Tuesday, February 07, 2006

"Everyone is Afraid to Criticize Islam"



Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch politician forced to go into hiding after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, responds to the Danish cartoon scandal, arguing that if Europe doesn't stand up to extremists, a culture of self-censorship of criticism of Islam that pervades in Holland will spread in Europe. Auf Wiedersehen, free speech.

SPIEGEL: Hirsi Ali, you have called the Prophet Muhammad a tyrant and a pervert. Theo van Gogh, the director of your film "Submission," which is critical of Islam, was murdered by Islamists. You yourself are under police protection. Can you understand how the Danish cartoonists feel at this point?

Hirsi Ali: They probably feel numb. On the one hand, a voice in their heads is encouraging them not to sell out their freedom of speech. At the same time, they're experiencing the shocking sensation of what it's like to lose your own personal freedom. One mustn't forget that they're part of the postwar generation, and that all they've experienced is peace and prosperity. And now they suddenly have to fight for their own human rights once again.

SPIEGEL: Why have the protests escalated to such an extent?

Hirsi Ali: There is no freedom of speech in those Arab countries where the demonstrations and public outrage are being staged. The reason many people flee to Europe from these places is precisely because they have criticized religion, the political establishment and society. Totalitarian Islamic regimes are in a deep crisis. Globalization means that they're exposed to considerable change, and they also fear the reformist forces developing among émigrés in the West. They'll use threatening gestures against the West, and the success they achieve with their threats, to intimidate these people.

SPIEGEL: Was apologizing for the cartoons the wrong thing to do?

Hirsi Ali: Once again, the West pursued the principle of turning first one cheek, then the other. In fact, it's already a tradition. In 1980, privately owned British broadcaster ITV aired a documentary about the stoning of a Saudi Arabian princess who had allegedly committed adultery. The government in Riyadh intervened and the British government issued an apology. We saw the same kowtowing response in 1987 when (Dutch comedian) Rudi Carrell derided (Iranian revolutionary leader) Ayatollah Khomeini in a comedy skit (that was aired on German television). In 2000, a play about the youngest wife of the Prophet Mohammed, titled "Aisha," was cancelled before it ever opened in Rotterdam. Then there was the van Gogh murder and now the cartoons. We are constantly apologizing, and we don't notice how much abuse we're taking. Meanwhile, the other side doesn't give an inch.

SPIEGEL: What should the appropriate European response look like?

Hirsi Ali: There should be solidarity. The cartoons should be displayed everywhere. After all, the Arabs can't boycott goods from every country. They're far too dependent on imports. And Scandinavian companies should be compensated for their losses. Freedom of speech should at least be worth that much to us.

SPIEGEL: But Muslims, like any religious community, should also be able to protect themselves against slander and insult.

Hirsi Ali: That's exactly the reflex I was just talking about: offering the other cheek. Not a day passes, in Europe and elsewhere, when radical imams aren't preaching hatred in their mosques. They call Jews and Christians inferior, and we say they're just exercising their freedom of speech. When will the Europeans realize that the Islamists don't allow their critics the same right? After the West prostrates itself, they'll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.

SPIEGEL: What will be the upshot of the storm of protests against the cartoons?

Hirsi Ali: We could see the same thing happening that has happened in the Netherlands, where writers, journalists and artists have felt intimidated ever since the van Gogh murder. Everyone is afraid to criticize Islam. Significantly, "Submission" still isn't being shown in theaters.

SPIEGEL: Many have criticized the film as being too radical and too offensive.

Hirsi Ali: The criticism of van Gogh was legitimate. But when someone has to die for his world view, what he may have done wrong is no longer the issue. That's when we have to stand up for our basic rights. Otherwise we are just reinforcing the killer and conceding that there was a good reason to kill this person.

SPIEGEL: You too have been accused for your dogged criticism of Islam.

Hirsi Ali: Oddly enough, my critics never specify how far I can go. How can you address problems if you're not even allowed to clearly define them? Like the fact that Muslim women at home are kept locked up, are raped and are married off against their will -- and that in a country in which our far too passive intellectuals are so proud of their freedom! . . .

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the most sharp- tongued critics of political Islam - - and a target of radical fanatics. Her provocative film "Submission" led to the assassination of director Theo van Gogh in November 2004. The attackers left a death threat against Hirsi Ali stuck to his corpse with a knife. After a brief period in hiding, the 36- year- old member of Dutch parliament from the neo- liberal VVD party has returned to parliament and is continuing her fight against Islamism. She recently published a book, "I Accuse," and is working on a sequel to "Submission." Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia where she experienced the oppression of Muslim women first hand. When her father attempted to force her into an arranged marriage, she fled to Holland in 1992. Later, she renounced the Muslim religion.




Full article here.

9 comments:

Neil Shakespeare said...

Good on ya for posting this. Thanks. I read a great quote from the editor of the Danish newspaper in question. He said, 'They are not asking for our respect; they are asking for our submission.' And then there is the untold story of the "three added cartoons" brought to Middle East by Danish Imams, which may be the ones that are fomenting all this. Cartoons ADDED by the Muslims themselves, showing 1) Mohammed as a pig, 2) Mohammed being fucked by a dog and 3) Mohammed the pedophile. If true it helps to explain why this is happening now instead of back in Sept. when the original 12 cartoons were published.

No Blood for Hubris said...

Sarah--that's perfectly true. The Bushists neither practice nor actually believe in democracy.

Neil--there's definitely a planned quality to it all. I had heard of other cartoons being circulated that hadn't actually been published, but didn't know the content.

Hmm. Cui bono?

Anonymous said...

They didn't like the Democratic process much with Hamas either. We know its all about lies to rationalize what is reprehensible.

NBFH, I got weird emails that the comments were rejected from your blog? Weird. Wonder if anyone else got that? Like maybe you have comments going to an email acct and they were rejected somehow?

Will these blogger woes ever end??

Thanks for the post.

enigma4ever said...

Thank you so much for posting on this- I have been thinking of her...and wondering what her thoughts were regarding this whole issue....

this whole thing is a mess..out of control...

Anonymous said...

What you call the 'exercise of free speech' is better summarized as the ABUSE of free speech. Before making such naive statements find out who it was behind the Mohammed cartoons controversy and their motives.

What we are seeing today is a deliberate ploy to demonize and dehumanize the Islamic world for purely materialistic reasons. It is a new form of anti-semitism for which the Straussian 'neo-conservatives' are responsible.

Their next mission is to bomb Iran, using nuclear weapons. Not much to be said for western tolerance or free speech there, I'm afraid.

Is it asking too much of the naivety of some folks to get things into perspective?

Anonymous said...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HAS20060207&articleId=1915Read THE ROAD TO THE MUSLIM HOLOCAUST

Beth said...

No Blood,

That was excellently said!

And please stop by for some cake.

No Blood for Hubris said...

I disagree, anon. It's not abuse, it IS free speech.

Once people are at a point where their lives are in danger for the content of their speech, that's created an authoritarian state.

Spit on Mohammed and you die--spit on whoever/whatever and you die--forget it.

One of my favorite Buddhist koans is--"If you see Buddha on the road, kill him."

(As to the rest, I think there are plenty of neocons who would like to bomb Iran, and all sorts of other places.)

No Blood for Hubris said...

lily, enigma got some, too--I hope this is only part of the larger blogger failure--sorry.