Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The Market for Victimhood

my name is Benjamin Hale I'm an associate professor in the philosophy department and the environmental studies program here at the University of Colorado at Boulder I'm currently the acting interim director of the Bruce T Benson Center for the study of Western civilization where I'm filling in for the year while bob has now is away on sabbatical ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and moved with her family in 1970s to Saudi Arabia and then eventually to Ethiopia and Kenya she first received international attention after she arrived in the Netherlands as a refugee from East Africa fleeing an arranged marriage while enroute to Canada she studied political science at the University of Leiden and eventually earned her master's degree there in 2000 shortly thereafter she worked for the center-left Labour Party the Netherlands working on immigration party policy eventually migrated over to the slightly more conservative liberal People's Party for freedom and democracy she was elected to the Dutch parliament in 2003 where she served for three years focusing primarily on integration of non-western immigrants into Dutch society in 2004 she collaborated with the filmmaker Theo van Gogh on a controversial short film submission several days after the film's release van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death in the street and ever since she's been forced to live under the protection of bodyguards hence the metal detectors and so on in 2005 her CLE was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world here CLE emigrated to the United States and became a US citizen in 2013 she's currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is the founder of the AHA Foundation which supports women's rights she's the New York Times bestselling author of several books notably infidel nomads and heretic and she has a new book coming out later this year called prey despite death threats and harassment Hirsi Ali has pledged to continue to do whatever she can to defend women's rights and critical thinking especially on university campuses please welcome ayaan Hirsi Ali to the University of Colorado campus speaking on the market for victimhood [Applause] thank you so much dr. hill for that very kind introduction thank you also to Abby and that was brown of the Douglas brown foundation for making this possible I'm incredibly pleased and privileged to be here at Boulder hello Boulder thank you so much for having me I know I'm not welcome in many university campuses these days or maybe I am but it's always very controversial before I begin tonight I would like to say it is just really a fantastic fantastic day to celebrate that today seventy-five years ago our schweetz was liberated from the Nazis so for all our problems all our polarizations all the problems we're going through just let's reflect for a moment on their time and think goodness don't we have it right you mean aren't we blessed to have grown up I mean for the young people I was really expecting young people and then I'm so students and so here I find myself with an audience who really know no this way more than I do more than I do you've been told that I'm going to talk at you for 45 minutes but that's not my intention I'm going to share with you a few remarks personal very personal remarks because everywhere I go in America everyone asks me please share your life story and I'm really really tired of sharing my life story but I'll do it again and again and this is just to give you a background because I think it gives you an idea of how maybe I have arrived at the conclusions and sort of the philosophy I hold today and then I want to spend most of the Ayana and we have an hour and a half tonight and that and a half I want to spend it in conversation with you I want to get to know you better and I'm sure probably wants to get to know me better I'm not just who I was when that book infidel was how many of you read the book infidel there and the book was published in 2007 I was 37 years old I just celebrated my 50th birthday so things have moved on and and I I really really really want to share all of that with you so I'll talk to you very quickly and share three things with you the first thing is that I do come from a dysfunctional family I grew up in a dysfunctional family how many of you grew up in a dysfunctional family most of as I did it's it's a universal thing I also my family was in a dysfunctional community how many of you recognize a dysfunctional community see and that's the number is small it's a hand a a hand there but in America everywhere I go when I ask how many of you find yourselves in a dysfunctional community it's not that large how many of you think that we'll live in a dysfunctional country and I come from a dysfunctional country dysfunctional family dysfunctional community dysfunctional country well in the country where I come from it split up into three different regions that don't recognize one another and it's not recognized by the rest of the world that's how it is functional we are so don't raise your hand too soon okay dysfunctional family when I say dysfunctional family here's what my life was as a three-year-old four year old five year old when I come into the world I find out that my father was in fact married to a woman before he married my mother and they had a child and he didn't tell his first wife about my mother and the fact that she had three children and by the time the first wife finds that out she's on to having her second child it's how dysfunctional it is there's no level of trust between husband and wife and then there's a relationship between my own father and my own mother and my father just keeps leaving and he gets a third wife and has a child with her and he gets a fourth wife and he keeps leaving that's dysfunction as this function gets and from day to day we are tall boys matter more than girls men matter more than women there's just this inequality that's baked into the cake and it's just you take it or you leave it when I question that it's just you can't question it it's just God has ordained it take it or leave it free sources food shelter affection everything there's a shortage of everything so for everything there is a zero-sum game and how do you then get as much of that teeny tiny amount that's going around as you can and that's the second component it's what in America you call the community what we in Somalia call the clan the extended family what my clan can get we don't share with the other clans in fact we designate the other clan the enemy were hostile to them so when we go to the water hall to get water we try to get as much as possible for ourselves for our brothers for those who share our name who share our bloodline and we don't leave any for the others and when the British and the French and the Italians came together in the 1950s and established a country called Somalia that then became independent in 1960 the nation-state there were no founding fathers maybe they were founding fathers in fact members of my family never tire of telling me there were founding fathers but then the founding fathers were either of this clan or that clan they were not like the founding fathers we know here they were the founding fathers that were rooted in clan they were dysfunctional in fact so dysfunctional but between 1960 and 1991 this thing in the world we were supposed to be one we want we were split up into these dysfunctional clans or tribes and we plotted against one another we intrigued against one another and the clan that gets to power that is places becomes you know gets the president or the military the bureaucracy the universities the media we intrigued against all the others and we hoarded everything the are left out we created an environment within the family within the community and on the nation-state level of the oppressor and the oppressed the victim and the victimized and the narrative of the oppressor that was most attractive was that of Karl Marx what came to us from the West the most romantic story was the story of Ruth Earl fight get together sing the poetry I come from an oral culture so we composed poems my father was a storyteller and a lot of my childhood whenever he was there he was absent about I would say 85% of the time but the 15% of the time he was there he was telling stories and writing poems and at some radio station so we all hang on his legs and he was telling the story of how one day we would overcome not the tools we would use but just how we would do it because then we were the victimized and there was a market for victims and unfortunately for me between when I became conscious of it between the ages of 10 11 to about 1617 when I lost faith in the narrative of the victory I saw too many young people especially young men subscribe to that narrative it came into your life you thought it was a narrative of emancipation but it was a narrative of victimhood because you were told to resent and you had something to resent you were taught to see the face of the oppressor and the face of the oppressor was there in front of us all the time in Mogadishu Somalia we had large posters of marks angles and Lenin this is a poor African country for heaven's sake so to have these three creatures at we used to call them creatures to have these three creatures at every corner and then when you turn the corner then you had our dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then again with three others whoever was the president Castro Che Guevara whoever was what and they were zooming around in the latest cars we had airplanes flying around we were lining up for food 100 degrees Fahrenheit that was we had absolutely every right to feel that we were the victims and that we were being oppressed but then if you only left with the story of being the victim of being resentful and the fermentation of they have it I want to have what they have I want to take that away from them I want to have it and then I want to do it to them if that's the story the what are you going to get you're just going to do it to them and so in 1991 in Somalia one through a collective effort and through an implosion of that system the whole thing came down when the people who been agitating for a change when it was their opportunity when they thought okay now is our time let's do it they didn't have a plan they didn't have a story beyond vengeance it was my family did it to their family my clan did it to their clan so we are going to do it to them so from 1991 to this day we're still doing it we're doing it to the other we're killing with a legend we're destroying they destroyed us they destroyed our souls they raped our women they took our property they did it to us so we're doing to them we're not moving beyond that it's that cycle that goes on and on and on now why am i sharing this story with you because I thought that was human nature I just thought that's how things went yeah there was a splash of religion that came in the 1980s that gave it some kind of fright tears Ness oh yeah the Prophet Mohammed said do it to them so it made you feel good to kill children it made you feel good to enslave women put them under burkas great if you are a man and you have the urge go take them the Prophet Mohammed said so it didn't matter it was my family doing to that family that family do me to my family my clan didn't - Declan in that London - Michael might try bring it to that tribe that's what was going on and I thought that was just nature that's how it happened the way you see plants go down in the winter and then it comes up again and that's just human nature then I came to the and I saw this wondrous country and I thought wow how did they overcome it how the f do you do it and then B yonder with the Netherlands was around for at least a thousand years or Europe was at least thousand two thousand some of the countries depending on what you're looking at then I came to this country and it's 200 and not even 40 years and it's like wow how do you transcend that level of tribalism in such a short period of time that's the story of America right that we're all sitting here I know I'm looking at all these white old faces and I think maybe we need more diversity here but the magic the magic of America the magic of America the magic of telling this story of America is not let's go tribal please for people like me let's not go tribal let's not go back to that it doesn't matter if the tribe is the bloodline I am a yarn the daughter of hair see who's the son of Magan who's the son of a Z and that's what was ingrained in me and anybody outside of that they have no rights to anything you know we have to be suspicious it's it's not that kind of tribalism or cleansing or whatever you want to call it but what I see us doing now in America on our campuses in our politics in our corporations in our newspapers in our media relating to the rest of the world is it's like we seem to be hungry for a tribalism of we gay we're black we are women we are this let's do the zero sum game please let's not do that please because the world wants to come here and learn from you those people who've inherited the story of America who've inherited what America is all about I was put in a hotel and the minute I opened the curtains there is beautiful beautiful mountains I know but it's the same in Somalian when I opened those if I had been in Somali and I opened my curtains in some hotel room which I wouldn't of course I'd be killed I'm an infidel but if I did that and I would think but there's no rule of law there are no traffic laws there's no food or if there is it's only for the few only furthers plan is tribal people who've managed to get it so what we have here is very unique in history in geography and in time how can we how can we hold on to this and give it to the rest of the world and I think the people who designed it is maybe design is not the right word but coming up with the first amendment that was genius because if you can protect the rights to offend right if you can protect the rights to offend then you're paving the way to overcome tribalism feudalism guilds and all the rest of it club isn't pleased and if only we can protect that and I can't imagine we have this is the University of Boulder please be honest with me if you are a student when it comes to academic freedom do you think twice about what you want to ask yeah this is in America freaking America if you if you worried in the United States of America about what you can ask now what you can publish what you can teach what you can propagate what happened to academic freedom freedom of inquiry ladies and gentlemen just think about that because once you snuff that out you're going back to that tribal cleanest cradle you're snuffing out Western civilization and it is what makes Western civilization different from everywhere else before I open it up for questions please let me contrast the United States of America as it means to me I think I'm the only person who boasts about it to the rest of the world I find myself in conversation with people from Asia mainly from China and the Chinese say we are offering them they've been saying this for quite a bit of time since 1989 that they found a mysterious way of a between order and prosperity and there's no need for democracy because democracy is messy look at us we're polarized look at us we have Donald Trump we have brag Z we have all this bad and the other so they think they have a better model then the first crisis shows up and it's a crisis all of us are questions of it all day long we've been following it all week long the coronavirus ever since I came so I came from Europe right people in Europe in the Netherlands we tend to trust government more than Americans even the most trusting of Democrat voters in America don't trust government Americans just don't trust government you go to Europe they trust government almost blindly but right now if the Trump administration asks you and you are Alexandria Ocasio Cortes and you were asked to report to someplace to test yourself for some virus would you go would you not go raise your hand if if the government asked you to go and get yourself tested go to your closest clinic go get yourself tested would you go would you not go would you go it's would you not go bald as a special place in China they have an entire province an entire freakin province quarantined they don't know what this and a lot of it is panic it's the government not knowing what they want to do the trust level between the government and the people is so low that the government has to come down on the people that is the kind of authority they are telling us about that's what they want to sell us on come on I'd have Trump any day you want to say to me that the Chinese get I would have polarization any day I would have the chaos we have anything I don't care what we have I love what we have by the way you don't even have to watch any of the politics you can just go ski and maybe the people who aren't putting their hands up they would just go while I was skiing that's why I didn't show up for him I don't have the coronavirus but if we had an epidemic like that I would say in our governments of freedom and democracy I know Winston Churchill said it is the worst was it's really but it is the best of governments it's it's terrible but it's the best of and this is exactly what we have to celebrate it is I think it's been the test it has been the test for Humanity how do we overcome tribalism how do we overcome tribalism and we're still I think in an embryonic phase places like America some of other liberal societies they have achieved something but we are not there yet and we cannot go back we can't go back by saying let's divide this society into new modern a post modern tribal entities I do obviously get that we need a narrative for lifting up people who have been left behind people who feel that no one speaks for them I get that and we need to do that but that narrative has to be a narrative of emancipation not a narrative of victimhood the narrative of victimhood the market for victimhood is a market of corruption it is the market for smugglers people smugglers it's the market for exploiters it is not a market of emancipation it is not a market for social justice and now I really welcome that conversation I want to have with you thank you so much for coming [Applause] [Music] okay cool all right thank you so much so so tribalism versus individualism narrative emancipation versus victimhood so one thing I like always when you have such a dichotomy of viewers that like to look for the root cause and said so what causes this and then what causes that and I think a lot of that has to do with the way a person identifies himself I am a member of such-and-such a group and so my identity my innate identity is with such a group and I think mm-hmm maybe they wrote huh that the root cause I think would be what actually is a human being and Who am I as a person and what do you think would be what is your understanding of what a person is what an individual is who exactly is a human being and what is the proper way for a person to identify himself so that at root you don't identify yourself as an individual as a member of a group but something that is relevant to you personally what do you think is a human being a person metaphysically innately is your first understanding okay well thank you very much the question okay what is a human being and I'm being asked how do I identify a human being I think it's I'll tell you something there's a difference between a human being and a non human being other animals library's full of books that have been written about why human beings are different from other animals let's other mammals even gorillas chimpanzees other animals that have come acquired that level of intelligence I'm not going to get into that in terms of innate iners we've had that whole discussion about nature versus nurture what you when you're born what you what you get from you know some of us a so I don't know okay music running math you name it but culture and I think it's a good question that you raised who are the people who are nurture you and what is it that they nurture you with what is it that they whisper into your dear little ear and I can only share with you from a cultural perspective but errs and culture matters to the degree that a civilization like in this one has produced something like this Adam Smith was not born in Somalia Thomas Hobbes was not born in Somalia Thomas Hobbes was making an observation of life as being short and nasty and brutish which is exactly what things are in Somalia and Afghanistan but he was born in Scotland at a certain time now let me tell you something what kind of culture what kind of nurturing is it that produces an identity like that that is very complex and it's layers and layers and layers of complexity and I'm going to go even one step further and say to you that of all the different products and expressions of human kelpy of human culture and human narratives in human identity some are superior to others and I know that that's a provocative thing to say but I'm leave you that and go to the next pass [Applause] you wrote an article an editorial in Wall Street Journal not too many weeks ago about trying to get rid of hate yes especially people that are born practically born with hate yep and obviously hate can be created could you describe a little bit more how to get rid of it hey that's the etiquette yes this is for The Wall Street Journal they chose the title can Ilhan America overcome her prejudice I didn't want to make it about Ilhan or burn it but it was about when Ilhan omar started to tweet about the Benjamins and all she did all this anti-semitic stuff and i wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt because she and i come from the same country clan is tribalists and then the country falling apart people going away she grew up she spent some of her time in a refugee camp I came here really truly grateful for being here she seems to think that being here is really over even though she's made it to being a congresswoman can you overcome hate I think human beings are creatures that if they're open to learning can indeed learn and can overcome it and here in this article and I really I mean it's Wall Street Journal July 12 2019 I will say yes you can overcome it but you can't overcome it unless you're really completely honest with yourself and say this is how I acquired it there was a time honestly so today is 75 years ago that we are celebrating the liberation of Auschwitz we look back at the people who made a shoe it's possible the people who took part who participated and who enabled and who actually gassed fellow human beings because we said they're not human beings they're Jews how did they get there they were nurtured into it and I want to say to you it was nurtured into me I was taught Jews are responsible for absolutely everything in the world that goes from there evil if there was no water coming out of the tap it was the fault of the Jews if we had no money it was the fault of the Jews if there was some kind of disease or epidemic it was of the Jew I bet you the coronavirus there are people where I come from right now who are saying it's the Jews who caused it once you learn that and once it's instilled into you if you find yourself in an environment where you have been educated your mind has been open and you know better and you're still peddling these ideas you're still peddling this nonsense then I think you have to take responsibility for that and I was calling out my fellow countryman Hanuman for saying now you know that when you are in that refugee camp and you were a 12 year old you didn't know any better but now you're a congresswoman some of your colleagues are Jewish you are in America you've been introduced to this abundance and this information this wealth of knowledge now you know better you have no excuse to carry on doing this and there's no excuse to do it against gays no excuse to do it against Muslims no excuse to do it against any group of people there's no excuse to continue to hate fellow human beings for no reason than only that you've been taught to hate them first up thank you for coming to speak to us today so our questions on the topic of moving full of ways to move forward as a society so some northeastern countries Sweden comes to mind having recent years experimented with government enforce mandates too diverse for the workforce most notably establishing percent quotas for women in the workforce particularly in fields with a typically larger gender dichotomy like the STEM fields mm-hmm so my question is what are your thoughts in the effectiveness of using policy as a tool for diversification in that way so I I subscribe to the view that government has to be small transparent and accountable that just happens to be my view and if government allows us citizens to be just who we are and figure out our own business and we then figure out for ourselves you know between me and my husband who's going to look after the children I have to tell you it's a constant and ongoing conversation who is going to do what he's not quite ready for me to be here tonight but I he's known doing the diapers tonight but that's that conversation between me and my husband is not something that the government has a say in now the Swedish people seem to think that it's different it's working for them a their homogenous it's a very small population and it's very wealthy so once you take because of those three factors once you take that to a heterogeneous 350 million people oh yeah now the government is going to tell you who's going to change the diapers we're going to get into a realm where we the government is not going to be transparent it's going to be opaque we don't know who's accountable and it's just going to cost tons and tons of money so I would say maybe there's I would rather liberty of a welfare when it comes to that I am but we shall see where this experiment goes and the Scandinavian countries seem to be doing it let me tell you the basic principle that yeah a man can look after children a woman can look after children a man can work outside of the home a woman can work out those basic principles I think they've been proven so I I don't have a fight with that I do have an argument though philosophical argument where what is the role of the government in that so if I don't win an argument with my husband should I be reaching out to the government in that case and I've seen it in some European countries where you're actually married to the government that's not much of a marriage I can tell [Applause] how do you deal with the conundrum of tolerance and intolerance not necessarily when it rolls over into hate but you can tolerate a certain amount and once you don't tolerate any more you are intolerant how do you draw that line well it's very easy do not tolerate the intolerant I'm going to repeat it do not tolerate the intolerant I've said this in the context of so when I was really and this was way back and it's still an ongoing thing I have a friend called magic now--is who's from the United Kingdom and he and I have gone back and forth about Islam and Islamism and okay he has persuaded me not to talk about Islam in general but to say it is Islamist political Islamists because they are the ones who have an agenda Muslim in general just leave them out of it okay I agree with that so when you talk to the political Islamists the political Islamists come around and say well women are supposed to be shrouded we do not have tolerate homosexuals Jews are all terrible people political Islamists as powers and communicate and propagate a narrative of intolerance towards a variety of people and I would say then don't tolerate that that's that's the line remember freedom is live and let live I'm not going to dictate how you live don't dictate how I live I think the basic and simplest idea in a context it is tolerance is all about not tolerating the tolerant I think that's what made America great I know it's too short and it's disappointing but thank you for being here you're touching upon the propensity I guess of young people on college campuses to to to to to adopt like a victim culture could you give us a few examples of young people acting like victims on college campuses and the negative consequences that occur by virtue of that behavior yes I will give you a little bit of that I actually put together the thank you very much I don't know if everybody had the question the question was young people subscribing to a culture of victimhood what is it that you see there is a vocabulary that makes me really uncomfortable let me see here we go so I made a note of it words like this intersectionality so I'm really old I'm an ancient woman and in terms of philosophy when I was in college I was made to read Bertrand Russell's a history of Western philosophy and intersectionality was not in there and and then there's another one microaggressions safe spaces there are more than a hundred genders that are about from Wars white privilege there's something called check your privilege now wait a second please so today is the 75th anniversary of our sweets being liberated please raise your hand if you have a relative in that history and a lot of you are happen to be white and male how could I just how could I say to you check your priveledge how can you say to someone who came here who fled that from Europe with nothing on their bags who survived Auschwitz Oh whose parents wiped out shoots and came here and say to them glibly check your priveledge just because you happen to have a white skin the potato repeal story of the Irish raise your hand if you have any story there how can you just go around saying you know check your priveledge you can't go by the color of people's skin that is such a nonsense so that is the kind of thing that I think oh my god it is such an intellectual dead end and we're seeing this on our campuses people are grouping themselves into a little tribes the whites if you happen to have to be male and have a white skin you must be the oppressor regardless of your history that can't be true we can't have that now microaggressions what am I supposed to do with that I mean you're laughing but what is a microaggression and then there is so I read up on intersectionality and microaggression it is so there is the assumption if I make the accusation I will say to you you have now looked at me in a certain way and I accuse you of something it you're guilty you're presumed guilty that turns everything upside down the idea that this free society this is what makes America different from Somalia from Somalia it's okay my tribe can just say oh yeah fine they're all guilty because they're from that clan the haters anyway we don't we don't we don't do due process we don't have habeas corpus we don't do lawyers we just stick our knives and our guns and we couldn't read the other guys okay you come here and they say you lawyer up and you say what is that and they say you'll go to some courts and the judges and the jury they assume that the accused is innocent until proven guilty but this micro aggression narrative is that you're guilty it doesn't matter it's Somalian [Applause] there are hundred genders why not a thousand I mean why stop it's a hundred I talked to my fellow scientists and I asked them really because I am NOT I am NOT a biologist I looked and I listen to the biologist as honestly as I possibly can as how many genders are there and they very uncomfortably say to me too but then if you're going to expand it why stop what's a hundred why why not seven billion there are seven billion of us why not seven billion to each his own gender this is the stuff that I think I mean if you're going to write I'm looking at dr. Hale if you're going to write the next Western civilization philosophy but politically what are you going to put in it okay the answer your question well what I'm going to put is that we're decaying pretty fast because we're going back we're going tribal we're going tribal we're giving up on civilization we're going back to okay this this stuff doesn't make sense to me intersectionality you can call it intersectionality or you can call it mature 10s man Mohammed dar or whatever I mean I can tell you give you a myriad number of African tribes and you can call it intersectionality I mean it's whatever you want to call it but you I think what Western civilization gave us was to transcend that and talk about a narrative of humanity we human beings and so if you recognize one another first and foremost as individual human beings and you talk about the family and you recognize the rights of the child you recognize the rights of the woman and give them access to education and so on and so forth and you you have you know God has his place and the government has its place and that will civilized violence has it that was the story but if we're going back to yeah okay blacks against whites transgender people against non transgender people homosexuals against it it's this is it's mind-boggling and we're doing it voluntarily we're doing it voluntarily and that is what boggles the mind for people like me who've just guy came here only in 2006 and I'm thinking we'll wait we had that whole big Cold War the Soviet Union I mean most of you been old enough to have known at some points you were ducking under some bankers so then we won that and now we're doing this maybe they want because they're havin they're havin us this is our camp this is in our universe I'm at the Stanford I'm at Stanford right now and we have some of these conversations and I'm just shaking my head we need to get rid of this oh yes hi thank you for sharing the story of your upbringing I haven't lived in the places that you've lived but I know that today we're standing on Arapaho and you indigenous land and that unresolved conflict is a reason why you see so many white faces here today at the end you said that people deserve to be able to push towards their own liberation and I'm wondering if you can give a concrete example of how a group can do that towards emancipation without invoking as you say victimization thank you for that question I want to go back to the opening sentence which is unresolved conflict about the people on whose land we see actually that conflict has been resolved because if it were unresolved this is the kind of truths that we have to tell one if that conflicts were unresolved we would have a line of the Native Americans in front of the people who came here still fighting one another that is not the case conflict is resolved I want you all to ponder that it's called history and it should be taught as such and the history that is being taught let's abolish Columbus Day and make it a Native American it's I am so sorry to say this to you but history is not about emotions it really is not and this is why the market for victimhood is yeah sure I'm going to say I speak for the Native Americans I'm going to go to the United States government on whatever level and I'm going to get whatever funds that the United States government is going to pay for speaking on behalf of the people and while the Native Americans find themselves in reserves their children excluded from modernity and from what America has to offer these funds are going somewhere and no one is questioning that because anybody who dares question that is being told or but then you are on a place where history is not resolved history is resolved it's called history it's done victimization and emancipation I think at some points people find themselves in a situation where they think it is unbearably oppressive and they want to get themselves out of it I have found myself in that situation and you get yourself out of it you make alliances you bear and you understand that you're not the only one and you get yourself out of it not by well owing it in it not by being resentful not by being vengeful but by lifting yourself up out of it with the help and I have said to you you look at the story of slavery or civil rights in this country or the Holocaust or any any other narrative of history it hasn't been only that the people who were oppressed lifted themselves out but they were also helped by the classes of people who came from the oppressor side these are the stories that need to be at all and in the end the story is not let's go back to the time of the Native Americans in the end the story is how can we make the best of it now how can we help the children and the great-great great-great grandchildren of the Native Americans of today to make the best of what America has today not wallow in it thank you I was wondering what kind of functional tools you think a country like Somalia can use to get themselves into a prosperous situation what kind of steps can be taken now moving forward given the long history of conflicts well I I follow I mean I think most Somalis don't know this but I do actually follow it originally and I look at the regions in Somalia that are doing very very well and when I say very well they are the regions that have a pintle and Somaliland little pockets of the south what they have done is they've decided to overcome their tribalism or clan ISM they've decided to build trust in the sense that if you want to bring investors back into the country you then have to deal with things like violence if you're going to kill people you're going to kidnap them you're going to you know screw them over they're not going to come so they have established systems where they can say okay we actually are going to get you back into the country please trust us it's a matter of standing falling standing falling standing but please trust us and they can do that because they can trust or build on the trust of those two other levels that I was in the family level and the community level and the teeny tiny pockets in Somalia that are thriving now and this is all very very relative it is where trust and peace to a certain level it has been established once again Somalia has 3,300 miles of coastline it could be the world's most visited tourist destination they can get this right but they do have to get rid of that tribalism they do have to get rid of that jihadism they have to get rid of the short-termism and I think some Somalis know that it's just how do they get the other clan mates to do that trust Trust trust and it takes a long time and that is why I say the countries that already have it like America and other European countries while you get rid why are you getting rid of it when you got so it took us so long to get here and now we're getting back into tribalism number ten yes you were mentioning essentially you know not tolerating the intolerant right and Islam is frankly fundamentally intolerant of anything that's you've alluded to and as certainly your history dictates as well and that sort of thing you also used to have the opinion that Islam is not reformed and I believe you reverse that opinion at some point there's wondering if you can comment on reform in Islam how likely it is particularly when you're dealing with the intolerant and the armed and and all of that sort of thing like is this a likely possibility in the Muslim world or or not so or in terms of Islam again that is Islam and there are Muslims right Muslims are very varied there are 1.5 1.6 billion of them and they're all human beings and every single human being is different so that's where the diversity lies right when it comes to Islam as a philosophy especially as political philosophy I would say that that is where the reform needs to happen and in my conversations with some someone like Majid I say right now what we have is Islam as a philosophy on reform please if you want my long answer on this read my book heretic but Islam unreformed requires you to believe without critical thinking it tries to organize human life on a political economic social and cultural level and the way to reform it if I were in charge but I am NOT I left Islam right I'm not a Muslim anymore I would say number one the idea of trying to say all wisdom and all morality is derived from one book and one man one book the Koran one man the Prophet Mohammed I think that has to be reviewed second Islam puts a lot of trust in the hereafter and so all small children are constantly taught remember life after death life after death life after death so if you're constantly investing in life after death you find that your children are not investing that much in life before death right and so then it becomes and this is why I think a cult like Isis was successful within Islam today is because that's exactly what it is that it happen it becomes a cult of death then number three there is this body of law Sharia Sharia law and it just governs everything absolutely everything but it also pretends to have an answer to a modern answer to the relationship between men and women the relationship between people of different religions Foreign Affairs military affairs political affairs economic offense but Sharia law and whatever it is that it governs was designed for the seventh century so obviously it can't have an answer to all of these things and I think the things that mean to be separated there is number four something that hasn't been really understood in the West it's called commanding right and forbidding from and within Islam especially if you're a political Islamist you are constantly propagating your Italian fellow believers you need to go and pray you need to fast you need to put on your headscarf you know every it's it's horizontal it's not the government telling you what to do but it's fellow citizens telling each other you cannot stray from the straight path and it's constant it's relentless so people are not left with any space to be creative to be themselves to have a sense of privacy and then number five finally it's the concept of jihad concept of jihad is you have to you have to as a Muslim it's an obligation special every Muslim male to convert others to Islam if they refuse to use violence and as long as that concept is there we're going to have trouble with Islam these are the five concepts within Islam unreformed today that I think is holding back Islam now let me tell you some good news the least reported story of our time is the sheer number of people who are in Muslim countries who are rebelling again least reported least understood all right hello thanks so much for being here we all really appreciate your presence over here at our University my question will require a little exposition so forgive me but I think you've touched on something super important which is this concept of sort of Liberty right live-and-let-live as you put it and I think it's important because we got a lot of good things in our country but many of our problems such as say on mental health we're kind of on the downturn like our our sort of native birth rates remain kinda low while immigrants are coming into our country with very high birth rates right you hear about this all the time the immigrant crisis it's things like that and it really is kind of like an excess of Liberty that has caused these things so when like at what point do you say we should look back to tradition we should look back to culture versus Liberty do you think we've gone too far or do you think we haven't gone far enough thank you well I feel like you know people really again you know when we talk about Liberty it is Liberty from what's so I belong to the school of thought it is Liberty from coercion it's not I have a right to this ayah right to that I have that's not my definition of Liberty my definition of Liberty is I want the government to leave me alone as much as possible but I would like the government to uphold such fundamentals as the rule of law so if people want to have children let them have children let them have as many as they want to have but then the rights of the child have to be observed I don't belong to the you know I I don't entertain any of the notions of the immigrants are having too many children I think that's nonsensical the what no where what we are all immigrants and we all want to have as many children as we have and we can but we do want to protect children so if I see any if you see a child in distress of course you call you call the nurse or you call there and I think government should provide for that for looking after children you know infanticide we don't do that in this country we don't do we don't do all of these crazy things but Liberty Liberty in no way entails that you take someone else's Liberty it is the government to leave you alone to do whatever it is that you want to do what is wonderful about Boulder I mean the whole you know outdoor living thing is you want to ski you go ski now you are taking a risk you know you're taking a risk I want to be left alone to take that risk if I want to have nine children well that's my choice if I can look after them so if I really don't I'm not one of those people who is going to dictate you should have one or two cellies what China does we don't do that could I give a quick follow-up is that is that all right yeah okay so say so say it's a hypothetical to pinpoint the principles no okay yeah too long too long-winded to start huh okay all right well thank thanks for answering appreciate it hello I'm so happy you're here this has been a wonderful conversation just one of the most interesting I've heard in a long time so thank you so much I've been on the left my whole life and I welcome you so I don't know how many other people are saying that this evening I think there's nothing wrong with that left or the right I think what we've what we are missing out the culture right now is that the left and right or whoever we're not having a conversation we're just being an hour and a coach embers and we need to change that yeah yeah good one that's a tribal you mentioned in your talk the cycles of revenge that you saw people in and I wanted to see if you wouldn't mind opening that up a little bit just for us to understand what that is you know how does it start and then unfortunately like well we kind of know what it looks like but maybe you could explain it a little bit and then why doesn't it stop you know why does it become this cycle that you know to me that sounds like it can't be stopped and it turns into I am if I understand correctly intergenerational like it but maybe I got that part wrong I'm sorry but what does that look like why doesn't it stop and have you ever seen it stop and if it did what did that look like well I want to say actually your question has to be reversed it is like that's what we've been doing as human beings for as long as we've been the under fellas and beyond we've been like that we've been avenging and revenge and we've been in these cycles of so the miracle is that we actually stopped doing it so the question is I here's what fascinates me these European countries so in 1992 I come to Europe and they're not killing one another mm-hmm I mean this teeny tiny country it's as flat as it can be it's I'm told the size of Rhode Island it's six feet under sea level and people are coming from Persia they're coming from all different parts of Africa they're coming from the former Yugoslavia and we're all like looking and think Wow you know the bank's there for men and women the whole thing functions it's just mind boggling I'm only 22 years old the women are dressed like you they have a tank top shorts it's in the summer and they're going about their business the men - no one is you know doing any there's no sexual misconduct at least that I could immediately see and it was like wow and so that fascinates me that's the fascinating story the fascinating story is not why human beings killing one another it's been that's been the story of humanity what's fascinating is why did they then stop doing it I guess I'm for this brief period and very brief fearsome ajan in Europe it's only after 1945 and not all of Europe only the western part right and then in America for the last 200 years we had only the civil war it's what I'm told right so it is there are very brief windows of time when you think they're just these little windows of peace time in human history and these are the fascinating bits these are the ones that you want to study and every time you have to get to that point where you say well they they transcend it that factionalism you know that tribalism that that clique is him and how did they end is it lasting is it lasting this is what's the story of America is it's great but is it lasting and is it a story that can be you know can you take it to the rest of the world China is saying oh we can offer you a combination of order and prosperity really maybe they can I don't know but the way they are treating this whole Quran I think I don't think so Russia with Putin you read about it there are a lot of Russians who are happy with Putin because he's offering some form of order some form of prosperity combined but for how long so that this is this this thing here we haven't it's been - it's been around for 200 years it is good and I think we're squandering it that but that's where the story like the fact that human beings have been killing one another oh come on I guess I wanted to see you know is it just the raw emotion that keeps going you know the they did it to me and we have got to get revenge you know what is it like because for me I look around and I'm like I do I'm sorry do you have siblings you have siblings um hi my name is nadir I'm Muslim I don't get them here or anything I just have a comment on your victimhood and their question on our tribalism and I first like to say I agree with you with victimhood and like especially since being in border it's like I'm being like cheetah is like a special animal in the zoo like victimhood oh we need you oh we can't say this around how do you feel oh I'm so sorry about what we did to you I'm like I'll need to hear that honestly I kind of do distribution in America because I know that America was not really meant for all all this gathering and welcoming of everybody was really made for just money as in like America like European countries came to America for fur for their gold for their money to supply their banks and and to have money banks and I'm a product of that as well my question for you with tribalism is for somebody like me who doesn't know the language of where he's from who doesn't know the area's Africa is from who doesn't know the culture and who would like to go back to that who would like to learn where he's from to learn like maybe like my son maybe like a facial feature like why do I did like the certain music or certain taste what do you have for people like that or a group of people who would like to not before who are forced to assimilate not to continue to assimilate but ill through their own ways well I will I think that's a good first of all like what a great kid I think what's a great question I wish that Bala University had a program where they would actually take young people to go to places in Africa like Somalia Syria Leon Smiley's not safe enough but see really on Liberia Zambia any any party in Africa where tribalism still is a problem really yeah the problem of you know not really it's very hard to persuade these different tribes and their leaders to become part of a national narrative let alone a global one so number one I think it would be a wonderful global leadership thing not just have the people from there come here and learn from us but people from kids from here go there and learn and see look this is how people live so when you come back here you feel blessed now in terms of music and what I call sights and sounds it would also do you a great deal of good to see oh gosh yeah and there's a lot of recognition here and someone talked about the identity earlier on so something as I don't know esoteric as identity because and feelings and things like that I think it would be really really wonderful to see those things and merge those things but you can't take here's the thing politics is about power it is about those who are in power the policies they bring to the place the legislation the dominance etc what I do not want people to confuse is let's take our feelings and inform policy and power because then you are going to you then you get into what we are now where we are now with all this work nonsense with Starbucks and all these other companies going they are going woke and it's like okay they've had too much coffee that kind of thing you cannot have you can't take rational reason you know database decisions and then just put them into the metaphysical and say today I feel this and today tomorrow I feel that then you get into kind of a very gray area so I would say let's separate it and say it's very good for a university like this one to develop programs of the culture the arts you go and listen to stories of people who are there who are here and the transition of that and then you have just you know I'm looking at dr. hill to help me out here okay I'm on my own I take a job and I am told this is what you're supposed to perform and I there is there is a an objective criteria that is developed for that and for people like you and me me being female you being black and me being black and female and then with the glasses disabled you you can't say I want to be treated differently because if you then if you start doing then there's going to be no more objective criteria and if you have no objective criteria you're never going to go beyond this whole tribal thing because then when you when you create grey areas then you are going to create areas where people are going to say whoa I can hide stuff you know I can I can I can just like but I'm so glad you asked that question and I'm so glad and so happy and so proud of you that you are not falling for that whole victimhood narrative oh and trust me I have an objective criteria [Applause] in light of the today's a 70 density I cannot hate in light of the today's the 75th anniversary of the release and in light of the history of anti-semitism repeatedly as a Jewish mother today I'm afraid I'm afraid because of so many Muslims in our country in other countries and the fact that I've been told that part of the prayer the morning prayer the daily prayer is death to the Jews I I'm afraid should I be afraid I think did you all hear the question so yeah as a Jewish mother and I've been told that you know a lot of Muslims are being taught in their daily prayers that they are to hate Jews should I be afraid here's the problem with fear fear breeds panic and then panic breeds sort of hatred and that again is what we just talked about which is irrational empirically and I can confirm this and I have the data to back it up in many many Muslim schools in many mosques on many Islamist websites millions of Muslim children and young Muslim adults and others are being taught and they're being indoctrinated with hatred for all things Jewish in the State of Israel that's just empirical that's just a fact now what do you do within that fact I think you face it and you look at that content and I think you look at the people that they are targeting this is how I would approach it this is what I say to all my Jewish friends and I say you look at that content you look at those audiences you look at how young those audience is some of them are 5 years old 6 years old 7 10 years old 15 and so on and I think that you look at that content you look at how young those people are and you introduce a counter-narrative you show them it's not true this is hatred it's not to choose a fellow human beings they are scientists they are doctors they are mothers they are children they are your friends the first time I saw a Jewish person I shrieked I was in a Belgium neighborhood in a place called Antwerp I was in an asylum seekers Center I was taken there by the guards it was an outing for the people in the asylum seekers centre and I was told we are now in the Jewish neighborhood and I thought what were they and they pointed to a family and I said there they are and I kept looking and I swear and then I said but that's a man and the white Dutch guy said to me what did you expect because that's what my brain my brain was I expected somebody with horn some kind of Harry Potter figure something a character out of her that's what I expected that's how I was brainwashed that's what I expected and I don't know what the other little children expected that is the empirical truth should we respond to it with fear and dread to a certain extent yes but I think at this stage we should also have the counter contact we should know a who is disseminating this information where's the money coming from who are the vulnerable audience is there targeting and then what is the counter-narrative that is how we ought to do it hi I just want to say first of all it's heartbreaking I just want to clarify that we could on says we should love everyone no matter what your religion is from we do not hate Jewish people they come to our mosque in Boulder every week it's an open place but my question so during your lecture earlier I was just wondering when you were talking about Islam I was raised overseas I was raised in Syria in the Muslim country and I was also raised here you brought up some sources we I'm just wondering what your sources are from like where where are they from because you know you it's LOM I believe is the most peaceful religion we do not hate anybody it is not meant to hate anybody if you have any questions about Islam which you know it's America we are minorities you best ways to learn is to ask them Aslam person and go to a mosque my question is I was wondering where you got your sources from when you talked about Prophet Mohammed and Islam is that based on experience or facts and I'd like to know because it is not my experience as a Muslim woman raised overseas and in America well thank you thank you very very much for that question I really want to applaud you for the facts going back to the question the previous question that when you said in our mosque in Boulder we don't propagate the hatred of Jews and everybody is welcome I really think that is something to applaud and that's healthy and that's wonderful that you take a stand against that I applaud you for that I think that's a wonderful thing you're from Syria and fasting or your parents are from Syria the first thing that just comes to my mind it's just how heartbreaking that is you know what's happening in Syria people being gassed it's become the theater for all this geopolitical terrible stuff that's happening part of Syria to answer part of your question part of Syria was in fact hijacked by a group of people called Isis the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and when they did that they did it in the name of Islam and you asked me for some empirics but when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Isis when they did that they not only quoted from the Koran they in fact tried to follow in the footsteps of the prophets in his life in Medina in as detailed a manner as possible as they could and I know that that is heartbreaking I know that that creates a huge cognitive dissonance for people who are Muslim it does it for my mother who is still a believing practicing Muslim and all the rest of my family and for you and for all the other Muslims whom I see here in the audience but again I say to this audience and all the other audiences I do not want you for one minute to equate the young lady's son they're with Isis I do not want you to look at this young woman and think she's covering up or denying or anything of the sort I want us and here's what the whole point of a universe this this is what a university college served for me was that you can actually get to a place a platform where you can engage in critical thinking right you can engage you can look at the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad in a critical way and not just stand there and say he was all perfect and he was and just based on my experience you can engage in a critical thinking of the Prophet Muhammad and still be who you are still be true to your heritage your identity your culture you don't have to give up all the values that your parents gave you being a Syrian being a Muslim being devout being spiritual being generous being wonderful but in this environment if they don't teach you to learn how to think then I don't really think they've shared with you the dream of what it is to be American thanks so much for coming tonight thanks so much to our speaker and have a safe evening okay [Music]

Channel: Benson Center

Views: 189,386

Keywords: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Islam, Philosophy, History, Political Science

Id: ADIiPyaqyaA

Length: 91min 53sec (5513 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020