Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Nairobi under the thumb of Islam. She was not permitted to read or write, but she smuggled books into her house, and read them, secreting them into the pages of the Koran. Comics, spy stories, geography, everything she could get her hands on. Her mother was illiterate, and hoped that her daughters would be, too. Then she was shipped to Europe by her father to be part of an arranged marriage, but escaped to Amsterdam and was granted political asylum.

Those who got out of communism and came to our shores were often artists and intellectuals, sometimes Christian. The Solzhenitsyn's of Islam, on the other hand, are its women.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes to western readers at the end of her book The Caged Virgin, "We Muslims come from collectives. We come from tribes. We missed the Enlightenment. You give us your compassion, your medicine, your money. But instead of your wealth, share with us your values. Protect us from the bearded men in long robes from Medina and Mecca" (177).

Bush, Blair and the other conservatives have largely taken up the mantra that Islam is peaceful. We went into Afghanistan and did allow women to be educated. Some 9 million women are not illiterate thanks to Bush and Blair. But Afghanistan is still a one-religion state, and the publishing houses are not exactly pumping out feminist texts, or secular poetry, or algebra manuals. The press is tightly guarded, and publishes next to nothing that they didn't publish before. If we leave, the Taliban would destroy these 9 million women as apostates. Would the left say anything? No, they would not. It would be racist to see anything in the third world as bad.

Meanwhile, Islam spreads west, but it is against the law for Christianity or atheism, or any other religion to spread over there. Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks, in an address to Australians,

"Why, in this wealthy nation, do you allow Saudi Arabia to finance schools here? The kids who attend these so-called Muslim schools are Australian citizens. Should they not be groomed to become Australians with Australian values of life, freedom, and tolerance? Why abandon them and look the other way as their hearts and minds are filled with the Day of the Overwhelming Event?" (176).

In many western countries, genital mutilation continues to be practiced. Children cannot defend themselves against surgeons who come in the name of religion, especially when parents are aligned against them.

"Did you know that Australian doctors are struggling to treat victims of female genital mutilation? Little girls who tell the doctors it hurts to urinate; teenagers who tell the doctors that menstruation hurts; and girls, of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen who are married and have difficulty giving birth. Yes, you heard me: these are child brides, not in Saudi Arabia but in Australia!" (176).

One wonders if tolerance isn't just a matter of sticking one's head in the sand, as we appear to be doing with the victory Mosque at Ground Zero. The Ground Zero Mosque is an obvious Trojan Horse.

The intellectuals of Troy did not rejoice when they saw the horse. Cassandra spoke out against it, as did others. But they were overruled by the happy few who wanted to believe so badly in peace that it cost them their whole culture.

Our intellectuals praised Stalin as he put millions into gulags. A few piped up. Orwell spoke, and some others. But most intellectuals got on the train, or were only too happy to look the other way, and to believe the propaganda. It's far easier to believe the propaganda, especially if you can get tenured.

The Muslim world is corrupt. They still have royal families who control the levers of the military and the courts in places like Saudi Arabia. Fundamentalist Islam is an uprising against those families, but it seeks to create a theocratic state with no human rights for women. Massive emigration to western Europe and other places like Australia has allowed some of the frustration to dissipate. But the problem remains. There is intellectual stagnation throughout Islam. About 300 books a year are published in the entire Islamic world. Anyone unlucky enough (especially women) to be born under the flag with the moon on it (a sign of lunacy) has only one chance of escape: the west.

The war we fought with the communists was difficult, but now, aside from a few western intellectuals like Michael Berube, communism is a spent force. A few misguided head-in-the-sand-types continue to revel in it, and to think that redistribution from the hard-working to the indolent, disorganized and drug-addicted will create justice.

The few governments that remain communist are embarrassed by those who seek to flee from their nightmarish grip. Tens of thousands walk out of Zimbabwe every day. North Korea would be a desert if they opened their borders. Vietnam has finally opened up to individual entreprenurial efforts, as has Red China, but still monitor information very tightly. They are embarrassed states: red with shame.

The leaders of Islam are not embarrassed. They are quite certain that they are the one true religion. Of course, everyone who says differently gets killed. This is how the communists remained in power for so long. But one feels the grip of the imams slipping. They rescinded the fatwa on Rushdie.

In thirty years, it may be that there will be no more Islamic countries, and the only true believers will be in American universities.

Many academic birdbrains think to go against Islam is racist. But Islam isn't a race. It's a religion, as Hirsi Ali points out. And she asks us in the west who have so many freedoms, while those in Islamic countries have nothing. "Whom do you help by saying nothing? It's selfish not to want to appear racist," Ali asserts (75).

Race trumps gender. Gender is taking a beating under the (matriarchal) imams. but to say anything is racist, so no one says anything. Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks, but why don't we take her more seriously?

When the recent Newsweek edition ranking countries came out, all the Lutheran countries were in the top ten. No Islamic countries are in the top fifty. But could Newsweek have said something?

Could Obama say something? His father was a Muslim from Kenya, the same country that Ali was raised in. But Obama doesn't have any brains, and he has less guts. Ali has plenty of both. Obama seems to see no problem at all with Islam. Imagine what it would take to get Obama to wake up to the problems of Islam. Obama is the representative of the American academy, and its whole way of "thinking."

As dumb as they are, even the Republicans are smarter. Which is why I'm a Republican.