Regular members of Joshua's Army may recall the name Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
She was raised as a Muslima in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, survived female genital mutilation, beatings, abuse and various aspects of Somalia's internecine clan warfare and became a devout member of the Muslim Brotherhood, after which her questions about Islam and the life she was leading led her to escape being 'given' in marriage to a distant male relative she had never met.and flee to Holland. There, she was granted Dutch citizenship and eventually became a member of the Dutch parliament where she became a voice alerting the people of her adopted country to the menace of radical Islam, and against the abuse of Muslim women and children in the Netherland's Islamic ghettos.
She later collaborated with the late filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on a film called 'Submission', which chronicled the plight of many Muslim women victimized as she was by the traditional tribal culture.The film caused a firestorm of protest among Muslims. Van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight by a fanatic Muslim while cycling to work one morning in 2004 and then had his corpse ritually mutilated. A note was pinned to Van Gogh's corpse promising Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she was the next target, with explicit Qu'rannic details of her `crimes against Islam' as an 'apostate', a death sentence in Islam. Other death threats followed, and Ayaan has lived under 24 hour security protection ever since.
She went through the experience of being forced to move out of her apartment because her Dutch neighbors were annoyed that the security protection 'inconvenienced them' and because they were afraid that the violence directed towards Ayaan Hirshi Ali might involve them. And the Dutch government, which was obligated to pay for her security as a member of Parliament also disliked the cost, the inconvenience and the political stigma of protecting an 'enemy of Islam' in a country that's over 25% Muslim, so they found a trumped up reason to take away her citizenship and force her to step down from her seat in parliament. Whereupon, she came here to America and became a noted author and speaker. You can read her story in her books 'Infidel', 'Nomad',and 'The Caged Virgin'
Since she came to America, she's been a tireless advocate for freedom and for women's rights,at the risk of her life and safety. Among other things, she helped form the AHA Foundation, which works to protect and defend the rights of women in the West from oppression justified by religion and culture.
So Brandeis decided to honor Ayaan Hirshi Ali. She was to be their commencement speaker and receive an honorary degree.
But when the local chapters of Muslim Brotherhood fronts like CAIR and the Muslim Student's Association heard about this, they went absolutely ballistic and were able to rope in enough guilty and frightened non-Muslim Lefties to go along with the mob to get Ayaan's honorary degree 'rescinded' and her invitation to speak revoked.
"This is a real slap in the face to Muslim students," said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew the honor.
"But it's not just the Muslim community that is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs," she said. "A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic."
Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies, refused to sign the faculty letter. He said it would have been great for the university to honor "such a courageous fighter for human freedom and women's rights, who has put her life at risk for those values."
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, said, "It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honor someone with such openly hateful views."
The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.
"This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy," Joseph Lumbard, an American convert to Islam and the chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, said in an interview. "They feel unwelcome here."
The university said that the decision had been made after a discussion between Ali and university President Frederick Lawrence.According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, that 'discussion' consisted of a phone call made simply to inform her after the decision had already be made.
A key part of the decision was said to be a statement by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a 2007 Reason interview in which she said about Islam, "Once it's defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It's very difficult to even talk about peace now. They're not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars."
"She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women's rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world," said the university's statement. "That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values."
What are those core values?
Not too long ago, Brandei, which is a Jewish sponsored but secular university awarded an honorary degree to writer Tony Kushner at the 2006 commencement, one of the most bigoted and self-hating anti-Zionists on the planet.
Kushner has a number of inflammatory statements on record, like, “The biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community,” and saying on another occasion that Israel’s founding a “mistake,” and that it “it would have been better if Israel never happened.”
Brandeis (at least then) had a number of pro-Israel students and faculty, but when they raised questions about the propriety of a Jewish sponsored university,especially one named after one of the leaders of the Zionist movement in America honoring the likes of Tony Kushner, here's what the university president told them.
Brandeis bestows honorary degrees as a means of acknowledging the outstanding accomplishments or contributions of individual men and women in any of a number of fields of human endeavor. Just as Brandeis does not inquire into the political opinions and beliefs of faculty or staff before appointing them, or students before offering admission, so too the University does not select honorary degree recipients on the basis of their political beliefs or opinions.
Of course, Kushner, aside from his 'anti-Zionist' credentials is outspokenly gay and a member of New York's Leftist intelligentsia. Ayaan Hirshi Ali? Well yeah, she's black, but she's a conservative who's very much off the reservation. And let's repeat the mantra, everyone...thou.shalt.not.criticize.Islam.ever.
Another interesting recipient of an honorary degree from Brandeis is Israeli author Amos Oz. Oz is a rigorously secular denizen of the Far Left who ran unsuccessfully in 1973 for the Knesset as part of the Moked (New Left/Communist Front) Party. He is sharply critical of Zionism as well as Judaism in general almost to the point of hatred, describing religious Jews as "Hezbollah in a skullcap."
Speaking in 1989 to his pals in the peace at all cost crowd in Tel Aviv, Oz described the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria as “A small sect, a messianic sect, obtuse and cruel, emerged a few years ago from a dark corner of Judaism, and it is threatening to destroy all that is dear and sacred to us, to impose on us a wild and insane blood ritual ... They are guilty of crimes against humanity, their Jewishness is of the Hezbollah kind, their Zionism is like Abu Nidal’s."
Then there was this, in one of his essays: “Why didn’t Israel develop as the most egalitarian and creative social democratic society in the world? I would say that one of the major factors was the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors, Middle Eastern Jews and non-socialist and even anti-socialist Zionists.”
“Then there were the masses of Orthodox Jews… to whom socialism meant blasphemy and atheism.”
“As for the North African Jews,” Oz writes, they were “conservative, puritan, observant and family oriented and to some extent, chauvinistic, militaristic and xenophobic.”
Oz has even maintained a friendship with Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who's currently serving five life terms in Israeli custody for the multiple murders of Amos Oz's fellow Israelis.
In short, Oz, in spite of his talent as a writer is a great example of a Jewish anti-semite. But Brandeis had no problem awarding him an honorary degree, in 1998.
I guarantee you there were no Muslims protesting about Brandeis honoring these two on the grounds of disrespect for Judaism or the feelings of religious Jewish students..
So I suppose these are the 'core values' of Brandeis. You have to be a celebrity of the Left...conservatives and classic liberals not allowed. You can criticize Judaism and Christianity all you want, but you must appease Islam in your public life,always, no exceptions allowed. Or someone could get hurt. And if you're a self-hating Leftist secular Jew who despises Israel, you're practically a slam dunk to receive an honorary degree and get an opportunity to speak and indoctrinate the students at Brandeis.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali had a few things to say about this, talking to FOX's Megyn Kelly last night:
Yesterday, Ayaan Hirsi Ali issued a statement expanding on her remarks to Megyn Kelly:
Yesterday Brandeis University decided to withdraw an honorary degree they were to confer upon me next month during their Commencement exercises. I wish to dissociate myself from the university’s statement, which implies that I was in any way consulted about this decision. On the contrary, I was completely shocked when President Frederick Lawrence called me — just a few hours before issuing a public statement — to say that such a decision had been made.
When Brandeis approached me with the offer of an honorary degree, I accepted partly because of the institution’s distinguished history; it was founded in 1948, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, as a co-educational, nonsectarian university at a time when many American universities still imposed rigid admission quotas on Jewish students. I assumed that Brandeis intended to honor me for my work as a defender of the rights of women against abuses that are often religious in origin. For over a decade, I have spoken out against such practices as female genital mutilation, so-called “honor killings,” and applications of Sharia Law that justify such forms of domestic abuse as wife beating or child beating. Part of my work has been to question the role of Islam in legitimizing such abhorrent practices. So I was not surprised when my usual critics, notably the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), protested against my being honored in this way.
What did surprise me was the behavior of Brandeis. Having spent many months planning for me to speak to its students at Commencement, the university yesterday announced that it could not “overlook certain of my past statements,” which it had not previously been aware of. Yet my critics have long specialized in selective quotation — lines from interviews taken out of context — designed to misrepresent me and my work. It is scarcely credible that Brandeis did not know this when they initially offered me the degree.
What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming. Yet the slur on my reputation is not the worst aspect of this episode. More deplorable is that an institution set up on the basis of religious freedom should today so deeply betray its own founding principles. The “spirit of free expression” referred to in the Brandeis statement has been stifled here, as my critics have achieved their objective of preventing me from addressing the graduating Class of 2014. Neither Brandeis nor my critics knew or even inquired as to what I might say. They simply wanted me to be silenced. I regret that very much.
Not content with a public disavowal, Brandeis has invited me “to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important issues.” Sadly, in words and deeds, the university has already spoken its piece. I have no wish to “engage” in such one-sided dialogue. I can only wish the Class of 2014 the best of luck — and hope that they will go forth to be better advocates for free expression and free thought than their alma mater.
I take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported me and my work on behalf of oppressed woman and girls everywhere.
In a way, what Ayaan Hirsi Ali had to say about feeling sorry for Brandeis students hits the nail on the head. The confused, frightened dhimmis and Leftists who got in line with CAIR and the MSA to silence her participated in the equivalent of an intellectual honor killing. They have no idea of how Islamists regard them. They are simply Lenin's 'useful idiots' personified. And many of them will remain clueless - until the knife is at their throat.
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