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I’ve been wondering what Ayaan Hirsi Ali had to say about Wilders's win in the EU in early June. It was a major event, discussed by blogs and many media.
My thesis has been that she is no longer an interesting and effective speaker against the Muslim incursion which the West is experiencing. In fact, I have said that some of her views are actually anti-Western and potentially destructive.
As far as I can tell, she has said nothing about Geert Wilders's win. There is nothing at her official (looking) website, nor at her American Enterprise Institute profile.
In fact, at AEI, she has three articles about Obama’s non-speech in Cairo.
I don’t know why she chose not to comment on Wilders's election results, which brings such a bright light into the dark tunnel he has been living in.
All I can think of is that she is subtly, unconsciously (or maybe delusionally) anti-Western, which I will explain later on in this blog entry.
I found this YouTube interview (in two parts) of her at her website, conducted sometime in February 2009.
On the dangers of fanatics acquiring the nuclear bomb:
She compares the potential fall-out with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
If she is going to consider herself an expert in geopolitical warfare, then she really better do her homework. The causes, preparations, dropping, and fallout of these two bombs can in no way be compared with what Iran and North Korea are planning, with Iran saying one of its purposes is to annihilate Israel.
I’ll take that back. The pause and smile with which she mentioned Hiroshima and Nagasaki indicates to me that she knows that the comparisons she is making will not be readily accepted by Westerners.
On the divergence between Islam and the West:
Ali equates the 10th and 11th centuries with the decline in the so-called Islamic golden age, and the emergence of the West from (so-called) backwardness.
Of course, with her reference to the backward European nations, she is talking about the Medieval period. Even as a layperson, I can argue against this "fact", simply by saying that there were impressive architectural and artistic developments that happened even within this period.
But, what makes it worse is that Ali seems to equate the break from this "backwardness" with the Europeans' curiosity about other cultures and countries (including this "advanced" Islamic world), to which they traveled and acquired their knowledge and ideas.
Her implication is that the West couldn’t have emerged from this stifling world of the Middle Ages by itself, and had to get the necessary knowledge from the Chinese, Indians, and of course the Muslims.
But how is it that these backward Europeans managed to pull together difficult and arduous journeys to acquire this precious knowledge, given that their backwardness wouldn't have allowed for such elaborate plans?
I will add my own interpretation of what she’s trying to say. I think she equates the Middle Ages with Christendom (she has said many times her frame of reference for the West she admires is the Enlightenment). And being an atheist, and I think anti-Christian, there is no way she can equate the West’s fount of knowledge having developed from within this Christian, Medieval world.
On reforming Islam:
For someone who is hired by the AEI, and who apparently spends her days researching Islam, she continues to make her delusional (and I will have to say, ignorant) statements about Islam: That it can be reformed.
I have written about her Muslim self-identification before. She can always call herself Somali, or black, or simply East African, to form a personal identity. But she chooses to call herself a Muslim, which invariably links her with the Islamic world. I have always found this very telling. I firmly believe that all her talks about reforming Islam is really so that she can continue to leave her options open regarding her personal identity – to converge Islam and Muslim together.
So, she is clearly a non-Westerner, preferring to identify with her own creation of an irreligious (or quasi-religious) Islam. In fact, throughout the interview she refers to her and the Muslim world as "we", and only once references herself as a Westerner.
But, in her belief (and desire) for the reformability of Islam, she splits Muslims into the fundamentalists - the believers of radical Islam, and the moderate - those who desire a reformed, more benign Islam. And she goes into the tired, and refuted, discussion that the two types exist, and that the harm is being done by the "radical" Muslims and not the "moderates."
So, nothing on Wilders, but a whole lot on her convoluted ideas. In fact, she hasn’t been in the news since Wilders's election victory was announced, which says to me that journalists aren’t really interested in what she has to say, and she isn't really interested in the radical, retaliation towards the Muslim world that seems to be working.