A profile of the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to DFS):
When the Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1989, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a pious 20-year-old Muslim who applauded the Iranian leader for putting a price on the apostate's head."All I knew is that he had insulted the prophet, and anyone who insulted the prophet deserves to die," recalls Hirsi Ali. In 2003 - after she renounced her faith and entered the Dutch parliament - Hirsi Ali became known as the "Dutch Salman Rushdie" for the torrent of death threats she incited for her crusade against Islam.
A few years ago, she met Rushdie in New York and apologized for once siding with the Islamists against him. He obviously accepted her olive branch, providing the cover endorsement for Hirsi Ali's new book of essays, The Caged Virgin.
Hirsi Ali doesn't sound like an embattled activist over the phone. Her quiet, flute-y voice matches the fine-featured face which peers with calm resolve out of photos. But her language is the opposite of delicate. Hirsi Ali has called the Prophet Muhammad a "tyrant," a "pervert" and a "pedophile" for counting a nine-year-old among his nine wives.
Running through The Caged Virgin is Hirsi Ali's conviction that Islam is inimical to individual rights because it calls for the individual's unquestioning submission to God. Hirsi Ali argues that Islam enforces an unyielding hierarchy - leading down from Allah, to the Prophet, to religious leaders and then fathers - which brooks no space for individual freedom. Hirsi Ali bats off the suggestion that this account could equally apply to other monotheistic religions, which demand obeisance to a single God.
"Judaism and Christianity have gone through a long history of enlightenment and reflection," she says. "But the Islam that we see today tends towards the seventh century. Islamic reformists throughout the centuries have been harassed and exiled and killed."
Yes. Read it all.
Fascinating.
So islam constitutes not a single obedience to a single god, but a series of several shirks: Allah, the Prophet ("Obey the Prophet as ye would Allah"), Imams, fathers, brothers, sons.
It's of note that the Catholic and other churches pose a major leader between 'prophet and priest: a Pope, an Archbishop, a Reverend with a TV studio. Whatever one's opinion of organised religion, I applaud the effort at least to some kind of order.
An appalled friend told me that when Ayaan Hirsi Ali appeared at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and before a larger college-wide audience a few months ago, there was not a single newspaper account of her appearance. Not a word in The Boston Globe, and nothing at all in the official Harvard propaganda designed to keep alumni abreast and to keep on giving, giving, giving.
Perhaps those alumni should be made aware that the complete blackout on news of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's appearance is yet one more good reason why the Harvard of their imagination, and their arificially whipped-up gratitude (what the Development Office wants them to feel on every occasion, by having alumni confuse their natural nostalgia, pleasant memories of four years if misspent youth, with "Harvard" itself -- or fill in the name of any other damn college you want), does not exist, and should give them one more good reason to stop giving, giving, giving.
Instead, give only to those who are likely either to have given evidence of defending the possibility not of what Harvard claims to have done, but what only individuals can possibly do, under conditions of mental freedom -- the mental freedom that is not possible wherever Islam rules, or dominates, or influences.
"Hirsi Ali has called the Prophet Muhammad a "tyrant," a "pervert" and a "pedophile"..."
She left out baby raper, slaver, lying S.O.B. and pipmle on the ass of humanity.
I see nothing wrong in calling a spade a spade or a lying snake a lying snake.
Kudos to Hirsi Ali.
I will also make a sexist male comment. She is very easy on the eyes:)
"The Caged Virgin" is an outstanding book, and it's not for women only - I highly recommend it to everyone:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743288335/103-2105170-5529443?v=glance&n=283155