Hirsi Ali's American Tour
PEN has invited Hirsi Ali to discuss her new book, The Caged Virgin, and her experiences in Africa and as a Dutch MP. That was last week, and it has caught considerable attention on the web. Atlas Shrugs quotes an entire NY SUN article:
Like an increasing number of immigrants in the West who refuse to have a “victim†label pinned to their lapels, the Dutch-Somalian actress, author, and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents something of a problem for liberal intellectuals. A short film she cowrote, “Submission,†was shown on Dutch television in August 2004. Its subject was the mistreatment of Muslim women at the hands of Muslim men.
Deliberately provocative, the film projected words from the Koran onto exposed female flesh. Just over two months later, the director, Theo van Gogh, was savagely murdered by a Muslim fundamentalist.Ever since, Ms. Ali, who is a member of the Dutch Parliament and the author of a new book, “The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islamâ€, has had to live under the protection of armed guards. On Sunday, Ms.Ali was interviewed by the Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch at the New York Public Library as part of PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature.[/quote]
Also Winds of Change has picked it up:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was in my backyard this week, and would to the gods I had been able to get away and see her. She’s been making the rounds of East Coast America’s establishment, including NPR and PEN, where Ron Chernow confirmed my bad opinion of him, carried over from his puzzlingly popular Alexander Hamilton book, by giving her an introduction that was more an apology than an endorsement.
It would be enormously enjoyable to see her visit places like Atlanta and Birmingham on her American tour, where she’d shake up minds and hearts in a different fashion and no doubt get a warm and heroic reception. But she is going deliberately into the fetid dragon’s dens of modern leftism, with a message meant to unsettle sleeping reptiles and prod them into thought.
And on Kesher Talk a LGF-fan posts:
I’m honestly thrilled that I was able to go hear Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak. As I remarked to my mother, this was the first time I’ve heard a speaker with whom I agreed on every point. I think she’s incredibly inspiring and I wish more people had the opportunity to hear what she has to say. Surprisingly, hardly anyone in the elitist-NYC-liberal circle I go to school with every day knows about her–I told my U.S. Government teacher I went to hear her speak, and not only did he not know who she was, he’d never heard about Theo van Gogh! I think that’s all pretty appalling.
Together these blogs give a nice impression of (some of the) reactions on the side of the Atlantic and on the ‘islam-critics” websites. And well, you can have your own opinions about Hirsi Ali, but you have to admit that she is very good in building her own constituency and setting the agenda for debate. Therefore I don’t agree with people who say she is a bad politician but a good activist. She is both, and very good in both.