I am somewhat aghast that Ayaan Hirsan Ali came to town and our old friend Pamela Bone failed to mention her in her column yesterday. Instead, local Eustonista Bone stuck to a Blairite standard – the wonders of liberal interventionism (soon to be rendered moot, no doubt, as Gordon Brown takes quite a different approach to foreign policy).
Still, the specture of Ali’s work is obviously never far from Bone’s horizon. Ali has been giving interviews in Australia:
“Islam was founded in an Arab desert culture,” she says. “The role that women had at that time in the 7th century was tribal in context. She was there only to reproduce. Women were viewed almost like camels, or perhaps, just as reproductive organs for the tribe.
Bone writes:
To many it is shockingly impolite to suggest that some countries – Western liberal democracies, for example – are better than countries that still operate under rules more appropriate to 7th-century century Arabia.
The biggest two arguments against liberal interventionism are that war is not necessarily a humanitarian intervention, and inevitably has dire consequences for many even if missions “succeed” and that the calls for humanitarian intervention to save people in the name of “universal values” (which are, as Bone concedes, actually Western) are invariably selective. Contrast for instance the current moves in regard to Darfur with the total indifference shown to the Congo where the UN has estimated four million civilian deaths. Writing in The Guardian, Roger Howard hits the nail on the head.
The key difference between the two situations lies in the racial and ethnic composition of the perceived victims and perpetrators. In Congo, black Africans are killing other black Africans in a way that is difficult for outsiders to identify with. The turmoil there can in that sense be regarded as a narrowly African affair.In Darfur the fighting is portrayed as a war between black Africans, rightly or wrongly regarded as the victims, and “Arabs”, widely regarded as the perpetrators of the killings. In practice these neat racial categories are highly indistinct, but it is through such a prism that the conflict is generally viewed.
As Howard argues, liberal interventionism is invariably a cover for self-interest and ideology. Not only are oil and the influence of the Chinese at play in Sudan, calls for intervention there also conveniently factor into narratives about the evils of Islam, alleged cultural deficiencies and “primitivism” of “Arabs” and that old staple, the GWOT.
Nor is it a coincidence that all the examples Bone uses to justify her proclamations about teh superiority of teh West relate to Islam. She’s been loud in her claims that “Western feminists” (herself excluded, of course) are indifferent to the suffering of women in Islamic societies. Her obsession with Islam has apparently blinded her to the suffering of women in The Congo.
There’s an obvious counter to the sort of simplistic rhetoric that we get from the Bones and Alis of this world:
I decided to skip to the end of Paul Berman’s monster essay and I see he winds up talking about Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She, of course, is every western secularist’s favorite Muslim precisely because she’s, well, not a Muslim. And, of course, from the point of view of western secularists it would be great if we could just partner up with secularists born in Muslim countries and together quash the menace of radical Islamist terrorism.
The trouble, of course, is that politics is the art of the possible, and history shows that it’s frequently not possible to do very much of anything with secularist politics. That’s why, for example, seeking arguments against Female Genital Mutilation in the Koran seems like an obviously smart move. In countries where large numbers of people believe FGM is required by Islam, arguments of the form “Islam requires FGM, FGM bad for women, therefore Islam should be abandoned” aren’t going to get off the ground. Arguments of the form “FGM is not required by Islam” or, even better, “FGM is condemned by Islam” are, pragmatically speaking, much more useful. But an argument like that is only going to be credible coming from a serious Muslim, probably one whose general beliefs are wildly too culturally conservative for my taste or that of any western feminist.
Samhita argues a similar case at Feministing:
I am sure part of the problem is that Muslim ideas and Western feminist ideas tend to run in opposition to one another. The feminist movement, as it is understood world-wide, is considered to be Western and white. It seems almost logical that local leaders would reject the terms of women’s rights if they are based on a Western model of “women’s liberation.”
However, the health risks of FGM are real and cannot be ignored internationally. But it is important to listen to these activists on their own terms.
FGM is an abhorrent practice, and I am very sorry that it was inflicted on Ali. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “we” have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in countries where such practices occur and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.
And, contra Ali:
“Islam is a totalitarian doctrine that puts women in a position that no other totalitarian doctrine, not even Communism, not even Nazism, did,” says Ali. “In Islam, women come off the worst.”
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.
In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.
Women make up 70 percent of Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.
In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.
Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as well.
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.
I think that people, in Australia at least, are increasingly seeing the rhetoric about the War on Terror as reflecting a very large helping of self-interest, and the madness in Iraq is exposing much of the violence for what it is – a series of internecine struggles within Islamism and Arab and Persian cultures rather than some sort of existential threat to “the West”. It should be long past time that we take the blinkers off and start asking exactly who and what aims the rhetoric employed by the Alis and Bones of the world serve.
Update: I have written a response to the debate this post started here.
Pointless nitpick: Matthew Yglesias
Other than that… I really am sick of Ayaan Hirsi Ali getting mentioned by people who would’ve locked her up in camps had she come here via boat, instead of the Netherlands.
Oopsy!
Fixed, thanks, Leinad, and you’re dead right about Ali’s Antipodean defenders. She was also (gasp) still a Muslim when she went to the Netherlands.
Great post, Kim. I was working my dander up to posting about Ali, but now I don’t have to!
Like you, I have a great deal of personal sympathy for her experiences. I don’t agree that demonising her ex-coreligionists is the most ethical or the most pragmatic response to undertake in the aim of ensuring that it doesn’t happen to other little girls anymore.
Agreed, tigtog (and thanks!) – I think the Algerian example demonstrates how her view on Islam is too much coloured by her own experience and culture (remembering that there are Islamic or Islamic influenced cultures rather than a singular Islamic culture). I also think that what she has to say about modernity and secularism is fairly lightweight. That’s not to diminish her passion and her lived experience – but I think in some ways she’s backed herself into a corner with her politics.
She is muslim & speaking sense in public, quite a rarity.
Some satisfaction in watching those who are a handbrake on society moan about how she gets an audience from those who lead with common sense, heh heh heh heh!
Monolithic Islam, n. : crazy, politically and theologically impossible supergroup existing solely in the imaginations of Islamic extremists and select Western commentators/policymakers .
Except she isn’t, and it isn’t. SATP and the facts, together in public?
Quite a rarity…
True as far as it goes.
But it is also necessary to note that women’s path to equality will always be blocked at some point before its destination by patriarchal cosomology, patriarchal theology, patriarchal ethical schemas, and patriarchal religious institutions.
BTW, Kim I think your nailing of Bone’s sanctimonious special pleading is right on target.
Oppressed African woman who experienced genital mutilation, the suicide of her sister, who fled an arranged marriage, who wrote a play about her experiences which then saw its director murdered, who now has to be escorted 24/7 by bodyguards, and who now dedicates her life (whilst putting it on the line) to provide inspiration for millions of similarly oppressed woman around the world.
And the Left is equivocal in its support for her.
Shame on you.
Here Here pommygranate
We are equivocal about someone who, however understandable her personal motivation may be, is effectively acting as a mouthpiece for the Islamophobic whitewash of two grubby imperialist wars. One (in Afghanistan) has led to the replacement of a bunch of misogynist Islamicists with another bunch of mysogynist Islamicists with a predilection for rape. The other has led to the deaths of countless thousands of Iraqi women and the immiseration of millions of others. It also, incidentally, involved the removal of a regime that, for all its faults, was actually secularist.
And btw, no-one’s providing the women of Afghanistan or Iraq with bodyguards.
effectively acting as a mouthpiece for the Islamophobic whitewash of two grubby imperialist wars
Is she?
Or is that your agenda?
No shame felt. Indeed those that should feel shame are those that use Ayaan Hirsan Ali to validate their Isalmophobia and provide a cover for their real lack of concern for the plight of women in many countries.
Which you would have understood if you read Kim’s post and not headed down the path of faux indignation.
Well said, Robert. Pommygranate: much of what Ali says is powerful and inspirational and a valid indictment of those responsible for her suffering. Kudos to her for the power of her voice.
But, taking the pragmatic view, as an apostate she is not going to be listened to by most of her former co-religionists, so that much of the sense of what she says will be rejected out of hand as Westernised propaganda (and frankly, a lot of what she says alongside her strong points is not actually sense).
The people who are listening to her are the people whose answer to her experience seems to be invasion and conquest. But if invasion and conquest in Afghanistan and Iraq have not actually improved the lives of women there, as examples above show, what actual success is Ali having in reaching her goal?
When Algerian women are successfully changing their society within Islam and without having to embrace secularisation, when Algerian women’s lives are actually being measurably improved, doesn’t that say something about which approach is actually more successful in ensuring that experiences like Ali’s are less likely to happen to other women?
What Robert and Shaun and tigtog said.
Yes, indeed. And in America too. But what practical suggestions have Ali’s supporters like Bone ever made to prevent FGM other than to denounce Islam really loudly? I reiterate what I said in the post and previous comments.
When Algerian women are successfully changing their society within Islam and without having to embrace secularisation,
But Tigtog, her whole point is that women’s lot will only be improved by secularisation. She makes the point repeatedly that hardline Islamic regimes (not all Muslim countries for sure) that impose Sharia Law on their people, by definition oppress women.
Under Sharia Law rape is only legal if you can produce four male witnesses, husbands are permitted four wives, women must cover up, women can only seek divorce if the husband permits it whilst men have the right of unilateral divorce, the penalty for adultery is stoning, women are not permitted to work or be educated and husbands are permitted to hit their wives for ‘disobedience’.
Thanks to courageous women such as Ayaan, we are becoming aware of these misogynous practices.
It seems incredible to me, as Robert knows, that the Left, the traditional champion of women’s rights, is not 100% behind her.
Shame on us for only having equivocal support? I though you were some kind of libertarian, pommygranate — why are you talking like a Stalinist partyliner?
Agree with her or not the fact that she is guarded 24/7 is frightening
Feminists, despite what Bone and even Ali would have you believe, were very much aware of these misogynistic practises before 9/11 and were working with Muslim feminists to help them change the laws and the culture to eradicate the worst abuses and work for female sovereignty and financial equity. There were many successes before the War on Terror began, and there continue to be many successes from such grassroots feminist activism in promoting women’s rights since the War on Terror started, just not in Iraq or Afghanistan.
And since to hear some talk, the whole point of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan was to liberate women, isn’t that a damning indictment?
Leinad
We libertarians try to persuade not to mandate.
“If God had been a libertarian, Moses would have produced the Ten Suggestions”
Malcolm Bradbury
But secularisation must occur by degrees to be a success. If you start by saying “you must renounce Islam and live in the real world, sexist pigs and downtrodden victims!” there’ll be a backlash.
For Muslims living in Western nations it might be different – where they have a bettter chance of making a clean break – but in the ME it’s just going to get folks hurt.
Kim doesnt have to defend herself and her argument,Sharia Law maybe in the hands of men as enforcers generally,and powerful men know wherever they are faced with that as awesome power alone,on matters God if that is their way ,human reason subservient as it may well be,cannot be submissive to that power if a rage against it exists.Powerful men as good Islamic folk will take the pain themselves as being powerless to God and for the sake of God where the longer term interest cannot be met alone in the understandings of the Koran or humanity. The practice will stop,because to be a Muslim seems to be pain bearing,powerful men cannot do other than that. Because they are men, not God I would of thought.The male cleric are servants of God or Allah ,they cannot be servants to the understandings of the Koran alone,their pain is therefore obvious,males as humans carry their pain in a undignified way often..to be in pain,may not mean to fail, but not be able to finally as on earth, meet all written Koranic matters that appear instructional..but..perhaps,are more than that,… to face the power of the Creator.That is the Clerics real problem as one of the faithful,instructional matters are which have to be borne by the faithful,reasoning can only suggest where a practice hurts the chances for both women as child bearers and sinners who could be worthy again,the Cleric is in a diabolical bind with their faith..if the outcome of that, as we see in countries like ours werent so terrible for women,we would sympathise with the Clerics.Their mortality is always tested by the non human Will… by faith.
And shame on you Pommygranate for betraying one of the great principles of libertarianism.
Your rants can be interpreted only as an attempt to justify interventionist violence, as if sovereign human beings will be compelled to change their mental outlook on important spiritual issues with an extravagant dose of military violence and with an insulting denunciation of the principles and precepts of an embedded and embattled culture. Your insensitivity simply emboldens and legitimises the fanatics who interpret ignorant generalisations such as yours as a conspiracy against Islam in general.
The Pommygranates of this world are among the most effective recruiting sergeants for jihad.
I share Pommygranate’s hope for a secular world. But I observe that Pommygranate’s means to achieve that ambition are futile and contrary to a libertarian understanding of human motivations and human autonomy.
Katz
Your rants can be interpreted only as an attempt to justify interventionist violence
Who said anything about interventionist violence?
And anyway, you show a lack of understanding of libertarianism. Not all libertarians are isolationist.
War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
John Staurt Mill, On Liberty
The same might be said of a man who has nothing for which he is willing to argue, nothing which is more important to him than his own feelings of superiority: he’s a miserable creature with no chance of looking intelligent except by quoting the ideas – well, you get my drift.
It’s one thing to be willing to fight in defence of one’s own notion of freedom – it’s something else entirely to demand that others conform to that notion and impose it at the point of a gun. The latter demands some pretty serious justification.
Pommygranate:
1. You answered your own question, and to your detriment.
2. Isolationism does not equal pacificism. I am neither isolationist nor pacifist. Nor am I a coward. A true libertarian has a better sense of the potentiality for beneficial outcomes of military violence than you do. For you, Pommygranate, appear to be somewhat besotted by the grim glamour of martial exploits.
In other words, you mistake shock and awe as a process for shock and awe as a result.
Grow up Pommygranate.
Katz
Try and debate without resorting to personal attacks. Not only is it common decency but it’s usually a good indicator that you have run out of arguments. Bye.
9.52am:
2.44pm:
Pommygranate bails.
(BTW, nice one, FDG. No one left here except us sensible folk, it seems.)
What’s the connection between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Theo Van Gogh was assassinated in 2004, and Ali’s fame was subsequent to that — well after both events were well under way.
The common Islamophobia which runs like a red thread through much of her work and the way it is put to use and justifications for “humanitarian intervention” and war, Rob – as tigtog said.
Dunno that you could really call ‘Submission’ Islamophobic. Heretical to an Islamist, no doubt, but then so was ‘The Satanic Verses’. Besides, has anyone used Ali’s work to justify the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan, or any prospective intervention in the Sudan?
Rob, you’re being overly literal minded here. It’s used as part of an attempt to form a climate of opinion which paints Islam as being dominated by a “barbaric” “7th century Arabian culture” which, as you can see from reading Bone’s piece, contributes to a justification for intervention in the Sudan, and the rest of the nonsense about the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan being in the interests of gender equity – which has now become a “core Australian value” according to Ministers because it enables people to stigmatise Islamic citizens and immigrants.
But Bone specifically singles out Turkey as an example of how Islam and (the universalist values of) democracy are compatible. She could have mentioned Indonesia, of course, as another example. Both are Islamic, both have extremists, but both (latterly, in the case of Indonesia) are firmly democratic.
I must say I see nothing to object to in her article.
Kim
I am afraid your post is a classic statement of why it is The Left that is associated with modern-day anti-Semitism more than The Right.
The tragedy is I am not even sure you will appreciate this even after I have told you.
Oh and let me save you the typing.
Kim: “Being anti-Zionist is not anti-Semitic.”
Which society (since evidently it’s not Turkey) is that precisely?
Kim
I have been saying this since my very first post on LP. However, 90% of my posts which situate Islamic imperialism at the centre of Middle East contretemps are not published. I suppose now that I have finally convinced YOU, my views will not be considered “Islamophobic?”
If so, LP will have a first-mover advantage among blogs published by the Luvvie Left. There are, to be sure, some quite hard-core Leftists around who have always been on to the reality. Rare as hens-teeth mind.
What are you on about, John? I’ve got no idea what anti-Semitism has to do with this post.
Mark – primarily Iran, I would have thought, and by extension other theocracies in which the same is true. Are you disagreeing with her?
Mark
I have a billion deadlines au momente, as i hope you can understand. So, rather than bash something out that reflects my frazzled brain which is currently jumping from Aeschylus to Justinian, to neuroimmunology to Fourier Series, I shall post a clear explanation on the morrow. However, as my post said, your not having an idea what anti-Semitism has to do with the article is no surprise.
Bone:
1. Bone is correct about ordinary Muslims being the best bulwark against extremist Islamism. But she does not seem to understand that her heroes Blair and Bush (and doubtless Howard) have been instrumental in making life intolerable for educated, liberal Muslims throughout the Middle East. Hasn’t Bone been keeping up with news from Iraq? At least 2 million refugees have fleed that tragic country since the advent of “Shock and Awe”. A high percentage of them are those self-same educated, liberal Muslims.
What have the Infamous GWOT Trio done for them? They have destroyed their lives.
2. Bone insists on mistaking correct prediction for approbation. We lefties plead with Bush, “Don’t go, you’ll make it worse!” And guess what, we were correct.
I cannot understand why Bone is unable to comprehend that rather basic point.
3. The million Turks know that if the whole of Turkey were to vote for president, Turkey would have an Islamist president. (Ironically, and predictably for many who aren’t besotted by fantasy, the US presided over a democratic process in Iraq that produced an Islamist hegemony.)
Rob, and Bone seem unable to grasp that Islamism is a product of illiberal democracy.
And Islamism is on the march, thanks in no small part to the cack-handedness of the Infamous GWOT Trio — Bush, Blair and Howard, and their claqueurs of the ilk of Bone.
I don’t know in what sense you mean, Rob, since as Katz has suggested, what she has written is emotive and disconnected rather than logical and argumentative. Very clearly the large number of people in Iran who would like to challenge the boundaries set by the regime derive no benefit from the sorts of concern troll analyses she writes (which either deliberately or through lack of rigour skip from example to example to paint a picture of monolithic Islam) nor do they benefit from the current posture of American foreign policy (which in the case of Iran has bugger all to do with either humanitarianism – the ostensible topic of her badly thought out piece – or “Western values” unless those values are reduced to the assertion of power or strategic realism, neither of which she has in mind, I think).
I’m sorry, Mark, I was quite unclear.
I meant do you agree or disagree with this statement:
Of course I agree with that statement, Rob, but that’s hardly the point.
Why then the exoriation of Bone? I’m baffled. (I often am.) I rather thought that was the central point of the whole article.
For two reasons, Rob, and it is quite clear from the post:
1. She elides a whole range of practices as in some way characteristic of Islam and suggests that Western secularism is the only answer.
2. She makes a tendentious attempt to justify war in the name of “humanitarian interventionism” and does so very selectively – it appears that the outrages to human rights she deplores only ever occur in Islamic countries.
No Rob, the central point of Bone’s article is that Bush, Blair and Howard have contributed to making that vision of civil society possible. (Bone’s corollary is that Lefties have conspired to prevent the realisation of that vision.)
Now this is the bit that you must undersand Rob:
Bone’s critics here have definitvely refuted Bone’s fantasy about hthe Infamous GWOT Trio.
Her argument is bankrupt.
Rob
The excoriation of Bone is an irruption of left-wing anti-Semitism, provoked by the appearance on Australian soil of the otherwise shunned “Other” of the western bourgeois-left feminist: Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Said western bourgeois-left feminists do not have room for Hanan Ashrawi AND their “Other.”
One can only imagine the pro-Palestinian paroxysms that attended Ashrawi’s visit a couple of years ago, among these same western bourgeois-left feminists. A sane human being would have expected similar reactions to Ali.
The hypocrisy so often crosses over from chutzpah to contemptible
No, I don’t see that at all, Katz and Mark.
Commenting on Blair’s foreign policy, she says:
That looks like honest commentary to me – and the context is Blair and his “interventionism”, not the rightness or wrongness of intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan. (Though it seems unarguable to me but what the interventions in the Balkans (was not the intervention there to save the Muslims?)and Sierra Leone were both justified and just.)
Bone acknowledges specifically that the Iraqi adventure has been disastrous.
What’s all the stuff about “Western values” doing in the column, then, Rob? Surely readers are meant to infer some connection between the assertions that these values are better than those “more appropriate to 7th-century century Arabia” as she puts it and the stuff on war? Either it has some point – which is to say that what she sees as oppressive values justify “humanitarian interventionism” – or the whole thing is just a confused rant.
John, once again, I have no idea why or how criticism of Ali’s views could constitute “anti-Semitism”? That’s just bizarre.
But she doesn’t acknowledge that the Left was correct all along about Iraq.
And why is that? Because she refuses to acknowledge that the Left’s understanding of social and cultural processes in the Middle East is superior to the interventionists’ ideologically-driven programs.
And what doesn’t whe acknowledge that? Because it would necessarily entail an utter refutation of her entire program of intervention.
Bone cannot acknowledge the source of her mistaken appreciation of the world.
Bone cannot acknowledge her intellectual bankruptcy.
Can you point me to where Bone mentions “Western values”, Mark?
John — thanks, I think I get your point about anti-Semitism.
Katz — there were strong voices from the right who opposed the invasion of Iraq from the get-go. Owen Harries, for one. In any case, the point is immaterial to the article in question.
Also, if you understand John’s point, perhaps you could elucidate it?
Yes, of course I saw those references, Mark, but there’s no mention of “western values“.
The first reference is hardly triumphalist. The second relates to comparative systems of governments. The third is in favour of the universality of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by western democracies.
Nothing to argue with there, AFAICS.
Nonsense.
Bone’s whole article is about what the west should do and think about Islam, especially in the context of the Middle East.
Her point is that Bush and Blair’s intentions are superior to the Left’s.
Your reference to Harries is utterly irrelevant. Bone vents her spleen on the Left, not on Harries and the realist Right.
I’m beginning to understand why you find Greensleeves comprehensible.
Rob, obviously she’s trying very hard not to identify “shared universal values” with “Western values” but since apparently they’re not shared and Western humanitarian interventionism exists to impose them, she doesn’t really succeed.
Particularly in the third passage I’ve quoted where “our” can only refer back to these putatively universal values.
Katz, you’re simply constructing a whole argument of your own and then projecting it onto Bone.
This is just silly. It was you who introduced the idea (nor present in Bone’s article but interpolated by you) that “But she doesn’t acknowledge that the Left was correct all along about Iraq.”
Why should she? That’s not what the article is about. You’re just re-writing the article to suit your own purposes.
Mark
Are you seriously suggesting that you would NOT agree with Bone on western values vs. seventh century Arabia?
And are you seriously trying to tell us that you do not realize that the utopia sought by Sunnia Arab Islamists IS the world of the first four “good” caliphs?
Rob, who are the “so-called liberal commentators” and “culturalists” the column is designed to criticise then?
I do sympathise, though. It’s a most incoherent article.
So, Mark, do you think that people in the Sudan, Syria, Uganda, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and all the rest do not believe in or aspire to nor have an entitlement to the rights and freedoms enjoyed in the western democracies?
Rob, many don’t aspire to “rights and freedoms” in exactly the same sense, no. Some do. As suggested in the post, there are other ways of achieving progressive goals than an importation of (anyway very imperfect) Western political systems… Let me point out, pre-emptively, that I’m not being a “culturalist” here but recognising that cultures vary. It’s idiotic to think that they don’t, and the claim that Iraq was justified and would work out because (all) Iraqis wanted “rights and freedoms” demonstrates why.
I’ve already answered the question, John.
Bone never said that.
She said:
She also said:
Yes; that’s what the UN charter is all about.
Oh Rob, what an inattentive reader you are:
Bone
I count six references to the despised Left.
The payload of Bone’s fantasia is in the final paragraph. It is a diatribe against TEH LEFT.
Don’t be daft, Katz. Try to remember she wrote the article, not you. The article is inspired by, about, and reflective of the issues surrounding the Iranian police’s rounding up of women wearing “non-or-insufficiently-Islamic” clothing.
Give some thought to what that police action and the left’s putative complaisance in the face of it actually means.
Putative is the word, Rob.
So, I’m sorry, what’s all the stuff in there about Blair and Bush and “humanitarian interventionism” got to do with the actions of the Iranian police? Is she suggesting Iran as a target of humanitarian interventionism in the name of “shared universal values”?
Re-read the article, maybe. It doesn’t seem to be too hard to work out. It’s an intelligent, well-thought out piece.
I mean, have a look at what you guys have been doing on this thread. You’ve picked up bits of what Bone didn’t say in the first place, dragged them off to some place in the conspiracy jungle a couple of hundred miles off at the side, extrapolated some conclusions of your own which you attributed to her, and triumphantly denounced her as a war-mongering fascist (except of course you didn’t say that but I, reconstructing your discourse, understand your meaning as perfectly as you understand Bone’s — not).
And of course Ayaan Hirsi Ali must be twice as bad, just because Bone approves of her.
Hyperbole, yes, yes — but not by that that much.
Rob, since Katz and I (and Kim in the post) are pretty clear about what she was saying in the piece and since your contribution has been to deny that she says what we think she says, perhaps the onus lies on you to specify what you think her argument is.
You’ve been playing a sort of guerilla scattershot approach with comments rather than engaging with either the post or clearly arguing against everyone else’s interpretation of Bone’s meaning.
The arguments made about how Ali proposes to respond to FGM compared to the responses of women in countries where it is practiced and the contention that the imposition of Western secular values is not the only way to bring about progressive change in gender relations are also set out in the post and the initial comments, but not addressed by you.
It comes down to a simple opposition, as it has done for centuries. Freedom versus oppression. I reckon the Larva Prodders are on one side, and decent human beings like Bone and the Eustonistas you love to sneer at are on the other.
As Pommy said a while back, it’s amazing you guys aren’t on Ali’s side. But then you probably wouldn’t have been on Voltaire’s, or Sakharov’s.
Oh I do like a good laugh before tea-time!
With some difficulty I’ll avoid responding to some of the utterly ridiculous things said above.
The crucial point for me is concern that the Left may find itself reacting to stupid arguments such as Bones’ by adopting a sort of caricature of the position she projects onto us.
Darfur demands a Western response. I don’t know exactly what form that response should take, and I can’t imagine it would involve an Iraq style invasion. But I’m worried when people say “well Congo is worse so any call for intervention in Darfur is just driven by Islamophobia”.
The thing Bone never seem to acknowledge is that the strongest voices for Darfur have generally been people who opposed the Iraq invasion (eg Clooney). The danger is that the Left may start to believe her and we end up opposing, or just not supporting, action there. And this time we probably have a lot more influence than we did in the lead up to the Iraq invasion.
So we’re on the side of oppression? Whatever, Rob. It must be comforting for you and the Eustonistas never to have a doubt that you’re on the right side of history and able to see things in their correct black and white colours.
I think you’ve let the cat out of the bag, there, personally. All this posturing by Bone and her epigones is about making political points within the West (maybe that’s the Antipodean incarnation of her/Blair’s “clash within civilisations”). Whatever, for instance, can you mean by this comment?
Either it’s meaningless concern trolling – I don’t believe for a second you advocate military intervention in Syria or Uganda for instance – or it’s a disingenuous attempt to claim some sort of high moral ground by dismissing those who see complexity rather than a “simple opposition” as firstly “culturalists” then some sort of enemy within.
That’s why the rhetoric of Bone and her ilk is so hypocritical. The assumed tone of self-righteousness disguises the actual political pettiness.
I don’t think the post argues against intervention in Darfur. I don’t myself. But it’s wise to understand what has led to the situation there, rather than accept the distortions involved in seeing it as part of some sort of Islam vs. the others stoush.
Thanks Mark. Rereading it I think I took “The biggest two arguments against liberal interventionism…” as meaning “The biggest arguments against intervention…” If Kims attacking the brand of thinking known as “liberal interventionism” I’m with her. If she’s opposing western liberals intervening, at least via government agency (I can’t imagine she’s opposed to NGO involvement) then I have a big problem.
feral sparrowhawk, I may have been taking it for granted that readers were aware of my previous comments supporting intervention in Darfur.
On Katz and Mark v. Rob, I think Rob is displaying that un-Euston “value” of romanticism and emotion which is his preferred mode of political rhetoric and thought rather than the reason which is usually proclaimed to be central – Enlightenment values and all that…
Still a bit of Hegelianism rather than Kantianism is to be expected given his political trajectory.
I havn’t read Ms Ali’s book so I wont be commenting on that. I do know that she has had to put up with a lot of crap, up to and including death threats, and for that I admire her. I also know that she has done a lot to raise awareness of FGM, and for that I admire her.
The two suggestions she has made for Australia, however, are just silly. The idea for an assimilation contract is based on the usual assimilationist error of seeing culture as highly responsive to government policies, no matter how symbolic those policies are.
I don’t think I have to point out what is wrong with the Office of the National C*** Inspector.
Yes, I think so, Mark. And the ‘whatever’ really says it rather well.
It really doesn’t bother you, does it? Well, whatever.
Where people struggle against it (oppression, whatever), don’t look to the likes of Larva Prod to assist.
Whatever.
I’m sure the history writers of the future are gonna look kindly at the forces of freedom, and praise to the skies their tactics of keeping their engagements with the forces of oppression strictly on the internet and in the op/ed sections. Never was so much owed,. etc etc.
No shit, Rob?! You haven’t been passive-agressively channeling this the length and breadth of the internet since first log-on?
I gotta say, I’m in awe of the moral clarity and intellectual rigor on display in much of your work, of which this paragraph (a noble salvo for the forces of Decency I’m sure) is wonderfully representative; particularly their apparent inverse relationship — for me it seems to work in the opposite direction.
But hey, I’m not currently engaged on the Good, Decent (if not neccesarily the winning) side of this, the Greatest Intellectual Struggle of Our Era (a phrase which gets more apropos the more I think about it) and having only been in a Trotskyist group for a year in my painful, awkward mid-teens, I haven’t accumulated the lifelong legacy of resistance to groupthink, charity to my debating opponents and nuanced, complex analysis of the international situation that has characterised your posting career. Otherwise, I’m sure I’d be much more deferential, but then again I’m appaled at being proven wrong: y’see, I always though that people who’d spent most of their adult lives as Maoists would show a little more humility and self-reflection viz. branding their opponents agents of ‘oppression’ and themselves of ‘freedom’…
Thanks, Leinad. I really value the endorsement.
Katz
Let us leave aside the little irritation of Pamela Bone actually being a Leftist herself!
The irony is on one level too delicious not to savour. But savour we must wait. Dude, WTF do you think Kim’s entire article has been about if not to instrumentalise the misery of others to fumble another try in her interminable low rent western bourgeois-left feminist culture war? Clearly Janet, Julia Bishop, and Miranda will have to wait. And just what IS it with these LP “feminists” and their interminable bile towards educated highly-successful independent women? Hmmmmmm……
Kim – like all the other LP feminists – does not give a rat’s ass about women outside their own little circle of white western Anglophone bourgeois bien pissant cyber-culture warriors.
How on earth they can have the gall to describe themselves as feminists, let alone “leftwing” with this abominable treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ladies, you should be fucking well ashamed of yourselves.
Disgusting.
I only wish that wasn’t sarcasm.
I can hear the Phantom drums calling me. Eus-ton! Eus-ton! Eus-ton!
I’d like to start, here, a new genre of meaningless troll comment—the interventionist troll. I for one would like to see how a modern Western interventionist force went against a Sudanese militia putting on conventional warfare airs; I’d like to find out whether Syria’s actually gotten around to taking delivery of any of those Russian SAMs; I’d fucking love to see some intervention action go down over and around Bushehr and Isfahan. Let’s not start on the NK long-range artillery around Seoul.
It’s because I’m honest enough to admit that I’m not interested in comparative human rights. I just wanna see intellectal interventionist consistency: and some gun-camera action with falling Paveways. Oh yeah.
Piffle, Rob.
The point of the post, and the previous ones I’ve written about Bone et al, is to support the efforts of women on the ground in other countries – like the ones in Algeria and in countries where FGM is predominant.
Betraying your postmodern past, you seem to think that the only worthwile struggle against oppression is some sort of discursive flourish – whether a wordy manifesto or a column in the Murdoch press. I don’t agree – I’m far more of a materialist than you, perhaps. I think that the efforts of women in Northern Africa and sub-Saharan Africa will probably be hindered rather than helped by the likes of Ali and Bone – which was the point that I was making by quoting Yglesias and Samhita. And one that you’ve studiously ignored in favour of your grand narratives.
Ahem. That’s intellectual consistency.
My point remains—bring on the bombs, Western feminists.
Yeah, right, John. That’s why I’m writing about what women in Algeria and sub-Saharan Africa are doing.
And who says Bone is a “leftist” anyway? A term, I’d observe, that lefties don’t use.
Indeed. Since you’re the most vehement culture warrior around these parts!
So, if you can get a job as a lawyer, it’s okay to continue FGM?
As a woman, think about it, imagine what it feels like, imagine the consequences.
Think about what it says about your rights and feelings.
Have you actually read what FGM is? I know it exists in various forms, but even at it’s mildest it is an outrage. At it’s extreme, it is torture.
I do not understand how ANYONE can dismiss it and treat it lightly. It is an abuse in every meaning of the word. Where is the outrage?
Excuse me, please read the post. I regard FGM as abhorrent. I linked to articles describing the steps that women themselves in sub-Saharan Africa are taking to fight against it. Those attempts may not proceed under the Euston endorsed rubric of “universal values” and thus might not be useful for people who primarily want to express “outrage”, especially when it can be tied to Islam. But they’re worth a thousand newspaper columns and manifestos.
Shorter Rob: I can’t read for meaning.
Other than military action, Kim, it is. Nothing will save the people of Darfur but military action. And military action is what they won’t get. No-one in the west now has the stomach for it.
Ask yourself what the reason for that might be.
I’ve got no idea, Rob. You tell me. The failure of effete elites blinded by culturalism to listen to Eustonistas?
But I thought we were talking about FGM. That’s what I was referring to.
Shorter Katz.
Erm.
Am I shouting into a vacuum? Are you, Rob?
I’ll never forgive Donald Rumsfeld for fucking up a perfectly sensible smash-and-grab plan, and doing away with any more fun cabinet wars for another generation. What’s not to understand about grabbing after smashing?
Hi guys – new here to the discussion, but not the reading nor the issues…
A brief background – here currently in China. Previously spent some time in Pakistan, 2 years in Afghanistan and some time around UAE, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi, Syria and Jordan.
I am enjoying this blog with lots to say – but before I move on I do need to ask….
Who was this Euston character?
Work harder on it, Kim. I’m into encouraging self-learning these days.
You know I think the world of you (seriously, despite our spats), but honestly….
There are some real moral clarity issues here. Who’s wrong, who’s right. Stuff like that. Ali’s right. The guys that want to kill her are wrong. It’s as simple as that. Let that simple fact get obfuscated and you start to drift on a very uncertain moral sea, and come to all kinds of weird conclusions and landfalls.
And we, who want to kill a bunch of other Sudanese in the name of secularism, are right?
Rob, stop fucking about with comparative morality and come over to the universal pro-war side.
Any intervention, anywhere, by the West is bad.
If we intervene, bad. If we hold a talkfest, good.
Talking concern is important. Acting out that concern makes you a target of vilification.
Simple, really.
Maybe it would satisfy everyone if the Chinese, Russians, Europeans did it instead.
Would they?… I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Speaking of which, F da G — where is my private network of killer drones?! You promised me this stuff would all be decentralised by now…
FDG, no, I’m not in favour of intervention in Darfur.
NewHereDazza, the Euston Manifesto is here. Universally despised in these parts, because it cleaves to the fundamental principles of the left that the left hereabouts have long since forgotten.
Meh.
Tarra,
so the USA going to Afghanistan was wrong?
Gulf War I?
I hate to bring up an obvious chestnut – thoughts on WWII?
Local analogy….
walking along the street – you see a guy smacking up his wife…. what would you do?
(egad! uncertainty — anything but that! )
*shields gaze from the brilliant moral clarity on display*
Then that makes you a moral coward as well as a sanctimonious one. You say military action is the only thing that’ll save the people of Dar Fur and then you oppose it? Fuck you pal.
Have at least the courage the rest of us have, and stand in favour of unilateralist militarism behind the protective separation of TCP/IP.
The only power with the capability to intervene in Darfur is the US, FDG, as it was in Somalia — and we saw what followed. Do you support that? Another Iraq?
Tell me it ain’t so.
Idiot.
Only power is the US?
I am not sure – I am pretty certain if the North Koreans, Chinese, Israelis or French wanted a hack at it they might be able to do something.
I would actually say each military situation is different – at least in Darfur you have a clear boundary that can be identified. Why don’t they do what the US did so well for the Kurds for a long time. Have a no-fly or no-go zone. Bomb the crap out of any militia or government backed force in the region. Send in billions, protect and rebuild.
Kurdistan in this instance would be a better example than Somalia.
But that does not make you an idiot.
We all know that any intervention by the US will be vilified.
Oil, world domination, colonisation, etc. etc. etc.
And if we help… it will be our fault too.
There will come a day when any decent civilisation will just have to sit back and watch because our help will be supposedly for the wrong reasons, wrong morality, wrong religion… anything you care to name… it will still be labelled wrong.
Even when it is right.
Iraq was poorly planned from the get-go, as I said. It could have been such a glorious war and occupation.
Anyway, you’re the one coming along all righteous about other people’s belief systems without any further plan but to stuff your hands down your pants and work yourself up about ‘em. If you think you can change other countries’ internal policies without—pardon the Maoist cliché—breaking a few eggs, dream on.
Until you can reconcile your infantile righteousness with the real, actual world of incursion, the rest of us get to name you Coward.
PS. Zimbabwe. Aches for three divisions of armour driving north from SA and a bit of planned decaptiation strike-action.
Leniad, I check sourceforge nightly for the killer-drone betas. No action yet.
Ali is right to say that FGM is abhorrent. And people are wrong to want to kill her.
But, really, Rob, do you agree with the rest of what she says?
Chris was quite right to draw attention to the strange proposals she’s made for Australia:
That was in the context of opposing chain migration and the settlement of migrants in contiguous areas. I don’t see that some sort of mandate about where you must live or overthrowing the bases of family reunion immigration upholds the sorts of values of “freedom” you and she are talking about.
Honestly, when she first came on the scene, I thought she might have something worthwile to say about the issues of secularism and Islam. I’ve come to the conclusion that she hasn’t.
We should definitely start a whole new blog (or does one exist) about incursions… it’s a whole new country.
Certainly using the difficulties of the Iraq invasion as an argument against invasion has the the same relative merits as the D Day Landings versus non invasion – or maybe we are only as good as our last war?
Ok – but back to the Islam feminism thing – I do take exception to the comments regarding Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is struggling make no mistake…. but by and large that war:
a. could and should have been fought – even prior to 9/11
b. has had a generally good outcome for everyone with some exceptions
c. can still be a success if the west has the financial and military will and is handled with sensitivity.
Rebuilding the country has been slow.
There have been some constitutional issues and difficulties wresting power from old power bases.
Some people are disenchanted.
But – very few Afghanis want a return to the Taliban.
Decision by points – the decision to invade.
F da G: re: your PS, you might wanna take a squiz at this.
I demand moderator incursion into Leniad’s comment. He is obviously viciously oppressing his markup. The content of his hyperlink cries freedom!
UN Inspectors have verified that Leinad has no urls hidden behind his tags.
egad. So it does. I’ll try again, in the hope that my efforts shall secure the liberation of this link and with it, the establishment of a firm bridge, a conduit if you will, between two
websitesworlds!Aaah, Aaronovitch. Such a soft target.
That’s a good blog, Leniad, I admire you for your feeds. Here’s a good one for Rob on the Sendero Decentista:
It’s a mightly riposte against military intervention in Zimbabwe.
Intervention, invasion, incurion whatever you call it is entirely contingent in my opinion on achievability.
Sudan is a different kettle of fish. Militarily speaking – invading, holding, protecting and denying access to a piece of land that is resident to an oppressed group of people is achievable….
Zimbabwe is a war I would not fight using bombs.
Sudan is.
The underlying theme of that Zimbabwe post backs it up – if you can’t win it – don’t do it.
If you can – do it.
But in between there are lots of great unknowns.
And even those with the most military experience and understanding sometimes get it wrong.
Should we have continued negotiation with Hitler?
Would WWII have been considered a just war if the Allies lost?
Interesting questions I think.
A very useful feed indeed. The shorter Paul Berman:
http://aaronovitch.blogspot.com/2007/05/thanks-to-simon.html
Kim, the plain fact is you’re not on the side of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, under threat of death for championing of women’s rights in the Islamic world, but you’re not embarrassed to ride or side with the apologists for her would-be executioners — and that says a lot.
Rob, see post above.
What is it about supporting Islamic women championing Islamic women’s rights you don’t understand? That’s what I’m doing. I refuse to endorse Ali’s Islamophobia because of her own past experiences (which are tragic and deplorable) and I refuse to endorse all the wacky suggestions she makes on assimilation (which are about as illiberal as you can get) because people want to kill her, which desire I condemn absolutely and wothout reservation.
Ok?
NewhereDazza asks “who is Euston”?
As far as I know it is a square on a monopoly board. Works for me.
Miserable devil!
Who? Where? Thought Kim had been pretty unequivocal about that.
Kim’s apologistry for death squads I’d like to see, before I add making-shit-up to cowardice amongst your blog commentary traits.
Ok, let’s look at the content of what she has says and debate it.
What has she said that is unenlightened, racist and wrong.
Perhaps then we should examine the relative truth of her arguments.
Having seen her speak – without the full knowledge of her personal experience, it does seem to smack of truths as follows:
– Islamic societies often promote arranged marriages which leave women disempowered.
– Islamic society compared to Wester society appears backward and oopressive
– FGM is a practice that is espoused in many Islamic (and other) societies – but not in the west
– Islamic societies encourage or at the very least complicit in the support of domestic violence of men vs women
– compared to western societies, women is Islamic countries are more oppressed
– Islamic countries have a hyper sensitivity to criticism, therefore anyone, no matter how silly or banal there arguments (nor logical or self-evident) is subject to oppresive and often violent backlash
Is there something else I am missing? What other arguments is she putting forward that are so preposterous as to justify threats to her life?
No one here is justifying threats to her life, NewHereDazza.
And, thanks, FdG. I hadn’t realised that in RobWorld daring to disagree with Ali apparently equated to death squad apologistry.
Doesn’t work, Kim. Reading your post and comments, I suddenly understand why it takes heroes to change the world, and why you, and I, will never be among them.
Rob, it might surprise you to know that I have some degree of admiration for Ali, but I think that unfortunately her political views are misguided and unlikely to change the world. I’d go back to what Yglesias said:
Thanks, F da G, though the spirit in which I was linking was: ‘uh dude, Zimbabwe ain’t gonna be fixed by three RSA Armor divs and some sharp shooting’.
Well I’m not saying it’d solve actual problems, Leniad.
But certainly the ZANU-PDF’re aching for it. And it’d allow us to resolve our crises of praxis in an ethical manner in the best way—on someone else’s country.
Kim,
what has she said that is Islamophobic?
Oh FFS. Rob, three words: Get. The. Fuck. Over. Your. Self.
Fuck. Too much document-work seems to have added a portable letter D. ZANU-PF.
Please read the post and the links in it.
Kim,
I have – so everything? or part? which part?
define Islamophobia.
Yeah, right. Let’s just fold on the whole issue and leave it to the “serious Muslims”.
Shorter Rob: Ayan Hirsi Ali speaks a truth which is too inconvenient for the intellectual left to deal with head on.
If Islamophobic means being scared of Islam imposing itself on me and affecting my world – I am Islamophobic. I don’t like it. I don’t want it. I think out of the three main monotheistic religions it represents the biggest threat to myself and western democracy. Not that the others don’t also – in my opinion all religion sucks, but Islam tops the list.
If Islamophobia means being scared of those who espouse it, I am not sure.
If Islamophobia means making untrue remarks about the religion in order to achieve a political or social objective – then I think that’s wrong.
F da G: HTML Mencken sympathises. And I agree on the awesomeness of any toppling of Mugabe — the RSA could run rings around the thugs he’s got guarding his schitzo playboy mansion/hovel. Then we should get a team of slinky ninja operatives to burn/destroy a differant set of Kim Jong-Il’s dictatorial luxuries each month, starting with his movie collection…
NewHereDazza, Islamaphobic hereabouts means anything critical of the worst elements of fundamentalist Islam – world conquest, extermination of infidels, that sort of thing. But of course they don’t mean it. Not really. New York, Bali, Madrid, Bali again, London — just unfortunate incidents arising from Islamophobic somethingism.
Well, those women activists in sub-Saharan Africa have a strategy for countering FGM which involves persuading people within that culture. How are Ali’s denunciations going to work to achieve her aims? Or are they just interventions in the politics of the West?
Borrowing your talking points from Tim Blair’s little helpers now, Rob?
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/view_coloured/#253876
Admittedly without calling me “bitch”, or “little Kimmy” or telling me to “fuck off”…
Or this sort of thing:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/view_coloured/#253894
Delightful company you keep sometimes Rob.
Parallel Universe:
Rape Victim – I was raped by my family. I am now alienated from them and they have disowned me.
Family – she was never raped. She has dishonoured this family with her lies.
Feminist reaction = a case of blame the victim. A denunciation and rebuke of anyone who would doubt the testimony of a disempowered and threatened woman.
Anti Islamic Forced Marriage Victim – my family tried to force me to marry this man. I left them. I have left them and am now disowned.
Family – she is a liar and has dishonoured us. We have disowned her.
Feminist reaction = ????
Lucky I’ve been drinking, Kim, I’m not sure I could stomach that otherwise.
Which side are you on, Rob, which side are you on…
</Robeson>
But FdG, they’re all totally opposed to misogyny and the intimidation of women speaking their minds!
Erm…
Thanks for the clarification Kim, nice to know we are on the same page.
It is interesting to notice that some people here are arguing that we should all accept whatever Ali has to say because of her experiences and the threats made against her. It doesn’t seem to matter what the merits of her arguments are, we can’t critique them because of her oppression.
One of the things the right mocked the left for when I was at university was the idea that someone’s views had more validity because that person was aboriginal, or gay or working class. And you know what, they were right – it’s a valid idea when you are talking about something directly within their experiences, but the idea that being a lesbian gives you more expertise on environmental issues is just stupid.
Ali has suffered appalling abuses, and the threats to her are a disgrace. That does not however, translate into everything she has to say about Islam, or immigration policies being holy writ. It is possible to have been brutally oppressed and be stupid or ethically bankrupt.
I haven’t read her book or much detail on what she has said, so I’m not saying she is either of those things, but people seriously seem to be saying she must be a source of all wisdom because of the hell she has been through.
So I said at Timbo’s that this was a bad post. Well, it was and it is. That’s all I said. Big deal. You criticise posts posted elsewhere all the time.
Well, Rob, you’re obviously not embarrassed to side or ride with out-and-out misogynists. That says a lot.
Sparrowhawk – I agree…
So let’s debate what she has said…
Let’s debate those facts.
What has she said that is Islamophobic?
That cut me to the quick, Fiasco. But I didn’t see any misogynists on that thread. Just Kimogynists. Who are, be it said, A VERY BAD THING. Seriously.
‘Timbo’?
Also, it seems to me that the very first of these 150 comments bears repeating, so allow me to repeat it. Leinad said:
And I suspect we are all a lot more sick of it than we were 150 comments ago, too.
Amen to that, feral sparrowhawk.
Well, that puts Ali in her place, I guess. We can all stop listening to her now.
You didn’t answer the question I posed to you, Rob. Do you support the calls she has made in Australia for an end to family reunion migration, compulsory gynaecological examinations of the daughters of African immigrants, and for an “assimilation contract” which would include the prohibition of settlement in the same suburb or area?
Are you four, Rob?
sigh….
Nobody up for the challenge?
Face off?
What has she said? Anybody?
Also – define Islamophobia whilst you do it.
Also – show what she has said in light of the general truths of Islamic countries…
I know because I have lived in them. Countries where Islam is the number one religion:
– encourage gender deparatism in schooling and social life
– do nothing to promote or secure the rights of gay people
– encourage or do little to deter massive discrimination against people who refute Islam
– have the death penalty, nearly always
– have dubious reactions toward honour killings
– incite or do little to repel anti western hysteria
– incorporate, encourage and allow ancient punishment systems for crime including lashing, hanging, stoning, beatings and torture
– discourage, alienate or make illegal any other alterntive forms of religion and its public practice
Simple question – juvenile and simplistic but so so true….
Is life better for women in Somalia or the Netherlands? Than America?
This woman is under protection because of what she thinks and says.
I need to know – why you are so critical, rather than praiseworthy of her. What she has said that is so despotic and false that would alienate you from her? And for whom do you feel more sympathy? For her sufferings or those for whom her words may offend?
Convince me whose side you are on.
Again, I’ll repeat – I’ve made my views on her views sufficiently clear in the post.
marx is dead, lenin’s dead, stalin’s dead, mao’s dead, ho chi minh’s dead, pol pot’s dead. guess it was only a matter of time before the left shopped around for a belief system as totalitarian & murderous as communism. embrace islam: you’ll be so glad you did
NewHereDazza on 31 May 2007 at 11:51 pm:
The feminist reaction to the forced marriage victim is actually exactly the same as to the rape victim, Dazza. Sympathy for the victim and condemnation for the violent abusers.
Let’s just make it properly parallel, shall we? Put KKK in front of the rape victim to parallel the Anti-Islamic forced marriage victim, and have the KKK rape victim make speeches about not only how the law should be tougher on rapists but also speeches on how the fact that her rapist was black means that all black men should be under curfew and there should be no black neighborhoods because they should all be assimilated into white culture.
People can be correct on some things and wrong on others. Not everything Ali says is correct.
What Ali has to say directly about her own experiences is worth listening to and is enlightening for those who didn’t know about FGM already. She should be talking about that and she should not be in fear for her life. The fact that she is in fear for her life is deplorable.
But all that doesn’t mean that when she descends to out and out fearmongering and extreme, unjust solutions that she is being either rational or ethical.
What a relief for the Laughable Prodsters. Here’s a woman who’s under 24/7 guard against murder threats by Islamists, a champion of Enlightenment values against Dark Age fundamentalists, her life on the line every day she’s alive, and we can make ourselves feel better about the whole deal by agreeing she’s stupid or ethically bankrupt.
Abso-fucking-lutely.
Thanks, tigtog, that’s well put. I must confess I’m getting a little too frustrated with some of the comments to be as patient and lucid in explaining things as you’ve been.
Enlightenment values, Rob? Really? Read what she’s actually saying.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21823647-2702,00.html
Not on Ali’s, by any measure, Dazza.
I’m afraid Leinad is right, Rob. This “whose side are you on?” thing is puerile. Presumably all the abuse directed at me by “Timbo’s” wingnut followers is a fine representation of “Enlightenment values”? What tosh.
The fact that she has suffered and has had unconscionable threats made against her does not validate her views.
Just as I might condemn the fatwa against Salman Rushdie without agreeing that he’s an excellent writer.
One of those Enlightenment values is the ability to move beyond emotional identification in order to assess statements and propositions by their conformity to reason. That’s not one you’re demonstrating.
And you continue to evade the question of whether you agree with the statements she’s made about how Australia should conduct its immigration policy.
I’m beginning to suspect because you may not agree with her, but that would sit uneasily with your insistence that she is not to be questioned or criticised under any circumstances.
I do not think her solutions or ideas regarding controlling the problem of FGM or migration control are correct.
Period.
They are wrong in my opinion.
But they do appear to be mere blot on the landscapes in the context of her big meesage.
What I have seen, her big message is:
Where Islam in the predominant religious / political force – it is oppressive to women and freedom.
If the bulf of her statements have revolved around the the former then I rebuke her view.
But if the foundation of her comments lie in the latter – then I can understand her anger and I can understand her. Even though I think it is wrong.
My feeling – she is a person who should be supported, approved of. In my view, some of her solutions are misguided, but what she speaks of Islam in her experience ring true.
Rob: Islamists wanting to kill you means you’re right about everything? Does that mean Salman Rushdie’s novels are the BEST EVAR? Achmad Chalabi’s business dealings were perfectly legitimate? Are you suddenly enamoured of the Soviet Union again?
An odd construction. It had nothing to do with the principle of freedom of speech?
He is an excellent writer, btw.
Yes, of course.
I’m tired, and I’m going to sleep.
Perhaps you’ll turn your mind to whether you agree with Ali’s comments about how Australia should conduct its immigration and settlement policy and why compulsory gynaecological examinations of African girls living here should be instituted.
Kim: re: Rushdie — deranged, Somali-maligning minds think alike
Heh!
I don’t have a problem with her comments as reported, Kim, but I’d like (suspicious as I always am of MSM reporting) to see a transcript of the speech. It’s amazing how people can be misrepresented, don’t you agree?
Tig Tog….
some feminists have used the testimony of the family of Ali to decry and denounce her forced marriage claims.
That’s what I was saying.
You lost me with the KKK analogy – sorry, I read it twice and didn;t get it. Can you restate it so I can understand it please.
Rob: uh, the point of this whole thread is that Kim, and others disagree with some of what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to say, but she has every right to say it. And that refusing to criticise anything she says (and denouncing those who do) because she’s been the subject of serious death threats is just fucking stupid, especially coming from you lot, the alleged Champions of the Enlightenment.
Is that so hard to understand?
Leinad,
Not hard to understand.
Just difficult to believe.
Seems they have seized upon a few remarks and made them the bedrock of Ali’s philosophy.
Bottom line – Ali escaped a sexist, oppressive, corrupted, malignant regime. And she told the world about it.
She is not being threatened by the mistruths she told.
She is being threatened by the truths she told.
People in the west should encourage and not discourage people like her.
Tell the truth and uncover falsehood by all means – but this for me really smacks of trying to illegitamise everything she is saying by a few naive remarks about how to control the problem.
Saying she is Islamophobic plays far nore into the hands of those trying to destroy this woman than those who need a voice for truth.
By default – those who criticise her have sided and given supplication to those who want to kill her – and use the word Islamophobic in the same sentence….
What the hell is this?
Frankly you half witted bloody lefties have no right to criticise this woman at all. How many of you have even come close to anything Ali has been through?
No. You just sit there in the safety of your pathetic Newtown suburb, smoke on your bongs and go on about the Imperialistic West. ( That same West that gives you the very freedom to express your opinions. Let me tell you if you lived under an Islamic regime freedom of speech would be an unheard of dream)
This woman has been through hell. Not only that but she persists in speaking out despite the fact her life is in danger for it. What have you lefties even done that even comes close to that?? ( And no joining an anti Bush rally really doesn’t count)
In fact all I can say to you is if you are prepared to judge her harshly why not do so after experiencing some of what she’s been through. Come on a one way ticket to an Islamic regime could give you a share in Ali’s experiences. Whose stopping you? Go buy one.
F***ing wake up!!!!!!
FGM is practiced in a whole range of sub-saharan countries many of which are not predominantly muslim at all. the practice pre-dates both the christian and muslim religions.
In countries like Burkina-Faso which has a 90% rate of FGM, they are pre-dominantly animist/traditional religious based etc.
Kim, is right that much progress is being made by communities on the ground. This org. is one of the most renowned NGO’s working on the issue: http://www.tostan.org/
When an overwhemlingly significant proportion of your population all “look” the same way, it is difficult for individual families to choose to stop a practice which will greatly lessen the marriage prospects of your daughters etc, which is why ‘whole community’ based education schemes are having such an impact.
Hopefully, critical mass will come into play when enough communities in these countries cease mutilating their daughters.
Many of these countries have also passed laws banning the practice, which obviously suggests that there is considerable opposition to FGM in deep dark Afrika, including the Muzzie bits.
It really doesnt help to jumble up all the different issues facing communities in developing countries – cultural, economic, historical, religious etc. and then wilfully view the situation as one discrete acute condition which can be cured with a silver bullet or two, or ten thousand.
Irrefutable facts:
Modern western secular societies do not accommodate FGM
Many Islamic predominant societies do
Islamic enclaves in the USA and UK have seen the rise of such practices – that is the gist of Ali’s comments. Enclaves of Islam in the west are bringing in practices and rituals that have not been seen in the west for hundreds of years. Hence her reactionary and at times misguided tone.
I agree FGM is not solely a Islamic problem
But many Islamic nations assist in the accommodation and perpetuation of such practices
Western nations do not
I am not disagreeing that animist, agrian, primitive and repressive regimes in sub saharan Africa also practice and perhaps intiated the practice
The point is – do Islamic nations promote an agenda and culture whereby such primitive and barbaric acts are accommodated and accepted within their culture – or – does it alienate, prosecute, actively discourage and reduce these practices?
We all know the answer.
FGM is wrong
In some places Islamic culture is an apologist for this violence. Get over it. Stop shifting.
To view the approach to women is Islam even in “progressive” Islamic countries – UAE, Jordan, Egypt please do the follwing…
Go to youtube
Type in wife beating
Watch the videos
And then imagine could ever such discussions EVER take place on Good Morning Australia or The Panel or ANYWHERE in the west…
The truth lies in your hearts.
Nonsense.
Anyone who criticises her “sides” and gives “supplication” to “those who want to kill her”?
Just ridiculous.
Kim,
Is what she said overwhelmingly true? Not in specific remarks of her reactionary comments regarding genital inspections and immigration – but in her denunciation of Islamic states and their treatment of women…
If so – support her comments denouncing the treatment of women in Islamic countries and criticise the specifics…
If you think she is Islamophobic – sorry but by default, you have helped the cause of her oppressors. I stand by my comment. Your comments and those of others WILL be used by those on the radical right of Islam to enhance their cause… period. Like it or not. You will be used by them to assist their cause.
I strongly doubt that, and it’s not my intention that it should be the case.
But you may like to contemplate how defending her freedom of speech is compatible with calling for there to be no criticism whatsoever of her views.
My point is, as I said in the post, that to the degree (and it’s a large degree in many instances) that some cultures are oppressive to women, the most effective and principled way of addressing that is to support women and organisations working to change that from within that culture. As Jo says, NGOs and activists are having a lot of success in opposing FGM. Ten thousand comments at Tim Blair’s blog and speeches by Ali will have no demonstrable effect. I’d repeat for the umpteenth time that the logic of Yglesias’ post is impeccable – it’s much more likely that persuading people that FGM is incompatible with Islam will have an effect than denouncing Islam in toto. And I don’t believe that many of those who associate themselves with these denunciations have as their primary motivation opposition to women’s oppression but rather justification of Western foreign policy and the chance to use a big stick against lefties in the West – as in the remarks from Ms Andrews above.
Dazza, have a read of this on the ground report on conservative muslim villagers in Senegal coming together to abandon both FGM and child marriage practices…
http://www.tostan.org/news-nov21_05.htm
Also Kim – present an alternative model for this woman to make a difference.
What should she do?
How could she better enable change?
I do agree with you on this point – merely going on TV or grandstanding does not always produce the optimal results…
You need look no further than those redundant “Reclaim the Night” marches or “Rabbit Proof Fence” style movie making to see that!
In her instance – given that you have never been near a situation like hers – what and how would you have handled it.
Then when you have figured it out – maybe drop her a line.
Jo,
great. That’s fantastic. What an enlightened bunch. I encourage that.
And I am not sure it proves what exactly? That they are progressive?
That Islam can be good? Sure it can be – mostly if it disavows the actions of its founder who practised polygamy and underage sexuality, random murder, genocide and the murder of apostates. Islam, like all religions, would be better – if they ignored the ‘holy books’ and adopted a secular legal system based on the French Republic, the US constitution or our own Westminster model than their own…
Sure our system is flawed and could be better – but – it’s waaayyyyy better than what they have.
The more they cling to what the Koran teaches (or their respective tribal beliefs)…. the worse they will be.
Your point in effect is this – they are becoming more civilised and less reliant on the teachings of their tribes / leaders / religious scripts / prophets.
The sooner the better.
and here’s another http://www.tostan.org/news_dec07_03.htm
they are such positive and joyful reports on significant changes in these countries.
Rob:
A claim that not all of her statements on Islam are rational is not a claim that she is stupid.
She is obviously a very intelligent woman. If you haven’t learnt by now that intelligent people from all backgrounds, beliefs and ideologies are very accomplished at rationalising their irrational responses, then you haven’t been paying attention.
Also, a person can advocate something unethical in one area without being ethically bankrupt. You do sometimes display a tendency to descend into hyperbole. I do consider advocating the dismantling of an entire culture rather than reforming extremists within the culture unethical.
As I was the person who introduced the term “bankrupt” into this discussion, I want it to be understood that I used in the context of “intellectual bankruptcy” not “ethical bankruptcy”.
I do not dispute that Pamela Bone is a very sincere, nice and moral person.
Pamela Bone is merely ignorant and blinded by her own ideology.
Warning: The equation of criticism of Ayaan Hirsan Ali to anti-semitism has exceeded the safety parameters of to “draw a long bow.” Please adjust your rhetoric to more acceptable levels of rationality.
The only military action the luvvie-Left is interested in is against Israel. And, as they will tell you, all this mewling over Sudan and support for Ayaan Hirsan Ali is just an Islamophobic ruse to deflect attention from the REAL issue: Palestine.
John Pilger told me that, and he should know. He’s like the biggest expert on being left-wing and shit who ever lived. Except Katz.
feralsparrowhawk
You make some valid points. Tell me, do you per chance have any of your blog musings from when Hanan Ashrawi visited Australia? I imagine they would confirm your position re Ali, yes?
Same goes for Kim and all you other “feminists.”
Dear Department of Rhetoric
You can take our hyperbolic equivalencies out of our cold, dead discourse. False dichotomies don’t kill arguments, people do.
Sincerely,
Admiral Fiasco da Gama, Count of Vidigueira
PS. Rob, you mentioned Sakharov above. Which side were you on when he was exiled?
—SIGNAL (UNCLASSIFIABLE)—
FROM: ADM DAGAMA
TO: LPHQ
POSITION: DOWNWARD FACING DOG POSE
—TEXT—
COMMENT AUTOMODERATED
WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR
THE WORLD WONDERS
ARGUMENTUM AD ABSURDUM
DIEU ET MON DROIT
—SIGNAL ENDS—
Congrats, Rob, on keeping the flag of good sense flying almost single-handedly.
Of course, feminists are leftists first and feminists later, just look at their treatment of women used and abused by Bill Clinton.
Just on the libertarian arguments raised above, it’s quite possible (indeed usual) to be a libertarian who is opposed to foreign military adventures who nonetheless holds that certain ideological or cultural practices are superior to others.
I’m quite happy to deride the Islamic version of Imaginary Friends ™ in the sky, because – like all belief systems founded on superstition – it’s a lorry load of bulldust. That doesn’t mean I want to go to Islamic countries and take away their particular lorry load of bulldust. For a start, the response is that of a baby having its rattle taken away writ large. And it’s not my problem.
I don’t know that Ali is a supporter of liberal interventionism. I get the impression that she vacillates on this point. Bone certainly is a supporter of liberal intervantionism – she’s bought into the myth that it’s possible to go to someone else’s country and change them into something she’d rather prefer and that they don’t like. Not going to happen, not in the short term at least.
That said – while I disagree with Ali’s specific proposals WRT immigration policy – I have no problem with a country like Australia behaving as if it were a large corporation seeking to recruit staff that will benefit that corporation. I’ve made my opposition to excessive numbers of low-skill immigrants clear over at Catallaxy, on the grounds that it depresses wages for low-skilled residents and undermines social cohesion. Taking in skilled immigrants that speak English (or are keen to learn it), have values that readily integrate with those already common here and can generally improve the national bottom line is probably a good thing.
I figure that – while not on a scale approaching that in other countries – Australia has enough misogynistic ning-nongs who’d mispell cat hanging off the public tit already, without importing any extras.
I can sort of see where Yglesias and Kim are coming from, but that arguments highlights to me that they are the one’s who are blinded by their ideology not PB. When Kim raises that there is a need to undermine from within it is of course correct but there is also a need to undermine from without and that is what Ali does and it ought not be condemned or undermined from anyone purportedly on the left as this post does.
I have many other criticisms of the often unintelligible justifications for criticising those who are trying to fight the enemy with the arsenal they have which i won’t go into at present – and absolutely no idea why this is being discussed under the heading more bones to pick – why was it necessary to criticise Pamela Bone for what she did not say in her article? Seems to me that as a journalist writing under strict word limitations she has more immunity from that kind of criticism than us mere blog writers. Maybe it was a matter of wanting to kill two birds with one stone.
Lastly i had to laugh when Katz was trying to ‘prove’ Pamela Bone is attacking the left – implying that she is either right-wing or anti-left when she said
But of course that is not cultural relativism. No Katz that’s not what the left does that’s what the pseudo-left does. (Pommygranate take note)
This post will now go into moderation for reasons i’ve not been informed about and so you lot criticising people for not putting their actions where their support for free speech and open debate is – is nothing more than convenience. I suppose getting rid of the opposition is ok if you want to keep talking to yourselves and refraining from dealing with the significant contradictions obvious between the ‘purists’ and the ‘by degrees’ among you.
More “Enlightenment Values” on display at Defence of The West Central:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/view_coloured/#253876
Wow!
Blogs and emails are amazing for creating a space to say stuff that people would rarely say face to face.
That was a bit harsh.
Ok, how about a game of – was the intervention worth it?
Iraq – the first time (kicking out of Kuwait)
Iraq part two
Napoleon’s regime change operations across Europe – did they make Europe better or worse? Worth it?
WWII
Korea
Vietnam
Any others are welcomed.
Stop moaning Kim when you`re under guard for exercising your opinions I`ll take note.
Timmy Blair’s gang of troglodytes seem to hold the view that criticising certain aspects of Ms Ali’s views is beyond the pale, indeed “evil to the coreâ€?, equivalent to Nazism (“sounds like Kim could put up a spirited defense at Nürembergâ€?) and deserving of FGM.
Didn’t we used to have a word for when a whole lot of people gang up on one person for daring to question certain things deemed two sacred to debate? Ah yes, political correctness, that was it!
Heh!
Meanwhile, over at On Line Opinion, Shakira Hussein provides her view:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5924
When it comes to physical consequences of exercising one’s opinions, the “free speech” left have serious form in wetting their pants.
Example, the panicked “don’t publish” reaction to the lunatic islamic violent embassy burning response to publishing a few mediocre cartoons.
Being called on one’s beliefs, & not having the stomach to back them up, destroys any self-worth one may have.
The groups of young people belting up pensioners for daring to listen to Pauline Hanson didn’t last long, not once groups their own age turned up to belt the sheet out of them.
The intellectual left hasn’t the balls to follow through on anything. Lots of talk though, in forums like this, but when bones & blood are at risk, they remember pressing engagements elsewhere.
Leave the hard stuff to the blisters & overalls lefties, they know what a real fight is, & don’t shirk it.
If I read it properly Kim has stated that she disagrees with some of the comments made by Ali.
And yes some of Ali’s comments are reactionary and misguided.
Kim could maybe take the opportunity to comment about the fundamental message of Ali and show solidarity:
– women in Islamic countries are generally oppressed
– being a woman in the west is way better than most anywhere else
– FGM is practised in many Islamic countries with the tacit approval of the government (or blind eye approach)
Chris ganging up one person is exactly what is happening to Hirsi Ali.
I don’t respect your choice either, darl. You clearly believe in a load of superstitious twaddle. I do, however, respect you. This is a different thing entirely. It is not necessary, in order to live in a civil society, to respect peoples’ opinions. It is, however, necessary to respect people. As long as you respect me – and frankly I don’t care if you think I pray nightly to an altar inscribed Markets! – then we’ll get along fine.
Once again, Dazza, the whole point of my post is to demonstrate my solidarity with women in Islamic (and other) cultures who suffer more direct oppression than those of us in the West. However, I believe that the most appropriate way to do so is to support the aims and strategies of those women themselves rather than issue political denunciations.
I’d urge people who take the issue of FGM seriously to read the links Jo has kindly posted which show the progress that can be made through community activism and education in countering the incidence of FGM.
http://www.tostan.org/news_dec07_03.htm
http://www.tostan.org/news-nov21_05.htm
Bollocks. Several people here have criticised some of Hirsi Ali’s views while saying they respect her. Thats certainly what I said. Nobody here seems to find the idea of Ali suffering FGM amussing in the slightest, where as several people over at Tim Blairs seem to think the idea of subjecting those they disagree with to it is an absolute riot.
Surely you can see that their is a distinction between that and suggesting that some of Ms Ali’s ideas may lack merit?
I agree Kim. Change can be achieved from within at local levels. Change can also be achieved in other ways.
Sometimes that means someone has to get up and shout from a soapbox or make a public demonstration.
If you are a feminist you would accept that?
Political pressure also works at times.
By putting this into the mainstream in the USA and Europe – it forces the issue out there. Ali has done a lot for that surely. This blog is a testament to that.
Putting on my Administrator/Moderator hats:
Seeing as there are quite a few new posters on this thread, and not targeting anyone in particular, might I just point your attention to the line just above the comments text-input box that says “Please read the comments policy“?
Anyone who isn’t so new at commenting here but who hasn’t read it yet probably should as well.
Chris I`m talking about her death threats.
Indeed, Chris. The “trash the lefty” fest at Tim Blair only goes to reinforce the point that the rhetoric of the likes of Bone and Ali primarily has its political effect in domestic political disputes in the West.
Dazza, I agree with tigtog that Ali should be listened to on the topic of FGM and that her experiences can be a very helpful way of drawing attention to the issue. However, I disagree with the way in which she counterposes a monolithic Islam to “Western secularism” and the political use she makes of her story.
I’ll say what I said on a previous thread on Pamela Bone. The most useful contribution anyone concerned with women and girls suffering from FGM (by no means all of whom are Islamic) is to give practical and financial support to women’s organisations working within the countries in which it occurs.
That’s worth ten thousand blog comments, to repeat a previous point I made.
Thanks TigTog. Noted and duly absorbed.
Threatening to harm or kill sombody simply because of what they write is absolutely beyond abhorrant. But those people need to be seperated from Ms Ali’s western critics. They are not being critical either in the same way or for the same reasons.
I agree Kim – the same goes for many issues…
Blogs are great for discussion but active participation and support go a lot further.
As for Ali’s viewpoint of Islamic Monolith vs. Western Secularism…. I discern we have differing viewpoints?
I agree with Ali if that is her stance.
We are different from those Islamic countries in very fundamental ways – and I do think that there is a very great threat from Islam at this moment… but perhaps that is another discussion.
I knew a woman who had survived Dachau. No doubt her view on Nazism was too much coloured by her own experience and culture.
Only if she was arguing that all Germans needed to be controlled and converted away from Germanity because of what the Nazis did, Zoe.
what a load of codswallop and bile is being spouted by some people.
for fecking decades, the right have often been a hindrance in respect of development and social justice issues in developing non-muslim or muslim countries – - and bang – as soon as it suits their agenda- they start attacking the very people who have never once vacillated in their support for the alleivation of poverty, women’s rights, social justice in all countries.
NGO’s and aid agencies are chockas full of lefties and many others, out there in the real world working WITH, repeat working WITH communities to bring about real change, from the ground up.
Against this background, we’ve had the corporate world and western govts. knowingly and willingly support repressive regimes in these countries purely for access to natural resources and other purposes – without considering the consequences of corruption, displacement and increased militarism for the local people amongst other problems.
Thankfully, again to activists working WITH public and private finance institutions and the resource companies, and international institutions like the world bank etc – there are significant break-throughs being made in the respect of corporate citizenship via the PWYP campaigns, and others similar initiatives around the Equator Principles etc.
never heard of them ??? wot a suprise, not.
Publish What You Pay
http://www.publishwhatyoupay.org/english/
& a link to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
http://www.eitransparency.org/
Equator Principles
http://www.equator-principles.com/
Like I posted above – it helps if people actually learnt about what is going on in the world, instead of interpreting everything through self-serving media corporations like News Corporation or boof-heads like Tim Blair.
THere are so many excellent small and medium sized organisations run by both women and men in the developing world – many of which are directly supported by civil society in the west including individual donors, philanthropic foundations, the churches, unions and so on.
Only a few years ago, these donors were being attacked daily by the neo-cons for spreading anti-americanism while simultaneously being attacked by authoritarian regimes for interfering in local affairs….
Now that the war is going so very badly, women’s legal aid centres in pakistan are ‘teh latest right-wing must have’ …..scuse me, fingers down throat….
The up-side of course – is real progress being made as per the links above.
There’s a difference between being German and being a Nazi, tigtog. As there is between being an Arab (etc) or being a Muslim. The latter two positions are a consequence of choice. The former two are consequences of biology.
I’m quite happy to try try to persuade as many Muslims as possible to stop being Muslims (ditto for other believers in imaginary friends). Non-violently, of course, which is where I part company with the neo-cons. ‘Persuasion’ includes mockery, humour, belittlement and bad cartoons, too. It’s called freedom of speech.
I agree with Ms Ali, but I dont think she’s useful in the fight to achieve the ends that she seeks. She’s preaching to the converted here, and her rhetoric, correct though it may be, will only inflame people and drive them further into fundamentalism both her and in the Islamic world.
Jo,
you make some sweeping statements about the right – not that I am a member (well I call myself a centrist)… but…
I have actually worked in the NGO community and there are many fine people involved in it.
However it is an industry and a lot of good money after bad has been wasted due to duplications of effort, poor accountability, misguided policies and in some cases corruption.
Like any industry – it seeks ways to perpetuate itself and keep itself relevant, especially now as the market for NGOs is becoming more and more competitive.
Western governments and to some degree western corporations no doubt have some complicitness in the poor governance of the nations you mention – but overwhelmingly, most of the problems are due to the people in that nation who run these countries.
What would you have western governments do? Stop trading with all tin pot governments until they change? Not allow corporations into poor countries until their labour laws improve? I don’t really understand that perspective.
From my observation – business is a better tool for advancing wealth and prosperity than any NGO program to date. Where money flows in the marketplace – people are encouraged to work, produce, consume and better their lives.
No mistake though – many NGO schemes (especially micro finance) have been a roaring success. Most have been mediocre. Some have been downright ‘orrible.
Do you really think the ‘right’ wants the oppression to continue? I suspect that everyone on both sides would want to see more freedom, democracy and a free market place.
German-ness is a biological phenomena, SL? Tigtog’s point was that Hirsi Ali’s got it in for Monolithic Islam, just like the hypothetical Dachau survivor has it in for Monolithic German-ness (not a completely unknown phenomenon). Both are lumping diverse cultures and sets of beliefs into one monolithic bloc, for easier condemnation.
Jo – I am pretty sure that almost all western corporations pay more than local companies. I am also pretty sure that they have much better working conditions that local companies.
From my experience, paying local staff at exorbitant rates well in excess of the market place creates a bloated false economy and resentment in the communities.
From my experience – local staff are clambering over themselves to get jobs with western companies because of the better working conditions, safer environments etc.
Generally speaking – western companies in these developing nations are a huge boost to these communities.
We should encourage business to utilise the relative competitive advantage of cheap labour in poor countries. It is better for everyone as far as I can see.
I don’t think ridicule and belittlement are going to be very effective modes of “persuasion”, SL.
Yeh right….. Arabs everywhere in the Islamic world have choice regarding religion. Can you imagine renouncing your faith in Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Syria, Palestine, rural Turkey or Indonesia? Choice is choice where there is freedom to act. Muslims, like all religious adherents, are mostly born not made.
There WAS a difference between Nazis and Germans though – I agree with that.
I don’t think ridicule and belittlement are going to be very effective modes of “persuasion�, SL.
Tell that to the next climate change skeptic you shame into believing AGW exists.
Human beings are distinct from their beliefs, no matter how benighted… however the Islam that the world is seeing consistently is xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, cruel, sadistic, violent, puerile, conceited, chauvinistic, and hateful.
Islamophobia is an intellectually justifiable fear. It’s fear of the ideology that turns men and women into slaves of irrationality and stagnation. It’s the ultimate anti-progressive paradigm. All progressives should be at least as Islamophobic as they are anti-Christian.
SimonC: Q.E.D.
Yep, just like being an Arab. Suggest you invest in one of those new you-beaut DNA tests – you used to be able to order them through the National Geographic. It’s quite interesting learning the composition of one’s personal woodpile, and with exceptions, tends to show that we in the New World are, ahem, pure Australian mongrels, and that people in the Old World aren’t. Until you start getting to places like Alsace, Wroclaw, London and L’viv… and then it gets really interesting
My point, though, is simple. Religion is an ideology, like communism or fascism. There may be different varieties of it within a given tradition, but it’s relatively easy to spot whether it’s mostly nasty (Scientology, Pentecostalism and – in my experience – almost all varieties of Islam) or nice (Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Buddhists).
Why is it so hard to say that some people really do believe in a load of superstitious twaddle? You don’t have any trouble doing it with the anti-abortion nutjobs in the US. You call them for what they are. Ali is performing a job on Islam similar to Bertrand Russell’s effort on Christianity: she’s attacking the maximising version of the faith (not that there’s much evidence for a minimizing version).
Russell’s barbs helped to bring Christianity down several pegs; Ali’s will likely do the same for Islam. Sure, they’ll carry on like stuck pigs about discrimination and blasphemy and what-have-you – just like the Christians did with Life of Brian and Why I am Not a Christian. I remember the Bishop of Exeter opining that ‘anyone who finds this film remotely funny should be locked up in Broadmoor’. For those unfamiliar with the UK, that’s a prison for the criminally insane. Myra Hindley was an inmate.
I just got that joke, Leniad. Make that a time-delay ‘heh’.
And slinky ninja operatives, yes please. Shintaro! The tea party’s over…
Well said Sceptic…
I am reading a book about Genghis Khan right now.
Boy what that guy did to the DNA of the world.
There’s a difference between being German and being a Nazi, tigtog. As there is between being an Arab (etc) or being a Muslim.
Now would seem an opportune time to refer to the Europe-wide denazification process that took place after the war. Not to mention Godwin’s law…
Wierd, SL, I always thought that ‘German’ was a linguistic and cultural identity that encompassed a range of ethnicities across several nations in modern Central Europe, but obviously not. You’ll be able to tell me which are the genes that constitute Germanness, right?
As a fellow atheist, SL, I wish that might be true. However, Bertie had the huge advantage of being an aristocratic scion with a firmly established intellectual reputation and oh yes a MAN criticising the Political-Religious Establishment from the inside. Hirsi Ali has none of those sociocultural advantages, and thus Islam will not engage respectfully with her opinions in the way British Anglicans and other Christians did with Russell’s.
An effective way to change things is to persuade Muslims that what happened to her was unIslamic and unKoranic (both of which are substantively defensible arguments). Just saying “this happened to me because Islam sucks, that’s why I’m not a Muslim anymore, and that’s why you shouldn’t be either” is only going to raise hackles and generate a backlash.
It’s not a Utilitarian approach.
I did try to deviate away from Godwin there, TimT, but alas I don’t think I’ve succeeded… For those curious about ancestry issues, this link will take you to the National Geographic study in which I participated, and which does a nice job of drawing a distinction between things within our control (like religion) and things outside it (like race). By confining “Germans” to the borders of modern-day German, of course I’m engaging in some ethnic papering over, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a considerable difference between a political ideology and the set of genes with which one is born.
The fundamental issue is still open, however. Why is Ali’s attack on Islam so worrying? I can understand the distaste for Bone’s military adventurism, but as I said above, the bulk of Ali’s critique is coming from a very different place. I’m willing to be persuaded that she’s a ‘Estonista’, but I suspect her ideas are more complex than that.
Tigtog – are you suggesting she should not speak up because she is a woman and Muslims won’t listen to her because of that? Please tell me you didn’t mean that.
Thankyou, Tigtog.
And all the more reason why I’m going to keep listening to Ali, and going to encourage my country (or any country in which I happen to reside, given the fact that I’m a beneficiary of globalisation) to adopt an immigration policy that steals all the smart women off countries that treat them like shit
You’ll find, SL, that Kim’s post attacked Bone and the liberal adventurists. It was pommygranate who started the naming-and-shaming.
I do wish that governments would put there money where their mouth is.
Bush and Howard talk openly about the oppression of women in these countries. We should advertise to the world (like the west did with communism) that any woman and any apostate (who by any measure is also oppressed) will be offered asylum and residency.
Then watch.
It was a method that subverted the legitimacy of communism.
You’ve got that mixed up tigtog. You are trying to portray Hirshi Ali as a sectarian which she is not. She has come to this country and has been asked what we can do and responded with some confronting comments – cut her some slack – because of her experiences with migrant communities in the Netherlands – which resulted in murder, and her living her life under 24/7 guard, it means she needs to take these questions seriously. She is basically saying you can’t allow these hurtful practices that are occurring within the privacy of the immigrant communities to continue unchallenged. It is not sufficient to just outlaw FGM you have to enforce the law and be effective.
All migrants are vetted. The Sudanese or Somali’s etc don’t need to be controlled or converted because they are Sudanese or Somali. They may need to be monitored because of their cultural practices – these practices (FGM) have been banned. I’m sure that Tigtog as well as myself wants to see Australian agencies actively enforcing sanctions against mutilation, and child marriages, and providing education to women in language specific material. I admit that it is problematic but all forms of family intervention by agencies of the state is problematic. Like any child abuse it is already compulsory for people to report it.
It is the same thing as what has been happening in Aboriginal communities with child abuse for years with a blind-eye being turned to it because it was only happening in that community. People are saying enough of these double standards. All our children need protection.
Basically, if feminists are able to mount arguments to waive equal opportunity provisions as they relate to women for the good of girls and women why is it not possible for similar exemptions to apply to agencies as they deal with cultural groups for the benefit of members of that group. For instance in Australia this already applies as it relates to the provision of education support for aboriginal students. These issues may also be able to be dealt with by using a carrot as well as a stick. I’m no expert and i suspect that provisions vary from state to state. As i see it – it is a problem to allow non-English speakers to immigrate and then to literally set them adrift with little government or other community support.
These are profound questions that are being raised and like Hirshi Ali I don’t want to see ghetto’s because it is invariably the women and girls who are the most isolated within them. Also, I find it very confronting seeing burqa’s walking around and have come to the conclusion that the burqa ought to be banned – I’m talking here of the full cage not the more moderate veils. (How’s that for giving you something to attack me on).
Kim argues that the most useful contribution is made from within. But what are those in Hirshi Ali’s position supposed to do from the outside – abandon their sisters who have been unable to escape, forget about their role in changing the world for the better for the other little girls? Give thanks for making it away themselves and get on with ‘enjoying’ their designer jeans and mutilated existence?
She is not within and has a powerful role from without. More power to her.
Well SL as I have said Im not worried by Ali’s Islam bashing but by her wacky policy ideas for Australia.
SL:
But how does generating an Islamic backlash against her Westernised apostacy, that will be used to justify further oppressions of uppity Muslim women at home who haven’t run from their country, help achieve Hirsi Ali’s stated goal of stopping FGM and forced marriages for other women?
I inadvertently largely answered you above, but here’s why: she appears to be making no effort at all to ameliorate the inevitable backlash to her opinions. She’s putting her vengefulness above the safety of the women she claims to want to protect.
Heh, sorry to harp on like this, but you didn’t quite get out of Godwin territory SL, even with the swab test.
Ethnic Germanness don’t got much to to with Modern Deutsch-heit: Anglo-Saxons, after all are Germanic. ‘Germany’ (as in the German-speaking peoples) has contracted and expanded over centuries, and migrant flows to and from it and neighbouring blocs made a joke of Hitler’s racial classifications back in the 13th century. A large part of the population of the FRG (and indeed of Austria) is made up of people descended from linguistically and culturally Slavic tribes absorbed back in the 9th-12th centuries — and don’t get me started on ‘Prussians’. Germanness as a biological identity stopped having any synonymous relationship with linguistic and cultural Germanness in the depths of the early Iron Age at the latest.
Nope, she has the right to say whatever she likes. That doesn’t translate to a right to be free from criticism.
I wasn’t the one who compared her with Bertrand Russell who had a lasting influence on theology and Christian apologetics. I offered my hypothesis as to the social privilege reasons that Russell was listened to and seriously and respectfully engaged with when many other atheists were handing out pamphlets that sank without trace: some of the serious engagement was due to his sheer ability as a logician, but most of the respect was due to his social position as an aristocrat.
Hirsi Ali has none of those advantages that will bring about respectful engagement with her opinions from within Islam. So what exactly does she hope to achieve with her diatribes? Because I can’t see how her stated aims can be achieved by what she is doing.
Her “diatribes” might be effective as far as I am concerned… maybe in some corner of the world Moslem women are watching what she has said on YouTube and it is fortifying their own convictions to act, to escape, to form collectives, to have a voice – how do you know?
Maybe it will bring feminist groups together to denouce Islamic religion as practiced in these nations as a monstrous form of patriarchal oppression (Ok that last one was a joke – we all know that’s never going to happen).
Of course we may never know because the chances for survival of a woman coming out and saying anything WITHIN Islam are pretty low.
As I still understand you Tigtog – and I am calling you on this – because you repeated it….
Respectful enagagement is of course relative… you and I can have an argument or a disagreement, without the threat of going to jail, being physically assaulted, raped or murdered. What I would consider respectful engagement would be blasphemous to many.
Many Moslems find it not just disrespectful but downright blasphemous that a woman can speak out against authority…. so does that mean women should not speak out?
Many Moslems find those that have left the religion and denied Allah worthy of death…. so does that mean only those within the religion can speak out?
I can’t believe you are trying to illigitemise her based on whether she is acceptable to the Moslem world or not.
News Flash: apostates and women who speak out are not considered ‘cool’ people to listen to in the Islam world.
Message to Ali – you should know better, please only allow respected Moslem men witin the Islamic community to speak up. As for you, everything about your experience is useless and should not be repeated because it won’t change anything. Be quiet please!
Steve at the pub
I must say I think history will date the final nail in the coffin of The Left as 9/11/01.
agree with alot of yr points Dazza in relation to ngo’s, but this is for another thread ie. to rake over finer points in respect of trade and development issues, but by my links, you’ll notice i have alot of time for companies that are now starting to do the right thing, and alot of time for people of goodwill getting on with the job.
which is not what alot of people who are seemingly outraged by kim’s post are on about.
As to Hirshi Ali, i dont have any issues with her, or even what she has to say. i’m more concerned that the paid War boosters cynically use her to justify their positions in relation to Iraq and simultaneously bash lefties for good measure. neither has anything to do with repressive muslim practices or FGM. If the COW had invaded Saudi Arabia, I could see what they are on about…..
Why must you say?
I’d like to know who the idiot is that’s forcing you to say stupid things.
Dazza, you appear to be reading every word I write in the most wilfully contrarian way possible. I have great admiration for many Muslim feminists who are working within their culture and gaining ground against misogynistic discrimination and oppression.
I want Hirsi Ali to be their ally instead of undermining what they are trying to achieve by denouncing monolithic Islam.
I want her to keep on speaking out about how terrible FGM and forced marriage is, the louder the better.
I want her to stop spreading the misapprehension that the best way to stop FGM and forced marriage is to dismantle Islam, because I believe that is not only wrong but actively counterproductive.
Also, apart from Jo’s excellent contribution, and Kim’s measured defense of her argument, the best contribution to this whole thread was the very first, which neatly encaspulates the confected outrage and sheer hypocrisy of the likes of SATP.
Of course, my wants have absolutely no power to compel her in any way, they’re just wishes really.
Hmm. Lessee
Apartheid was an abhorrent practice, and I am very sorry that it was inflicted on South African blacks. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “we� have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in country where it occurs and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.
The Holocaust was an abhorrent event, and I am very sorry that it was inflicted on European Jewry. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “we� have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in country where it occurs and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.
The Killing Fields were abhorrent , and I am very sorry that it was inflicted on one third of Cambodia’s population. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “weâ€? have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in country where it occurs and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.
Slaughtering millions in the Terror and the Gulag was abhorrent, and I am very sorry that it was inflicted on Soviet citizens. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “we� have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in country where it occurs and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.
“Lynching them niggers” was an abhorrent practice, and I am very sorry that it was inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan on innocent blacks. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “weâ€? have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in country where it occurs and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.
So there is actually no evil a progressive cannot excuse with this monstrous piece of amorality. Does that not make anyone holding this view both amoral and fundamentally evil themselves?
MarkL
Canberra
For the record, I do not believe the war in Iraq was a good idea.
I too have reservations about her move to become aligned with a group in America with a clear agenda. What she has to say may become sullied by that. No more though than people like Cindy Sheehan. People always risk being written off by the other side of politics the moment they place a stake in the ground on the political football field.
Better for her if she had remained independent and spoken across the political spectrum.
Sadly, I suspect… she felt let down by those on the left in Europe, many of whom I am sure did not like her anti Islamic messages.
I think many here are tainting what she has said and will continue to say because she is on the other team. You will attribute motives that may or may not be there, look for excuses not to believe her, and listen to voices that are more aligned with your political stance that contradict her.
My observation is, that if someone is on your team, you are more willing to oversee mistruths, misguided motives or reactionary commentary – but people never seem to miss the opportunity to find them in the opposing side.
Aside from the reactionary and naive comments she made regarding ‘what Australia should do’ – I find her general underlying beliefs to be authentic. Islam is overwhelmingly a patriarchal and oppressive religion.
She wants to condemn Islam. You don’t agree with her.
I am with you that a more pragmatic approach is necessary at times. But also remember the Islamic world is for the most part, highly dogmatic in its approach to the Q’uran, Sharia etc. It seems hard to have a discussion with people who from the go will not accept other religions seriously into their social framework (with the exception of Turkey, Malaysia and less so Indonesia).
So what would be the best thing for Ali to do?
At some point in time, be you on the Left or the Right, you must take a look at what you are doing. Sometimes it really is simple.
The Left is not just criticising, but Anathematising someone who is under the threat of death by Reactionaries and anti-Progressives. The criticism is not just about her particular recommendations, it is because “her experiences have coloured her perceptions about Islam”.
Kim, that was a very unfortunate phrase. In fact, as MarkL has shown, the whole argument against any intervention against Fascist Theocracy is unfortunate, and has echoes in the “America First” and other Peace movements in the 1930’s.
The Left has, on the whole, become associated with smelly dictators, the Kim Jong Ils, the Mugabes, the Castros, and lately have become wholesale apologists for the most oppressive theocracies, simply because the west is not totally 100% perfect in every particular. They see no difference between Abu Ghraib (as is) and Abu Ghraib (in the Saddam era). Between forcing prisoners to use unscented soap, and burning their eyes out with blowtorches.
Now criticism of our institutions, our government, our actions is essential if we are to improve. But the criticism is now more mendacious than real.
People neither on the left nor right now look at who is being threatened with death – or actually ritually slaughtered – for what they say, and who is both attacking them and defending their murderers. We need the Left. Not IslamoFascist apologists.
Kim
I read your article (after following the link at Spleenville) and can confirm that you make a clear and valid argument.
It is obvious from what you’ve written that you consider actual progress in fighting female oppression in Muslim countries to be the test by which proposals should be measured. Clearly you reject the ‘culture clash’ approach being promoted by Ali on the basis that is is inflammatory, ineffective and in fact likely to further entrench the suffering of women in Islamic countries.
And after all isn’t the provision of actual solutions that protect women what this is all about?
It is most telling that people like Rob (and Tim Blair)are forced to completely misrepresent your message in their desperation to attack you. His comments, and those of the other visitors from Blairville, demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the argument you have made.
I see no reason why you would continue to indulge these people given their now demonstrated inability to understand a relatively straightforward argument. You have made yourself perfectly clear – and your message is positive and informative to those of us with the cognitive ability to digest it.
Thanks for a thought-provoking read.
I see this thread as just another variation of the old left-right dichotomy.
The Left believes they can stop FGM by convincing the perpetrators that what they are doing is wrong.
The Right believes the only way to stop FGM is by imposing their will on the perpetrators.
For the record, I support Hirsi Ali and believe the Right viewpoint is more practical.
I guess Tim Blair sooled only his pseudo troglodytes onto LP, knowing it’d be a waste of resources to sool real troglodytes onto pseudo leftists.
I think of this thread as being more about the reason — passion dichotomy, with a healthy whack of the logical, sensible person — utter-fucking-simpleton dichotomy chucked in for good measure.
This is borne out by every freaking Eustonite on this thread exhibiting an inability to read bordering on the bloodyminded and bawling incoherently about how mean Kim/Tigtog/Leinad The Terrible, Maligner of Somalis are to poor Mrs Hirsi Ali who we apparently want to ritually disembowel and roll around in her guts. If that floats ya boat Dan. J., then don’t me get in your way, I’d just remind yas that AHA would probably still be in Pt. Headland getting mocked by heroic Comrade Blair had she thought to take a boat-ride over here…
I’m off to ride my bike.
Really? I thought most contrarians have debated the topic based on its merits, with logic and with a minimum of abuse. Are you sure this comment is in line with the site’s policies?
That doesn’t float my boat.
Yes, get some fresh air, Leinad.
Who here has condoned the oppressive behaviour against Islamic women? Cite?
Disagreeing with you on the most effective way to alleviate said oppression is not the same as tolerating/condoning said oppression.
Pointing out that certain advocacy regarding women in Islamic societies is counterproductive to the alleviation of their oppression is likewise not the same as tolerating/condoning said oppression.
Adrian, time to back up your mouth.
Please state examples of my hypocrisy, and do it now.
Please state examples of outrage from me, confected or otherwise.
You’re all condom & no viagra aren’t you?
MarkL, you couldn’t have summed it up any more effeciently.
I’m angry at myself for reading through this entire thread… an hour neither I or my boss will ever get back (though I’ll still get paid).
I’m constantly, and consistently amazed (which, perhaps, says something about MY ability to learn) at the “left”s willingness to turn on, or minimize, anybody that might threaten a percieved greater good. The obvious examples have already been mentioned: feminism on Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton.
This whole thread SHOULD have been: “Ali’s techniques may not be the most effective…” followed by “but her cause is just and we should support it to the hilt.” This second-guessing about how iin some fantasy-land somebody may someday use her words to justify another war (even if that war is as moral and just as is possible) is just tiresome. Now I’m tired. It worked.
I made 4 million yuan profit today selling an illegal coal mine I bought less than two months ago in Shaanxi. My problem now is how to get 4 million in cash back to Hong Kong. That’s 40,000 notes, for those interested in cash transactions in China.
Kimmy, you seem like a smart girl. Any ideas?
Whether Ali’s approach is very pragmatic is arguable. But is your response to Ali any more enlightened?
Contra viewpoint – how pragmatic is it of Kim to raise this as an issue to further her debate? How does raising this issue further the cause for reasonable discourse? How does criticising such an obvious victim as Ali assist you? Surely this type of commentary alienates people in Australia?
So if we hold Kim to the same standard that she holds Ms Ali – ie. speak only if your contribution engages, does not create hostility, and effects real change – she is guilty of the same mistake.
Whether Kim’s comments are true or not (and there is some substance to them), have they assisted the cause of many on the left in bringing about more tolerance of Islam? Or have they in fact backfired?
Some on the left need some PR desperately on this. If I were a media spin doctor (and I am not as I probably would be crap) I would whisper in the ear of people like Kim “you cannot win against this woman. Any comment will make you look (if not by fact, but insinuation) like you are a hypocrite. This is not a battle you should fight.”
So this is the ultimate irony. Kim is accusing Ali of using her voice in a manner that is not effective or enlightening. And yet Kim you have achieved that exact outcome or perception for yourself by your criticism of her. How have you furthered your cause by these comments?
Hirsi Ali gives up her freedom Tigtog gives up chicken….hmmm who to listen to.
Tigtog, You ALL have, by regarding the horrific mutilation of the genitals of small female children as a cultural issue not to be condemned as barbaric and uncivilised. The cultural relativity it takes to rationalise this evil practice as a ‘tradition’ is appalling, and betrays profound moral blindness (at best), amorality (median case) or straight out acceptance of evil (at worst). If the latter, it also implies deliberate and malicious racism, because ‘it’s only ‘little brown people’ who suffer in your culturally relativist world, while you posture and preen, using their suffering as a prop to your own sense of (a)moral superiority.
What a dreadful display of how far the left has sunk into the slime.
Once you supported human rights, the idea of human progress, and were relentless enemies of totalitarianism. Now you defend the ‘traditional rights’ of misogynist theo-fascists to mangle little kiddies genitals, rejoice in the literal enslavement of women in ‘traditional’ backward and primitive cultures with Dark Ages religions, and slobber, delirious with joy, over every fascist dictator, murderer, rapist, torturer and terrorist you can find: provided they despise your own society, of course.
What HAPPENED to the left?
MarkL
canberra
Kim
You insist you will not support Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s ‘homophobia.’ Tell me, do you consider Anthony Lowenstien to be an anti-Semite?
MarkL, clearly your rants are composed from a TEH LEFT HAS SOLD THE WEST OUT random comment generator, because they have absolutely no relation to what anyone has said on the thread. The post condemns FGM and no one here is supporting “traditional rights” to indulge in such abhorrent practices. We’re merely suggesting that lunatic rants such as yours – and the post argues that such rants are the height of concern trolling as they do nothing whatever to advance the actual position of the victims of these abuses but only seek to make wingnut political points – have little or no effect, to the degree that they’re not counterproductive.
Thanks, Mondo Rock. One would hope so.
As to SL’s Bernard Russell analogy, I’d make two points:
(a) Russell was criticising Christianity from within a culture formed by Christianity, and in fact one where not just secularisation but anti-clericalism had prepared a receptive ground for his writing. That’s a very very different thing from people in the West denouncing Islam from without.
(b) I very much doubt Russell had any real effect on the growth of unbelief (which is what it really is, not an active repudiation of Christianity) as perforce his writing would only have been known to an educated elite.
I have no idea what you’re on about, John. I’ve never said Ali was homophobic and I have no idea what Anthony Lowenstein has to do with anything relevant to this thread.
“Most, if not all the treatment of women in islamic societies is being tolerated (and evidently condoned) by the people claiming to support feminist causes. Why is that?”
Why indeed?
Because those same western liberal apologists believe (incredibly) that adults who hold down small children & cut their private parts off are able to be reasoned with.
If a 5-year old girl on her way home from pre-school were to be taken by two women & a man to a gold coast motel room, where they held her down & cut off her private parts (or ANY other part, say an ear or a few fingers) what would these same people say?
I’m not sure who disgusts me the most, the sickos who do it, or the sickos who apologise for them.
Sorry, steve at the pub, outside your imagination and the groupthink of Timmeh Blair’s thread, where precisely has anyone on this thread justified the practice of FGM? The post condemns it. Cite some actually existing “western liberal apologist” please.
MarkL,
that’s a red herring. Kim seemed to me to be making a critique of what Ali said and the manner and relative effectiveness of how she said it. I haven’t seen anywhere that Kim has supported Islam in this respect (explicitly at least, though I have suspicions she is an apologist). Kim’s criticisms of Ali have merit. Ali may have compromised herself:
– by aligning herself with a right wing political group who WILL hoist her banner for their own political purposes
– by making some ill advised remarks on how to control these issues within Australia
– by her manner of speech which might inflame tensions and alienate her from the people she wants to protect (and I DO by the way think she sincerely wants to protect these women and rebuke assertions that she is totally self serving)
In effect maybe Ali has compromised herself.
In that respect I have come to agree with Kim and others here.
Problem is that these assertions and open criticisms will actually backfire. Like Ali who may have created anger and resentment (even though some of what she says is true) in the Islamic world, Kim likewise will have achieved the same result amongst the majority of people in Australia (though I flatter Kim and this blog here – Ali has a much bigger platform than anyone here, and so she should).
I am all for open criticism. In fact I lean more to say what the hell you like than Kim is. Problem is that you can get tied in your net. If you hold people to a standard of public discourse to which you do not hold yourself, you have a problem on your hands.
Shorter MarkL:
My heightened sense of moral outrage makes me more absurd than usual, and I think people will take me seriously if I use CAPITALS.
Wrong as usual. Like all the other trolls you haven’t bothered to actually read Kim’s comments and if you have, well you’re even more of a boofhead than I thought.
I remember when you were a particularly vociferous cheerleader for the Iraq war, keyboard commando extraordinare. Well you couldn’t have been more misguided about that, but you’ve learnt nothing, you understand nothing, and all you’re left with are the same pathetic and empty platitudes and a totally synthetic moral superiority that would be amusing if it wasn’t quite so malignant and vindictive.
Shorter JG: I don’t have to make sense.
An example of ambiguous apologist writing is required?
How about this:-
“FGM is an abhorrent practice, and I am very sorry that it was inflicted on Ali. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “weâ€? have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in countries where such practices occur and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.”
I’m not interested in reasoning with adults whose idea of “culture” is to hold little girls down & slice off their private parts. How sick can people get?
Infibulation is in a whole different league to tying a kid’s loose tooth to a doorknob.
Kim, are you saying that it’s wrong to make a forceful denunication of something you believe to be evil, if you don’t have a practical way to “advance the actual position of the victims of these abuses”?
Are you putting that forward as a general proposition? Would that have applied to the great moral causes of the past, such as slavery and apartheid? Would you have told one of the firebrand abolitionists in antebellum America that there’s really no point railing against slavery from the free states — you just have to wait for incremental improvement to come from within the South?
MarkL had that coming adrian no doubt.
Nobody should resort to insults though.
And nobody on either side should use “I told you so…”
Where did you stand on Gulf War 1? If you were wrong did you shrink like a violet from your general political position? Because MarkL do you really expect him to?
If the Yanks had got it right in Iraq you would be seething over similar rebukes from people like MarkL.
And just for the record, the war is not quite over yet.
What is right is relative – if the coalition of the coerced had won, the world would remember it as a good decision to intervene.
They have in all probability lost – and the people who supported it look like idiots.
It’s not pure luck of course. And I have to say – even to CDFs like myself, the whole Iraq thing looked unachievable and very risky.
Kind of like the people who said no war in the 30’s now look really dumb. But I tell you, if the war had lasted 10 years, left 200 mill dead and resulted in a peace treaty that left Hitler in charge… my god there would be airports and a peace prize named after Chamberlain.
Oh, FFS, satp.
It is a bloody cultural practice. That’s not to condone it. That’s just a fact. I condemn it. I merely point out that:
(a) people who are actually living in that culture have much more chance of doing something meaningful to stop it than people giving speeches using it to stigmatise Islam generally or writing blog comments;
(b) It, and those who suffer from it, shouldn’t be used as a political football for puerile grandstanding about how evil TEH LEFT is.
End of story.
Learn to read, please. Might help if you get off your high horse.
I wasn’t going to come back to a thread that is starting to fester a bit, but I do think MarkL in his ‘pisstake/parody’ post has a point. Far be it from me to tell other people how they should write things (I’ve had enough of that stuff done to me), but I don’t buy this rather silly ‘insider/outsider’ dichotomy. I suspect it may even be a false one (dichotomy, that is). It’s not a matter of ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ but ‘neither’ (which isn’t easy to represent in English – XOR perhaps? Or vel?). Ali was inside the beast; I don’t see how she can really ever be outside it.
Muslims live in Australia. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, I don’t give two craps what they do in their own flea-bitten excuses for countries (although I do note that a significant number seem to want to come to mine). I do, however, think that a good bit of anti-clerical pummelling from the likes of Hirsi Ali is a damned fine thing, at least in Australia. Presumably the body sponsoring her trip out here is interested in a few fireworks – of the intellectual variety. It’s vital that Muslims who live here learn that intellectual fireworks are the only variety legitimate in a country that plays by liberal democratic rules.
Those are my rules, and while when I visited varies Middle Eastern countries I played by their rules and wore a black sack so that I could see the interior of various famous mosques, if an Australian Monty Python team (I note everyone picked up the Bertie bit, ignoring John, Eric and friends) decides to do a Life of Muhammed (it’s got potential – think of the whole ‘follow the gourd/follow the sandal’ scene), then I’d prefer not too see puling excuses made about ‘denouncing Islam from without’.
I take your point about Pamela Bone, Kim – she is tedious – but coupling her with Hirsi Ali is unfair. Ali is fighting misogyny and religiously-sanctioned criminal assault in her own way. It may not chime with yours, and that’s fine. There’s plenty of different ways to skin a cat. But making comments about her views of Islam being ‘too much coloured by her own experience’ is a cheap shot. This is particularly so in light of the fact that you use women in Algeria as a comparative metier.
In Algeria, radical Islamists won the 1991 elections fair and square. The military – at that point defiantly secular – staged a coup, putting the Islamists to the sword, with terrible bloodshed on both sides. Modern Algeria – with its many women in high places – is a product of a species of liberal interventionism, in this case by the military.
Look, Paulus, at this point in time I’m just astounded that anything that is in any way nuanced seemingly escapes understanding. I’ve explicitly agreed with tigtog that Ali does do good work in drawing attention to FGM but the use to which she puts her denunciations – that is to say, the broader narrative that she wraps them up in about the alleged essentially totalitarian nature of Islam – is deeply counter productive.
The combination of the vacuity and the authoritarianism of her “policy proposals” with regard to Australia should give people pause before they join in this whole “she cannot be criticised under any circumstances” nonsense.
Why is that, SL?
She relies on her experience to make her point, surely?
I’m just asking her to stop talking as if “Islam” is some monolithic thing that is to be represented solely by the lowest common denominator of people who claim to be acting in its name.
As a Catholic, I would hope that someone who had been sexually abused by a cleric would be simultaneously respected for the horror of that experience but disbelieved if he (or she) claimed that the Catholic faith as a whole necessarily led to child sexual abuse.
What other experience should she use Kim?Yours?
No, Leigh. But she might like to contemplate whether her own experience is representative.
If she’d been born in Burkina Faso, as jo pointed out, exactly the same horrible things could have happened to her, and they’d be equally deserving of condemnation, but they wouldn’t have been done to her by Muslims.
Don’t let us get started with the Catholic religion.
What a corrupted and perverse religion. A deformity of a deformity. Killing millions in Africa indirectly through its primitive and maladjusted policies on contraception. An oppressor of enlightenment, development and rationality at every turn.
People need shaking, society needs people to come out and denounce abuse and cover up. Enough of the secret meetings, payouts which are dependent upon radio silence, no prosecutions etc etc.
I salute people abused under this system to denounce it.
She has bodyguards 24/7 there are people out there trying to kill her and she should contemplate her experience?We should be attacking that scum not Hirsi Ali.
Here we go again. How many times do I have to say I condemn death threats against her? You asked what purported to be a question in good faith, and I gave you a reasonable answer. If you don’t believe that anything she says should be at all questioned, that’s your business. But obviously there’s no reasonable response that can be made to it.
I think this thread could do with an overnight cooling off period. Comments closed til tomorrow. When they re-open, I’d like to see the thread take a new direction, as it’s just getting more aggro as people continue to reiterate the same arguments. So if you don’t have anything new to say, don’t say it. And if you can’t say it civilly, go away.
Kim,
I think i’m the only person who has commented about policy proposals for Australia, and even then i didn’t comment upon Hirshi Ali’s ideas of (1) signing the pledge of assimilation and (2) the annual examinations of daughters from relevant families. I haven’t thought it out – but i don’t buy the idea that just by putting ideas out there she has to be defined as racist or semi-racist because of them. The bottom line is that you’re now saying that it’s her ill conceived policy ideas that are the main point of disagreement yet there has been no actual debate about these ideas just denunciation.
BTW it is problematic characterising your critics as saying that because of who she is and what she has been through that she can’t be criticised i’ve not seen anyone do this can you point it out?
Seems that detractors here haven’t the courage to actually debate ways in which we in Australia can help women and girls who are at risk of genital mutilation. Hirshi Ali knows you get murder and mutilation if you do nothing. Napoleon said that the logical outcome of defensive warfare is surrender – in order to win you must attack. Exactly what are your proposals for dealing with these issues in this western country?
Like i said earlier the actual mechanisms for welfare monitoring would very from state to state, but i think there is something in requiring families from relevant cultures to indicate that they renounce the practice of genital cutting – to use the less loaded term. That wouldn’t impact upon current families but would be a start.
As i see it, the annual examination of daughters is much more difficult if not impossible to administer. I think one needs to concentrate on getting information to the young girls that these practices are considered to be abusive in Australia and detrimental to their future reproductive health, and generally ensuring that they know their rights and where to go for help.
Mostly I suppose it would be a case of relying on mandatory reporting mechanisms. Once there had been prosecutions the message would become clear to those thinking of continuing the practice. (I noticed prosecutions have occurred in the U.K. – this is also problematic as it requires that there be ’sacrifices’ – i.e. some girls will be mutilated if the annual checks that Ali calls for are not implemented)
The more i think about this the more questions and problems show themselves and i would like to see a well written discussion paper canvassing issues and possible remedies – is there such a thing? can anyone steer me to something. For instance i’m not sure what ought to be the position re polygamy – or bride price – certainly i don’ t think the Australian imams ought to be allowed to give the nod to temporary marriages as occurs in some cultures.
That is enough to get me in trouble for now.
Sorry, identity stealer at it again the above post was not patrickm but informally yours.
Is there any evidence at all that there is an issue “in this Western country?”
Read the thread!
Why? The practice is illegal so by being in Australia such families are already obliged to not partake in it. Contracts like that do not mean anything.
This trend in Australia towards trying to codify social attitudes into existence (Ali proposal, citizenship test, Brendan Nelsons various values in schools initiative) is really getting rather silly.
I just love the way that Cultural Leftist “diversifiers” tie themselves up into knots trying to square the circle between pre-modern multiculturalism and post-modern feminism. Its the gift that keeps on giving to Cultural Rightists. There is no way to do square this circle because it is ideologically impossible, as the case of Ms Ali proves.
Larva Prodders need to be honest with themselves rather than just trying to pick nits out of the Culture War. Their philosophy has a serious internal contradiction.
They can either celebrate diversity which includes pre-modern barbarism. Or they can promote unity where it organises modern civilization. But they cannot have it both ways.
Ahem, shouldnt a certain Larva Prodder be giving someone else a hat tip for rapidly alerting him to the NY Times article?
Yes, thanks for that Jack, it was interesting and I took the liberty of forwarding it around.
Thanks.
The NYT article is a good one but Mark does not appear to realise that it strengthens feminism’s case but weakens multiculturalisms case. It shows that Islamic societies can progress towards modernity, so long as the religion is secularised in civil society and seperated from the state. This is part of the civilizing passage from tribal pre-modernity to national modernity. (And perhaps onward to global post-modernity.)
So what is changing in Algeria is not the theological expression but the sociological foundations. Probably most of the sectarian Alpha-males in Algeria have been killed or are in shell-shock after two generation of internecine warfare. So the women are picking up the pieces. Same thing happened in Germany and Japan after the wars.
But Australia wont get this result if it continued on the multicultural free-for-all started by Fraser.
If we import ignorant pre-modern tribalists from the more backward parts of “Islamia” under the guise of “multiculturalism” then we will get a more reactionary version of Islam. This will be good vote-fodder for degenerate Leftist parties but it is the kind of diversity not worth celebrating.
The key fallacy in analysing the Culture Wars is to take the ideological superstructure at face value whilst treating the sociological sub-structure as a dependent variable. Marx used to lampoon the “ideologico-deductive method” as “the mark of a fool”.
In fact, following Weber’s sythesis of Marx and Hegel, we can say that the real structure of society is conditioned by the interaction of its materialist sub-structure (socio-biology) and its idealist super-structue (theology).
Thus “Islamia” has a vast array of socio-biological structures onto which is tacked a theological scripture, with versions that range from militant sectarian to moderate secularist. The theological superstructure depends on the socio-biological base.
Islam, in its place, is a great civilizing religion which tends to bring tribalists out of their caves and into the law. There are plenty of Islamic nations where women are treated more or less fairly and are kicking on eg Turkey, Indonesia, Malaya. This is something that most feministic Cultural Rightists, eg Ali, Bone, Albrechtsen and Devine, have always affirmed.
THus very backward and ignorant inbred societies, such as SUuni Iraq and Suuni Pakistan, tend to select very sectarian versions of Islam. More modern and moderate societies with properly formed nations states in Turkey and Malaya tend to select more benign versions of Islam. This is what is happening in Algeria.
Mark, you wanted to know if fgm is practised in Australia. A quick google of “fgm in australia: brings up this article:
Anecdotally, I’ve heard of fgm being performed in hospitals in Sydney’s west, and I’ve also heard of cases here in Melbourne where women have to be cut open to give birth, and a couple of years later, the same women are returning with the same problem.
The Royal Women’s Hospital has an FGM liaison unit, and according to a first-person account on their site:
She assessed my FGM degree which was infibulation and developed birth plan for my safe delivery.
She discussed deinfiulation process and gave me the option to get deinfibulated at 20 weeks of pregnancy or during delivery.
I chose the latter, because if I had known that information through the FARREP workers I would have chosen to get deinfibulated before I got pregnant.
For the rest of my pregnancy I used to come to the routine antenatal visits where I was given time to ask questions and discuss important issues for my pregnancy and delivery.
At 28 weeks I was referred to the pre-admission clinic where I was discussed with my social situation, FGM status, admission and discharge procedures.
My labour started spontaneously at home and my husband drove me to hospital. In the labour ward I showed the midwife in charge my birth plan and she called to assist me a midwife who is experienced deinfibulating FGM affected women. She negotiated with me to suture back half way the deinfibulation and sutured the episiotomy.
Looks to me like she was stitched back up, although luckily for this lady not the whole way.
I guess since it’s her cultutral heritage, it’s okay to re-sew her up, and our taxes go towards supporting an abominable practice.
It’s not possible really to tell though if that procedure was medically necessary, nilk. I don’t know enough about the consequences of FGM to be able to say. It’s not indicated what the reason for it was, so you may (or may not) be jumping to conclusions that it was because of her “cultural heritage”.
I’m with Chris – I very much doubt that assimilation contracts would have any effect whatsoever. It’s mindless symbolism. If a practice is illegal at Australian law, that illegality doesn’t get any reinforcement from government mandated bits of paper. If there is evidence that it is occurring, the law should be enforced.
It would also be useful to know more about what sorts of methods those working against the practice in Australia are using. It would seem to me counterproductive to have loud denunciations of it – the key thing should be to convince people it is wrong.
Kim on 1 June 2007 at 12:57 am
Yes. I read Ali’s statement and it is sound good sense, shocking only in its forthright honesty unclouded by airy-fairy, arty-farty, touchy-feely, ideological wankery of the kind put out by Cultural Leftists like Kim. Here is what she said about an Enlightened approach to immigration policy:
Australia has over the past decade accepted more than 25,000 immigrants from the Horn of Africa. Ali says the immigrants should be forced to sign “a contract with your country” to abide by Australian values “and to do no harm to the country, or to individuals, especially girls”.
Ali said Australia should examine its refugee policy to ensure new arrivals were willing to assimilate. “My advice would be, instead of taking people based only on need, to say to them, right now you are desperate and you are needy, and we choose you to settle, but we want you to sign a contract to have Australian values, and you will assimilate,” she said.
“You should have a position where you have one Chinese, one Somali, one Iraqi, none of them speaking English, all together, trying to assimilate. It should not be that they all come from the same country, or the same tribe, and they are all cousins.”
This is an Enlightenment position alright. ie Liberty for women, Equality for all Creeds before the Law and Community for citizens.
It is also good common sense for immigration policy unless encouraging pre-modern tribal ghettos represent a civil ideal for living.
I dont know if values statements are “mindless symbolism” or not. It depends if the values are good or not.
Multiculturalism licences barbaric practices eg FGM. So any values statements associated with that ideology are an open invitation to evil.
Cultural Leftists need to fess up that they have lost the Culture War both in theory and in practice. One cannot combine Enlightened national modernity with barbaric tribal pre-modernity. That is a philosophical axiom that any analytical philosopher could have told you straight out of 101.
The sociological evidence for that proposition is now abundantly clear. We can see it in Beirut, in Baghdad. And in parts of SW Sydney.
It must be agonising for Cultural Leftists like Kim, caught between between the feminist rock and a the multiculturalist hard place. It is truly embarassing to watch her squirm before the appearance of a person like Ali, who has been inside the belly of the beast and returned to bear witnessf.
She cannot be a consistent feminist without renouncing pre-modern patriarchy. But she cannot be a consistent multiculturalist without embracing such practices as FGM.
She deserves no pity for her self-indulgent, self-contradictory and foolish stand. Larva-Prodders who attempt to justify their immoral Culture War ideology now increasingly resemble George Bush trying to justify his immoral War on Terror. They both look like a deer stuck in the headlights every time a new load of evidence is waved in their face, making bankrupt their claims. Both are base their cases on false premises and both cause untold human suffering.
Shame on them.
300!
Thats from the document that sets out Australias cultural policy Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity [PDF]. The thing that Bone and vapid intellectual non-entities like Albrechtsen and Devine (who has shown herself to be incapable of maintaining a consistent argument over 800 words) isn’t multiculturalism. It is a daemonic-looking strawman they have conjured up so they can feel big by denouncing it.
BTW jack, what you wrote is so jam-packed full of bollocks it’s hard to know where to start, so I won’t waste my time. Why don’t you find a blog you can assimilate with?
Chris on 2 June 2007 at 3:50 pm
The thing that Bone and vapid intellectual non-entities like Albrechtsen and Devine (who has shown herself to be incapable of maintaining a consistent argument over 800 words) isn’t multiculturalism. It is a daemonic-looking strawman they have conjured up so they can feel big by denouncing it.
It is touching to see Chris invest so much faith in the multi-culti boiler plate industry. The problem with multiculturalists like him is not personal: they are nice enough. Or political: they mean well for all people.
It is professional: they dont have the analytic skills to grasp how silly their ideas look to someone not invested in happy-clappy feel-good talk. And to someone who has been around the traps, both nationally and internationally.
I split my sides laughing everytime I hear fairy tales about how people who take their ethnic cultures seriously just cant wait for alternative cultures to move in next door. Like Baghdad, for instance?
And then these same cultures are expected to go and read Mill (On Liberty, Subjection of Women) and give up all the privileges of Alpha-maledom! Gimme a break. One born every minute.
The work of daemonic straw-man conjurors is made so much easier by oxymoronic cheese-chalk constructors. Such as the nitwit who coined the notion of “united in diversity” and other boiling-ice nonsensities. Next it will be “lambs and lions lying down together society”.
Christine Keeler has just conceded to you Jack, you’ve got ‘em on the run.
Christine Keeler on 2 June 2007 at 3:56 pm
Funny how fast the Wets run from facts and logic when their ideological cover is blown. Doubtless the sisterhood in the Third World will be patheticly grateful for your ideological support as they have their genitals ripped out.
Sorry SATP, but I’ve conceded nothing. Just couldn’t be bothered arguing with antediluvian fuckwits.
Golly Jack, you really have trounced Christine, she’s taking her bat & ball & going home!
“You’re a fuckwit” .. as rebattals go, this one says more about Christine than it does Jack.
The New Left’s Culture War is the gift that keeps on givving to the Old Right, making the latter the only effective defender of Enlightened values. NOw former terrorists, not Hicks of course, are pro-Howard:
Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani – all former covert operators for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation who now speak out against Islamic radicals – yesterday encouraged other world leaders to follow Mr Howard in being vocal against fundamentalist groups embedded in western nations.
Saleem, a computer software engineer who had terrorism training in Islamic cells around the world, said Mr Howard was an inspiration.
“We are so proud of John Howard and I would challenge any nation to look to what he did when he said ‘if you don’t like it in this country, get the hell out’,” Saleem, 49, said yesterday.
“He’s got guts and has given a clear message.”
The trio, who gave a speech last night to 5000 people at the University of California about the dangers of the home-grown Islamic jihad movement, are targets of the radical Muslim community and are protected around the clock by a fleet of highly trained security staff.
Shoebat, 46, offered some advice to Australia’s radical Muslim population – saying they must adhere to the laws and accept the culture of the nation where they now lived.
First women held in subjection and now former terrorists see the light. But Larva-Prodders still have their heads stuck in the sand.
Kim, like it or not the voice of Islam has beome more and more strident. What we see happening in many parts of the world is a neo-primitive ‘revival’ which seeks to recover a purity of faith that its proponents regard, mistakenly, as a return to the true Islam. Many Muslims despise the hijack of their religion by cruel zealots but fear reprisal. Many, as polls demonstrate, sympathise with them too. We see few signs that moderate voices are prevailing.
What we are witnessing in Islam is a deepening politicisation of tenets which were once spiritual. Look, for instance, at the metamorphosis of the concept of jihad. The ambition of the new Islam is precisely that it is totalitarian, global and monolithic. To be fencing this phenomenon off as ‘culture’ and ruling it out-of-bounds for discussion is to misapprehend it altogether. The new Islam is as universalist as communism was but it has as its goal a submission more complete than anything western totalitarianism ever dreamed of. The Taliban gave us a little preview of this consummation and anyone who claims Afghanistan is worse off without them is certifiable. That this is yet no existential threat to ‘us’ is beside the point if we care at all for the fate of others.
Hirsi Ali has an insider’s clarity of vision, despite her lack of obeisance to Edward Said and university reading lists. She shows a better grasp of the political nature of the revolution that is occurring in the Muslim world than many western leftists. For them Islam is a Rorschach blot into which is projected what is essentially their own narrowing political concerns – be it the pursuit of George Bush and John Howard, their obsession with culture and identity as autistic ghettoes, their nihilistic arguments with enlightenment values, and their persistent, very western romanticising of other cultures regardless of their shortcomings.
Kim seizes on a couple of the more ill-advised things Hirsi Ali says with a relieved eagerness and one suspects bad faith. The left has always been a champion of emancipation and now we are bid, with mealy-mouthed passivity, to do nothing. Hirsi Ali should know that oppressed women being kicked into police cars for showing a few strands of hair – happening in Iran as we banter so enjoyably – are best left to deal with the situation alone, er, sorry ,â€?…people who are actually living in that culture have much more chance of doing something meaningful…â€?. That’s how we support them.
Ali must not speak too loudly, not because she will anger the theocrats who are delighted with the work of their benighted fifth columnists in the west; no, she must not speak too loudly because she embarrasses us.�
Gosh Mark Christine Keeler is just so civil.
Might I suggest http://www.frank-knopfelmacher-is-too-wet-for-me.com?
Kim
Sorry, I meant “Islamophobia.” I was posting on both this thread and the Peel thread, getting my phobias messed up!
My point is, if you feel so comfortable condemning Ali as an “Islamophobe,” I wonder if you similarly condemn Anthomy Lowenstien for being “anti-Semitic?”
Also, I cringed when I saw you try to hide behind the fig-leaf “as a Catholic.” Come on, you’re better than that.
Katz on 2 June 2007 at 5:28 pm
Oh yes Katz, your are right on with your diagnosis as usual. “bollocks” and “antediluvian fu*kwit” are very witty and original ripostes. Why I am not splitting my sides laughing is because I am autistic. I must consult with my neurosurgeon for humour hormone therapy.
skepticlawyer
Some of the world’s top on-Muslim Koranic scholars have to publish under a pseudonym for very real fear of being martyred. And woe betide any Islamic scholar who ever had the temerity to point the philological impossibility of The Koran having been delivered to Muhammad in Arabic.
Great comment, Inurbanus. Best on thread.
Really why dont Cultural Leftists just give up the ghost? Everyone now knows that their cultural ideology is a crock, from high-powered life and mind scientists to the man in the street still faithful to his ‘lying eyes.
Now even their own former comrades are turning on them, not to mention what would once have been their “clients”, such as Ms Ali.
THe game is up. People have stopped listening to po-mo, multi-culti pee-cee clap-trap ages ago. They are preaching to an ever declining captive audience.
The rotting remnant of the New Left is the most effective barrier to social democracy in this country. The only person who really benefits from flogging the New Left’s dead horse is John Howard. He can rightfully suggest that such people should not be allowed near the tiller of the ship of state.
Why dont you be honest about your mistakes, admit that you stuffed up sociology and ignored biology. Stonewalling about the debacle of the Culture War only makes you look like GW Bush desperately squinting for light at the end of the tunnel in the Terror War.
Inurbanus is at liberty to suspect anything s/he likes.
I guess s/he flatters her/himself that her/his suspicions are sufficient to sustain any charge s/he wishes to make, not matter how reckless.
If true, how quaint
And how egotistical.
Jack Stroochi
There is one thing you must remember when analysing postmodernism. It is not POST at all. It is ANTI. The central tenet of pomo ideology that the liberal progressive promise of modernity was a fraud. To wit, the multiculti pomo types are PRE-modern.
It is this reality that sees them so quickly having to resort ethical and intellectual balletics that not even Rudolph Nureyev would have attempted.
That is also why, it quickly gets to the gutter when all they have is to call you names – racist, Islamophobe, misogynist, homophobe……
Jack
The horrifying party political reality is that the ALP, having junked left-wing economics in 1983, has now junked pomo multiculti. The exposed carcass is not pretty and stinks to high heaven.
Robert B “two grubby imperialist wars. One (in Afghanistan) has led …..”
Afghanistan was an imperialist war?
You’ve completely lost it Robert. You need to look at the root causes to understand why the US felt the need to defend itself by attacking the Taliban, and condemning Osama to die in a hole.
Antway, I thought the left’s position was that Afghanistan was OK (or at least would have been if anyone but Bush led it), and that only Iraq is the imperialist war. Or is that only the public position?
Sorry, Kim, but Blair’s lot have comprehensively won this one. Your points look cheap and shallow, and too many of your supporters are evincing the sort of filthy language and sloppy logic that (finally) got Birdy put on permanent moderation at Catallaxy. This irritates me, because I don’t support liberal interventionism, and happen to think people should have to live with the consequences of their shitty electoral choices – be they Nazi or Islamist.
You don’t like Ali because the righties like her and find comfort in her views. Hey, maybe they’re right, and politics isn’t a useful lens through which to view this. The fact that Islamists are mostly brown and poor doesn’t protect them from being more full of shit than the most egregious colonialist and racist. Maybe the only reasonable response is to blow the crap out of them and grind their culture and their religion into the dirt – a 21st century version of what the Romans did to Carthage. Whatever happens, in my country at least, I prefer my liberal democratic rules. Sure, people aren’t going to read John Stuart Mill and FA Hayek at gunpoint, but at least I can raise high the barriers and keep the really misogynistic anti-market-in-ideas grubs out of Australia.
Look, I like your stuff, and you’re one of the most astute bloggers around, but you backed the wrong horse on this one.
tigtog on 1 June 2007 at 10:31 pm
Kim on 1 June 2007 at 11:39 pm
This is a good example of the extreme intellectual naivety, bordering on disingenuity, of Larva Prodder ethnic racket apologists. Its on a par with Bolshevik apologists complaining that they do not intend poverty and tyranny when they institute collectivization. It just sort of…happens every time these policies are pursued.
An ideological activist is responsible for objective consequences of bad policy, irrespective of subjective motives. That is why responsible social scientists concentrate on “unintended consequences”.
Good intentions are not enough. We see how the road to hell is paved with good intentions, or unciteable non-bad intentions, in policy areas as diverse as Aboriginal welfare, the Iraq war and multiculturalism.
The fact is that in immigrant cultural policy lax selection and mad settlement policies will breed barbaraties like FGM just as surely as if they were mandated by constitutional referrendum.
So people like Kim and Tigtog are responsible for their gross ignorance and wanton indifference to the nasty consequences of their silly ideas. Made much worse because it violates at cause they hold dear to their hearts: womens rights.
But then the Bolsheviks claimed to have the workers rights at heart which did not stop that revolution from being betrayed from within. And overthrown by the clients eg Solidarity.
Kim et al seem to have a tin ear, deaf to the clanging ironies of History
sl, I’ve never seen a king-hit delivered with more economy or precision.
You should fight for money!
Kim, from one woman to another I reckon you are a moron.
Who cares about Bone, open your eyes. Judging by your astonishing inability to process what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is saying about aspects of the world in the 21st century and the sheer reality of 24hr protection from deadly fanatical ignorant repressed and undeterred men, its obvious you are either a denialist or an analyst lite at a vastly different end of the modern feminist spectrum to me. I hope I never see you set foot in my university.
Jack, good points. When they are reduced to spittle-flecked invective and such logical nullity as ‘… so jam-packed full of bollocks it’s hard to know where to start, so I won’t waste my time.’ they simply have nothing left.
My wife (nurse, has seen some of the butchery inflicted by the barbarism of mangling the genitals of little girls and it moved her to tears), noted something which made me pause. She said:
What would a person like Kim actually do if the father of the cute little 8 year old girl next door let slip that tomorrow, at midday, the witchdoctor was coming around to slice off her clitoris and labia with a razor blade, sans anaesthetic?
Would she say: ‘Having a witchdoctor hack off that little girl’s clitoris and labia with a razor blade is an abhorrent practice, and I am very sorry that it will be inflicted on the little 8 year old girl tomorrow at 1200. But rather than preaching about allegedly universal values and some sort of right that “weâ€? have to intervene and perhaps more importantly for the ideological obsessives, only to do so in such a way as will satisfy our own preconceptions, it might be worthwhile reflecting on the actual realities on the ground in country where it occurs and the methods activists are using to counter these cultural practices.’
and then make sure she was down at the coffee shop sipping soy latte and earnestly discussing the pro-active nature of modern feminism with like minded progressives at 1200 next day? After all, that would avoid having to listen to all that icky screaming in agony as the little girl was mangled.
Or would she actually put her own feminist butt on the line to stop it from happening?
Somehow, I think she’d be at the coffee shop.
I think that is wrong. We all (left, right and calathumpian) should be able to concur at least on something like that, surely?
MarkL
Canberra
Oh, before the accusations of chickenhawkery/oh-you-pose-the-question-what-would-you-do start, yes, I know that mutilating the genitals of little girls is illegal in Australia so yes, the responsible authorities would be told by me/mine, and I’d have a bunch of mates around just in case they did not show up on time. I do not condone criminal acts whatsoever. But then I am a non-nuanced bloke who understands that there are moral absolutes in the world – like evil. I regard practices such as hacking up little kiddies as barbaric, and as evil. They have no place in Australia at all.
“It’s not possible really to tell though if that procedure was medically necessary, nilk. I don’t know enough about the consequences of FGM to be able to say.”
Kim, it is not difficult to find the consequences of fgm on google.
For a quick look at how it’s usually done, check here.
Please note that the above link contains photographs that leave nothing to the imagination. If you are squeamish, or believe that as it’s a cultural tradition that we should overlook, then don’t follow the link.
According the the WHO back in 2000:
As a woman, I consider fgm to be an outrage. As someone who no longer calls herself a feminist, I find it disgusting that there is vacillation about what feminists should do about it all.
Currently in Australia, about the only action being taken is by those working with the communities here in Oz to educate those recipients, and possible potential recipients of fgm.
After all, we can’t be seen to be condemning something like this.
I’m exceedingly angry about this hemming and hawing about it all, Kim, so please bear with me if I get a bit harsh.
This is one activity which should be condemned out of hand. The doctors that I’ve heard of who do practice it use the excuse that it’s going to happen to the girl anyway, so at least this way it’ll be done in a clean and sterile environment and cause the least amount of damage.
I guess, in the interests of celebrating my daughter’s partially chinese heritage I should have bound her feet when she was two.
Since she’s nearly five now, maybe I can find someone to cut her up so I can fit more into my incredibly multicultural neighbourhood in the municipality of Casey. You know, the one with about 150 different nationalities or so.
This disgusts me like nothing else, and I can’t understand why those who call themselves “feminists” sit back and bleat about how it’s the culture.
Fuck the culture. It is women being mutilated in order that they not participate fully in sexual enjoyment, nor take any pleasure in their bodies and natural and wonderful.
Oh yes. Blair’s rantbots have smitten Strawperson Kim hip and thigh.
(I wonder if they’ll ever get around to arguing against the actual Kim.)
Kim on 2 June 2007 at 2:30 pm
Assimilation would certainly be better than segregation, which is the direct effect of multiculturalism in theory and practice. Mindless symbolism is good. That about sums up the net result of a genuine of bogus Wet ideological activism.
A govt mandated bit of paper could be part of the social contract. After all Wets are always urging govt mandated bits of paper on us, bills of rights, treaties, sorry statements. The difference is that civic cultural contracts would actually do some good.
But the best method to discourage this barbaric practice: Dont let them come here.
And if they persist: show them the door.
kim says:
Rerservations about loud denunciations never seemed to deter Wets when it comes to giving voice to opposition over macro-political evils such as improper wars, torture, climate clogging etc. Why not use them to discourage micro-cultural evils eg child labour, burquas, cousin-marriage and polygamy. This technique work to reduce with wife-bashing amongst Europeans. Why go softly-softly on non-Europeans? Some of them are even more in need of a civic morality check, thanks to morally bankrupt cultural policies.
The rights of men, women and children trump torture dressed up as “cultural heritage” whether religious or not every time as far as I’m concerned.
As for the laws being useless, that is because the bleeding hearts’ brigade has gutted them to the extent that when I’ve got an altercation in my neighbourhood I don’t even think of calling the police. There will be no police presence until after it’s all sorted, and nothing will happen.
If any “alleged” criminals are caught, they will be let off with a tap on the wrist.
Big whoop.
That is why this abomination occurs at all in our remarkable country.
The women and children who suffer most from these practices are not protected by our laws, because we have to respect their culture. Or their religion.
Sorry, that’s not on.
When will you people who think that all cultures are equal (except your own, of course, which should be denigrated at all turns) wake up to the fact that your culture which gives you the freedom to even have this stupid discussion craps all over the others.
Women in islam, and some animist, and pagan and even sub-saharan african cultures do not deserve to be kept lower than us because of the habits of their forefathers.
This is another country, another time, and a whole new way of life.
Leave the old one behind and join us is a brand new world.
So, is this thread a Missy yet or what?
Given that the contention of the post is that these arguments have nothing much to do with the actual welfare of the people concerned (Mr Strocchi’s solution being “show them the door” – so it’s all about humanitarian concern, is it?) and everything to do with scoring political points over TEH LEFT, there’s a fair degree of irony in that comment, Rob.
Really, SL?
Like this gem? Coming on top of all the other charmers from people on Tim’s thread, suggesting that she should “fuck off”, calling her “little Kimmy”, suggesting that she undergo FGM, etc.
I think some of the comments on this thread have clearly been influenced by those on the other thread, but having said that, I recognise that some of those new to this thread were arguing cogently and politely. But the level of emotion clearly prevents some from discussing the issues with appropriate regard for others’ right to hold a view. It’s been significant, in that context, that many people have imputed beliefs to those on the opposite side of the argument that they don’t hold without any evidence whatsoever – it’s very clear indeed that no one on this thread condones FGM or holds any view other than that it is a criminal and repulsive and evil practice. But much of the level and tone of the argument doesn’t give me much confidence that it’s worth continuing.
So I think keeping it open at this time serves no productive purpose whatever. If any one has a new perspective on the issues, and wants to engage in a genuine debate about the best way to address FGM without descending into a political stoush or vulgar abuse, then they’re welcome to email me and I’ll consider re-opening the discussion.
Update: I’ve written a response to the debate stimulated by this post here.