Waging a war on socialism worthy of chronicling in a concept album by Rush.
Made In America
From Scottish Parts
Inherent Bias
6:58 pm, 5/31/07
A feminist blogger named Kim is unhappy with Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
...her view on Islam is too much coloured by her own experience...No doubt, growing up with a bunch of genital-mutilating tribal thugs as her masters gave Hirsi Ali her vivid opinions, much as Abraham Lincoln's youth experiences shaped his own approach to slavery. That's pretty much how opinions are formed. I wonder how Kim would feel about the notion that her own view on Islam might be too much coloured by her lack of experience.
Women in Algeria have been entering the workplace and into legal and governmental institutions, without giving up religious beliefs, as reported at some length in the New York Times....That scarcely suggests that liberal secularism is a necessary precondition for women's path to equality nor that Algerian women are being trodden under the thumb of some archaic 7th century culture.Kim's point that Islamic faith does not have to be an obstacle to human liberty is certainly valid and true, but that's the catch: Algeria is an exception because the Islamists lost the war and are, therefore, not making the decisions for Algerian women. Had they won, Algeria would today be every bit as neolithic as the other nations governed by their ideology.
To an Islamist (and in Hirsi Ali's experience), if it allows human liberty, it is not Islam. In fact, Islamists believe so strongly in this premise that they continue to murder Algerians over it.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali loaths and fears Islamist doctrine because she understands it. Kim does not because she chooses not to. (Via Tim Blair)
at 06:33 PM, 6/1/07
Your point about Lincoln might better have been made regarding Frederick Douglass. Now, there's a guy who just could not see both sides of the slavery question. In fact, I don't believe he was interested in alternate viewpoints regarding slavery.
Your point about Lincoln might better have been made regarding Frederick Douglass. Now, there's a guy who just could not see both sides of the slavery question. In fact, I don't believe he was interested in alternate viewpoints regarding slavery.
Aaron at 07:32 PM, 6/1/07
Oh, definitely, and in retrospect, he better fits the mold.
Lincoln never became the kind of grizzled abolitionist that's common of the time, primarily because he saw the same valid legal and Constitutional realities of the debate that others argued. If you study his early career in Illinois, his brutally logical approach to the issue is very apparent (and somewhat unusual for the time).
Although I can certainly see calling Ayaan Hirsi Ali an abolitionist against Islamism (I drift that way myself), I don't think it particularly impacts the point that Lincoln's earlier experiences on the rivers and growing up in an abolitionist household shaped his opposition to the practice, providing the grain for his mill-like thought processes.
Oh, definitely, and in retrospect, he better fits the mold.
Lincoln never became the kind of grizzled abolitionist that's common of the time, primarily because he saw the same valid legal and Constitutional realities of the debate that others argued. If you study his early career in Illinois, his brutally logical approach to the issue is very apparent (and somewhat unusual for the time).
Although I can certainly see calling Ayaan Hirsi Ali an abolitionist against Islamism (I drift that way myself), I don't think it particularly impacts the point that Lincoln's earlier experiences on the rivers and growing up in an abolitionist household shaped his opposition to the practice, providing the grain for his mill-like thought processes.
at 07:49 PM, 6/1/07
My favorite story about women in Islam--and I can't for the life of me remember where I read it--was that Iraqis were hiring strictly orthodox Shi'ite women as bodyguards, because they could hide weapons under their abaayas, and the al Qaeda terrorists--being good, brain-dead traditionalists--never thought to search them.
One woman had killed three would-be al Qaeda carjackers who stuck their heads through the windows. "Hands up, in the name of Allah!" Kapow. I hope they all had time to be outraged that a mere woman had sent them to their 72 raisins.
"I used to run away when I heard gunfire," the woman with three kills said. "Now I run toward the sound."
Arm all women in Muslim lands, and you'll see some pretty draconian socio-political changes right away, I'll betcha.
My favorite story about women in Islam--and I can't for the life of me remember where I read it--was that Iraqis were hiring strictly orthodox Shi'ite women as bodyguards, because they could hide weapons under their abaayas, and the al Qaeda terrorists--being good, brain-dead traditionalists--never thought to search them.
One woman had killed three would-be al Qaeda carjackers who stuck their heads through the windows. "Hands up, in the name of Allah!" Kapow. I hope they all had time to be outraged that a mere woman had sent them to their 72 raisins.
"I used to run away when I heard gunfire," the woman with three kills said. "Now I run toward the sound."
Arm all women in Muslim lands, and you'll see some pretty draconian socio-political changes right away, I'll betcha.
skepticlawyer at 12:20 AM, 6/2/07
Thanks for bringing up the Algeria example, Aaron. For a while there I thought I was the only one who noticed the logical leaps involved.
Thanks for bringing up the Algeria example, Aaron. For a while there I thought I was the only one who noticed the logical leaps involved.
Mark Bahnisch at 07:12 AM, 6/2/07
I think you're conflating Islamism with Islam. The fact that the Islamists lost in Algeria may indeed have enabled women to make social and political progress, but those women still identify as Islamic, as the NYT article makes clear.
I think you're conflating Islamism with Islam. The fact that the Islamists lost in Algeria may indeed have enabled women to make social and political progress, but those women still identify as Islamic, as the NYT article makes clear.
Aaron at 11:22 AM, 6/2/07
"I think you're conflating Islamism with Islam."
Mark - That's rather the point. *Islamists* conflate Islamism with Islam, and believe that non-Islamist Muslims are apostates or infidels. In their eyes, *they* are the mainstream. In Hirsi Ali's experience, what she experienced is the 'real' Islamic doctrine, with a doctrine that allows women liberties and rights being, by definition, non-Islamic, whether the people who practice it want to identify themselves as Islamic or not.
That's the critical problem of the Islamic question: For every cleric who says Islam is a religion of peace according to the Koran, there is another who says that Islam is a religion of slavery according to the Koran (and that the 'religion of peace' is a lie invented by Westerners to trick Muslims out of killing them). For temporal purposes, it doesn't matter what the Koran *actually* says, because both are absolutely certain they are correct, and one of those clerics believes the other cleric needs killing for betraying God, which is a real, concrete problem that transcends theological debate.
I can call myself Catholic, but the Vatican would strongly disagree, and would have compelling arguments for doing so. Mel Gibson says it's the Vatican who's wrong about Catholicism. In reality, it's academic.
So, it's Kim's refusal to acknowledge that her own terms of debate are not those of the people she's trying to refute that skews the argument and moots her own points. She's trying to frame Hirsi Ali, critics of Islamist governance and Sharia law, and, in fact, the Islamists themselves, in the terms of her own feminist worldview, terms which the Islamists neither understand nor care to. This is the very definition of 'the Liberalverse', a term you'll see used a lot on this blog.
"I think you're conflating Islamism with Islam."
Mark - That's rather the point. *Islamists* conflate Islamism with Islam, and believe that non-Islamist Muslims are apostates or infidels. In their eyes, *they* are the mainstream. In Hirsi Ali's experience, what she experienced is the 'real' Islamic doctrine, with a doctrine that allows women liberties and rights being, by definition, non-Islamic, whether the people who practice it want to identify themselves as Islamic or not.
That's the critical problem of the Islamic question: For every cleric who says Islam is a religion of peace according to the Koran, there is another who says that Islam is a religion of slavery according to the Koran (and that the 'religion of peace' is a lie invented by Westerners to trick Muslims out of killing them). For temporal purposes, it doesn't matter what the Koran *actually* says, because both are absolutely certain they are correct, and one of those clerics believes the other cleric needs killing for betraying God, which is a real, concrete problem that transcends theological debate.
I can call myself Catholic, but the Vatican would strongly disagree, and would have compelling arguments for doing so. Mel Gibson says it's the Vatican who's wrong about Catholicism. In reality, it's academic.
So, it's Kim's refusal to acknowledge that her own terms of debate are not those of the people she's trying to refute that skews the argument and moots her own points. She's trying to frame Hirsi Ali, critics of Islamist governance and Sharia law, and, in fact, the Islamists themselves, in the terms of her own feminist worldview, terms which the Islamists neither understand nor care to. This is the very definition of 'the Liberalverse', a term you'll see used a lot on this blog.
Comment Policy: Irrelevant or obscene posts, including ad hominem attacks, SPAM, crazed ranting, and threats of violence may be removed at the owner of this site's discretion.
