Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s talk at the Jaipur Literature Festival shows how globalization is changing the debate. Sadanand Dhume, the author of “My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009), in the Wall Street Journal. Dhume is writing a nonfiction book on the impact of globalization on India.
Speaking to a packed hall, with her burly bodyguard unobtrusively off-stage, Ms. Hirsi Ali spoke about Islam—and its problems with individualism, women’s rights and sexuality—with a frankness unfamiliar to most Indians. She described the faith she was born into as “a dangerous, totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion.” She argued against the moral relativism that has prevented Western intellectuals from scrutinizing Islam as they do Christianity and Judaism. She asked why it seemed impossible to have a sober discussion about the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad without riling Muslim sentiment, and made the case for bringing the Enlightenment to the blighted lands of the Middle East and Muslim South Asia. Ms. Hirsi Ali touched upon India only briefly, to contrast the country’s success with the dismal state of neighboring Muslim-majority Pakistan. More:
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