Ayaan Hirsi Ali In Philadelphia

Ayaan Hirsi Ali surfaced today in Phildelphia, in a cafe at the Park Hyatt Hotel for an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. She's in Philadelphia this month for a conference in honor of scholar Bernard Lewis, and to promote her first book, `The Caged Virgin'.

After reiterating her story, which you can read here, the interviwer got some pungent quotes from Ali on Islam and Mohammed.

Even though her revoked Dutch citizenship has now been restored, Ali is here in America to stay for some time, and apparently has indeed taken up that job offer with the American Enterprise Institute.

Hirsi Ali admits she was already leaning toward leaving Holland for many reasons: the death threats and security; eviction from her most recent apartment in the Hague after neighbors won a court judgment that Hirsi Ali's dangerous proximity violated their human rights; and the chance to come to the United States as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. So she resigned from Parliament.

"It is difficult to work as a parliamentarian if you have nowhere to live," she told a news conference. Or with constant death threats hovering over you, I would imagine.

Hirsi Ali gets to the heart of the matter with admirable clarity. She insists that the beliefs and life of Islam's prophet, Muhammad, must be confronted, analyzed, and, in many respects, rejected. In other words, the Hadiths.

"If 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion abide by, follow his rules," Hirsi Ali observes, "and say we want to be like him, then I think it's urgent, it's necessary."

This is a fundemental piece of the puzzle in reforming Islam.

Ali concedes that Muhammad urged Muslims to do some good things, "such as his advice to be charitable toward the poor and orphans." But, Hirsi Ali insists, on the whole he's not admirable.

"He borrowed a little bit from Judaism," she says, "he borrowed a little bit from Christianity, and he invented some things, especially the fierceness with which he dealt with his enemies, the killing, the way he violated special tribal rules."

Bernard Lewis, whom Ali is in town to honor, leans to the interpretation that Muhammad was a warrior of his time, contending that he shouldn't be judged by modern standards.

Hirsi Ali sees his graciousness as prudence: "I think Bernard wants to leave the Arabs some dignity... . He wants to give them an opening, which is really noble... "

Her own view, however, is that "following this man [Muhammad] can lead to only one thing, fascism...."

Hirsi Ali says she decided to confront Muhammad's history after Nigerian Muslims rioted over the planned 2002 Miss World contest there. A British-educated Nigerian journalist wrote that Muhammad himself would have married one of the contestants. The rioting that resulted killed 200 people.

"So I said," Hirsi Ali confides, " 'You know what, darling Europeans? I'm going to tell you about Muhammad!' "


Hirsi Ali talked about how Muhammad, who had nine wives, married wife Aisha when she was she was 9 years old. Hirsi Ali outraged Dutch Muslims by accusing Muhammad of pedophilia.

Hirsi Ali says some took the issue seriously. She emphasizes its relevance today because "there are more and more men taking minors as wives, and saying that Muhammad is their example." Not to mention girls being `sold' in childhood as wives.

In the same way Hirsi Ali plans to challenge the beliefs of Black Muslims in America. She finds it as unfathomable that African Americans would convert to Islam as that Jews would convert to Nazism.

"I want to tell them about Darfur," she asserts firmly. "The people in Darfur are being exterminated just because they are black. So [Islam] is also a racist doctrine... . People don't know what's going on in Saudi Arabia. All these palaces are full of black slaves! So the black community here converting to Islam is like converting voluntarily to slavery.

"I think if they hear it from a black person," she says hopefully, "it will help."

A note to the curious...the word for `black' and `slave' in Arabic are exactly the same: `abed'. And most serious scholars concede that for every slave that travelled West over the Middle Passage, 10 to 15 went East, to the Arab world.

Ali is apparently now working on her second book, about the Enlightenment.

"I'm going to resurrect Muhammad, and he's going to have conversations with [British philosopher Karl] Popper and me and [economic theorist Friedrich] Hayek."

"I hope I live long enough to complete it," she says.

hat tip to LGF