My favorite human rights activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, spoke at the University of Wisconsin in Madison this week. The university’s newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, reported:
Former Muslim and feminist speaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali gave a controversial lecture at the Memorial Union Tuesday night as part of the Distinguished Lecture Series.
Over a thousand people endured hour-long lines and airport levels of security to attend the highly-anticipated event in which she delivered a message critical of Muslim society and called for increased freedom for Muslim women all over the world.
….She cited cases in the Arab world and in the U.S. where violence against women was justified through the Qur’an and Islamic teachings in illustrating her argument.
In countries under Islamic rule, Ali said, “It is law to disclude women from rights and freedoms enjoyed by men. Marriage and divorce, testimony in court, dress, inheritance. In these issues, Islam scripture is implicit that women are inferior to men.”
She issued a call to action for all Americans to fight against what she views as a human rights violation, stating the issue is more significant than most people realize.
“We must use intelligence and reason to confront what I see as one of the world’s greatest inequalities: the treatment of Muslim women. This inequality is not only a moral tragedy, but is a threat to global peace.”
This is controversial? If a feminist speaker came to Madison to declare it a disgrace that American women’s pay averages less than men’s, she would be acclaimed. If a Muslim woman raised in Somalia points out that women are men’s property in Islam, that’s controversial. Well, there was controversy, so I guess the word is apt.
Her speech met resistance from many in the audience. Shouts of “Allahu Akbar” were heard, which means “God is great” in Arabic.
Rashid Dar, president of the campus Muslim Student Association, says Ali is not giving an accurate picture of Islam or of Muslims, and fears possible ramifications of her speech.
“She’s trying to make it seem like Muslims ignore human rights violations. Well, we don’t. She oversimplifies and that’s at the root of the problem, that’s what can become dangerous for us in America,” Dar said.
Hirsi Ali said she thanked the University for providing a forum for free speech, but Dar said he questioned the motivations of bringing such an inflammatory speaker to campus.
“Would an anti-Semitic speaker have been brought to this campus? No,” He said. “But we accept Islamophobic speakers because we’re afraid, and she fits the bill for someone who can confirm our fears.”
Robert Spencer reports on the speech at Jihad Watch and adds some information about the disruptive Rashid Dar:
His name was familiar, so I hunted down my account of my own address at the same university in October 2008. And lo and behold, I found that a young man whom I described as an “arrogant and self-righteous lout” who tried to shout me down was none other than…Rashid Dar.
This thug-in-training really ought to be disciplined by the university for his continual disruptions of talks by people who tell the truth about Islamic supremacism. But he won’t be, of course, because his world view meshes with that of the university administration, and Hirsi Ali’s does not.
Truth is not a defense nowadays. Hurt feelings trump the truth, or faked hurt feelings, which are just as good. That is, the hurt feelings of Muslims and other groups who claim and receive victim status. Perhaps Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s feelings are hurt by the harassment she gets when she speaks. And if any of the death threats she receives were carried out, more than her feelings would be hurt. Does any of that count to the college administrators who allow the thuggish behavior?
Previous RRW posts on Hirsi Ali are here.