Quotes of the Day: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Utterly horrific, and totally offensive. Not the fake offence that muslims cry when we draw cartoons, but the true offence of the destruction of human dignity. And that is why muslims shall not be appeased and why we will never subjugate ourselves to them.

She was at CFI-Los Angeles today. She was interviewed, and answered a few audience questions afterwards.

Somebody asked her about Everybody Draw Mohammad Day. She approves. She said that in Western society, all ideas belong in the public square, and are up for analysis, argument, and ridicule, and Muslims need to see that.

I volunteer at CFI-LA, and in their bookstore I sold over 50 copies of Nomad. It was an honor to help out, and to meet Ali afterward.

To get ready, here’s the excuse you’ll get from more moderate Muslims: It’s not their religion to do such abhorrent things, it’s the culture in certain areas.

A few arguments against this:

1) Ask those people why they do it; if it’s their religious duty. I bet they’ll say it is.

2) Religion is culture. Culture isn’t necessarily religion, but saying something is culture doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a religious basis.

3) Religion provides a huge resistance to change, beyond simply the normal resistance of tradition (strong as it may be). It may be traditional to do this, but it’s easier to change a pointless tradition than it is to change one that is supposedly based in unchanging, divine law.

4) The same flaws of thinking that allow belief in unseen gods with no reality checks also allow such atrocities to occur. Anyone who treats faith as a virtue has to be held accountable for those who use their faith for atrocities. There is no No True Scotsman at play here. If you like faith, you have to be able to defend what’s done for it, even if it’s not your brand of faith.

5) The actions of these Muslims and more “Westernized” Muslims differ in degree, not in kind. Oppression of women is rampant, rather it occurs through genital mutilation or imposed dress codes. Until your religion will treat women as full equals, including allowing them to serve in the clergy, you’re committing the same type of crime.

@infophile

A few counter-arguments:
1) Westboro Baptist Church members will claim that picketing funerals is their religious duty. That doesn’t mean that picketing funerals is a duty for all Christians.

2) Indonesian Muslims will be very surprised at any suggestion that they, as Muslims, ought to be performing FGM. It’s a cultural trend mainly found in North Africa and it is performed by both Muslims and non-Muslims in that area of the world too.

Yes cultural elements can sometimes be incorporated into religions. In this case it’s a cultural element related to prejudice against women. Similarly Christians are often arguing over cultural elements related to prejudice against homosexuals (and prejudice against women too in some cases of course). (This is not to make comparisons between Islam and Christianity, but to relate the issue to a religion you might find more familiar than Islam.)

3 and 4) While true, these elements are criticisms of religions as a whole and are not counter-arguments to the very specific issue of FGM in relation to the religion of Islam.

5)There are plenty of westernised Muslims who have neither FGM (heck, there are non-westernised Muslims who don’t have that) nor imposed dress codes. There are even female imams serving in some mosques. Yes reforms are still possible (and in progress), but that is true of all religions.

What better criticism of FGM in fact (from an Islamic perspective) than “this is not true Islam”? So long as the argument is used as a reason to condemn FGM rather than simply to avoid criticisms of Islam. Muslims who make such an argument must be sure to express their condemnation of such misguided expressions of their faith.