Avoiding offense means that we don’t accept each other as equals. -Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Last night I had the opportunity to see one of my heroes Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak about her new book Nomad. A few years ago my dad told me about her, I think he had seen her on an interview, and he was completely blown away by not just how poised, measured and graceful her responses were to even the most domineering of debaters, but by the solid process by which she has come to form her controversial opinions. I bought her book, Infidel, and was immediately struck by the frankness with which she talks about her life and the courage required to publicly face a very dangerous enemy. Born in Somalia and raised a devout Muslim, she has experienced directly the oppressive forces discussed so much and yet understood so little in much of the world today. Later, escaping to the Netherlands to avoid an arranged marriage, she didn’t just begin a new life- she became educated and eventually won a seat in Parliament. You can read more about her accomplishments and life here, and here she is on Bill Maher:
It was everything I hoped it would be. This woman is the purest example of what people need to be striving for- she has experienced bad things in her life, challenged herself to become educated on how and why things have come to be this way, and then formed an inarguable opinion on how we can make a move toward progress. There was one thing in particular she said last night that really stuck with me- instead of defending the rights of the culture we need to defend the rights of the individual. That means it’s not ok to defend a man’s right to killing his daughter in the name of his religion, which seems obvious, but it also means it’s not ok to defend someone’s right to pull their child out of school due to their religion, because that child has a right to an education.
Naturally there were some detractors in the audience who, desperate to catch her less-than-prepared, challenged her to give some answers to the problems instead of just identifying them. Which she did. One of the most important of these is the idea that oppressed people need the opportunity to question the beliefs that are passed down to them. This means education and exposure- a marketplace of ideas. When millions of people cannot read and are told from the moment they are born that questioning anything means only horrific consequences, the notion of objectivity as it relates to their religion becomes nonexistent.
I could go on and on and on about last night, but luckily I don’t have to (because I could never do her justice). We met a wonderful gentleman there who will be posting the audio for all to hear, which I will of course link to. In the mean time, go pickup Infidel and Nomad. I guarantee you’ll have a new hero too by the end of either one of those books.
-Peace-
i hate to be suck a geek, but whenever i think about the topic of working to stop honor killings and female circumcision in cultures that embrace such practices, it makes me think of the Prime Directive in Star Trek. [for you non-geeks, the Prime Directive was the Star Fleet policy of not interfering in the affairs of a planet that there can be no interference with the internal development of a pre-warp civilization.] i sometimes think that ultra-liberals who push the “let them have their culture” agenda are working from a kind of Prime Directive, but there’s one major logical departure in our case and that is that WE are a part of that civilization. we do NOT live on a different planet from the those who circumcise their young girls and kill their rape victims and blow-up innocents in the name of Allah, so we therefore MUST do something about it.
hearing Ali speak the other night with such clear-headed logic about these topics made me see that there is a third way to treat such barbarism – a path between outright warfare and irresponsible dismissiveness. that path is logical and intellectual opposition. particularly when these acts are practiced in the US or anywhere else in the western world, we need to treat them just like any other crime. religious “tolerance” shouldn’t ever excuse the mutilation, rape or murder of women and the sooner we recognize that and act accordingly, the sooner we’ll be able to deal with it like adults.
i’d like to just settle this argument once and for all and move on to other topics and i think ms. Ali is blazing that trail and then paving the road for us all.
Kendall,
I wanted to acknowledge your blogging- you are right on. Thanks for putting yourself and your thoughts out there. I look forward to more!
Take care………..John O’Connor