Ayaan Again

During the Motoon uproar last year the general response was that free speech should be defended but the cartoons should be condemned. I argued that the cartoons are in essence true and should be defended not grudgingly but with the full vigor that one fights for the truth as well as fighting for the right to speak one’s mind. Almost no one talked about “fighting for the truth” as if that were a secondary matter. I found a like-minded soul:

“I am supposed to apologize for saying the prophet is a pervert and a tyrant …[b]ut that is apologizing for the truth."

Indeed! Who says such a simple and obvious truth?

“Ms. Hirsi Ali was born in 1969 in Mogadishu--into, as she puts it, "the Islamic civilization, as far as you can call it a civilization." … The culture that I came to and I live in now is not perfect," Ms. Hirsi Ali says. "But this culture, the West, the product of the Enlightenment, is the best humanity has ever achieved."”

What ails Islam? Is it poverty, lack of education, lack of democracy?

“"Immediately after the murder," Ms. Hirsi Ali says, "we learned Theo's killer had access to education, he had learned the language, he had taken welfare. He made it very clear he knew what democracy meant, he knew what liberalism was, and he consciously rejected it. . . . He said, 'I have an alternative framework. It's Islam. It's the Quran.' "”

Surely a fighter for woman’s rights like Ayaan will be a champion of the left. But wait:

“Many liberals loathe her for disrupting an imagined "diversity" consensus: It is absurd, she argues, to pretend that cultures are all equal, or all equally desirable. … "The multiculturalism theology, like all theologies, is cruel, is wrongheaded, and is unarguable because it is an utter dogmatism. . . . Minorities are exempted from the obligations of the rest of society, so they don't improve. . . . With this theory you limit them, you freeze their culture, you keep them in place."”

Surely conservatives would welcome her as a champion of the West:

“But conservatives, and others, might be reasonably unnerved by her dim view of religion. She does not believe that Islam has been "hijacked" by fanatics, but that fanaticism is intrinsic in Islam itself: "Islam, even Islam in its nonviolent form, is dangerous." … This worldview has led certain critics to dismiss Ms. Hirsi Ali as a secular extremist. "I have my ideas and my views," she says, "and I want to argue them. It is our obligation to look at things critically."”

Well that might have alienated D’Souza and Auster. Most of the rest of us love her. Indeed, the editor of the Wall Street Journal concludes:

“All of this is profoundly politically incorrect. But for this remarkable woman, ideas are not abstractions. She forces us back to first principles, and she punctures complacencies. These ought to be seen as virtues, even by those who find some of Ms. Hirsi Ali's ideas disturbing or objectionable. Society, after all, sometimes needs to be roused from its slumbers by agitators who go too far so that others will go far enough.”

Too far? You decide. Read it all.

Update: Ayaan autobiography's a must read!