentalist and she became the next target for vengeful Muslims worshipping the religion of peace and tolerance. She now resides in the U.S. and has done so for the past six years, where she founded the AHA Foundation, striving to combat female genital mutilation, honour killings and sharia law victimizing women.

"There is no moderate Islam", she has stated. "There are Muslims who are passive, who don't all follow the rules of Islam, but there's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There's nothing moderate about it." It is a message that Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch also delivers, and it seems rather unlikely that Brandeis University will anytime soon honour him with an invitation to address the university, capping it off with an honorary degree in Islamic studies, though he would qualify.

Over 85 of the 350 Brandeis faculty members signed a letter asking the university to remove Ms. Ali from the list of honorary degree recipients. An online petition created by Brandeis students days ago has been supported by over six thousand signatures. "We see this decision as a personal attack on Brandeis' Muslim students, and as minorities at a predominately white, Jewish university, many of us feel isolated and unwelcomed", the university's student newspaper editorialized in a statement by the Brandeis Muslim Students Association.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the U.S.'s largest Muslim advocacy group, also had their say: "It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honour someone with such openly hateful views", stated spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. Of course when it comes to organizing university student groups to mobilize against Israel through Boycott and Sanctions actions, and slandering the country as an apartheid regime, slaughtering Palestinian children, CAIR is up there front and centre.

They have no scruples about advancing the agenda of Islamist political ideology, quite comfortable with the Western penchant for guilt and scruples adhering to visions of fairness and the rule of accommodating oneself to the pluralist views of others through self-abnegating overtures of tolerance and accommodation, even when such obsequiousness results in self-harm.

Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali.