National Post, Monday August 15, 2005
Multiculturalism’s Eloquent
enemy
By Robert Fulford
Op Ed column [Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Canada] for Monday, August 15.05
It's not every day you see a film that cost the director his life, and it's
even more remarkable to watch it in the presence of the co-producer while a
dozen RCMP bodyguards protect her from Islamic terrorists. But there we
were, in the auditorium of the Earth Sciences Centre at the University of
Toronto, some 150 of us, watching Submission, Part I, the 11-minute film by
the late Theo Van Gogh, and listening to his collaborator, Ayaan
Hirsi Ali,
who is known around the world as an abrasive critic of Islam, an
astonishingly outspoken Dutch MP, and an ex-Muslim--"an apostate," as
she
says.
She was in
religious
teaching, Sharia, into
alongside Irshad Manji, the
author of The Trouble with Islam, and Homa
Arjomad, who runs the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in
Hirsi Ali was born 37 years
ago in
hijab-wearing Muslim while her exiled family shuffled
from
arranged her marriage to a cousin she didn't know in
the
Today she comes across as
articulate, passionate, and elegant, as
well as clearly secular. She wore a chic red pantsuit, blue shirt, earrings
and a gold chain. She has a kind of
vertical beauty, a long face perfectly
shaped. Apparently a profound strength of spirit makes her appear serene,
even after nearly three years of living under police protection. She makes
her points with exceptional clarity in a subtle, Africa-accented English,
one of her six languages. It would be hard to imagine a more persuasive
advocate for Muslim women.
Her film is no less impressive. When Submission was
shown on Dutch
TV many Muslims called it blasphemy. In
revenge, a Dutch-born,
Dutch-educated Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri, murdered Van
Gogh. He proudly
admitted the killing and received a life sentence. He also said Hirsi Ali
could be next.
Submission shows quotations from the Koran painted on a
woman's
body. The symbolism is clear: Muslims impose scripture on women and
religion functions as an instrument of coercion.
Still, you can call Submission a religious film. The
narrator, a
woman, is no apostate. She addresses Allah, in whom she clearly believes,
reporting atrocities (which the film shows) against women. They are flayed
for losing their virginity, forced
to marry men they hate, expected to
accept male brutality as routine. "I feel, at least once a week, the
strength of my husband's fist on my face," a woman cries. How can Allah
let
this happen? The film embodies faith in its most frustrated, baffled form.
The film connects with Sharia because Hirsi Ali and many
others
believe that women will be intimidated
in Sharia arbitration. Experience
says they will not be properly
represented and may be forced into accepting
violations of their rights. That seems reasonable, since Muslim women are
often far less educated than their fathers and brothers.
Hirsi Ali paid special attention to
the ugly face of
multiculturalism. It favors cultural groups over the individuals within
them and teaches that all cultures are equal. That creates a belief that
minorities can make their own rules.
"If you take multiculturalism to its logical end,"
she said, "it
becomes racist because you are
discriminating against women in one group,
allowing them to be mistreated as you would
not allow others to be
mistreated." [ITAL]Multiculturalism is racist![UNITAL]
That left her
audience with something to think about.
She emphasized that genital mutilation is not in Koranic law, but
many who practice it claim that religion demands it. Others insist they are
following Allah's will when they
deny women ordinary rights. A government
that sanctions Sharia in family law may find itself
trapped into endorsing
this nonsense.
Hirsi Ali believes democracies should
avoid dealing with their
citizens as communities. "Go back to the roots of liberalism," she
argued.
"It is not about groups." She
took an MA in political science at
recently, "I wanted to understand
why we asylum seekers were all coming
here [to Holland], and why everything
worked in this country, and why you
could walk undisturbed through the streets at night, and why there was no
corruption, and why on the other side of the world there was so much
corruption and so much conflict."
Her views cause discomfort among many who consider themselves
seekers of social justice. It's as if Islam were intellectually forbidden
territory, a place where outsiders
aren't allowed to express their
well-reasoned views. Hirsi Ali calls this "the
paradox of the left." Many
on the left take pride in supporting equality of women, but in the case of
Islam they step back nervously and sometimes even help to encourage
oppression. Sharia courts look like the perfect
example.
People of liberal views desperately fear being called
racists, a
point that came up often during the evening. Someone asked Manji,
a
lesbian, why the gay community seldom
expresses itself on questions related
to women in Islam. She replied that many
gays say privately that they are
horrified by Muslim practices but "feel they have no permission to say
anything for fear of being labelled racist, which is
the most devastating
charge you can make against anyone." Manji said
Muslims sometimes use the
sensitivity attached to religion as a way to choke off normal and necessary
questions about Islamic practice.
As the Friday evening meeting ended, Hirsi
Ali was asked how Van
Gogh's murder affected her. She was disturbed by that terrible event, no
doubt about it, but on the other hand she was planning to produce another
film, the sequel she and Van Gogh had discussed. Otherwise, she would be
allowing violence to direct her life. She won't do that. "I am not
persuaded by violence. So I'll just
go on."