A reader writes:
Without undermining the intellectual capabilities and the personal achievements of Ms Hirsi Ali, she often comes accross as self-overestimating and excessively self-benefitting. Since she stepped out of the islamic faith, she seems extremely obsessed with projecting islam in a negative light. For a self-proclaimed islam expert, I would appreciate a discuss that projects a more rational, objective and more balanced projection. She is celebrated in the West because of her anti-islam crusade. I reside in the Netherlands and I know that she avoids public debates and discussions with people of authority and experts on Islam who do not share her views of islam. My attention was drawn to Ms Hirshi Ali in the early nineties when she was a young member of the PVDA (The Workers Party in the Netherlands). As a young politician, she was out-spoken, well articulated and determined. She later cross-carpet to the VVD (Liberal party). Following political scandals surrounding her acquisition of the Dutch citizenship, she had to quit her seat in the parliament. Since a few years she has been working for the extremely consevative American institution: The American Enterprise Institute. For a self-proclaimed liberal individual, her taking up a job position with this institution, suggests a great degree of contradiction to me, knowing the goals and objectives of this institute.
For the good order, I am not religious and could care less on religious issues, it’s just that I sort of had higher expectations of Ms Hirshi Ali towards the minority communities in the Netherlands. With her intelligence, personality and achievements, she could go a long way as a role model to young immigrants who are not interested in religon. This I miss in her list of achievements, hence the term: “excessively self-benefitting”
she is cashing in on the mood of the moment—which is Islamophobia—so what new? anyone who wnats to make money sees an opportunity here—but what does this say about “western” society? the answer is not pleasant…..
Actually, she was already advocating this long before. Moreover generalizing to western society is doing the same thing as she generally does. She generalizes from a small group of people wo have a certain, specific, interpretation of Islam to being representive for the whole of the Islamic world. You imply with the comment ‘what does it say about western society’ that a) there exists something like ‘western society’ and b) that she is representative of this ‘western society’. Even the writer of this rather critical piece, when it comes to ms. Hirsi Ali’s stance, is from the Netherlands, the ‘western’ country where she used to live. It says little about ‘western society’, if such a thing even would exists.