Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is very worried these days. According to her, the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is just a symbol -- a small- scale model of the bigger war between the West and radical Islam. She predicts that this bigger war will become very tangible in the coming years. Hirsi Ali, a Somalian refugee, was subjected to female genital mutilation when she was only five years old. She later became a political activist, a feminist and a writer, and was elected to parliament in the Netherlands. She co-created the provocative film Submission with Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who was assassinated as a result by a radical Dutch Muslim. In 2005, she was named as one of Time Magazines 100 most influential people in the world. But most importantly, she has become one of the biggest critics of Islam and a prominent fighter for womens rights in Muslim societies. She founded and currently heads the New York-based womens rights organization AHA Foundation, which addresses issues like underage marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence and honor killings. I would like to talk to you about the Islam that you knew, in comparison with the Islam observed by Hamas. What are the similarities? What are the differences? My first participation in this debate between Islam and the West was after Sept. 11, 2001. All the Western people were trying to explain [the attack] away, saying Islam is a religion of compassion, it is a religion of peace, it is a great civilization, and all the things that are done in the name of Islam, they are done by a small minority that hijacked this religion. It is all hijacking, it is not Islam. This premise still underpins American and European foreign policy. Back then we had Hamas, Hezbollah, al- Qaida and Taliban. It was all fringe. There were 19 men who took airplanes and crashed into the twin towers and the Pentagon. This was a small group of men who were pathological and they twisted Islam to fit their pathology. Now instead of a small group of 19 boys there are millions. Mi piace · Rispondi · 14 · 6 h
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 06:49:38 +0000
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