Tag Archive for 'Ayaan Hirsi Ali'

India’s groupthink on Islam

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on January 28, 2010
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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:

The Lit Fest wrap

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on January 25, 2010
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Namita Bhandare on the 5th Jaipur Lit Fest which ends today at Diggi Palace, Jaipur

The fifth season of the Jaipur Literature Festival is almost at an end. So many writers and so many readers packing their bags as they head back home after five days of sometimes heady, frequently thought-provoking and, yes, occasionally banal discussion.

It’s been such a long journey since the first Lit Fest, held with 17 authors in attendance at Neemrana (and, apparently, an audience of five people). This year’s Lit Fest counted 220 authors, including one Nobel Laureate (Wole Soyinka), several Bookers (Roddy Doyle), serious academics (Niall Ferguson) and an international press gathering that included legendary magazine editor Tina Brown. And, yes, the audience: an estimated 30,000 people from Jaipur, Delhi, London, Glasgow, Rome, Mumbai, New York, Kolkata.

While the crowds at Diggi Palace were cause for celebration — who would have guessed that so many people were still interested in the written word — they were also cause for consternation.

And here’s the conumdrum. The beauty of the Jaipur Lit Fest lies in the fact that it is free and open to all. There are no tickets. There are no VIP enclosures, no green rooms for star authors. The success of the Jaipur Lit Fest lies in the fact that it has been able to rope in the crowds it now gets: school children and teachers and unpublished poets wandering around armed with manuscripts and invincible in their belief that all is not lost, that there is a market for their work, that people still read and love poetry.

Continue reading ‘The Lit Fest wrap’

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the wildcard draw at the Jaipur Lit Fest

Published
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on January 24, 2010
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Posted by Namita Bhandare from the Jaipur Literature Festival:

Her name was never on the official programme issued by the Jaipur Literature Festival, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali, often described as Europe’s most controversial politician finally managed to  get her visa to attend the fest only at the last minute. Despite her quiet, unpublicised entry, she drew packed crowds when she spoke to Shoma Chaudhury of Tehelka on Islam and her journey towards becoming an infidel.

The author of The Caged Virgin and Infidel spoke about how the Koran is viewed by Islamic believers as a complete book and how the Prophet is infallible. “Every discussion that is even slightly critical of the Koran leads to the accusation that the discussion is a sin, that you are an infidel,” Ali told the audience at the Diggi Palace Durbar Hall, venue of the Jaipur Literature Festival. “Islam is exempted from the kind of systematic scrutiny that, say, Christianity, is subjected to.”

Ali is a prominent critic of Islam and her screenplay for the Theo Van Gogh movie Submission led to death threats and to Van Gogh’s eventual assassination. The Somalia-born author, activist and feminist has been living under tight security in Washington, where she is a fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, since.

Unlike other religions that allowed for criticism, Islam brooks no questioning, Ali said. “In Islam you submit your will to a force outside yourself, to a collective will,” she said. Describing the Koran as a book written within a certain cultural context in the 6th century, she said many values are outdated. For instance, she said, in Islam, men and women are not equal, homosexual relations are not tolerated, women found guilty of adultery are required to be stoned to death, and the list of obligations under Islam have led to an environment of bigotry where believers are obliged to distance themselves from non-Muslims.

Hirsi disputed the idea that Islam is under seige. “The idea that Islam is under seige is an Islamic idea. In the name of Islam you have many organised groups and states committing violence and terrorism,” she said. “Islam in this context is a danger to global peace.”

Also read in The Indian Express: ‘When fundamentalists run out of arguments, they call you an infidel’

“It is important to off-set Islamic values with Western values. In Islam, men and women are not equal, a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s, and homosexuality is not acceptable. Is there a way to have a discussion with Muslim fundamentalists about Islam without offending them? No,” says Ali, who feels that Islam needs to go through the same “enlightenment” process that other religions have gone though.

‘Moderate Islam is a contradiction’

Published
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on March 31, 2008
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Right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders wanted to provoke an international scandal with his anti-Islam film “Fitna.” He succeeded. Here he talks to SPIEGEL about his crusade against Islam.

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SPIEGEL: Last Thursday, you released a long-awaited film that rails against the Koran. Heads of government across the EU are already discussing it and in Afghanistan Dutch flags are going up in flames. Have you achieved your goal: to provoke?

Wilders: The political elite has demonstrated with astonishing clarity that it learned nothing from the debate over the Muhammad cartoons. It bows to the Islamists. For example, our government has developed evacuation plans for our diplomatic missions abroad. That’s just an invitation to militant Muslims.

SPIEGEL: You invoke the right to freedom of opinion but you demand a prohibition of the Koran. Does that not contravene the principle of religious tolerance?

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[Pic: In Karachi, a Wilders effigy is burned by angry crowds. DPA]

In the American Enterprise Institute, author of Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says Fitna is an embarrassment to the Dutch Cabinet

The central thesis of Fitna is: the Koran commands Muslims to spread their faith throughout the entire world, by means of jihad and indoctrination. To show that some Muslims take these edicts literally, viewers are shown images of terror attacks in New York and Madrid. In the movie, you hear excerpts of sermons filled with hatred and Muslim crowds that cheer on the preachers.

In one scene, a girl of three is taught by rote that the Koran reveals that Jews are pigs and monkeys. At the end of the movie, suddenly one hears the sound of a page being ripped from a book followed by a message that this is a page from a telephone book, not the Qur’an, and that it is up to Muslims to deal with the intolerance in their Holy Book.

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