Born to a Muslim family in Somalia in 1969, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, as was customary there for girls of that religion, was genitally mutilated at the age of five. Clearly appalled throughout her youth by Islam’s treatment of women, she fled to the Netherlands at the age of 23 to escape a forced marriage to a man she had never met. There she became a vocal critic of Islam which ultimately led her to join with Theo Van Gogh in the production of the 2004 film “Submission” about the plight of Muslim women everywhere. Shortly thereafter, Van Gogh was shot and killed on an Amsterdam street by a male whose savagery did nothing but corroborate the film’s message. Ayaan herself was and still is subjected to death threats for daring to criticize what she sees as some of the truly ludicrous aspects of the Koran.
Married to writer Niall Ferguson in 2011, Ayaan became an American citizen in 2013. Ferguson, as his books make evident, is a staunch supporter of Western Civilization and its values. So also is Hirsi Ali. In a lengthy interview with Ben Shapiro posted by the Daily Wire on May 12, she laments that various Muslim regimes as well as China’s Communist government are ecstatic that Western “liberals” are undermining the very values that made their civilization great. A Leftist would no doubt scorn my designation of Western Civilization as “great,” citing its many heinous “colonialist” sins. But while the history of the West is hardly without its villains due to the very nature of the species, it is its Cultural Heritage that “conservatives” such as Hirsi Ali find eminently worth defending. The philosophers of Ancient Greece, in an era that actually tolerated diversity of thought, speculated on social-political-moral issues with a level of insight utterly beyond not only that of the fascists presently ruling nations such as Iran, but beyond the intellectual capacity of the contemporary Left. The European Enlightenment’s elevation of Reason over the dictates of religious dogmatism ultimately led to the endorsement of the Principles of Democracy, including the rights of each individual to Freedom of Thought and Speech. The irony of contemporary “progressivism” is that it is rife with the very sort of narrow-minded dogmatists so prominent throughout the Muslim world. In illustrating the oppressiveness of that world, Ayaan points out that until she came to the West, she had never heard of the Holocaust! As it didn’t fit the agenda if her overlords, it was simply trashed as a historical fact. One is reminded of the incessant charge of “misinformation” lodged by our “liberal” overlords against statements which don’t fit their narrative, statements which so often prove to be true. For Ali, the obvious irony of her personal history is that she escaped a regime of intolerance only to embrace another which seems to be heading in the same direction! Inasmuch as DEI is no more than an arbitrary Religious Doctrine, given that the Races and Genders are in fact biologically different, the Left’s statistically based definition of social justice is utter nonsense. Should I be so demented, I would no doubt be outraged that while Blacks make up approximately 20% of the American population, they constitute a significantly higher percentage of the NBA. Does that league have some sort of anti-White agenda, or is the very notion absurd? Are the disparate levels of achievement of various identity groups always the result of oppression or in most cases simply the product of the very real diversity of the species?
My various “liberal” friends seem to have no idea that the values they so sanctimoniously defend have sent Western Civilization into a downward spiral. Hirsi Ali thinks it is absurd that the significance of Intelligence, Ingenuity, Achievement, Morality, Self-Discipline, etc., have been more or less banished from contemporary political debate by the Left out of deference to its sacred value of Inclusiveness, the idiotic notion that we’re all the same. Threatened by Muslim fundamentalists who would like to see her dead, criticized by the Left for some of her views, she nevertheless continues to courageously defend opinions which she sees as simple common sense. As a Somali woman, of course, she can hardly be denounced as a White Supremacist. But think of the paroxysms of outrage on the mainstream Left should a prominent White Male condemn Islam as a degenerate religion while defending the values of the West over those of every other civilization. The cliched litany of insults would no doubt include racist, Islamophobic, White Supremacist, hateful, fanatical, etc., etc.
The wondrous gift of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that she proves that Mind can clearly transcend the restrictions born of one’s existential condition, be it those imposed by Biology or the Culture to which one is born. When Black Americans espouse “conservative” views, they are often derided as Uncle Toms, the simple-minded dupes of their White oppressors. No doubt Ayaan is seen in some quarters as a “useful idiot” of the Islamophobic Right. She is, however, intelligent, articulate and courageous to an extent utterly beyond the capacities of those who would criticize her, those who mindlessly endorse the doctrines of Political Correctness for fear that some member of an offended minority might call them a nasty name.
Ayaan, it is the transcendent wisdom of people like you that inspire me to believe that a rational Humanism may ultimately come to vanquish the primitive Tribalism being fomented by the contemporary Left.