In his report on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s talk at the Sydney Town Hall as part of the Writers’ Festival, Pommygranate comments:
That she is a polarising figure is indisputable. Blog chatter in advance of her talk had produced some of the most vitriolic dialogue that I have seen since arriving here last year.
You can judge whether that’s so for yourself by reading the comments thread on my post about her work (and other things, and I probably made a mistake in trying to analyse too much together) and in the two responses to my post at Tim Blair’s (perhaps soon to be joined by a third, who knows?).
I don’t want to adjudicate that, and I don’t want to re-open the debate. I do want to clear up some misconceptions about what I was arguing, which wouldn’t have arisen had people been reading for meaning and context.
Firstly, some seem to think I was downplaying Ali’s own experience. Perhaps I should have made it clearer that I had no intention whatsoever of minimising her pain and suffering. My choice of words in the comment that’s been singled out left something to be desired. Blog comments are often written in haste, but fortunately the medium also gives us the chance to correct misunderstandings and ambiguous or poorly chosen words.
Secondly, her experiences do not put her beyond criticism. Those whose worldview caused her suffering in the first place, and those who would seek to silence her through threats and intimidation are acting in an evil and abhorrent fashion. But to subject her views to reasonable criticism is not the same thing. She herself vehemently argues for the values of Enlightenment reason. Fundamental to those values is the ability to criticise and to subject others’ views to reason and through argument to approach the truth. It’s in that context that I criticise the substance of her political views. To argue that any criticism of her means that one “sides” with those who against all liberal principles wish to silence her is to totally misunderstand the very same traditions of debate and argument she argues are of paramount importance to a free society.
Thirdly, my criticism of “loud denunciations” of FGM (and I fail to understand why some commenters believe that to use an acronym is to downgrade its horror) does not mean that I don’t believe that it should be denounced by all reasonable and compassionate people. What I’m talking about is expressions of outrage which primarily have a political or religious motivation.
What has been entirely overlooked in much of the criticism of what I have written is that I’ve consistently argued that people who are as horrified by FGM as I and many other feminists are have chosen to do something practical about the issue by giving financial support to women working in African countries who are working within their own communities to convince others that the practice is wrong and abhorrent (as I said in my original post) and should cease. Links were posted to reports of such work on the thread here at LP – you can read some reports of this work here and here. I would strongly urge those who wish to see FGM disappear as a source of horror and trauma for girls and women to give financial support to this organisation. I continue to believe, and agree with Matthew Yglesias and Samhita at Feministing, that this is the most practical and effective way of working to eliminate the scourge of FGM. I believe that Ali does useful work in highlighting the horrific realities of FGM, as I said on the original thread, but I believe that the best step that can be taken to work against it is to give support to those who are best placed to do so where it occurs, not to politicise the issue.
Lastly, as Irfan Yusuf points out, FGM is practiced in many sub-Saharan African countries where Islam is not the majority religion, for instance in Burkina Faso where religious beliefs are overwhelmingly tribal and animist. To ignore this is disingenous, at best. FGM is also practiced by some Jews and Christians, and I don’t think that the cause of opposing its continuance is at all served by turning it into a religious or a political issue.
No doubt I have made some mistakes in some of my arguments, and like everyone else who blogs, have at times chosen my words too quickly. I apologise for that, but I absolutely don’t resile from the four points I’ve made above.
Those interested in Ali’s visit to Australia can also read some arguments from Islamic Australians here and here.
Update: Some very worthwhile links from commenter A. for those who want to read more about the lived experience of women who have suffered FGM, and learn more about other NGOs working against it. Via Mark in comments, this UK NGO has a variety of resources on FGM, including this information on FGM and Islam.
Further update: I see Tim has updated his post to rebut my arguments in this one.
There’s also a great post from Yasmin over at Dervish on Ali’s howlers. Also worth a look is this guest post by Kizzie at Pommygranate’s place – giving an African Muslim woman’s perspective.
And there’s another post here, as the debate enters the MSM.
Well said and well argued, Kim.
Ho hum. As per usual, the left “speaks truth to power” only when there’s no chance that the “power” is going to cut off the speaker’s head and post it to Al-Jazeera.
Kim hems and haws:
A multicultural feminist takes a real feminist to task for giving aid and comfort to “the Right”. A better illustration of Strocchi’s Law of Cultural Leftist ideological contradiction could hardly be imagined.
A Wet (ie minority diverso-phile) cannot at the same time give consistent ideological support to both feminism and serious multiculturalism. Respecting ethnic traditions means turning a blind eye to the most important rule of pre-modern tribalism: respect the patriarch. Watch them tie themselves up in knots trying to talk their way out of it.
It is infantilist to decry female oppression in principle and enable female oppressors in practice. If one wills the individual autonomist end one must will the institutional authoritative means. The powers that be must must not tolerate the intolerant. The very opposite of touchy-feely, happy-clappy, diversity-celebrity policies.
Kim right you look like GW Bush flailing away at the obstinate reluctance of circles to square. Why dont you just give up, fess that your cultural philosophy is fatally flawed and start from sound first principles.
Excellent piece of wriggling Kim.
You got “done” on the first thread, live with that.
Specific legislation banning FGM has been enacted in all States and Territories bar Queensland and Western Australia, where legislation against FGM relies on the Criminal Code in relation to assault. In those states where legislation has been passed penalties of up to 7 years imprisonment apply to persons convicted of intentionally performing FGM, or for taking or arranging for a child (defined as a person under 18 years of age) out of a jurisdiction for the purpose of performing FGM. Exceptions are made in the case of medical procedures that have a ‘genuine therapeutic purpose’.
Your home state of Queensland amended sections 323A and 323B of the Criminal Code expressly prohibit the practice of FGM. Legitimate medical procedures and sexual reassignment procedures have been excluded from the definitions.
Doctors can go to jail for performing FGM.
There are no ifs, buts when it comes to FGM in Australia and whether it is religious or cultural or practiced in the sub Sahara is irrelevant.
Here it is illegal. And wherever it is practiced it is barbaric and immoral.
Excellent piece, Kim.
Nonsense, Jack. There’s no suggestion in the post that FGM should be seen as anything other than as a crime and an evil act. The difference of opinion is on how to counter it, and whether it should be used as a plaything in domestic political debates. As usual, you’re arguing against a straw-feminist-multiculturalist.
Thank you for the information about the current state of Australian criminal law, saint, but not a single person on this or the previous thread has done anything other than say wherever it occurs it is an evil and criminal act.
Possibly resembling this
Much better. This separates the FGM issue from the liberal interventionism issue, which is where the first post went wrong. Pommygranate is right though – some people are just polarizing. Having, briefly, been such a polarizer myself, I can assure you we often have only the dimmest idea as to why.
I wasn’t aware that Christians follow this practice as you state Kim.
Could you tell where and what denomination/group does this?
Another Kim, this is what Wikipedia says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting#Christianity
I’m so glad you’ve pointed out that Islam and FGM are not inextricably linked. It’s a fact that seems to pass most people by.
Tostan is an excellent organisation but operates only in a small area. There is progress being made elsewhere too, eg Kenya where alternative rites of passage have been devised. There are a number of articles on the IRIN website, and for a more medical point of view The Lancet.
For anyone interested in what the effects of FGM could be like, there is a French blogger of Senegalese descent who was mutilated when she was four years old. “It ruined my life”. She blogs at Le Chemin de ma reconstruction which is, obviously, all in French. She is extremely articulate and not without a sense of humour. She has been posting about her progress and feelings as she plans, and now has had, reconstructive surgery. I have been translating, not especially expertly, on my own blog and with her encouragement, in an effort to reach a wider audience. The first translated post is here. The posts are consecutive with links from one to the next. Quite a few of the commenters have suffered the same thing.
Mark on 4 June 2007 at 11:24 pm
No. It is remarkable that Leftist political agitators, heirs to the tradition of hard-headed materialist social analysis, should be reduced to falling back on hot air to avoid making hard choices.
I am bored and cynical about the Cultural Lefts propensity to engage in moral narration at the expense of social insitutionalisation. As Dr Knopfelmacher used to say: “there is such a thing as a proposal which has theoretical moral validity and empirical social absurdity”. Any fool can spout ideological attitude. What is needed is some savvy institutional rectitude.
This debate has arisen because feminism actually cannot be consistent with multiculturalism. This is not a plaything of the wedging Right. Many principled old-fashioned Leftists have denounced the cruelties and oppression to innocent women and children inherent in the diversity philosophy.
Nor is it a straw man, especially since the emergence of massive ethnic ghettos in some Atlantic states where liberal civil norms are now a thing of the past. We have the evidence of Ms Ali’s mutilated femininity to prove it. (Or is that yet another one of those annoying events that have popped out of the “Strocchi-verse” to irritate you?)
Simply pointing to Kim’s lip-serving, half-hearted, tokenistic denunciations of a barbaric practice wont get the Cultural Left off the hook here. She endorses a philosophy, multiculturalism, which if taken seriously mandates tolerance of barbaric practices.
Fine words are not enough. If one is serious about stopping FGM in AUstralia one must start by forcing the more backward immigrants to adopt liberal civil norms. Or stop them coming in. Or send them packing.
Cultural Leftists need to be honest about the fatal contradiction in their ideology and the deadly threat to freedom inherent in their electoral strategy. They cannot give freedom to pre-modern tribalism and expect this to coexist with fairness to post-modern feminism.
This sums up the dilemma of the multiculturalist in a nuts hell. A Janus-faced phrase heavily armoured in boilerplate, covering layers of contradiction. Kim’s shabby and sloppy posts on this subject exposed the contradiction with painful clarity. Her shame-faced back-pedal has not improved matters.
The Cultural Left, like the Martial Right, is slowly drifting into a world of solipsistic relativism where empirical corroboration and logical consistency are optional, depending on political expediency.
A good, forthright and honest post, Kim. I still think you are fundamentally wrong about much of this (and that’s just my opinion), but congratulations on the post anyway. Took some guts.
Mark, with respect (and apologies for talking about Kim in the third person here) one of Kim’s comments included this statement:
And I haven’t gotten to the rest of the statements Kim made in that comment alone which really are not addressedby Kim’s clarification above.
Well put, Kim.
Much and all as I would like the rest of the world to become a liberal secular social democracy tomorrow, it’s not going to happen tomorrow, the next day, or even the next generation. So we do the best we can to make the world a better place, a step at a time. And that sometimes means that we have to deal with people whose values are different to ours, and often not very likeable, and try to persuade them something is wrong within the terms of their own value system.
Jack,
Posturing aside, how many women have you saved from FGM today? How many bucks have you kicked into organisations that are actually working on the ground – in whatever ways work, even quiet, patient persuasion, however deficient you might consider that when a good energetic finger-wagging is obviously in order?
Me – well no, I haven’t saved any today, don’t expect to save any tomorrow. Which is why I’m not exactly farting up a storm about it.
saint, I hadn’t been aware that it was occurring in Australia. I admit that maybe I’m naive to think so, but only anecdotal evidence has been produced. As I said to SL on the Catallaxy thread where this was also discussed:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=2883
I do think that if there are organisations working in Australia to counter the practice, then giving them support rather than writing op/eds and denunciatory blog posts which seek to stigmatise Islam rather than to genuinely work against this evil would be the preferred way to go. That’s on the same grounds as set out in this post.
I’m more than happy to admit that I’ve got stuff to learn about FGM, and I think education about its deleterious effects and the best methods of working against it is in everyone’s interest. That’s what I’d prefer this thread to concentrate on, rather than politics and culture wars stuff, which is why I have no intention of letting myself get diverted into the Strocchiverse here.
Many thanks, Rob, I appreciate that.
I have no intention of avoiding this topic in the face of criticism. Where the criticism is valid, I’d like to take it into account, but I won’t resile from what I want to say just because some choose to personalise or politicise the issue.
And thanks to others who appreciate the post.
SL, again as I said at Catallaxy, I wrote the original post fairly quickly, and though I could have I think made the point linking to Bone’s position clear, I didn’t succeed as well as might have been ideal. Nor was the point about Algeria made as well as it could have been. That’s the thing with blogging – it’s a fast medium, and one often has second thoughts. Fortunately it also enables corrections and clarifications.
Oh, and A., thanks very much for your comment and the links.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/06/04/ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-the-fgm-debate/#comment-374211
I’ll update the post so that readers can easily access your links.
Bone and Algeria are linked. I’m a utilitarian, so I’m happy to admit there may be cases where liberal interventionism works. Algeria is probably an example of that (that’s certainly the impression I got when traipsing through the place looking at Roman ruins). Iraq, I think, is a pretty clear example of failure. Of course, the initial circumstances were entirely different, and – also of course – it’s a facile truism that history loves to teach its lessons once only.
Bone, Algeria and Ali all rolled up together? Weeeelll, that’s a bit of a stretch.
FGM is certainly going on in Australia. I’ll get my sister to swear an affidavit to that effect if you like. And a queue of other medical staff, too. That’s why it’s had to be explicitly criminalized across different jurisdictions, as Saint points out above. This is trickier for the common law states, but easy in Qld, WA and Tasmania, where there is a Criminal Code based on Sir Samuel Griffith’s original ‘master’ code.
I’ll second Rob’s praise, too, and ask people to get off Kim’s back. When you all write perfect blog posts that are perfectly reasoned, then you can come back and start flinging poo
Anecdotally, I have heard of one or two cases of mothers who’ve had female relatives visit from the old country and been scared witless of leaving their daughters alone with the in-laws.
Which raises another problem with all the attempts to make denunciation – the louder the better – compulsory. This gross simplification of the issue to a big “They’re all mutilatin’ their daughters” scare.
I love it when the cultural right express their care for women. Such a touching sight:
which is why all those states in multicultural australia have passed laws banning it. But with these comments this fool shows himself to be
the political expediency in this case being to invent a form of multiculturalism which exists only in the ‘Strocchi-verse’, accuse it of importing barbarians who will eat our babies, and then whale on it like a skinhead in a rage. Such a touching sight.
Thanks, SL.
Certainly these sort of comments don’t do anything to advance debate (#103 on the thread):
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/do_not_denounce_them/#255263
I see Tim has updated his post to rebut my arguments here.
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/do_not_denounce_them/
Yair, saw that. I’ll be Missing Linking ™ the lot tomorrow, if that’s any consolation. There’ll be a special section just on this stoush (so the rest of you better get your posts written if you want a spot in Missing Link).
That’s good, SL, it would be useful if people were to read the posts by Australian Muslim bloggers on it and I’m sure Missing Link will facilitate that.
Off to sleep now!
Gummo Trotsky on 5 June 2007 at 12:18 am
Its pretty cheeky for you to button-hole me on this subject since Ms Ali’s experience validates my cultural philosophy and refutes Larva prodders. Much to the evident discomfort of mark and kim. Although you seem un-embarassable on this score.
Characteristicly you completely miss the point. The political issue for Northern Hemispheric-type states is not how much they can reduce the spread of FGM in the South. It is whether we can prevent FGM spreading in the North, through the degeneration of Left wing parties into ethnic racket brokers and Left wing activist into ethnic oppressor apologists.
When I point out these inconvenient facts I get smeared as a “racist”. No doubt internal disquiet and cognitive dissonance on the Cultural Left tends to get dampened by the ever-rising tide of wishful thinking.
FTR I have always supported liberal charities that focus on improving the condition of women in the less-developed regions of the Southern hemisphere. eg Medicins Sans Frontiers. I even make the occasional ostentatious donation to such causes on other blogs.
But I generally prefer to let my words speak louder than my deeds. Cultural Lwftists are addicted to the fatuities of their over-spent youth. And we know that the first step in the cure of addiction is to admit there is a problem. They need to be told, loud and clear.
Gummot Trotsky says:
It has not stopped you from hand-wringing, finger-wagging and thumb-sucking about the comparatively trivial evils of the Howard govt. Out of political expediency you just turn a blind eye to this sort of thing in your own backyard, whilst indulging your moral vanity in the grandstand.
Thank you for the link, Mark.
It does state that Jews do NOT practice FGM.
It further states that it continues as tradition in Ghana, NOT as a part of the Christian faith.
Another Kim, from the Foundation for Women’s Health, Research and Development, a UK NGO:
http://www.forwarduk.org.uk/key-issues/fgm
I’d recommend the site as an educational resource generally.
That’s the point, though. The practice predates Christianity, Islam and Judaism. While some Muslims justify it using religious arguments, as do some Ghanian Christians who practice it, many Muslims would argue that it’s not part of the Muslim faith, just as we as Christians would (correctly) argue against the African Christians who practice it that it’s abhorrent to our faith. Whether or not it’s a religious or cultural practice, it’s still evil and abhorrent, and specifically prohibited by UN conventions as a violation of human rights. But we don’t get anywhere if people persist in stigmatising an entire faith because some misuse religious precepts to justify it, and particularly not if people have political scores to settle by making such points.
On FGM and Islam:
http://www.forwarduk.org.uk/key-issues/fgm/fgm-islam
This thread is going to take a break over night while moderators are asleep. Normal service will resume in the morning when a moderator is available.
I’d hazard a guess and say there isn’t a poster here who has direct experience with female genital cutting. I can’t quite believe I’m writing this (as a Muslim feminist who knows the practice is cultural and *not* religious, and that only around 10% of the world’s Muslim women live in countries where FGC is practiced) but believe it or not, there *are* some women who claim it as empowering, and question the hysteria and hype around Western denunciations. For example Fuambai Ahmadu has written:
(She has an article in Shweder’s Why Do Men Barbecue on the topic)
Just on Another Kim’s question, it would seem that Ethiopian Christians (the majority) from one particular ethnic group also practice FGM:
http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/rep/crfgm/10098.htm
The link came via one of Tim Blair’s commenters:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/do_not_denounce_them/#255369
Yasmin, that does really raise the cultural relativity argument. I’d still argue the practice to be absolutely wrong, just as I’d argue that forms of Indigenous traditional justice in Australia such as spearing (I was repulsed when Oodgeroo Noonucal advocated the spearing of young men from her mob who were gay) are.
On that question:
http://www.forwarduk.org.uk/key-issues/fgm/human-rights
Yasmin, women who find it “empowering” to have their private parts sliced off are free to make that conscious choice when they are adults.
Mutilation of the body is practiced by many adults, just gotta see the amount of tattoos & pierced ears in our society for evidence of this.
But chopping up 5 year old girls is an abomination.
How can those who slice up girls, reconcile themselves with the islamic view on body mutilation such as ear piercing & tattoos?
Is there a fork on the road to paradise, where all FGM perpetrators are diverted to eternal damnation?
Juliet Rogers at the University of Melbourne has researched female genital mutilation extensively. I heard her give a paper on this subject in 2001. It was my understanding at the time that FGM is practised in Australia.
http://www.criminology.unimelb.edu.au/staff/Juliet.htm
SATP, no-one here is disagreeing with you. That’s the point. We all agree that it is wrong, and we all agree that it should be stopped.
The question is, though, whether it’s an effective use of people’s efforts to screech loudly that something is evil when those you seek to convince find it empowering. If we genuinely do want to stop it, rather than to feel all morally superior, then we must do what’s most likely to work.
That so many people in this debate seem to prefer loud screeching, when even a six year old can tell you that that’s rarely effective, suggests that some of this concern is superficial at best.
Indeed, Anna.
Despite the link to Kim’s new post at Tim Blair’s place, none of his commenters have grappled with the issue of supporting practical measures via financial or other forms of support for people actually working against FGM.
Instead, we see comments like this:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/do_not_denounce_them/#255311
Yep, intervening against FGM by posting blog comments which call people “trash”, a “twat” and “a worthless piece of shit”.
I guess that discharges his “duty”.
I agree lots of the concern is superficial Anna. Why else would there be lots of talk of “cultural” claptrap, instead of “criminal mutilation”?
I’m tempted to suggest that the consciousness of the women in question tends to become invisible in this ‘debate’, even when testimonials are invoked and native informants located by both sides. It may be problematic to extend the criminalisation of the act into a pathologisation of it’s lived consequences.
But I think the really important point here is that Kim is leveraging off her position of power with respect to the global division of labour, to support a kind of ethical intervention that doesn’t strongly reinforce those power differentials. Whereas the implications of the more shrill denunciations only seem to lead to one place. Perhaps a true evaluation of Kim’s position would examine the mechanics and consequences of her strategies.
You lot were called on cultural relativism on this issue for originally arguing that there is no difference between this and the ‘cult of labiaplasty’. When I commented on the ‘bone to pick’ thread I criticised your denunciations of the trend towards making vulva’s more aesthetically appealing – arguing that there were mostly well defined medical reasons for why women would choose to have this done – I failed to point out that many women choosing these procedures are women trying to reverse damage from genital cutting rituals.
So Mark there are degrees of cultural relativism and whether these are predominantly religious or cultural rituals means little to me as the main thing is that the laws are effectively enforced; and although you LPers seem to assert this you shy away from saying this is our problem one that we have to make hard decisions about in Australia. For instance ought our hospitals pop in a few extra stitches after child birth? Do adult women have the right to request Australian medical professionals to perform the procedures like this for them? (Either with or without Medicare funding? and under what procedures that ensure they are not doing so under duress).
What has really made me think outside the square on this issue is recognising that this is often about women and their relationships and not necessarily about maintaining patriarchy. As Papillion describes, her father was angry to learn that his mother and wife had whisked his daughters away when he was travelling. The actual story about what happened to her when she was 4 is unclear as her mother denies that she had anything to do with it and says that it was her mother in law who insisted the traditions be maintained and that she literally kidnapped the children to take them for cutting.
Anyway, I think we may have more of a problem than our liberal minds would like to think. I read about a woman who immigrated to Britain who ironically had not been cut herself describing that she felt her daughter needed some help to overcome the promiscuous culture that she was surrounded by and that she was seriously considering sending her on a trip overseas to have the job done.
Papillion suggests she would go so far as not allowing her children when she has them to be alone with grandparents if she suspected them, or to not allow them to travel without her to Senegal in order to protect them from it. So the issues that can throw this up are not self evident, especially to descendants of the Enlightenment that could no more do this to our daughters than fly to the moon. Cultural or religious in origin Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows the ritualistic demon to its full extent.
I do wish the same could be said of all the comenters over at Tim Blairs place. While I would never suggest that Mr Moral Clarity himself supports FGM it is worth noting that he who demands loud denunciations of everything can’t be bothered either naming or shaming the individuals in question in what was a very long post by his standards.
Steve, it isn’t claptrap to talk about the reasons for something happening – it’s the best way to try and prevent it. Since the reasons are largely cultural, then it makes no sense to discuss FGM without talking about culture.
Informally yours writes that:
Which is why Kim has said time and time again that one of the best ways to combat the problem is to give people who do understand it the means to fight it. We aren’t there, we haven’t lived it – the most useful thing we can do is support those who have, and who want to put a stop to it. Help them, rather than forcing them to also defend their religion and culture against “The West�.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is a controversial suggestion for anyone who genuinely supports the aim of putting a stop to the practice.
I agree, Anna, and I think the correct response to Kim’s position is to – if we are really interested in change – either do as she does, or, pose criticism in terms of the actual practice that Kim is advocating ie of a kind of ethical, non-invasive intervention via selective resourcing of involved groups.
As I’m sure has been pointed out elsewhere, there are various types of female genital cutting, and infibulation makes up a very small percentage of women who undergo cutting.
As for the question of choice – then do we have the same horrific response to male genital cutting performed on babies? If not, why not?
Got news for you, twat. If I witness a little girl being tortured and mutilitated, not only do I have a right to intervene, I have a duty to do so.
Using language pertaining to hatred of women,referring insultingly to female genitals while pretending to be on the “right side” vis-a-vis mutilation of women — it’d be a wonderful irony if it wasn’t so sickening.
We aren’t there, we haven’t lived it – the most useful thing we can do is support those who have, and who want to put a stop to it.
Like, Ayaan Hirsi Ali for instance?
From a Melbourne perspective, where we have a sizeable African and Islamic community, I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that performing FGM on minors is widespread. If anything, it is exceedingly rare here. It is also illegal, and medical and educational professionals are mandated to notify authorities if they think it has or is likely to occur. It is also illegal for a minor to be sent overeas so that FGM can be done. Whilst FGM is difficult to detect as a result of its secrecy, the few cases of which I am aware caused significant health problems for the young women involved, and they did come to the attention of doctors and statutory authorities.
As for the Blairites parading their new-found sympathies for women, and demanding public denunciations; a variety of women in different roles have attempted to dissuade refugee communities from the practice of FGM in Melbourne. Whilst denunciations might make the rightards feel good, they are clearly insufficient on their own. The pressure to perform FGM on minors often comes from matriarchs within the relevant communities, and FGM is also bound up with notions of sexual worth and marriageability. The difficult task of changing these latter attitudes is far more important than indulging in a bit of self-righteous chest-beating and Muslim-bashing.
As for the Blairites parading their new-found sympathies for women
To be fair, teh evil conservatives have always been about protecting women. From themselves more often than not.
This is not about perfect blog posts it is about wrong ideas.
Talk about double-beat-about-the-bush speak.
or this
What do those statements mean at the hospital – do the women get their extra stitches after child birth or not? Or their reconstruction via Medicare?
Talk about setting up silly false dichotomies – this one established between Kim’s ‘moderates’, and the ’shrill denunciations’ is a shocker. Exactly who is the problem? Certainly Kim has come in for some shrill denunciation for her position, but who is it that she refers to as being a counterproductive shrill kind of anti-FGM campaigner, people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Pamela Bone no less!
Kim’s point in bringing all this up was not to praise them but to expose them and to do so from what Kim would assert is a left tradition. Rather than take the opportunity to foster solidarity and build bridges where possible.
I’ve just heard Hirsi Ali on the radio and unfortunately the interviewer is another ABC hand-wringer who hadn’t done any research and so we didn’t get much past a short explanation of Ayaan’s life, and it was pre-recorded and so there weren’t any questions. Typically unsatisfactory ABC fare.
However one thing Hirsi Ali said that spoke loudly to me was in reference to the fact that this had all been struggled against before in the western struggle against the religious types imposing their witch-burning etc. her comment was that she was just not prepared to wait 600 years.
Struggle had to be one that was waged on the front foot and that IMV is a foundational left stance. Fighting back against oppressors in order to rid the world of the oppression. Standing up for one’s rights in struggle against the oppressors, and siding with the oppressed never abandoning them because the oppressors threaten to kill even more etc.
Progressives name the oppression and those engaged in it, we don’t mince our words. If the oppressors are too powerful to defeat we recommend the tactic of running away with the intent of finding more favorable ground to fight on. But the strategic intent ought to be for a fighting approach to gaining rights where applicable. The whole notion of waiting for the slave owners to set the slaves free of their own volition is a delusional type of stance advocated by people like pacifists that Kim is self declared not to be.
The message coming through loud and clear here is ‘fund and support the groups that never start a war of liberation’ work with the peaceful campaigners who are not so confronting of this world. We used to sing a song that went; ‘Don’t be too polite girls don’t be too polite. Show a little fight girls show a little fight!’
The whole world had to finally make it perfectly clear to the Saudi regime that they were no longer permitted to run a country where people could own slaves. They were dictated to.
Some feminists apparently don’t hold the rights of women that highly as the one thing they don’t approve of is launching an armed intervention to crush the fascists who want to use religion, culture and politics whatever is convenient to keep women and other underlings in their place.
If it were not for the fact that the pseudo-left are white-anting the Iraq war it would be possible to be pushing the coalition of the willing to be doing a lot more to help fight that culture war on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Missing Link is now up. Go here.
You may need to disambiguate this one.
‘Protecting women’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘giving women equal rights’.
So ‘the Blairites’ wanting to keep womenfolk safe from genital mutilation is perfectly consistent with standard conservative rhetoric, like wanting to keep women safe in the kitchen*.
*Straw-conservative rhetoric. I have no idea if anyone actually believes this.
I fail to understand your reasoning, informally yours. Are you calling for a war on FGM across Africa? FGM is not practiced in Iraq or Afghanistan, as far as I know. I just don’t get what you mean in practice – how exactly are “progressives” (who are rarely in a position to decide questions of war and peace anyway) supposed to follow your precepts?
If I were you, I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions about people’s motivations. In any case, I don’t see any inconsistency in pointing to the way in which the issue of FGM has been misused for political purposes and arguing for practical solidarity with women fighting against it from within their culture.
I don’t see that you’ve addressed Anna’s point at all – you seem to be arguing that “the West” or “the left” or “progressives” are the only relevant actors in fighting oppressive and evil practices.
I think the Luvvies have hammered enough nails in their coffin here, without my rubbing it in.
In time, historians will footnote this thread in university courses titled
“Requiem of the Left.”
“advocating ie of a kind of ethical, non-invasive intervention via selective resourcing of involved groups.”
I’m referring to exactly what Kim says she does. She helps groups on the ground in affected areas. It is an intervention but it is non-invasive, because it gives resources to groups who know the local situation and are already working on it. Which I would oppose to, say, going to war.
“It may be problematic to extend the criminalisation of the act into a pathologisation of it’s lived consequences.”
This is an aside, but I doubt that those expressing their concern in many of these cases are really interested in the women who have unwillingly undergone this mutilation already. Instead, there is a kind of psychotic desire to prevent all violence in advance, by deploying violence first.
“Talk about double-beat-about-the-bush speak.”
If you don’t understand what I write, just admit it, informally yours.
“What do these statements mean at the hospital”
If I had meant them to be about health policy, about the operation of the medical system, or addressed to doctors, nurses and hospital administrators, I would have said as much.
Reducing everything to the zero point, and hysterically demanding answers about that situation from everybody, is not a reasonable way of conducting an argument.
Since on the evidence of every single comment that you’ve ever written, that would only consist of repeating slogans about “luvvies” and “multiculti” and the like, I think we’ll survive John.
John I don’t think you will see the left going anywhere any time soon, unless of course you think that everyone will shortly break the habit of a lifetime and stop thinking of everything as a dichotomy.
Rather I see this thread as a reaction against a certain debased and obnoxious section of the Australian right which deliberately and dishonestly conflates cultural realism, which sees culture as deeply entrenched and difficult for people in general and actors external to the culture in particular to change and cultural relativism, which sees culture as above and beyond moral criticism.
It is these same people who like to get around judging their own and everyone else’s merit based on the conspicuousness of their denunciations of a range of (mostly) third world horrors.
As I write this Tim Blair is demonstration the paucity of this point of view by not denouncing his own pro-FGM commenters.
Janet Albrechtsen gets the wrong end of the stick again in today’s Australian.
I’ll make two points briefly in response to Janet, and in so doing contribute to the discussion on this thread.
Firstly, she repeats the suggestion that FGM is a specifically Islamic practice. Commenters here have made it clear that this is a myth.
Secondly, she suggests that Ali is a voice for reform and enlightenment within Islam. I respectfully suggest that this is like describing me as a voice for reform and enlightenment within Christianity. Of course I don’t want to stretch the comparison too far: my reasons for abandoning the Protestant faith of my youth hardly bear comparison with what Ali had to endure which led her to reject Islam. However the point stands that having placed ourselves outside our respective former faiths, both Ali and myself are very limited in our ability to act as voices for reform from within.
It’s worth recounting an experience from the early 1980s to illustrate this point. In the early 1980s a very sinister and manipulative fundamentalist Christian sect with far right connections set up shop on Melbourne campuses and began recruiting, focusing in particular on individuals in lonely or otherwise vulnerable personal circumstances. I, and other secular leftists, denounced this organisation and did what we could to prevent it gaining an institutional foothold in student union structures, but as secularists there was nothing of any practical value we could do to assist the individual Christian students who had fallen into the group’s clutches. This could only be done by people from the Student Christian Movement who knew how to out-argue the extremists on scriptural grounds and win their victims away on terms which didn’t entail renouncing the basic principles of their faith. I think there is a lesson to be learned from this experience.
Good points, Paul, and very much in alignment with my own understanding and experience.
The harm comes in setting FGM up as a purely Muslim tradition, when the fact is that it is an ancient practise which conversions to (variously) Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Horn of Africa have been unable to stamp out, as people justify continuing their old tradition using the precepts of the new religions. Traditionalists are anxious that without continuing the FGM tradition they won’t find husbands for their daughters, and they will justify whatever they think will help find husbands for their daughters in any way that they can.
Sorry for not commenting yesterday, Kim: I was out most of the day and then the blog was out for most of the night. Just wanted to add to the chorus: terrific clarifying post.
Paul wrote:
Absolutely. As a Muslim woman who is relatively active within the Melbourne Muslim community, I don’t know of a single Muslim I’ve met who thinks that Hirsi Ali is anything other than a) extremely ignorant of Islam b) a tragic soul who is possibly mentally ill c) has nothing to offer Muslims but actually makes our experiences and lives in the Western world, worse.
In the early 1980s a very sinister and manipulative fundamentalist Christian sect… I, and other secular leftists, denounced this organisation and did what we could to prevent it gaining an institutional foothold in student union structures, but as secularists there was nothing of any practical value we could do to assist the individual Christian students who had fallen into the group’s clutches. This could only be done by people from the Student Christian Movement who knew how to out-argue the extremists on scriptural grounds and win their victims away on terms which didn’t entail renouncing the basic principles of their faith.
I don’t think that holds. It was not members of the extremist sect itself that drove the ‘enlightentment’, but people from outside the movement who were never-the-less intimately involved in the culture, and who just had a different interpretation of the basic text.
Like, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Can we get it straight that FGM was a leftover from the pre-Islamic culture in Africa and in this instance its continued practice is actually an example of Islamic tolerance (for want of a better word) of a preexisting practice that is barbaric? As a strident atheist I have no desire to defend Islam as a benign religious faith but let’s attack it for the right things? The irony of all this is that if she were using FGM to say ‘all African cultures from my part of the world are barbaric’ there would be an uproar of political correctnesss even among her supporters yet essentially this generalisation is closer to the truth than the one about Islam.
I’m sorry – she’s gone through a lot and has some good ideas, yadda yadda but all in all I find her contributions superficial.
Me too, Jason. Far too much of what she writes – apart from the personal narrative – is just sloganeering.
Memo to Janet:
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/desperate_for_enlightenment/
Who exactly? Who are these “progressives” who are so busy defending “cultural sensitivities”?
Oh, and thanks, tigtog.
Also on the question of humanitarian intervention which has cropped up here and on the other thread, I think the problems which such inerventions are intended to solve, and whether armed humanitarian intervention is likely to be the most effective solution, need to be considered as practical political problems, not only as moral issues (although that dimension should never be forgotten). It may sound very cold and calculating, but proposals for humanitarian intervention should be subjected to very searching auditing of the specific on-the-ground details of proposals for practical implementation, extended cost-benefit analysis and consideration of the opportunity costs of such operations. Iraq has shown that it’s not sufficient to say “someone oughta do something, even if it’s the wrong thing”.
To put it another way, Paul, good intentions are never enough. The question is always about the effective practical translation of those intentions, in order to avoided unintended consequences, and beyond that the interrogation of those intentions and how they relate to our positions within the various systemic and structural contexts we occupy.
Cowardice. A one word summary of the motivation for appeasement of these sickos.
Adam Gall
Post-structuralists promising liberation bearing not AK-47s, but structural contexts, eh? This should be quite a show. Best I duck out and grab some popcorn and a choc-top.
Back in a mo.
did you get the message at all about the origins of FGM, SATP? Which sickos are you referring to? Africans? You racist! [sarc]
I think the problems which such inerventions are intended to solve, and whether armed humanitarian intervention is likely to be the most effective solution, need to be considered as practical political problems, not only as moral issues (although that dimension should never be forgotten). It may sound very cold and calculating, but proposals for humanitarian intervention should be subjected to very searching auditing of the specific on-the-ground details of proposals for practical implementation, extended cost-benefit analysis and consideration of the opportunity costs of such operations. Iraq has shown that it’s not sufficient to say “someone oughta do something, even if it’s the wrong thing�.
As a very obvious example of that – Islamist fundamentalism has risen markedly in Baghdad since the COW invasion (that puts a strange image in my head – Cows with Guns?), which is the opposite of what a “liberal interventionist” would expect to happen.
(although liberating women from the shackles of Islam was never an objective of that invasion – it was a retrospective justification employed in desperation… now I’m sounding like Gilbert and Sullivan, sorry.)
I don’t need to read this site to be aware of the origins of FGM.
Call me what u like. Some primitive tribesmen in africa mutilating their children in no way mitigates anyone else who does the same.
There are more sick practices in the islamic world than just FGM, any tolerance of any of it is cowardice.
There is one helluva lot of cowardice when it comes to taking on violent islam. Particularly from people who seem to be not afraid to hit the streets when it comes to comparitively “important” issues like having to pay a little widdly bit for a uni education, or something like that.
Where are the people who were beating up pensioners for merely listening to Pauline Hanson? Why don’t these people take on a raving hard line iman? Hmmm…………
Guess there’s a first time for everything.
Sure SATP but the point is Ayan Hirsi Ali is getting attention in large part because of her equation of FGM with Islam, and the conflation of FGM and a whole lot of other bad things that happened to her with Islam, not all of which actually were (e.g. honour killings, arseholes in the family etc).
And who are these appeasers you talk about and what are they stopping people who want to combat violent Islam from doing exactly? The worst exporter of the most vile versions of islam is Saudi Arabia and the House of Saud are friends with the house of Bush so they are getting kid gloves. Meanwhile the hunt for OBL was diverted by a wasteful war which brought down a secular dictatorship and has now created the conditions for the expositors of the violent versions of Islam to crawl back in.
And call me cold-hearted but I’ve never bought the argument that a person with 1st hand experience of A (whether it’s abortion or FGM or whatever) is automatically entitled to have his or her opinion given greater weight simply because they had the 1st hand experience. That sort of argument reeks of sentimentality and irrationality to me – issues like abortion and FGM can be studied. So I’m calling though not exactly mountebanke but ‘overblown authority’ re Ayan
John,
I don’t think I’ve made a single point on this thread that could be called post-structuralist. It all seems to be pretty straightforward stuff, actually. If I wanted to deconstruct some of the stuff going on here, I probably could, but I don’t think there’s an audience for it here. The closest I’ve come is to suggest that the women in question tend to disappear in the ‘debate’ over FGM. Taking a look at our own positions in a world economic and political system might be kind of marxist, I guess. If you don’t understand what is or isn’t post-structuralist thought, then I don’t know how you can sustain an objection to it.
So Jason, because Islam and FGM are not completely synonymous, we can forever ignore the link?
Wonderful!!
While we’re at it, we can forget about aboriginal disadvantage. After all, not 100% of Aborigines live in poverty so the two cannot be linked.
And forget about smoking. 100% of smokers don’t die young, so free for all smoking!
Last I saw, not 100% of women get breast cancer. So we can stop all those mammagrams quick smart, there can’t possibly be a link between the two.
/sarcasm
Obviously the test should be whether Islam and FGM occur together at a higher rate than FGM and other factors (religions/cultures/etc). If there is a significantly higher occurance, then a link can be implied, and possible actions should be discussed.
That makes no sense at all, SimonC.
The only relevant correlation is between membership of particular ethnic groups and the practice of FGM. Where the population is almost entirely Christian (as in Ethiopia), the ethnic groups which practice FGM do so while those that don’t don’t. Similary with Islamic populations. No one in Iraq, or Turkey, practices FGM. The religious justification, as tigtog suggested, is an ex post facto rationalisation for pre-existing tribal practices.
No Simon you’re missing the point. There is no doctrinal basis for FGM. The various Islamic rulings on FGM are actually directed at *restricting the severity* of FGM found in the backward societies which were practicing FGM before Islam came along. Now you may say this is scant comfort for the victims but the point remains – ironically in this case what Islam is actually being blamed for is not being more intolerant of the barbaric practices of the ‘infidels’ in the lands where FGM was being practiced before these ‘infidels’ became Muslim.
For background see here
http://www.minaret.org/fgm-pamphlet.htm
This debate is really completely tiresome. As if there aren’t enough things to query in Islam without creating strawmen? As if one dishonest example is the key to winning the ‘war of civilisations’?
I lived in a majority Muslim country (Malaysia)for 15 years. FGM is completely unheard of there and in Indonesia because the pre-Islamic culture of the Malays, unlike the Somalis, did not practice this stuff. So if you want to get outraged over FGM and honour killings in particular, get outraged over the barbaric cultures it was practiced in. If you want to get outraged over the fundamentalist psychopathologies that led to S11, then get outraged over Islamo-fascism as propagated by clerics hiding under the umbrella of the House of Saud.
Does it really matter though?
Culture isn’t a static thing. It changes and integrates other cultures into it. Islam, in some cases, has integrated FGM from some animist tribal culture.
Smoking didn’t originate in Australia. It was an oriental custom that has been integrated into (and is slowly disintegrating out of) another culture. I don’t think anyone has suggested that we should not look at smoking in Australians because we weren’t the origin of the custom. Nor does it stop people looking at some other parts of the culture, such as the drinking culture, which may increase the prevalence of smoking.
Hirsi Ali is putting forward her view of (a certain application of) the culture of Islam and its role in the prevalance of FGM. The weight you wish to give to her opinion is entirely in your hands.
This could be interesting.
Irfan Yusuf and New Matilda editor Jose Borghino interviewed Hirsaan Ali while she was in Australia:
http://www.newmatilda.com/home/articledetailmagazine.asp?ArticleID=2292&HomepageID=204
You can download the podcast from that link.
Jason
the point is Ayan Hirsi Ali is getting attention in large part because of her equation of FGM with Islam
Only on Oz blogs, that is. As i pointed out, her actual speech barely mentioned FGM. It was all about the Koran, its misogynist teachings and its emphasis on the terror of Judgement Day.
Agree with everything else you said though. Bush’s single biggest failing is ignoring all the House of Saud-funded poison that pours out of Saudi Arabia, whilst pursuing a mindless and destructve war. Guess oil talks too loudly.
SimonC,
I think the point that Jason and others here is trying to make (and that I agree with) is simple – but you seem to be missing it.
FGM is not part of the culture of Islam. Not. The Koran (or at least the translation I have read) is quite clear on that – to deface the body is a sin in Islam, to the extent that many observant Muslims will not normally even have a tattoo.
To blame Islam for something specifically prohibited to its followers is at best ignorant. It would be like blaming Islam for a Muslim who drink-drives and kills someone as a result.
There are a few things in Islam I disagree with – the position on bodily mutilation is not one of them.
Not sure whether this has been mentioned yet.
On Sunday 6pm, repeated Tuesday 1pm the divine Rachel Kohn is going to interview Hirsi Ali on The Spirit of Things.
It looks as though it is a recording of a Sydney Writers’ Festival event.
Not outraged Jason. I am interested to see how the debate progresses, but I don’t really have a horse in the race.
I see your point now. You are pointing out the logical fallacy:
1. FGM is prevalant in some backward societies
2. Islam is prevalant in some backward societies
3. Therefore, FGM is prevalant in Islam
Which is probably the basis of most people’s understanding. Without seeing any statistics, I can’t comment either way.
How is smoking tobacco, which was native to the Americas and was introduced to Europe by European explorers before it found a market in Asia as well, an “oriental custom”?
It really doesn’t give great confidence in your general perspicacity when you drop clunking great howlers like that.
It almost seems that some commenters here are setting out to stretch reality by demonstrating there is absolutley no correlation whatsoever between FGM & islam.
What is coming next? Proof there is no correlation between Islam and misogyny, homophobia, violence or honour killing? That the muslim world is not a bunch of hot headed Luddites?
A venn diagram of FGM & Islam would have a rather large overlap. Difficult to put it any other way.
Islam is far from pure or perfect. It has been responsible for producing most of the people responsible for the terrorist acts of the past 10 years.
So there are muslims who are kind to their sheep & don’t commit terrorist acts? However the world would be one helluva lot more peaceful these past several years if Islam did not exist. And life for air travellers would be one helluva lot more convenient.
Hey! I’m supposed to be the analogy police.
So is the problem everyone has with Hirsi Ali that she says ‘Islam is bad because of FGM’ when you think she should be saying ‘This particular culture that its adherents call ‘Islam’ but which is actually a bastardisation of the one true understanding of the Koran is bad because of FGM’.
I agree on one hand, categorising people is always going to create a stereotype which is not going to be accurate on the individual level.
But public discussion is going to get very, very complicated if people have to refer to oppressors and oppressed by name, so as not to unfairly place innocent individuals in the wrong category.
“A venn diagram of FGM & Islam would have a rather large overlap. Difficult to put it any other way.”
Yeah, Steve, I empathise with your difficulty.
Hard to keep abreast of what a venn diagram of Islam looks like from one terrorist attack to the next.
Let me try again.
If it is the case that all members of certain ethnic groups practice FGM, but not all Muslims do, and other members of the same ethnic groups are Christians, Animists and Jews, then FGM is not an Islamic phenomenon.
It’s simple syllogistic logic.
It should be easy to grasp by people who are such strong defenders of “Western reason”.
Hi Kim
Your clarification on this issue is completely unnecessary. You are very gracious to apologise for the confusion ’caused by’ the original article – but the truth is that your argument was quite clear right from the word go.
Those who have attacked you have all exposed a profound bias, not only in their behaviour but also in their ability to interpret the written word.
Not once in your article did you criticise Ali. Not once did you suggest that her experiences should be downplayed. Not once did you advocate that critics of FGM should be silenced. These were all dishonest strawmen that were thrown at you by the peanut gallery in their desperation to score points over you.
All you did was to question the approach that Ali is proposing, and suggest that her own experiences potentially disqualify her from considering this issue sensibly and rationally. A child could see that your argument is not in the slightest sense controversial.
I just want you to know that, despite their prolific posting and general blog idiocy, the critics of your last post are not representative. The vast majority of intelligent and rational people would have read and understood you.
You have nothing to apologise for.
SATP,
A Venn diagram of low rainfall areas of the planet and Islam would have a very large overlap – but I do not see you blaming them for a lack of rain. If you think you can make that case, lets hear it.
Correlation does not prove causation.
Many thanks, Mondo Rock.
Liked your work in the 80s too!
The emotionless, callous male indifference of Kim’s posts and comments left himself open to the critique he has sustained.l
And his defenders have been mainly male too, understandably.
Yeah, that Kim is one callous dude.
Bec, before complaining about women being overlooked, perhaps you should heed your own advice, and not overlook them.
Do I get to be a humourless castrating feminist now that I’m not the cold heartless voice of masculine reason?
And not only their ability, but also their willingness. Don’t understimate the ferocious desire of some people to be hatin’ on Islam no matter what, even for things it didn’t do.
I mean, look at the crystal-clear comments from Jason — who (1) has been even clearer than Kim, (2) has the most cred re personal experience in this respect, and (3) can’t be despised and rejected as any form of “lefty” — and they’re not even listening to him.
And as for you, Kim — nice bit of passing there, dude. I would never, ever have guessed.
PC’s right. This is starting to get silly again. I’m not going to repeat what Jason’s already said, or what I wrote over at Missing Link, but c’mon. I’m no fan of Islam (or any religion for that matter), but if you’re going to hang shit on a religion, hang legitimate shit on it.
With regard to Ali, it’s also worth heeding Pommygranate’s point that she herself spends most of her time talking about scaring the shit out of people with awful judgment day visions, Saudi mosque-funding and general misogyny.
Maybe the obsession with FGM says more about us than it does about either AHA or Islam.
If it is the case that all members of certain ethnic groups practice FGM, but not all Muslims do, and other members of the same ethnic groups are Christians, Animists and Jews, then FGM is not an Islamic phenomenon.
Why does it have to be a phenomenon?
If it is the case that all members of certain country have poverty, but not all Aborigines do, and other members of the same society are Christians, Animists and Jews, then poverty is not an Aboriginal phenomenon.
(I have exchanged ‘ethnic groups’ with ‘country’, because I don’t believe race has anything to do with the discussion)
This doesn’t mean anything. The question to ask is do Aborigines experience more poverty than Christians, Animists and Jews.
If the answer is yes, then is there a link? If so, then should action be taken?
I am not answering these questions, I simply don’t know. But I think Ayaan Hirsi Ali has every right to ask hers, and to give her opinion on the answers. The correct (non-controversial) response from her critics is to suggest evidence which proves her to be wrong, rather than rely on ad hominem attacks.
Well said, Mondo Rock and Jason.
There is so much straw around I’m afraid that this post will spontaneously combust.
SL: Like I mentioned above, I don’t really have a horse in the race regarding FGM. I certainly wouldn’t be voting for a ‘war on FGM’ requiring liberal intervention.
I am more interested in the freedom of speech angle. As I said, I think everyone has a right to attack her arguments, with all the venom they desire. I just want people to actually listen to them, rather than deciding she is too compromised by her past to make a legitimate point.
Looks like my previous post has got some responses at Tim Blairs. I can’t respond there (not registered) so I will here. If anyone thinks this is thread-jacking please delete away.
See comment 103 here and comments 33 “Female Genital Mutilation, it is the IN thing, give it a try, BITCH!”, 38 “On your way out, send in your daughter” and 43 here.
I know those comments are extremely tasteless jokes but if Timmys mob really believe that conspicuous denouncings are the solution to everything and are really primarily motivated by abhorrance of FGM rather than a narcisistic desire to play the champions of Western civilization they wouldn’t be silent about such comments, sarcastic or otherwise.
I mean really, do you think you would see Ms Ali laughing at jokes about FGM.
Well, Chris, it’s given them something to loudly denounce. They were kinda running out of steam there for a while.
I don’t know why, SimonC. Different ethnic groups in Africa practice FGM from the ones that don’t.
And if you believe there have been ad hominem attacks on Ms Ali, please cite them.
Suggesting that her views on Islam are incorrect because she has experienced it first-hand is an ad hominem attack, as it does not even mention her argument let alone where it is false. It is like me suggesting that your views on gender disparity in Australia are invalid, because you are a woman and so you are irrevocably biased.
Mark:
Thankyou for the podcast. I enjoyed the irony of this particular exchange (apologies, this is paraphrased. There is no transcript, and my typing is atrocious):
Irfan: You’ve been quoted as mentioning that violence is inherent in Islam. If that’s the case, it seems to me it is something that should be criminalised.
Ali: [Makes a point of separating Islam from Muslims]. A lot of what is in there is already criminal. You cannot go around killing people. You cannot cut off peoples hands, you cannot cut off peoples heads… We should provide Muslims, seeking meaning in their life within Islam, a separation of politics and religion.
Irfan: Well, then should Islam be outlawed in Western countries, like Australia? If it is a dangerous text, essentially the same message as Bin Laden whose books are banned, should the Koran be banned as a terrorist text.
Ali: In my understanding of Western ideas, of freedom of expression, I would never ban books, never ban ideas, but punish criminal behaviour.
Irfan: So you wouldn’t support the banning of a book of Bin Laden or his associates.
Ali: I have downloaded his texts from the internet, I have compared them with the Koran! For me, and I believe it was Voltaire who was quoted saying “Even when I despise what you think or what you say, I am going to fight to the end for you to say it. And to fight it down”
Sadly for my argument she then goes on to say she want to see Creationists criminalised in schools… Luckily for me, arguing for her right to say something does not mean I can’t disagree with what she says.
Probably over-cautious. I like to make a strong distinction between criticising a person’s race and criticising a person’s culture. The term ‘ethnic’ tends to ride the often thin line between the two.
Ethnicity refers to the identities of socio-biology, ie ethnology with a human face. It is where natural endowments and cultural environment combine to produce the nurtural embodiment.
The basic components of ethnic identity are lineal, liturgical, lingual and legal ie race, religion, regent and region. Traditionally referred to as God, King and Country.
No, I’m suggesting that she’s extrapolated too far from her own experience. I might well do the same. Any of us might, if we were to start engaging in polemics. It’s not an “attack” of any sort, but a criticism based on reason.
But your substitution doesn’t make things any clearer at all when discussing countries with a population of multiple ethnic groups.
There’s a distinct difference between Cypriots of Greek and Turkish backgrounds, for example (and between the Welsh and the English of Britain, come to that). And how about the different ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia, and the fact that today’s Serbia has a large minority population of Croats and vice versa, just for starters in the entangled ethnicities of that region?
Somalia’s population is made up of many tribes, and those tribes also have large populations in neighboring countries. Only some of those tribes practise FGM. Of the tribes that practise FGM, some groups within the tribes have been converted to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Despite FGM being against the precepts of all three religions, the tribal members still largely continue to practise FGM. As far as I know, none of the three Abrahamic religions has been more successful than any other at managing to stamp out FGM amongst its converts within the tribes with a FGM tradition.
So yes, Islam has failed to stop FGM. Judaism and Christianity have also failed to stop FGM. FGM is an ethnic tradition that tenaciously clings despite modern affiliations with different cultures.
Pommygranate write:
You know what really s***s me? I have Bachelors and Masters degrees specialising in Islamic studies, studying Qur’an, hadith, theology, philosophy, Sufism, education, etc. I’ve travelled to Yemen to study Arabic. I’ve bought and read a whole library of specialist Islamic studies books. I have been active and involved in the Muslim community here in Australia since I first starting practising Islam. I have spent close to a decade teaching young Muslims, as well as non-Muslim Australians about how Islam preaches peace, toleration, moderation, seeking non-violent ends to conflict where at all possible, that interfaith dialogue is valued, that Muslims have a rich and varied history, that Muslims are an extraordinarily diverse group of people and have contributed to the betterment of the human race in some of the most amazing ways (with examples), and ONE visit from Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who doesn’t even know what usul al-fiqh is, which demonstrates she has practically noreal understanding of Islam) and all of that means diddly-squat.
For those wishing to better understand FGM from an African perspective, Kizzie, a Sudanese female Muslim blogger, has posted an article on my blog on the subject.
Perhaps those folk who insist that FGM is integral to Islam, using such an association to define Islam as a uniquely evil religion, might care to explain why the atrocities of the Christian-based Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda aren’t integral to Christianity.
I think you might be crediting her with too much power, her strident fans and supporters with too much influence and this upheaval in the “blogosphere” with too much significance.
For all that the internet is a public forum, that seems to have been tacitly forgotten in this “debate” – at bottom, it’s just another cross-blog shit fight.
For anyone outside the sometimes very weird community of Australian bloggers, who might have accidentally googled there way here or whatever, it must be like passing a house on the street where the inhabitants are arguing very loudly about who’s a bigger shithead. The sensible thing to do in such a situation is to congratulate yourself on living somewhere else and move on.
Tch, you say that like it’s a bad thing.
I find self-congratulation to be sensible in any situation—it works for me.
And Jack: that’s some amazing aphorism alliteration you’ve got there. Awesome, actually.
FdG,
In some respects it is a bad thing because the heat and vehemence of the argument and the fact that it’s become – in part – a game of “denounce or be denounced” gives little comfort to anyone who thinks that the best way to deal with this – as with any other problem – is to look for effective solutions in something approaching a calm rational manner.
Of course this isn’t the way we do public debate and public policy in this country – what we want is debate and policy making that makes us feel better about ourselves by finding people who are so much worse than we are that they deserve to be punished for it.
Not that I consider Australia exceptional in that regard.
Gummo Trotsky (cool name btw):
It’s not just here in the blogosphere, it’s in the MSM too. I mean most of the articles I’ve read (with one or two exceptions) bought what she said hook, line and sinker. How can journos who can pick apart statements by Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnball’s with the accuracy of an ex-wife confronting a husband in a lawyer’s office, repeat Hirsi-Ali’s howlers like they are gospel truth from God Herself. It’s like they suspended their critical faculties all at once, because she’s either black, beautiful or From Somewhere Else.
All three. And if the opinion polls on Howard versus Rudd are anything to go by, I’d suggest strongly discounting their opinions too. And while the MSM like to think they’re oh-so-superior to us bloggers, fact is, they have their little shit-fights too. With much the same effect as cross-blog shit fights.
Am I the only one who can see an analogy with the way that Marxism became regarded by many people as inherently murderous and repressive due to the fact that people influenced by murderous Russian nihilist and chiliastic traditions (and their Chinese and Cambodian equivalents) became converts to Marxism as they understood it, and subsequently behaved like murderous nihilists and chiliastics in direct contradiction to the views of Marx, Engels and the majority of their Marxist and other socialist contemporaries?
This is not to say one should not criticise Marxism, but that one should criticise it for the right reasons.
Umm Yasmin (very cool name btw):
Yes, she is black, beautiful, from somewhere else. More importantly she is likely to attract lots of interest, stir up some passions (thus draw viewers, sell newspapers etc).
She is a hot chick, who has been threatened with death by some henchmen for being involved with a film which took a shot at some established conservatives. THAT strikes close to home among the media clique which conducts interviews.
Physical consequences for expressing art causes a lot of the “disscuss-ocracy” to break out in a cold sweat.
Thus she is news.
I think Hirsi-Ali is being positioned, and self-positioning, as a ‘native informant’, as it were. It’s a classic rhetorical strategy for adding authenticity to a cultural political position, and it does reduce down to a ‘look, here is the authentic voice of personal experience’ as a self-evident justification. Obviously it’s working for a lot of people in the media, mainstream and otherwise. In spite of the feminist use of experience in a variety of ways, it rarely serves as a self-evident justification – a last word, as it were – in feminism. There is still an interesting tension there, however, and that is what is being traded on and exploited to try and discredit feminist opposition. It might not be working on feminists, but it is probably working on the vaguely pro-feminist, liberal-minded of medialand.
Umm Yasmin
What are her ‘howlers’?
Umm Yasmin, yes I second Pommygranate’s question.
Miss Ali has said stuff like: “the muslim world claims to be peaceful, then as soon as someone prints a simple cartoon, they hit the streets & proves the exact opposite”. Paraphrased, but the diametric opposite of a howler.
SATP,
The trouble I have with your comment is that the Christian world makes the same claim – regarding peace – but we could produce plenty of historical examples, and contemporary examples, of Chritians behaving in less than peaceful ways.
When it comes to the historical examples there’s a stock response we’ve all heard “Well Christianity is over that now”.
Jeering reply – “oh yeah what about [insert selected contemporary examples here]“.
Angry rejoinder “Well, those people aren’t/weren’t real Christians!”
Cue audio: The Carousel Waltz.
Quite so, Gummo. I’m reminded of Edward Gibbon’s estimation that the total number of Christians who perished during the entire period of persecution by the Roman emperors was less than the number who perished in a single sectarian battle between Catholics and Protestants in 16th century Italy.
Come off the grass Gummo.
The “christian world” does not hit the streets in mobs burning down embassies, hacking off heads, just because of a rather bland newspaper cartoon.
And you know it.
Gummo
but we could produce plenty of historical examples, and contemporary examples, of Chritians behaving in less than peaceful ways.
Historical – no doubt.
But contemporary? Please elaborate.
And there you have it.
Would the wingnut boys be making such an unholy fuss and outraged kerfuffle about the mutilated genitals of a homely 65-year-old woman with exactly the same history and message? Even if it gave them an excuse to Islam-bash?
Best I can do is a recent historical example. It went by the name of ethnic cleansing. Katz provided a much more contemporary example in this comment.
Let’s make a deal – I’ll lay off the tu quoques if you guys lay off putting it all down to Islam.
An argument I was trying to participate in here, before my comments disappeared. SL’s point is interesting:
Though of course I disagree.
Not to worry Fiasco, chicks just don’t do it for some fellers. Each to his own.
Gummo
Best I can do is a recent historical example
Exactly!!
I see Paul Norton has to go back to the 1500s for examples.
I’ll lay off now.
pommygranate,
Recent, as in “within my living memory and your living memory” not good enough for you huh?
You were too quick on the gotcha, old son – I also back-linked to a comment from Katz on the Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda. Katz’ linked report is dated http://www.irinnews.org/InDepthMain.aspx?InDepthId=58&ReportId=72445.
So here’s a question – at what time today, Australian Eastern Standard Time, do you estimate that Christian violence towards non-Christians and heretic Christians finally end for all time? That was a pretty significant moment in history and we should find some way to commemorate it in future.
Given female genital cutting is the topic, let’s take her article from The Australian.
According to this 2005 Unicef report, infibulation is one of the rarer forms of female genital cutting, except in northern Sudan. But in Egypt, for example, less than 1% of women have undergone infibulation. Of all the countries where female genital cutting is prevalent, the most common form is “Type 1″ which involves excision of the prepuce. Only in Burkino Faso is “Type 2″ (excision of the clitoris) more prevalent. So Ayaan Hirsi Ali is describing the opposite of what is actually the case.
Hirsi Ali is attempting to make it sound like an Islamic practice, because she has a virulent hatred of Islam. Given that the population in Somalia is Muslim, then perhaps she doesn’t have experience with other African states where Christians and animists practice circumsion. But she is literate, she can read. From the Unicef report:
It then goes on to give Muslim-Christian ratios for cutting among women aged 15-49. For Guinea, Mali, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic the ratio hovered around 1:1. For Kenya it was just over 1.5:1 and for Senegal it was just over 2.5:1. In Nigeria, Niger and United Republic of Tanzania it was less than 1:1. Only in Cote d’Ivoire, Genin and Ghana were the stats dramatically different.
I don’t know about Somalia, but perhaps Ms Hirsi Ali could mention there many Imams who do discourage the practice. Take this story, where some anti-FGC campaigners decided to take the imams along to a woman who performed cutting, to disuade her of the practice:
But let’s move to comments she has made reported in Aussie newspapers:
Only 10% of Australian Muslim children go to Islamic schools. So the Saudis have their work cut out for them if they are trying to Wahhabize our kids. When Brendan Nelson made the insinuation that somehow Islamic schools are teaching our children to be “less” Australian than other schools, Islamic school principals responded. The chairman of the Australian Council for Islamic Education in Schools, Mohamed Hassan said:
And Hirsi Ali might do well to counsel the citizens in her new adopted home of the United States of America. 42% of them think of themselves as Christian before American, according to Pew.
But why set up nationality and religious faith as if they were mutually exclusive identities? We all wear lots of different hats and to be a good Muslim certainly doesn’t make me less of an Australian, in fact I feel it makes me a better Australian than if I was not.
Look I could write a whole post about this, and I haven’t even BEGUN to talk about her ignorance of Islam.
Steve:
And of the world’s 1.3 BILLION Muslims, how many went out on the streets? How many of Australia’s 300,000 went out?
Where do you get this urge for moral equivalence from Gummo?
The moslem world has plenty of violent hot headed sickos, and very few opponents to their actions.
The christian is the opposite.
Print a cartoon in a newspaper which depicts jesus christ blandly. Don’t expect anyone to even notice, (including orthodox serbs from 15 years ago or a bunch of anglican gunmen in uganda)
Then print a cartoon which equally as blandly depicts mohammed. The embassies of your country will be burned down. Your fellow citizens threatened with murder & kidnap, companies registered in your country will be boycotted, mobs of foaming mouthed fanatics will hit the streets waving placards calling for your murder, and so on & so forth.
Your office will have to be guarded by armed police.
There is no moral equivalence for THAT.
Ummm…. Northern Ireland anyone?
My big long comment about Hirsi Ali’s howlers is too long and seems to have gone into moderation so I’m posting it at Dervish.
Umm Yasmin – Northern Ireland – what were the Army and Police doing? – having a picnic??? I normally try to avoid personal attacks, but in this case you are an idiot for trying to pull that sort of moral relativity crap.
Oh and while I’m giving you a serve, Yasmin – As an Athiest I am quite comfortable with the 40% of Americans who see themselves as chrisitan first, becuase they don’t take their religion as a reason to strap on suicide vests or crash aircraft into buidlings or use chlorine bomb trucks against civilians purely in order to kill civilians.
Christian violence like hmmm… blowing up the Oklahoma building, or shooting abortion clinic doctors, or killing Muslims in Indonesia and parts of Africa, or killing each other in the various wars and conflicts including Northern Ireland. Heard of the Christian Identity movement?
Gummo – ok. that’s one.
Umm Yasmin – the troubles in Northern Ireland relate to nationalism not religion. The IRA campaigned throughout the 20th century for a united Ireland, not a Catholic Ireland. The UDF (the Protestant equivalent of the IRA) favour a Northen Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and separate to Eire.
Look – the point is this. There are an awful lot of people who commit violence in the name of Islam (not Christianity, but Islam). I don’t know why this is. But it just is. To deny this fact, is to wedge one’s head firmly in the sand.
Razor,
What’s wrong with my example? Do you want me to quote extremist Catholic and Protestant Christians who justified their murder of each other?
Now, of course their violence was no more related to Jesus’ teachings, than Osama Bin Laden’s is to Islam – but if you are going to conflate how people attempt to justify their violence using religion, then you can hardly expect to overlook the history – past and contemporary – of “Christian” violence.
Umm Yasmin, stand outside a cathederal in Melbourne & shout out that priests are pedophiles. You will probably be quite curtly told to “push-off”
Would you be prepared to stand outside a mosque on friday shouting out that imans are pedophiles?
Mmmmm, and there are an awful lot of people who justify violence in the name of “spreading democracy and freedom in the Middle East”. To pretend otherwise is to….
Off-topic, and rather pointless debate, people.
Please stay on topic.
Umm Yasmin,
You could put a figurine of jesus christ into yellow cordial, name it “piss christ” and galleries will fall over themselves to exhibit it. The arty set will coo over it, most people will think you are sick (but only becuase of the yellow fluid & the word “piss”) the most you have to worry about is that some drongo who isn’t the full quid may use a cold chisel to attack your creation.
Next you could put another figurine into yellow cordial & call it “piss mohammed”……….
Why not ask Chaser, Steve
\
You’d get the same reaction, a whole heap of people staring and a couple of the lads trying to move you out of the way of the public and cart you off to the local mental asylum.
Sorry Anna, I’ll try and stay on point.
Umm Yasmin
The Oklahoma bomber was a self-proclaimed ‘agnostic’ and a ‘lapsed Catholic’.
If anything, he is a stain on the name of anti-government kooks, but you can’t pin this on the God-fearing Christian fundamentalists.
Northern Ireland was a nationalist issue.
Killing Muslims in Indonesia – this is a joke right?
Pro-life activists – mad as a bar of soap, i agree, but deadly Christian terrorists? Hardly. Violent incidents are isolated and in decline.
Pro-life is also an Islamic view, i understand, stemming from a hadith that considers a fetus alive 40 days after conception.
Anna – why is it off-topic? Is it because it’s an uncomfortable issue? These are issues central to Hirsi’s speech.
Perhaps Pommygranate would be so kind as to provide the names of the Protestant members of the Provos and the Catholic members of the UDF.
And here is a link to references of several massacres of Muslims recently committed by Christians in various parts of Indonesia.
And harassment of Muslims also occurs in the USA, as this ACLU report shows.
The post, pommygranate, is about FGM and Ali’s views on that. Experience suggests that once we stray onto the sorts of “Is Islam more violent than Christianity?” comments that have begun to appear on this thread, logic flies out the door and the quality of discussion quickly declines.
Please respect Anna’s request.
Well, it’s your blog, Mark, and if that is the case, then i’ll say no more. I think 99% of the commenters here are in agreement on the FGM issue though.
The topic is Hirsi Ali, and ways of eradicating FGM. It’s clear that there is major disagreement on those issues, but a comparison of my god is better than your god, or whatever, is pointless and ignores the more important issues.
To bring it back on topic, this current tangent was in part raised in response to the idea that all Muslims are made to feel responsible for the acts of murderous madmen in a way that other religions are not. This is also evident in the way “Islam� is blamed for FGM, when it is neither limited to Islam, nor always, or even often, present in Islam.
But the point isn’t to show that all religions are bad, or good. The point is that blaming Islam is counter-productive. FGM would still occur if Islam was completely removed from the planet. But meanwhile, blaming all Muslims for the problem means that they have to spend time and effort responding to attacks from supposed allies in the fight for women’s rights, that could be spent working for progress in the really important battles.
Attack someone’s most strongly held beliefs, and associate them with behaviours they in fact find abhorrent forces them to choose “sides� in a way they wouldn’t otherwise. Stop forcing them to defend their religion to you, and they’ll be able to spend this time and effort on more useful things, like convincing superstitious women haters not to cut up little girls.
That some on the right would continue with this unhelpful approach when anyone with even the remotest understanding of human behaviour knows how it will turn out, suggests that they only care about the rights of women when it means scoring cheap points off the Left.
Well this has certainly been an interesting thread, if somewhat overheated, which I suppose is not surprising. I think it might be helpful to step back and try to make a few finer sets of distinctions, though, as I fear the level of reasoning on display here has not always been of the most flattering kind. For all the talk of Venn diagrams and so on, we aren’t dealing with arguments that have the pristine ethereal purity of math or geometry; human cultural history is sticky and weird, and comes with lots of baggage, which must be illuminated for an argument to stand or fall properly.
For instance we are asked to recoil in alarm at the thought that
“42% of [Americans] think of themselves as Christian before American, according to Pew.”
But of course this citation is pure equivocation; one of the relevant factors that’s left out is that the vast majority of this scary 42% are probably not recent immigrants to America; they are already native-born Americans, who are quite at ease with their identity and at home in their native land. Their identity is not in dispute, and so the Christian/American distinction is not terribly problematic. Thanks to the immense follies of multiculturalism, though, we cannot speak with the same cultural confidence about large numbers of newer immigrants, hence the anxieties engendered by these questions like FGM. (Out of sheer niceness, I am going to ignore the ludicrous analogy of Northern Ireland, which is either so ignorant or so dissembling as to be beyond ridiculous.)
It might be helpful to split the FGM debate into two separate spheres: the internationalist-humanitarian one, and the national-political one.
If a person is vitally concerned (as well they might be) about the humanitarian issue of eradicating FGM globally, on the grounds that it is cruel, then you have to realistically address the basic fact that it occurs in many places, mainly in Africa, where you have no jurisdiction. In that case, a reliance on international organizations, NGOs, charities, and subtle group pressures of the sort that Kim was advocating seem to be the methods that have the best chance of success.
I think that the other way to view the debate is locally, as it were; that is, with respect to the national sovereignty of nations in the West, who are increasingly seeing their cultural and legal norms under assault by mass waves of immigrants who show far less respect for the standards of their adoptive nations, than was previously the norm. The newer waves of (gadzooks) ‘multiculturalist’ immigrants often, and increasingly, aggressively seek special accomodations for their groups within what had once been an ‘equality-before-the-law’ society (and Islam is, like it or not, a principal offender in this regard). In that respect, the persistence or prevalence of FGM within a Western country where it is explicitly outlawed, is a kind of direct assault upon the host country both as a living culture, and as a viable system of laws which it has the right to determine for itself, and on its own terms (viz., not on the terms of the immigrants, who owe and are not owed).
Viewed from this perspective, loud denunciations and a zero-tolerance attitude have more meaningful attributes within a local and national-sovereignty context; at the very least, one is forced to admit that they are perfectly reasonable options, even if one ultimately chooses others. A useful comparison might be made to the hilarious debate between Nicolas Sarkozy and Tariq Ramadan on the subject of stoning adulteresses; regardless of what they do in, say, Iran, it simply can’t be done in France, and even to entertain the notion seriously, is not only preposterous, it strikes at the heart of the civic body; it is, in essence, a form of treason to suggest that such a practice be followed in France. This is part of the basis of the outcry over a thing like FGM, and regardless of whether or not it is an innately Muslim practice (which appears not to be the case), nevertheless, there is a strong Islamic association with it, just as there are ongoing strenuous Islamic attempts to carve out a law-within-a-law in Western societies to which Muslims have immigrated. To ask Muslims to therefore take note of the law, does not strike me as either unreasonable or Islamophobic, to use an utterly ridiculous and essentially meaningless word.
I won’t address Hirsi Ali as such, because I have only a slight familiarity with her work, but it seems to me that in Kim’s initial post, Hirsi Ali was quoted as having made some rather forceful proposals to ensure that the law of the land was respected concerning FGM. Regardless of whatever else you think about those proposals as such (and they would need to be tested in the light of existing law), they were eminently practical suggestions, taking into clear-eyed consideration the secretive nature of the practice and the clannish behavior of the immigrant groups in question. They at least had those virtues, whatever their vices might be. People who want to continue the discussion on those terms, if they disagree with Hirsi Ali’s proposals, ought to make realistic and pro-active proposals of their own. It is not enough to say that FGM is already illegal; thanks to multiculturalism, much of your law is probably already held in contempt in secret by numerous people. The prime issue may be one not so much of humanitarian concern per se (though it is surely that), but a test of whether or not you value your own values and your sovereignty enough, to take concrete steps to assert same.
Great comment, j_p_z. This corresponds closely to my view; I do think there are differences between domestic responses and international humanitarian responses to this type of abuse. Confusing the two is quite dangerous.
An assimilation contract (a non-legaly binding bit of paper with a signature on it committing someone to do something which is not objectively quantifiable) is an “eminently practical suggestions”?
Let’s get this in some sort of proportion.
Have a look at the sources of immigration to Australia in 2003-4.
A massive 3900 people came from the Sudan. That’s 4.1% of arrivals.
The Brits came in first, as always, with 18300 or 16.4%. Second was our Kiwi friends with 14400 or 12.9%.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/918B6C069BF7E993CA2570DE000697EA?opendocument
Of course we can’t tell what they do in “secret” JPZ but
[link].
Very well put j_p_z
Great post.
Thank you!
I have to get over being so lazy and letting JPZ be the Voice of America.
Brilliant, my east coast brother.
Are you a musician or a lawyer, JPZ?
………”The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world”……..
The bottom of the first page of the report in the link says that 60% of US muslims DO NOT believe that arabs carried out the 911 attacks.
Hmmm, now read the paragraph again…
….. “The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world”….
Read the report, it’s 28%.
“Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks.”
That is the bottom line of the first page Anthony. Doesn’t look like “28%”.
Perhaps I am reading it upside down or something?
Go up to the the top and find the PDF, there you’ll find many pages.
Here’s a hint, there are three answers.
By no coincidence, 28% is remarkably close to the 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
Jason Soon
There is no such great distinction between “culture” and “religion.” In fact, culture IS largely religion. Also, Islam did not appear out of thin air like Athena from the Head of Zeus.
Islam was a political response to the realities of life in the Arabian peninsular, Syria, Persia, and eastern Africa in the sixth and seventh centuries.
So you cannot simply divide what is “Islamic” and what is “cultural” by some artificial dateline.
Anna Winter
I think you have come in rather late. The topic IS, and has been for sometime, the fact that Kim only chose to address Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s presence in Australia as a footnote to a broader attack on Pamela Bone. FMG is a minor side-show. It is merely a horrible data point compared to Ali’s entire ouevre which ranges much, much, more broadly and profoundly. Even her writings, speeches, and interviews while in Australia barely touched on FGM, compared to her broader points: The substance of what she is saying is far greater.
Even if every single person who has posted here agreed that we all in total agreement on FMG, the substance of the REAL debate would still hardly be touched
The REAL issue is why have Kim and so many other leftist feminists (with the exception of Pamela Bone) spent so much time avoiding Ali’s substance, instead switching and baiting with ephemera.
You are one of them, so maybe you can clarify.
jpz
What are you talking about? US fundies, the IRA, Northern Ireland, your imaginary Australians scared of multiculti are NOT the topic of this thread. An African woman’s visit to Sydney to address the Sydney Writer’s Festival is the topic.
Her won words are more than enough for us to discuss without bringing in all that other noise.
jpz
Oops, please accept my apology. I see, you are quoting OTHER posters ephemeral interjections. Interjections, you – like me – see as irrelevant.
Umm Yasmin
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t Timothy McVeigh depart this earth via 100,000 volts care of the American people?
Correct me if I am wrong, but how many abortion clinics have been blown up again? How many doctors have died? Is it, er, er, er 3?
Correct me if I am wrong but less Christians died at the hands of two centuries of the Inquisition than the 30,000 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood who were massacred by the Syrians on one day in 1982.
Correct me if I am wrong but don’t western societies – including the very one you live in – vigorously prosecute any attempted violence and reject theocracy?
Religious people are going to stick up for their religion – that’s natural, John. I think Umm Yasmin would be better off as an atheist, and I’ll always put the atheist perspective, robustly. That isn’t to say that other religions are somehow exempt from the irredentism currently afflicting Islam. The fact that other religions (notably Christianity) tend to find a home in countries with a clear demarcation between church and state means they can’t get away with as much. That’s not for want of trying, of course.
McVeigh was a poor example, I grant you, because he wasn’t inspired by religion, but by other, more obscure hatreds. The anti-abortionists, however, are held back from Islamist-style behaviour by the rule of law and the US Constitution. Yes, Islamic countries probably need something similar, but I’m not going to expend blood and treasure helping them find it. We had to figure it out for ourselves. They can do likewise.
Forgive the sidetrack, but Greenfield’s ignorant blague cannot go unpunished.
The Inquisition was something of a sideshow in the mortality stakes. On the other hand between 15% and 30% of the population of Germany perished during the Thirty Years’ War.
Back to the issue.
Here in Australia we have ample laws against FGM, which is in the Australian setting peculiarly an Islamic practice.
The braying outrage of the Illiberal Right does nothing to improve the situation for Australian victims of FGM.
But that’s no surprise. The Illiberal Right simply view the issue as another straw in the hurricane of a more general culture war.
The Illiberal Right are as inhumane as they are obsessive.
Just think how much of a better place the world would be without the liberal left.
Indisputably, the liberal left are surplus to society.
And there’s another post here, as the debate enters the MSM.