No More Mr. Nice Guy!

The Allah Delusion

Some time ago I wrote about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her courageous personal story in escaping a brutally misogynist religion and society. I was concerned that she seemed to end up being used as a pawn by US conservatives. Now I am very disappointed to read the following:

Her alignment with the American right doesn't seem like an easy fit. She is a militant defender of atheism, feminism and gay rights - all forces they have demonised for decades. She is an illegal immigrant, their ultimate hate figure. But, as our interview goes on, I realise she has depressingly begun to adopt some of their ideas. She wants to abolish the minimum wage. She no longer calls for the closing of all faith schools, but simply Muslim ones, because "they are the only ones that do not respect the division between secular and divine law".

She has even begun to touch on the American hard right's preposterous predictions that Muslims are "outbreeding" the continent's traditional populations and will impose sharia law "within decades". When I challenge her on this, she says that "experts" say it is true.

Not just a pawn, but a willing pawn. How sad for a woman of such intellectual courage.

As I've said many times before, Christianity is in principle no better, no less violent, no less anti-intellectual, no less demeaning to women than Islam. When Christianity held absolute power in Europe, there's a good reason the period was known as the Dark Ages. It was only with the splintering of Christianity, and the rise of reason and humanism that this permitted, that the church was gradually stripped of its power and the worst of its excesses reined in. And it was only after it lost total power that it became more moderate. There are some very powerful and influential people in the US working to reverse this state of affairs, not just within their own shores but throughout the West, and don't think for an instant they wouldn't overthrow our entire system of democracy, the rule of law, and especially science if the opportunity arose.

There's no doubt that the rise of fanatical Islam is something we need to worry about, but we are being offered a false choice: either keep caving in to Muslims in the West, constantly censoring ourselves for fear of offending them, and granting them special privileges to opt out of our legal and educational systems, and create enclaves of Sharia in our own countries; or "return to our roots" and meet fanaticism with fanaticism, as the current Pope is constantly and shrilly demanding we do.

The only real choice we have if to leave both Christianity and Islam behind, and firmly defend the principles of liberalism, humanism and secularism that has made the West strong and prosperous. We should stop indulging the tantrums of various religious groups and tell them to grow up! And most of all we should stop apologizing for our Western values, and realize that they are very powerful and attractive to people living under religious oppression all over the world. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali says, "The message of liberals is so much better, so much stronger."