Mythologising Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Aaronovitch Watch reports that Paul Berman, the most tedious of the Decentists has decided one of his tedious essays wasn’t dull enough and therefore has expanded it into a book. This would be awful enough, though ignorable, had it not been for the sucking up Berman recieves from Ron Rosenbaum in Slate, which contains this collossal and quite likely deliberate error:

“Hirsi Ali, who described her decision to leave Islam in 2007’s Infidel, was subsequently driven from her refuge in Holland by death threats that followed her from Somalia. And by the murder of her friend and supporter, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, whose slashed and bleeding body was found with a note that called Hirsi Ali next to die. ”

No… Just no…

She left because it came out she told fibs about her real background, wasn’t actually Ayaan “Hirsi Ali” at all and the then minister for Deporting of Brown People (Rita Verdonk) still had a personal score to settle with her and attempted to take away her Dutch citizenship for it. Ayaan then left parliament in a huff and buggered off to America to her wanktank job. Nothing to do with death threats, certainly none that followed her from Somalia. In reality, nobody gave two figs about her until she jumped on the anti-Islam bandwagon.

The above quote is a typical example the mythology build up around Ayaan Hirsi Ali by writers like Rosenbaum, mostly for US and UK consumption. She’s supposed this brave fighter for the rights of women oppressed by Islam, a liberal freethinker refusing to bow down before terrorism. But again, she was silent about all of this until after “9/11” changed everything, until there was a market for this image. In the Netherlands she’s largely seen as a hinderance rather than a help in emancipating Muslim women, as her rhetoric puts the back up of those she’s supposed to help, while any real practical engagement by her remains elusive. But for those who regard The War Against Terror is the Greatest Intellectual Struggle of Our Times this is more of a feature than a bug, as witnessed by Rosenbaum’s judgment on a Decentist villain, Tariq Ramadan:

The problematic nature of Ramadan’s moderation can perhaps best be illustrated by his call for a “moratorium” on the stoning of women to death in Islamic societies for “honor” violations. The fact that he called for a “moratorium” at all has been hailed by Western, particularly European, intellectuals as a comforting sign for those concerned about women’s rights in the growing Muslim communities of the West.

The fact that he did not condemn the practice outright or call for its outlawing, and instead only called for “debate” with Islamic scholars and theologians on the matter during the “moratorium,” is not entirely reassuring to others.

Leave alone the twisting of Ramadan’s words, what comes across is that Rosenbaum rather would’ve had him make grandiose but futile pronouncements that make them feel good, than offer a practical, face saving measure that might just stop stonings because it offers conservative, suspicious theologians and the governments that employ them a way to change their religious laws while claiming to be completely orthodox and true to Islam. You don’t convince genuine believers by loudly denouncing their faith and demanding they should adjust to your moral worldview immediately. Or to put it in words even Decentists should understand: you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.