By DOUGLAS MURRAY AND CRISTINA ODONE - TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
Added: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:30:53 UTC

Two articles were published on the Telegraph.co.uk Blog one by Cristina Odone and a response by Douglas Murray. Below are the articles:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali reminds me of Richard Dawkins – obsessive and simplistic

Original Post by Cristina Odone

A friend has just come back from Hay on Wye, enthusing about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom he’d heard promoting her new book, Nomad. Islam’s most famous critic was, he assured me, a stunner.

You can’t disagree with that verdict; but Hirsi Ali is something else too. As I read Nomad, the tone of this feverish, self-justifying tome reminded me of a Dutch social worker I met once. Hirsi Ali (who indeed worked for years as a translator for the Dutch social services) shares that same intolerant world view and politically correct instincts. The only difference is that Hirsi Ali, unlike the frumpy, solid and sandaled social workers the world over, has made rather a lot of money out of promoting her grim philosophy.

In her autobiographical accounts, Infidel (a worldwide bestseller) and now Nomad, Hirsi Ali blames everything that goes wrong in her own and her family life on Islam. Her parents, sisters, brother and cousins all have suffered horrific mental health problems, botched abortions, beatings (usually at the hands of a father or a husband) and abandonment. For Hirsi Ali, depression is never a medical condition; it is the reaction of the powerless to the fierce diktats of Islam. Abortion is never the desperate resort of a girl who’s lost her way, but the consequence of Muslim modesty; and when a husband leaves his wife, it is never because their marriage runs into trouble, but because Islam teaches men they can treat women with impunity.

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Cristina Odone should be saying 'Thank God for Ayaan Hirsi Ali'

Original Post by Douglas Murray

Like the friend to whom Cristina Odone refers in her bog post today, I too saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Hay last week. In fact, we passed a very enjoyable evening with Christopher Hitchens – the very idea of which would, I’m sure, have Cristina expiring in a mist of Catholic vapours.

Ayaan discussed her wonderful new book, Nomad (available to purchase here), at the festival. But backstage, people were discussing the notably vitriolic review in that day’s New York Times by Nicholas Kristof – a review which strongly suggested that the writer would never forgive Ayaan for leaving Somalia or Islam. Had she stayed in Somalia under the subjugation of Islam, then the New York Times would doubtless champion her. But she left. Unforgiveable. Thus passes modern “liberalism”.

Happily the great Andrew Roberts rode to Ayaan’s defence with a stern and brilliant riposte at Tina Brown’s Daily Beast. That piece, available here, is a much better than the one it is a response to.

I was going to blog on all this last week, but Israeli naval activities distracted me. However, Cristina’s criticism of Ayaan inspires me to get back to it. (By the way, one day I hope to write about why almost all of Ayaan’s most vehement critics are women.) But for now I just wanted to register one objection and one thought.

Firstly, the objection. As well as being a friend, I am another of those who regard Ayaan Hirsi Ali as one of the great heroes of our time. As well as making a stand which puts her at daily threat of murder by Islamic fundamentalists, she has also taken the only moral stand which actually loses you support among otherwise self-proclaimed liberals. For anyone who is not a believing Muslim, what Ayaan says is not only true but obvious. But, contra Cristina, saying this is in fact deeply unpopular. If Ayaan were attacking Christianity she would be rich as well as safe. If she were writing books attacking Judaism she would be the toast of every campus and activist group in the world and almost certainly have a chair at an Israeli university.

Cristina describes Ayaan’s placement at the American Enterprise Institute and the praise afforded to her by Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Martin Amis as evidence that “a Muslim-basher, in our secular culture, is welcome everywhere”.

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TAGGED: COMMENTARY, HUMAN RIGHTS, REASON

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