Audio: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on NPR
posted at 6:18 pm on May 8, 2006 by Allahpundit
“If they get to me and they kill me, I can always leave something behind.”
Full twelve-minute clip, including her thoughts on the “perverse racism” of multiculturalism, is here. Video of her interview with Norwegian TV is at LGF. I’d never heard her speak before this afternoon, but after viewing the clip, can attest that this bit from Hitchens rings perfectly true:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke calmly and rationally about the problem. I never know whether or not it’s right to mention, with female public figures, the fact of arresting and hypnotizing beauty, but I notice that I seem to have done so. Shall I just say that she was a charismatic figure in Dutch politics, mainly because of the calm and reason to which I just alluded?
Just so. Go watch and be mesmerized. If you distilled the essence of jihadism and set out to create its precise opposite, she’s what you’d get.
She’s speaking at Harvard tonight [It's tomorrow night. Duh. -- ed.] and doubtless will have to face down some of the usual suspects. If anyone has photos, video, audio, or whatever, we’d love to host it. Hitchens says it’d be a fine thing if we made her new book, The Caged Virgin, a bestseller, so here’s the link. $12.97 for the hardcover at Amazon; at that price, it’s practically a civic duty.
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She is… amazing. Mesmerizing.
violet on May 8, 2006 at 7:33 PM
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that rare Leftist who takes a hard line against radical Islam because of it’s ultra-reactionary nature, as opposed to the more common Left position which is to tolerate or side with it because it is materially less powerful than the unfairly-powerful West. We can all wish there were more Leftists like her. And of course her deep bravery is manifest.
But I think it should be said, she’s not just a Leftist, she’s, apparently, an ultra-Left fasicst:
“I would ban the [Vlaams Belang, right-wing political party] because it hardly differs from the Hofstad group [Jihadists]. Though the VB members have not committed any violent crimes yet, they are just postponing them and waiting until they have an absolute majority. On many issues they have exactly the same opinions as the Muslim extremists: on the position of women, on the suppression of gays, on abortion. This way of thinking will lead straight to genocide.”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/918
Okay, if they really are Nazis, if this article is giving a wrong impression, than I’ll let her off the hook. But in the few words she uses to make her case, she sounds a lot more like the fascist than she makes them out to be. She makes them out to be conservatives.
From what little I know about the Vlaams Belang, their position on gays is no marriage or adoption, and their position on abortion is none except for cases of rape and incest. I don’t know what she means about “position on women.” Maybe they really are dangerously close to Nazis. Maybe they’ve also called for burkhas, polygamy, stoning of gays and mass murder of certain ethnic groups. If so, my bad, and it’s really weird that they’ve gotten so big in Europe without more of an uproar. But if those are their positions, those probably would have been the things for Ali to cite against them, rather than her vague complaints here. (I gather the original interview is not online or not in English.) And since it’s the largest party in its country, I would think those positions would have gotten more press, even over here.
Instead, my impression from this small snapshot of Ali’s views is that she is typical of the European Left in that anyone who we would call “conservative” in this country is basically a Nazi. By wanting them banned, she may be even more extreme than most of the European Left. Certainly, she makes the GOP-tolerating liberals in this country look like, well, liberals.
So while I don’t particularly disagree with anything in this post, and clearly a fascist Leftist against Jihad is better than the Leftist majority that invites it, I think her extremism is a fairly important thing to know about her while we’re cooing at her beauty and shelling out for her book. She’s obviously a useful ally against jihadism–assuming she’ll have us–but in the Cold War authoritarian sense. She may be our son-of-a-bitch, but she is a son-of-a-bitch.
Alex K on May 8, 2006 at 8:10 PM
Wow!Quite a Woman
Great Courage
Wisdom and Beauty
(foolish haiku attempt while indulging rare gentle side)
She is special though.
ecamorg on May 8, 2006 at 8:34 PM
Just listening to her – increased my resolve to be brave and face my fears.
Look up “Courageous” in the dictionary – you’ll see her face.
Richard Davis on May 8, 2006 at 9:01 PM
I just need to add, because she deserves it: Ali’s radical opposition to any kind of conservatism, particularly on women’s issues, is certainly understandable, given her background. She has better reason to be what she is than Europe’s homegrown fascist leftists do.
But a crazy, unnacceptably illiberal position is still crazy and unnaceptably illiberal, whether you’re a decadent Euro or a brave refugee from an ultra-misogynist society.
(And I have no problem at all with her positions on gay marriage, abortion, whatever; it’s the banning of her opponents’ positions and the equation of them with genocide or extreme Islam that’s the problem.)
Alex K on May 8, 2006 at 9:16 PM
Also, I think the Harvard talk is tomorrow, May 9th.
Alex K on May 8, 2006 at 9:18 PM
Well, if she’s a leftist, but makes war against Islamofacism, then all I can say is what they said in Predator Vs Alien: “…The enemy of my enemy is my friend…”
moc23 on May 8, 2006 at 10:09 PM
She’s no Stalinist commie from what l’ve read about her over the past few years.
She may be a “liberal” but she’s not the campus lefty who dances with Pallies as they burn American and lsraeli flags. There is a marriage of convenience between the left and islam. If Ms. Ali fights to expose radical islam and shows the world what it really is, than she is on our side, lib or no lib.
moc23 Good analogy regarding AvP.
Dr. Rice ’08
Tony737 on May 8, 2006 at 10:38 PM
“But a crazy, unnacceptably illiberal position is still crazy and unnaceptably illiberal, whether you’re a decadent Euro or a brave refugee from an ultra-misogynist society.”
I am in total agreement. But, as moc23′s AvP reference goes…
(I love that, by the way.)
violet on May 8, 2006 at 11:41 PM
Alex, there’s not much meat in that sandwich you’re serving. First, we should all be quite familiar with the folly of taking any one sentence and running with it. Without further context, it isn’t terribly instructive. If this is taken from an interview, as advertised, shouldn’t we at least get the question she was responding to? Was she simply offering an opinion, as one might surmise, or has she offered legislation that would show her to be “seeking to ban the VB” as the commentariat at BJ is spinning?
Further, Europe regularly bans things considers “hateful”, so a Dutch parlimentarian taking such a view of a group they see in that light isn’t especially radical. On the contrary, it’s quite pedestrian by prevailing European standards.
Lastly, we’re talking about a woman who was born and raised as a devout Muslim, who then had an awakening in the Netherlands. It’s no surprise that she’d display characteristics of the culture she was immersed in.
I think you’re way off the mark. I’ve never heard anything she’s said that would lead me to even consider using a smear like “fascist” against Ms. Hirsi Ali.
Pablo on May 9, 2006 at 8:47 AM
Alex K — Paul Belien alerted me to those remarks and they are worrisome. I don’t know enough about Vlaams Belang to judge the accuracy of her characterization. I also don’t know what preceded and followed the quote from the Antwerp paper about her reported desire to ban them. It would be helpful is someone at her Harvard speech asked her to clarify. All that said, her courage and insight into Islamic threats to the West are undeniable…which is why we’ve made her the subject of today’s Vent.
Michelle on May 9, 2006 at 9:26 AM
Alex K,
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
William Paley
incorrectly attributed to Herbert Spencer
shooter on May 9, 2006 at 12:03 PM
Let me reiterate that I really do think she is deservedly admired and that nothing said above or in today’s Vent about her position on Islam or courage in general is wrong. And as I said, someone with her background could understandably be fierce in her oppostion to any conservative social positions.
And if this VB party starts killing people, then she’ll be right and I’ll be wrong. But I don’t think that quote is vague–either the Brussels Journal is misrepresenting her, or she’s saying that conservative social positions are the path to genocide.
And “fascist” was a lazy way to describe her and unfair to all she’s done. But whatever you call wanting to ban political opponents, and I realize it’s an increasingly popular idea in Europe, it goes against what ought to be our standards of Western liberty.
Alex K on May 9, 2006 at 4:01 PM