In Conversations with Ayaan Hirsi Ali

is wrote not long ago that she has managed to outrage more people in more languages in more countries on more continents than any other writer in the world today she was born in Somalia she was raised in a strict Muslim family in an extended clan she spent her childhood not just in Somalia but in Saudi Arabia and Kenya and Ethiopia as as well and it was a childhood punctuated by not just a civil war but by the horror the unimaginable horror of genital mutilation at age five and brutal beatings the one constant in her early life and childhood was the devout Islam of her mother under which ayaan became herself quite devout she went to the Netherlands in 1992 was a refugee fleeing from a forced marriage to a cousin whom she had never met she learned Dutch she went to college and she entered politics she denounced her faith just after 9/11 she was elected to the Dutch parliament and she became an outspoken advocate for the rights of Muslim women in Europe for what she calls the enlightenment of Islam and we'll be talking about that with her this evening and for security against what she perceived as an Islamist threat to Western societies she probably became most well known earliest and she alluded to this earlier today as well following the murder of her colleague Theo van Gogh with whom she made the movie submission as you may recall if you read her her were read about her or her first book infidel shi-it what the body of Van Gogh had a letter pinned to his chest pinned with a knife addressed to ion indicating that she should be next her book infidel became the number-one bestseller in Europe and her new book which I commend to you and which is available in our bookstore Nomad which has just come out and she's joining us really from the book tour it's already been translated into many other languages is undoubtedly going to find similar circulation and probably similar if not even greater controversy Nomad is a carefully chosen name it describes her own journey physical spiritual and emotional from her childhood to Europe and then ultimately to the United States which of course is now her home she works now for the American Enterprise Institute the AI was really responsible for her being able to get the necessary papers to come to this country and she's also recently established the ayaan Hirsi Ali foundation dedicated to fight crimes against women including genital mutilation forced marriages and honor violence I thought the way we might start our conversation is just to pick up on on the three minutes earlier and use you talked about how America is wonderful in the West generally but particularly the United States is is a competitive and can compete very effectively I wonder how you think the West ought to compete with what you view as as a threat from extreme Islam views oh gosh where do I stand I think that America is good at competition if you take a number of Americans and say a number of Europeans a number of Africans a number of Japanese anime and you tell them sell your products I think Americans will be able to sell the product of their selling to the largest number of people and convince them that this is a great product I quoted I think it was Mitt Romney whom I had speak who said you know we were able to sell a brown liquid to millions and millions of people and convinced them that you know this is this is the best thing to drink and other time he was talking about economic competition but I thought what if you as Americans were to compose your value system individual freedom rights tolerance the equality between men and women liberal capitalism you know these values that underlie that if you are to to compose that and you were to start competing with the agents of radical Islam for the hearts and minds of millions and millions and millions of people who now identify themselves as Muslim but who really know very little about Islam who don't read the Koran who it's only through transmissions of that message that they feel that they are Muslims but they really haven't been confronted yet with an alternative set of ideas with an alternative moral framework with an alternative value set we have been swindled into thinking and that the values that our Qaeda embodies is only that of a fringe group men like bin Laden really don't belong to the mainstream we've deluded ourselves into thinking that answers can only be found within Islam and what we need to do is encourage Muslims to reform Islam and both the external idea that say countries like Saudi Arabia want us to believe Islam means peace we are not at war with you don't go after our constituency and our own self delusion that reform and change will come from in Islam have put us in a position where we're not even looking into what is it that agents of radical Islam are saying how much are the resources that they have what do the agents I remember when I was a little girl 1985-1986 I was only 16 15 16 years old and I became radicalized I joined and sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood but I lived in Kenya there was no proximity to the Muslim Brotherhood the person who introduced the ideas of radical Islam to me and my fellow students was one of us she went to Mecca and Medinah on a scholarship paid for by the Saudi government she herself got brainwashed into thinking the way she got to think and then she was replanted amongst us and she was then introducing us to ideas about the difference between right and wrong our obligations she was telling us all about the Hereafter how we could become much as how we belonged to a larger group of people called Ummah how that was our family and how we needed to be loyal to them she was making us conscience of what America was doing wrong what Israel was doing on all of this and if you look at the radicalization process of every individual that we now see whether it is the so-called homegrown terrorists or out there in Pakistan and Muslim countries that can you can identify that process of radicalization are we competing with them my sense reading no matters you might argue that we're competing we have one hand tied behind our back and you're talking you in the book that one of the most important things is education but we can't just leave it to Muslim children and Muslim families themselves and and that we have to be much more aggressive in advocating our own views and you you argue that it's you think out of some kind of misguided politeness that we don't challenge the beliefs can you talk more about that and and that's a very hard thing I think for many Americans to do especially being such a religious country yeah are you know it's a religious country and I think there's almost a taboo of criticizing other religion I got a wonderful opportunity this morning and yesterday at the Socrates seminar to spend time with American students and we addressed that question why is it that Americans are inhibited why are you not allowing yourselves to judge other religions by their merits and other ideas by their merits and the entire class and some ways all of the classmates actually said I'm uncomfortable thinking critically of Islam it's because in the way we are brought up it is it's become a part of a visceral system of every American do not judge other religions do not judge other cultures and I understand where that comes from and I think that is really a wonderful trait to have until you are confronted with a religious political movement that wants to replace your own value system with something that they consider more superior I think then the time comes for competition then comes the time to say oh great do you think that your moral framework is superior to mine let's talk about it but then and this is where I think the white and I use the word swindling very very carefully is that's when you get organizations coming out and saying if you do that if you subjects Islam as a belief system to the same scrutiny that you subject to Christianity to Judaism to secular political movements then you are Islamophobic you are racist you are a xenophobe you're not a xenophobe if you think through the concept of jihad you're not a xenophobe if you think through the concept of informal fatwas where every male Muslim has the obligation to command right at least what he thinks is right and to four-bit wrong in other words you have in every male Muslim a policeman who punishes you when you think you've that when he thinks that you've done something wrong then there comes a time to start competing with these ideas for the hearts and minds of millions and millions of human beings who now think of themselves as Muslims but if they were to find other alternative ideas might change their mind all we have to assume is that the individual Muslim can change his or her mind I changed my mind I know several who have done that and changed stats in small steps you even we in a conversation would and we had the other day you were talking about even the role that is not being played by many NGOs or Western foundations when they're providing aid in some of these countries you contrasted the process that's followed by the Saudis for example yes we say yes we'll build this road but we're gonna in in return we're gonna expect your children to go to these madrasahs and and follow these particular precepts we don't do that and you you you believe that our aid should be conditional on changes in the schools and changes in the mores yeah given given the context in which for instance a country like Saudi Arabia this was published this is a paper published by the CIA in nineteen 2003 they found that between 1973 and 2003 these are the decades that America and Europe were engaging in moral relativism in multiculturalism in self-doubts who are we we were all wrong white girls these are the decades in those decades Saudi Arabia was investing a lot of money not only in Saudi Arabia but all of the world and in the West in promoting their ideas their value systems call it Islam call it what hobbies can call it salafism I don't care what you call it but it wasn't the Bill of Rights it wasn't Universal Declaration of Human Rights and so where you have the resources you have the ideology and you have the agents the message is tired to millions and millions of people and it's taking root and people are acting on it we act shocked we say oh my god why do they hate us why do they hate us because we were looking away all this time and for decades people who are being told haters so if you look at that if you look at the efforts that wealthy Muslims put into convincing human beings out there except our moral system and give charity with strings attached we will build you that clinic if you become a Muslim if you are already a Muslim we will give you even more if you become our hobby Muslim and you compare to the amount just in sheer numbers of money and agents that the West has sent out to the developing world with no strings attached you can keep your culture you can keep your religion you can keep your value system we'll bring you the condoms we'll build you the hearts we'll build you the clinics we'll talk about malaria but we're not going to talk about values and if we talk about values the minute you take offense we are going to withdraw talking about values but keep offering you the same help then I think you get into a situation where even the money from Western countries is used to promote values that are anti-american that are anti Western that are anti universal human rights let's talk more about winning hearts and minds which is what you think we should do it's our policy to do it your words in in infidel and especially in nomads about Islam are themselves very hard words you criticize it in terms that we've already discussed we're really not accustomed to when people talk or write about another religion calling in many of its tenets I mean for example you you you describe its tenets about as monstrous it's celebration of violence and the closing of minds might you're very stridency and and the words you use be in a sense you know comparable to drone attacks and that they're they're too hard and too threatening or I mean obviously you've carefully chosen these words and you think it's appropriate to describe the tenets of what had been your faith in those terms but might it in fact be fire to be as outspokenly critical of something that is so elemental to so many people well I mean let's take the drums there are after the 11th of September there was this whole debate about okay what should we do and there was one school of thought that said let's just you know get rid of the radicals who are militants who are violent by using drones let's get to how do we discover you know who's how can we tell the difference between a militant Muslim and a non militant Muslim and in order to find that out to be used among other services the Secret Service the military and the Secret Service these these are very very very expensive ways of I'm not even talking about the moral side of the issue but I'm just talking about just the sheer cost of keeping that up trying to figure out who is the next article Muslim who's going to harm us defining the problem as inherent in Islam and then targeting Muslims to think of something else was labeled strident radical wrong and I think by doing so we leave the field we give the agents of radical Islam a monopoly on that constituency and that is a huge demography think about the fact that most Muslims don't really know what is in the Koran most Muslims have no idea what Muhammad said most Muslims poor in the sense that they're trying to struggle to make a living they only know what the agents of radical Islam tell them and we are giving that small small elite that small slice of individuals who proclaim themselves as the leaders of Muslims we are giving them that entire field there's no competition with it what we are also ignoring is that the individual Muslims who live Muslim countries and come to the west and who through curiosity discover for instance Christianity or rational humanism and leave Islam and those X Muslims whether they're Christians or whether they're atheists like me the fact that they have to live in fear and in hiding so if you go if you look at all of this what you will see is that what you some of you might think is stridency radical that it does indeed lead to people thinking about do I want freedom or do I want submission to the will of Allah as a woman do I want to be the driver of my own destiny or do I want to depend on Guardians be they my father or husband or so on to define for me what my life is do I want to invest in a life here on this earth or do I want to invest in life after death that those individuals who reach a conclusion that is freedom life equality tolerance live in hiding a persecuted are a small minority and have to face consequences that the other group doesn't have to face that is something that encourages me to tell you all of us let's compete so you let's spread that message of freedom tolerance equality and you think those messages can be can be carried by Christians and Jews and Hindus effectively and feminists and feminists well we'll come back to them the feminists and and how because I know you write it no matter with great disappointment about how the Western feminist movement had let down in your view Muslim women and have not done nearly as much as that out of this the same kind of false multicultural concern I think yeah I think feminists also have succumbed to the idea that the notion of equality between men and women and equal rights before the law between men and women is something that is Western white man is the oppressor he oppressed the black man the colored man he was the imperialist etc etc so the only man really who sexism you should target and whose prejudices you should target is that of the white man there are many feminists who have succumbed to that there are other feminists men and women who feel that the only way that they can help women in developing countries or women from developing countries is only by zooming in on the social economic variables but not discussing the convictions the culture and the culture and by ignoring culture you're ignoring the fact that these convictions have convictions that are going to be passed on from one generation to the next generation my grandmother who mutilated me was convinced that I would not get a husband once I became of age so her conviction was if I don't do this I'm breaking with tradition she's not going to have a husband and I'm therefore not giving enough love love as defined in her way what my grandmother didn't realize and what say the feminists there were no Western feminists who got in touch with my grandmother but if as a Western feminists you were to have conversation with my grandmother you would convince her or but women no longer need to be virgins in order to be married they don't longer need to depend on husbands they can work they can have you know they can work for their own money and in fact in most developing countries almost all the work is done by women it's just that they're not paid for it and they're not recognized for it but a lot of work is that and it's creating that consciousness in women like my grandmother that might have changed her mind that might have changed her mind about feminists might have started telling Muslim women women in developing countries that all this focus on virginity is wrong morally wrong because it puts more weights on the hymen than on the human being it creates a sick relationship between the female and the male where the man is only convinced that he can be himself and a man and powerful if he controls the sexuality of women so there's so many things that feminists could do could have done that they haven't done because they believe that doing so is ethnocentric and imposing their rights and so that's one of the reasons that your voice is still a relatively lonely one I mean it's interesting again in your book and on our conversations the reactions sometimes you get when you speak to college audiences and how frequently it's young Muslim women who object most strenuously to even your being there and and and you you say that there are activist groups of every stripe as there are on American campuses yet nothing for girls fleeing Islam no group fighting for the rights of Muslim women and you say and I'll quote you even when Muslims blow up other Muslims who differ in their interpretation of a supposedly peaceful religion even when children are used to suicide bombers even when a devout Muslim woman is raped goes to the authorities and is stoned for having sex outside of marriage even then students are silent why well that is what fascinates me so I talked to American students American Muslims educated in elite colleges and I confront them with these facts and they seem to be more outraged by the fact that I am criticizing Islam or for in the quran even naming them and not at all perturbed by the women who stone the women there was times I mean in one of the college's I visited it was other time when Afghani women found the courage and had organized themselves to fight against the mullahs and they were rounded up and some of them were whipped some of them were lashed they were humiliated they were put in jail they were raped and what were these Afghani women fighting for they were fighting against two verses in the Koran they were saying we don't want to be beaten by our husbands and we don't want our husbands to force themselves sexually on us now both of these fights for men are in the Koran the Afghani women were not mentioning the Koran they were not criticizing the Koran they were just saying we don't want to be beaten we don't want to be raped the Muslim students in American colleges absolutely could feel no empathy with those women they were far more outraged by the fact that I had mentioned these things that these reports were in the New York Times they were outraged by the fact that the media was reporting on it they weren't outraged by the violation itself they attacked me on the film's submission that led to the murder of theo van gogh i confronted them with the verses that i had written on the bodies of women again they were far more outraged by the fact that i had gained to take quranic verses and written them on the satphone women than they were and what the vs. said and the fact that those verses were put into practice and i think that is something that as Americans as Westerners we have failed miserably in convincing these young minds young American life young American minds these are American citizens young America minds that they have they are subscribing to a value system that comes to them it comes in the campus's Muslim centers mosques etc online the ideas of radical Islam are propagated but somehow we have failed to caution them somehow we have failed to give them to give them as a weapon individual critical thinking so that they can tell that Imam or that authority figure from Islam who approaches them I don't agree with you and here's why I don't agree with you we have somehow failed to give them those tools you you write and you speak with us about radical Islam why why don't you talk more about moderate Islam I mean some critics would say that you're describing a Islamic culture that exists in Somalia in Yemen and Saudi Arabia maybe Afghanistan but not the the majority expression of Muslim belief not in Indonesia not among moderates in most other countries not among Muslims in Europe or Muslims in the United States so where where are moderate Muslims in your view of all these issues well first I would say it is wrong to presume that only because I am from Somalia or only because I have been exposed to radical Islam that that is something that is limited to Somalia that is empirically wrong the radical Islamic movement in Indonesia has been growing and really growing upwards from say the 1980s but markedly so from the 1990s and so on take a country like Turkey best friend of the United States very friendly toward Israel was what things are changing but just look at look at those developments look at country like Malaysia with three ethnic groups where the ethnic melenz were probably more modern and progressive in the 1970s than they are now so that's trend more and more Muslims subscribing to radical Islam having the civilizational awareness considering themselves to be a part of a Ummah that transcends and advocating for Sharia law increasingly and advocating for Sharia law increasingly it's not something that is limited to Somalia it's not something that I'm inventing that's just the empirics as it is moderate Islam versus radical Islam this is another self delusion we confused moderate Christians with moderate Muslims a moderate Christian is a Christian who knows who says comes out and says things in the Bible that were written ages ago I don't really take the Bible seriously I mean I'm inspired by the good things that Jesus did but in my daily life I I'm I don't I don't use the Bible as a manual the the individuals that we tend to think of as moderate Muslims are individuals that do not take the Quran as a manual they don't practice it they don't do everything that Muhammad the founder of Islam said that you should do but intellectually they have not confronted the Quran and the morality that is that's presented in the Quran they've also not confronted the example that Prophet Muhammad has given they're simply ignoring it and that ignoring of these edicts of that moral framework is only for a period of time and this is why so many night describe that in Nomad so many Westerners come to me and say how is it possible this guy was really he was just one of us he used to go out with us he used to drink with us now this himself from us no longer drinks has a beard and he's attending these radical Islamic classes what has happened to him he was moderate he is now no longer moderate it is because he was before a passive Muslim who is not practicing the faith and has been persuaded to become more active and to become someone who observes the faith now that doesn't mean he's necessarily going to be violent but he you know still it means he subscribes to that so modern Islam is not the same as modern Christianity for me a modern Muslim is someone who like Irshad Manji looks at what the Quran says looks at what the Prophet Muhammad says and says I know all of this I've taken note of it but I choose my own morality and I will take from the Quran what I want and I'll leave behind what I don't want and the number of if you if you if you define morals Islam as such the number of Muslims who subscribe to that a very very few yeah aren't persecuted I think it actually was Tom Friedman who wrote in one of his columns once that of course there many heinous practices revealed in Leviticus or the Old Testament and there are certainly very ugly chapters in Christian history in most religions history but we now have you know Judaism 3.0 and Christianity 4.0 or whatever but for some reason Islam or from much of the Islamic world is still stuck in 1.0 why is that you call for an Enlightenment in Islam yeah well that's why I gave up I think on this whole idea about Islam reforming from within because Islam has obstacles that Christianity didn't have and probably Judaism being half some of the students this morning and some of my fellow my friends Jewish friends tell me Judaism is all about a struggle the concept of God is one that you fight with you argue with and Jews don't proselytize they don't go to other people and say become Jews so that already gives the Jewish population puts them in a completely different situation where you have a congregation of people continuously quarreling and fighting and asking questions you've been to my synagogue I I haven't been to your synagogue but if what I'm promoting is if what I what I'm trying to promote is critical thinking a question God so if you already have a whole congregation of critical thinkers then things will look different the concept of a god or in within Christianity when I came to the Netherlands but also before I came even in Kenya Jesus Christ is presented as a figure who died for us and our sins and a figure of love and then his creator is a father so you have these are benign figures I almost want to say Jesus Christ is from what I know of established Christianity he's a very happy me figure long hair flip-flops walked on water saved people and this one again in one of our seminars this morning I think it was a girl from Serbia who said you know as a Christian and she's an Orthodox if you sin you will be punished it is something between you and God but your fellow Christians won't to come and punish you now if you take Islam first of all the concept of God is one of submission you just have to bow and do as you're told the Quran is full of explicit commands and I look and I've struggled with trying to you see okay I want to give the people who want to reinterpret the Quran a chance but reinterpretation means you're going to twist God's explicit words and you're going to make them more obscure and before you know you've put God in a position where he's incoherent and really doesn't know what he wants to say and take for instance the verse in the Quran that says beat your wife there is an American Muslim who interpreted that to mean leave her what beats is very explicit leaving her I'm not sure is such a good idea especially in Islam where divorce for men is really very breezy you just bring in two witnesses you say your divorce and that's the end of the story so I'm not sure that interpreting the Quran is in any way improving the situation and then there is no hierarchy there's no there's not such a thing as a church where in within Christianity first is for Catholics is the Catholic Church but even for Protestants you have all these different cenotes you become members of these synod's and then as a congregation or as a community you do what the leadership says we don't have anything like that in Islam all men are equal so here you will be mediating will you be conversing with this person who you think is an authority figure whose message you like but there there's a bin Laden emerging and there there is an unlucky who is suddenly an authority and so you have anyone can call himself an authority because of that state of anarchy where there is really no central figure for Islam who mediates between was limbs and who's the spokesperson for Muslims between Muslims and non-muslims that just doesn't exist and the demography is expanding at a rapid pace we are talking about one-fifth of the world population then I think seeking answers within Islam and waiting for that faith to reform itself is simply not a viable how to take competition offering that demography other ideas that might lead us to a better answer let's talk about a particular political practical issue that is now being faced by many countries and it's been controversial in Europe and that's burkas and and headscarves in your in your book you write of headscarves you say muslim headscarves and burkas are quote gradations of mental slavery and marks of apartheid does that mean that the French are right to ban certain kind of head scarves and schools or our countries right to ban the you know the full burqa well in I supported the French banning the headscarf in school and they didn't just ban the headscarf they ban the cross the kippa the what they call manifested religious symbols in school outside of the school compound you can wear them again I also as a member of parliament when we were in the Netherlands we had to look at should we ban the face covering yes or no and I remember that we talked about the mask in the Netherlands you're not allowed to wear a mask you can't cover your face and so some of the MPs said instead of designing new legislation let's just file it under the mask no covering your face is masking your identity so it's forbidden even for religious reasons there is the argument of security in a new era of terrorism Islamic terrorism where you're required for instance in airports but also in places where large groups of people come together to identify yourself there CCTV cameras all over the place I think it is not before long there is no way some of us will be able to cover our faces while some of us don't or are not allowed to and so from a security perspective I can imagine legislation being put into place saying the face government is wrong but from a moral perspective I would rather that we engage with the women who wear these veils and point out what the Quran says about what the head is what their religion says about it and their religion says you as a woman must hide your beauty otherwise men will get aroused and then will grope you rape you and if that happens groping the rape the touching were looking at you in a wrong way another man will come your brother your father whose honor is is it time to feel this attack is going to go after that man and before you know it is going to be a state of fitna or a state of war so as a woman prevent men a from their own sexuality and be from them taking revenge and the best way to do it is to stay at home unless you have a reason to leave the house if you need to leave the house then completely cover yourself so that you don't attract attention to yourself male attention to yourself in other words female sexuality has to be hidden that is a conversation I think that we can have with Muslim women let's open it up to to the audience and I don't know if we can get some lights or we need to get them down it's hard hard for me to see but there's a woman right behind you or man I can't even see but I see an arm and if you could just stand and your name and a short question please oh oh you don't have to stand I do see a crutch thank here thank you that was very very interesting conversation and I just wanted to ask you just try out a few thoughts on you I come from the women's movement and for 20 years have been working in the international women's movement this has been one of the most difficult issues is how to support in a way that's practical and effective and I have worked closely with many Muslim women and Muslim women's groups in many countries around the world I've been I've been asked please don't raise this stoning of women in Iran or help me get the UN to raise that because if you raise it from the US it will just make it worse it really won't help it will actually make it worse and so we tend to listen to those voices and feel the frustration of well what can we do and try to find different avenues and it's certainly my sense that within the movement of feminist Muslim women there's a heated debate about whether you can find equality within the Koran or whether you have to reject the religion as a whole seems like a very sensitive issue and it doesn't strike me that there's much of a place for women from outside that faith in that debate that we all have those kinds of debates in our own contexts and that that's a debate that you know can go either way from an international point of view and you can support women who believe both ways to try to promote equality and in in many countries even Somalia it seems to me there are women who are trying to they're strong and they believe in equality in the most fundamental human rights sense but they have no voice and they have no power and so it's a mistake in my view to look at other cultures and not recognize the same heterogeneous nature of the discourse and those cultures that we have here we have many minority voices here that don't reflect the dominant discourse and yet are very indigenous and so I guess what we have tried to do with issues like female genital mutilation and other sensitive issues that involve culture is to empower the voices of these women from the culture as opposed to come in in the way that that I hear you may be suggesting with an American voice that may undermine the very work that we want to try to support them in doing so I would just be interested in your thoughts about that certainly on FGM I mean just a few weeks ago the American Association of pediatricians came out with this great idea that it would be fine maybe we should support the idea that young girls where babies should be cut in a mild way and there was a huge outcry and they backed off and and you know that's one extreme and then the other extreme is to come in and you know disregard the kind of need for education and just try to ban something and criminalize it without listening to the voices of low so we always try to find that balance and I would never say that we've done enough for a good job but I also think it's quite difficult and some of of that kind of strident voice is fine when it comes from someone like you but when it comes from someone of a different culture it may actually undermine the work well I get that there are a number of statements that I have had recurring you know come back I want to respond first of all to is it there's the we and they if that is their culture if that's the way of doing things do you think that coming in with an American voice the American way of doing things is effective because the elites the people that you talk to that you engage in getting through to the rest of the community tell you this is not the right way to do it you should do it in a different way think about the situation in Iraq and in Afghanistan when Americans were told by the elite leadership those people who consider themselves to be the spokes spokespersons for Iraqis and Afghans invade because you invaded Iraq or because you invaded Afghanistan Afghanistan Iraqis will not go and vote and we've seen over and over again when election booths are established that the population goes through rain bad weather and good weather and they stand in long lines and the expatriates do the same thing even when they know that there's the risk of being bombed by suicide bombers and they stand in line and they fought so the people who are telling you don't markets your values to the population because they're going to consider you hegemonic they're going to consider these values you know foreign on all of that saying that because they have an entrenched interest in the way things are and that is why I promote instead of speaking through mediators or self-appointed mediators to reach out to the populations themselves I also want to point out another I think that you've mentioned which is you know a there and here that is no longer the case we have my five or six or maybe seven million Muslims living in the United States and more who want to come there are 15 to 20 million Muslims in Europe and every year about a million people from Muslim countries make an attempt at getting into the European Union there are thousands who apply for asylum or work permits in Australia thousands of others want to go to Canada so the number of Muslims leaving Muslim countries Sharia ruled countries who want to come to the west ever increasing so that is that that whole distinction between there and here no longer applies and for every single Muslim who wants to come into the West I've been through that process you go through an interview with a Western civil servant with pages and pages full of questions but I don't remember ever being asked and all that I've translated for tons and tons and tons of Somalis who are seeking asylum in the Netherlands I don't remember a single question whether it was a visa application an application to come and study or an application for naturalization I don't remember any question during those interviews that asked those individuals about the value system that they were living behind the value system that they wanted to come in and what they really wanted to be a part of that let's go to next question in the third row what wait for the microphone if you would david kuhnian from new york i six months ago at the parliament of world religions in melbourne australia there was quite a bit of conversation about these issues and a lot of women's groups whether they were interfaith women's groups or in particular muslim women's groups and the sense I got at some of those sessions was that there's also a distinction between Saudi Arabian tribal culture that has been along with the money and the roads and the madrasas that has been expanded as they've tried to set this idea in place and that although there may be one or two important verses in the Quran there certainly our honor killing verses in the Old Testament and that kind of thing and and my my question is in particular with honor killing the sense I've gotten is that that is less about Islam and much more about sort of tribal Saudi culture that's being sort of expanded throughout the Muslim world and that in places like Indonesia that it might be easier to be trying maybe people could deal with people with head cloths much like they feel comfortable with with a woman in Brooklyn who's wearing a wig if it wasn't that there's also this huge misogyny about people who are in Buffalo able to chop off their wife's head when they're upset you know because they're bringing on this sort of tribal Saudi mentality on top of what's being taught it is as Islam and isn't there an ability within Islam to sort of say clearly you know if a woman wants to be discreet that's fine but but we can we can all agree that chopping off someone's head you know because you're upset with your wife is not the you know it's something that within the modern world I think that's something that you could get huge groups of Muslims to agree to with your wife would you take away her credit card yeah you will get large numbers of Muslims who will not be had their wife's because they're upset with her but if you want to discriminate if you want to make a distinction between say Arab culture Saudi Arabian culture and Islam you're going to have a hard time is LOM was founded by an Arab man and Mecca and what was that culture is a great deal of what has been elevated to become religion and if you look at what is in the Quran what is in the hadith the sayings that the Prophet Muhammad left behind you will find a great deal of similarities between the way Arab peoples live it is Arab Islam is Arab culture Islam was founded in an Arab setting and that has expanded has been spread to the rest of the world unless I mean I'm an atheist and I can say that now and I can talk to some Muslims who say no Islam is after its founding it's very different from what Arabs want and it's and there's you know there's Islam as a religion as a message from God the one and only and then there is Arab culture and the two have nothing to do with one another and actually Arabs have contaminated the true religion I don't agree with that position I think it's more plausible to accept the fact that Islam is Arab culture and as it spread through the centuries to other cultures it's been diluted by other cultures but essentially it is Arab culture in Arab culture and in tribal culture even when it's not Arab the mechanisms of honor and shame Fame and within the family that the relationship between the two sexes is one of honor and shame in which case the behavior of the females invites shame and the man can get rid of that shame by punishing the women who have shamed the family and then regaining honor so yes you can say does the Quran say permit honor killings no that's the Quran say flog the adults around the adulteress yes if you read hadith you get more precise instructions and the procedure of doing it and the hadith will tell you assuming that there is a Sharia state that the adulterer and the adulteress should be flogged if they have had sex before marriage should be stoned if they've had sex after marriage that there is a whole way of proving it with four witnesses etc and it's always so much easier to prove the fact that women have had sex and men can deny it but even if that were not the case even within Sharia there are injunctions that say if the family if the brother or the father decides to kill the indecent woman then that's his discretion that is also part of Sharia and so we can go on and on to say let's separate what is Arab and Arab culture what is Islam and you're going to get in a twist let's continue with some other questions yes in the back yes so if the if we accept the notion and I agree with you that that much of the foment of this religious fundamentalism comes out of Saudi Arabia and they have the resources from selling oil to us to do that and they're there encouraging people to move forward with the society that is antithetical to ours should we not be at war with Saudi Arabia I mean why are why do we consider them our allies and have their kings come and hang out with our presidents and and we talk treat them as our allies but in fact they may be our greatest enemies and what is your thought on that well we are in conflict with Saudi Arabia and there is a factor of oil we depend America depends on oil on three sources from the region and that obviously puts the foreign policy in a different context and I don't really think that war is where you should begin wars are expensive and once you invade a country then the next thing is as you have noticed in both Iraq and Afghanistan you don't merely leave you don't merely defeat and then leave you've got to get into the business of nation-building and that's again a very expensive way of doing things but we haven't explored is competing with the message that the Saudi government and not only the Saudi government the Kuwait E's United Arab Emirates all these wealthy say either individual Muslims or Muslim States promoting the Organization of Islamic Conference that met recently after the flotilla incident in Jeddah where Iran has a sitting even though if you read Western newspapers you're going to go away with the impression that Saudis and Iranians never talk because they are Sunnis and Shias and they're more at war with one another than they are at war with us so that is only partially true if you look at the organization of Salameh conference on a state level they are united in the objective of promoting Islam and not just Islam as prayer and religion but as a political system Sharia the introduction of societies that accept Sharia various forms of Sharia communities Muslim communities within the West that adopt Sharia and you get delegations from these countries coming to the EU coming to the White House coming to the individual countries and telling them what they should think about Islam how they should respect Islam why they should not draw cartoons etc etc if you look at that and you see their message it becomes more and more clear that they represent a coherent set of values derived from Islam and promoted in the name of Islam and I wish that we could if we only understood that we could and and some of us do we could compose a counter message and instead of respecting their religion as they want us to we'll say why don't you respect the individuals that you are trying to targets freedom to choose you promote your message and we will promote our message and let the audience decide what message they want to follow that would be the best way to go about it over here at gentlemen Howard Gardner I'd like to pursue that because I think the idea of competition of ideas of narratives is a good one and it's a lot less expensive than new Crusades but you've talked about it in two very different ways on the one hand you talked about teaching critical thinking you call yourself a rationalist and almost all of your examples were very reasons but then this afternoon and again early tonight you talked about selling it the way that we sell coca-cola and of course those are very irrational those are playing to the hearts the emotions in ways which may be more effective with people so I'd like to know where do you come down on the you know the details of the message and how it should be conveyed I think it's both it's not just the rational and you will find within Islam individuals who are seeking who are seeking a narrative a moral discourse by way of reason by comparing different religions different frameworks and then coming to a conclusion I want to be a rational humanist and I think this is how life should be or I want to be a Muslim and I think this is why I became a Muslim etc but that group in humanity and we know from human history is always a small group most people come to their convictions through emotions a through sentiment who appeals to something associations peer pressure etc and my position right now is the less expensive way and probably more effective way of defeating radical Islam of defeating Islam let me drop radical I'll drop the qualifier of defeating Islam is not through drones and diplomacy and soft power all of these things that we're talking about that might work in the long run but in the short term it's probably more effectively if we do both ways those individuals who are rational minded can come to John Locke and chose to appeal and Adam Smith sooner than we think if we take it to them the other group will hit more easily persuaded through sentiments and emotions and peer pressure and discrete associations we can do it through those means but either way the message the American message is I find more preferable and I want to use the word superior even though that is something that all of you in this room have been conditioned not to think then the message and the narrative for life that Islam offers time for two more quick questions here in the third row and I'm interested in your vision of how we would sell this message particularly because the American ethic and the feminist ethic is so based in autonomy I'm interested to hear how how we could sell the message without equality injustice without an underlying fundamentalism quite frankly in autonomy well if fundamentalism means confidence in the idea you're feeling confident that the ideas of autonomy the ideas of tolerance the idea of science and rationality and life on this earth say you are born and you lead a healthy prosperous life of wellness and you die peacefully in your bed I'd say about the age of 90 plus that yeah that kind of a discourse if you feel your confidence that is superior to a life that begins only after death requires martyrdom requires all sorts of things that make life on Earth miserable then it's not fundamentalism it's it's just the sense of you are confident that what you believe if you compare it to that other beliefs is better it's more superior and I think we did this in during the Cold War there was Radio Free Europe but it wasn't only Radio Free Europe there was a great deal of propaganda and discussion that was open about why the ideas of Karl Marx if put into practice would lead to a Stalinist regime what we are doing now is when it comes to Islam we are condemning the symptoms we're condemning the Terrorism the misogyny we're condemning the fact that gay rights are trampled upon we are condemning despotism but we're not talking about the origins of those ideas the convictions that are given from generation to generation so if you compare it with communism it's like saying ok let's say the 5-year plan is really a bad it's really a bad outcome don't do the 5-year plan but Karl Marx is Holly and he's a man who should be respected and whose pictures you cannot draw and the works of Karl Marx like the Communist Manifesto is an elevated book and everything it contains is Holly and we should respect it that is the way we are treating Islam and we have the West has been confronted with terrible ideas in the past and ideologies and the only way and I this is it wasn't the only way there were military there was the military side of it there was the Secret Service there were other there were other components to that conflict and to those all conflicts but the most effective conflict the most lasting one was the competition this I did not season was bad it was proven to population starting with the Germans why it was bad communism was proven in the same way this is the idea if implemented this is the outcome today with Islam we're only condemning the outcome question over here gentlemen here Antoine Fuqua is someone who grew up in the Netherlands I was fascinated reading your book and really quite that impressed with your courage and still as I was reading this that was something that kept nagging me and that was the examples you gave were very believable and concrete very specific and still it was this nagging feeling where are things you were devout Muslim were the things that today you would say in Islam that are still appealing to you that are still that that you feel some sense of sympathy with even today what what would those values thee if they are oh I still feel that the question is what are the values within Islam that you still have that you still value that you think you still think of positively I think if you take for those of you who are familiar with Islam if you were to divide Islam say the chapters that were revealed to Muhammad I can't really talk in terms of Revelation it doesn't seem serious but anyway let's assume they were he'd be under to Mohammed the chapters that were revealed during his period in Mecca there's a lot of greatness in there this he preached he preached generosity he preached hospitality he preached that the rich should take care of the poor he preached a lot of good things that are universal and that we all believe in if you take his revelations in Medina that is when Sharia law is devised and starts to evolve when the concept of jihad develops when even in some ways genocide or activities are the Jews the Jewish tribes are completely you know annihilated their property taken the women become slaves or concubines of Muslims it is during that period Islam as it evolved after Medina that I have a quarrel with and I think you all have a quarrel with but for a true Muslim who believes that he cannot change anything in the Quran and that the latter chapters in Medina abrogate the earlier chapters in Mecca that is when you really get into into trouble and even if you don't even if we were all to you know go down the path of trying to reform Islam only through what we interpreting Scripture I just think again and I repeat it it is it's not a viable strategy because we are talking about one fifth of the world population eighty percent of whom are probably under the age of 25 there is a youth bulge people want jobs they want to channel that energy into something and right now they have agents telling them to channel it into martyrdom you can't wait until Islam evolves and goes through years of enlightenment years of reformation and comes to the same point where we are now if we want to do it that way then we have to pay the price of going back centuries ourselves I don't know if you want to pay that price I am let me just ask one last personal question in in your books you described the influence of your mother who obviously had enormous influence in your in your early years inspired your own devotion to Islam what is your relationship with her like today my relationship with my mother is very I almost want to say there is no relationship in the sense that there's no connection we have telephone conversations I described some of those in nomad where my mother just she's in my perspective a terrified old woman she's terrified of Hell and the hereafter and what's going to happen after we die and so all she can tell me is please come back to Islam because if you don't pretty soon you're going to die we are all going to die and you're going to burn in hell and I can't say what I really want to say because I don't want her to hang up on me which is to say Oh mom quit there is no hell it's not here after this I just oh you know this is all nonsense that is used to terrify elderly women like you life is on earth now you have a few more years left let's leave it you know by the day by the minute and let's have a proper proper relationship and so in that sense my mom and I are completely disconnected ladies and gentlemen ayaan Hirsi Ali

Channel: The Aspen Institute

Views: 40,104

Keywords: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Elliot Gerson, islam, women, aspen ideas festival

Id: g2VUFH4Nz8c

Length: 70min 7sec (4207 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 05 2010