The Marxist Mission to Destroy Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The feminism I once championed — and still do — was first taken over by Marxists and subsequently “Stalinized.” It was then conquered again by Islamists and “Palestinianized.” I and a handful of others maintained honorable minority positions on a host of issues. In time, women no longer mattered as much to many feminists — at least, not as much as Edward Said’s Arab men of color did. The Arab men were more fashionable victims who had not only been formerly “colonized” but who, to this day, are still being “occupied” by allegedly “apartheid”–intentioned Jews.
While most of my generation of feminists have long ago retired, died, fallen ill, or have continued to rest visibly on their own earliest laurels, I continue to champion universalist values and to resist the death-grip of multicultural relativism.
But my cohort have influenced the media. Thus, I am not at all surprised to see that Deborah Scroggins has just written a book titled Wanted Women: Faith, Lies, and the War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafiya Siddiqui. Truly, she has got to be kidding. Alas, I am afraid that she is serious.
Recently, the New York Times gave a relatively glowing review to this new work. According to critic Dwight Garner, the two women are “such opposites that, as the author memorably observes, ‘Like the bikini and the burka or the virgin and the whore, you couldn’t quite understand one without understanding the other.’”
Garner continues: “If you are wondering who is the bikini (and thus the whore) in that formulation, Ms. Scroggins leaves little doubt that it is Ms. Hirsi Ali, whom her book relentlessly attacks.”
Hirsi Ali is indeed “wanted”— but by misogynist Islamists whom she exposes and opposes. Siddiqui, “Lady Al Qaeda,” was indeed “wanted” and is now in prison for attempting to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan for al-Qaeda. In 2003, the FBI “named her as the only known female operative of al-Qaeda.” In 2010, Siddiqui, a devout Muslim and a Brandeis-educated Pakistani, was sentenced to 86 years in jail.
Which of the two women do you think Scroggins prefers? The brave feminist freedom fighter Hirsi Ali, or the pro-Islamist and terrorist Siddiqui? Scroggins finds a “weird symmetry” between the two. Of all the false moral equivalents with which I am forced to live, this rankles quite a bit. But Scroggins sees them both as “rebels,” as sister-equivalents.
Excellent article, thank you.
Instead of nonsensical concepts like “Islamophobia” or “homophobia” wouldn’t an equal liberal world view of cultural relativism suggest “albophobia” (fear of whites) or menphobia?
Oh no, that would require an overarching and consistent philosophy equally applied to all rather than “justice” consisting of whatever stupid faddist depravity and reverse hate-speech is current at the time.
Liberals are the truest idiotic, pack-of-lemming, cultural suicidal maniacs I’ve ever seen in history. I guess that’s why they shrug of suicide bombers so easily. That level of self-hatred and submission to “faith” in an idea does have similarities.
I have never thought of Hirsi Ali as a feminist. More like a young woman smart enough to recognize her own persecution in Somalia and to write about her own subjugation (including genital mutilation) under Islam.
A gentle soul, friend of the guy slaughtered while riding his bicycle on the street in Amsterdam Theo Van Gogh who had made the short and truthful film Submission that so insulted his vile Islamist assassin and his fellow travelers.
That someone lauded by the NYTimes has written a book attempting to destroy Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s reputation is only another measure of Ali’s effectiveness.
The hardest enemies to deal with are those who have no self-interest. The Sunnis and Shiites who blow themselves up regularly in Iraq and Pakistan in order to kill each other have nothing to gain. The 9/11 terrorists had no tangible political goal–unless they wanted America to attack Afghanistan and evict the Taliban rulers. Similarly, feminists who support those who persecute and murder women have no hopes of accomplishing anything.
In every case, they are motivated by the most powerful political force on earth–anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionists never stop to think that if there were no Israel, the neighboring states would divide the land among themselves and persecute the Palestinians, as they always have.
People who lack self-interest become altruists (by Ayn Rand’s definition) and are to be feared. They don’t care about the welfare of others because the have no regard for their own. Hitler and Stalin went about destroying their countries in the name of duty and commitment to the “betterment” of mankind.
Neither Hitler nor Stalin thought they were destroying their countries, they were “remaking” them as an improvement, removing “impurities”.
Hitler later stated that he’d rather see Germany destroyed than live in shame of defeat by her inferiors, and tried to orchestrate that as a last ditch effort, but such was never the plan when he started his work.
I admire neither, but their vision was constructive (even if misguided in their underlying philosophies) at heart.
Interesting to note how the Left has lost its way. According to Marx “Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.” If they support Islam they believe that social position of women is that of subservience. Therefore, as feminists they are anti-feminism. Scary.
SPOT ON! Talk about a ginormous, “DUH!”?
I think we are mad to call people like Ms Scroggins feminists. And real feminists should be called equalists or civilisationists. Or simply, normal.
The trouble is that we are up against not merely those who want to annihilate us, but also those who can endlessly find excuses for our would-be executioners. How about this, from “RebeccaH”, condemning a factual account of massacres in Nigeria by islamist terrorists:
“Not helpful. Bigoted, in fact. It’s one thing to despise Islamic extremism, and quite another to despise Muslims simply because they’re Muslims.”
Hardly a criticism which is justified by the text:
http://pjmedia.com/blog/christmas-under-islam-hardly-a-season-to-be-jolly/
Deborah Scroggins was covering refugee issues in Atlanta when I was a refugee placement worker there, providing resources against (in retrospect, maybe for) the gangster, prostitution and physical violence issues we were importing. If I recall correctly, she interviewed me in the early 1990′s when I was a spokesperson for refugee women’s issues and also when our odd community (conservative evangelicals and leftists) was coming to terms with precisely what we had wrought — I remember picking up from the airport Afghan “families” with 9 “sons” between the ages of 10 and 20, no daughters, one old toothless woman — and also rushing women to the hospital because refugee women’s husbands had adapted to electric stoves by using them for punishment. A hand on the grill: why the hell did I learn the smell of burning flesh in Clarkston, Georgia?
And why did the estimable New York Times send scores of reporters there to root out vague prejudice among the decent, old, white Baptist church ladies who ran the ESL classes, classes where, after lecturing, I walked away amazed by the commitment and equanimity of these “small-minded southerners” towards the cluttered, disruptive, universal humanity arriving in droves on their doorsteps? I’m still amazed at how those perjurious NYT assholes accused decent people so easily of hatred — then jetted back to their exclusive zip codes, where nobody from Clarkston could possibly have afforded to live. I don’t use slurs lightly in print, but I can’t edit my feelings about the grotesque mistreatment of the good, decent, extraordinarily generous people of Clarkston, Georgia.
If Ms. Scroggins is the person I remember — and I’m pretty sure she was, Deborah — she was willing to excuse any excess committed by brown men against any woman. Yawn. She’s no feminist: she’s just another white girl trapped in a cycle of self-destructive, elite self-loathing that can only be fed by attacking other women. It’s the sick default of pathological liberal feminism.
It’s also not inconsequentially why you can smell burning flesh in Clarkston, Georgia, and it’s why shops advertising burkas are scattered throughout the county now, and it’s why we actually had to write an anti-clitorodectomy bill there over a decade ago. I passed a burka shop outside Clarkston recently, amazed at a sign advertising full facial covering of women where African-American civil rights organizers used to go home to their non-veiled, tough, PhD. educated wives at night. Why nobody associates such regression with the reign of the masked Klan in the twenties in nearby Stone Mountain eludes me.
Sickening. I continue to be sickened by my involvement in its provenance. But, Dr. Chesler, I ask you to reconsider your support for Judith Clark. She is a manifestation of such identity-based hatred. It would only be justice for her to die in prison.
Our immigration policy is neither kind nor just nor right; it is depraved. People talk as if these new Third World immigrants are just like the waves from the 19th and early 20th century forgetting that these new immigrants were just as far behind the curve back then as they are now. Importing failure and ignorance of even the most basic nod to a concept like the greater good.
This is why people lament Europe creating middle eastern countries by drawing lines on a map without regard to ethnicity. It is an admission that they cannot get along while ignoring the effortless manner in which Americans ignored such considerations and basically created a country by learning to tolerate others and find common ground rather than seek out differences. Now the new immigrants still have the old world mentality and they won’t change any time soon. Their children will be taught by the Democratic Party how screwed they are and they will be taught the entitlement con game instead of the tough love of reality that is the best teacher.
Saile: Thanks, you are totally correct.
US immigration policy is totally under the subtle control of political correctness. Even the Republican candidates play to that tune. Geraldo Rivera, for example, also, perhaps unconsciously. All immigrants are good, bla, bla, bla. Wrong! This is a country of immigrants, bla, bla. Gone the days when Hitler could accuse the US of stilling German brains.
Forget for a moment the Muslim garbage coming in. What I see around here is as bad, Mexicans and Hondurans mainly, illegals all, who mostly hate the US, with a profound, and misguided, sense of entitlement, and a gang mentality. Honduras has the highest murder per-capita in the world. Guatemala follows closely, and Mexico, well, no comments. This is the future, LA is the future. Hunker down and arm yourself.
Tina: Why are you holding back on your feelings? Let it all out, even if it melts the keys to your computer, our eyes, and the feelings of liberals/feminists (esp. liberals and feminists).
What you have experienced in Georgia, in your work as a criminal victim’s advocate, and as a humanitarian is called “reality” where I come from. However, to the Left, it is racism and a KKK mentality, keep the women pregnant and in the kitchen, and most criminals are a product of their society, not of their own lack of socially responsible behavior.
George Orwell is probably doing handstands and body-flips in his grave as he watches how the Left has taken “Animal Farm” and “1984″ and made them into “reality.” “Peace” equals “war”; “all pigs are equal,but some pigs are more equal than others”; and “good” equals “bad”.
The next time you have a criticism of the Left/Feminists/Islamofascists, don’t hold back, but let us know in time to put on our asbestos underwear. There is going to be a hot time in the old town that night.
You sound like you have been living in the real world, while people like Deborah Scroggins just live in their own heads (which are on upside down and backwards)).
Very thoughtful article. Ms. Hirsi Ali is the very picture of an admirable feminist, who is facing down the most virulent, organized, widespread misogeny the world has ever seen.
Best comment so far. I disagree with Hirsi Ali if she supported the war in Iraq because women and religious minorities are worse off there now than they were under Saddam, cruel brute though he and his sons were. I recognize her as a brave feminist and she would be considered left of center by American political standards. This is obvious to anyone who has read her books. Just because she has worked at AEI does not make her a right winger; after all, every employee of the government does not agree with everything the government says or does.
I am stunned that this Scroggins would attack Hirsi Ali, and that the attack is supported by the NY Times. But I really shouldn’t be surprised, after all, it is the NY Times. This is why I decided several decades ago to never buy or read the NY Times, the paper of agitprop and disinformation.
“I am stunned that this Scroggins would attack Hirsi Ali, and that the attack is supported by the NY Times.”
The same paper of record who stood behind NYT Pulitzer winning correspondant Walter Duranty as he did media flack for comrade Stalin during the liquidation of +7 million Ukranians in 33′?
Nothing the NYT does should surprise you. They have had blood on their hands for a very long time.
I was thinking that the only thing the Times seems to be good for anymore is the arts section. Now comes the review of Scroggins’ book. Can’t even trust the book review section anymore.
The book review section of the NYT has been untrustworthy for a long time. If you’re a conservative and you write a bestseller and are at the top of all the other bestseller lists, the odds are that you won’t make #1 on the NYT list.
The book review section has been unreliable for years, especially on the subject of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I recall Ian Buruma’s absurd reviews in the Times many years back.
I wouldn’t call it a “Marxist” mission but more of an “entire leftist” mission to destroy Ayaan Hirsi Ali. After reading all of her books, I am constantly amazed as to the hate the left feels for a woman that has done nothing but write about and explain her TRUTHS:
1. That as a child she was forced to endure a genital mutilation by her overzealous grandmother.
2. That as a young-teen she was nearly killed by an Islamic teacher for not learning properly.
3. That she was forced to marry a stranger, which led to her escaping and seeking asylum in the Netherlands. It is there that she saw the differences in the freedoms taken for granted by Westerners and the stagnation due to social/religious dogma from fellow African refugees.
4. Speaking out againt her former religion (she now considers herself an atheist), which not only led to the death of a friend, but numerous threats and attacks on her life.
You would think overcoming all of these traumas would bring pride and applause from “feminists” in the West, but the fact that she doesnt conform to their leftist views of what a real feminist should believe, it is easier to consider her an enemy and seek to destroy her than give her credit for her courage and stregth that make her a real female role model.
It’s shameful that feminists of today do so little to actually help women. I think of the National Organization for Women only in negative terms. I believe these women actually hate all men, they’re full of self-loathing for being women, and they want to de-genderize the wonderful differences between men and women. I think they’re all sick and in need of psychoanalysis.
A few years ago in New York, a Muslim man beheaded his wife in their TV studio. NOW was silent. They are silent about female genital mutilation. They’re silent about the oppression Muslim women suffer in Muslim countries. They’re silent about honor killings. The truth is that they’re afraid to stand up for Muslim women because they’re afraid of Muslim men.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a hero.
Severely Persecuted Non-Muslims are Ignored and Abandoned by UN Agency and Western countries. The suffering, persecution and horrendous atrocities perpetrated by Muslims against Hindus, Christians and Sikhs in Pakistan is so terrible that every non-Muslim needs to be rescued immediately out of Pakistan. Instead, massive numbers of Muslims are imported into our Western countries. In America, even entire communities of Muslims are imported. But of course, Deborah Scroggins does NOT want the public to know these facts.
I agree though I did not read Scroggins’ work. I anyway don’t think that Ayaan ever supported (a) war: I rather remember her (very politely) jocking about (so to put it) USA’s readiness (Bush’s era) to throw a bomb wherever there could have been a problem, in order to solve it. Good and beautful days to everyone.
I am continually astounded by the idiocy that passes for intellectual discourse today.
Deborah Scriggins is a moron, plain and simple. I am sick to death of what passes for feminism today in all too many quarters of the west. Hypocrisy truly reigns.
Is Ms. Chesler the only one who tells the truth? Is no one else confronting this trash?
Before long I will be looking forward–with dread, no less– to seeing shrines to the third world phallus established here in the west, beginning on college campuses, no less. What a truly frightening joke this world is becoming!
Thanks again, Phyllis, for a great article.
I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book “Infidel” in disbelief and have read everything I can about her since. She is a woman of courage and should be one that our young women admire. Unfortunately, she will only be held up for inspiration to those who homeschool and seek the truth.
was I censored?
…… apparently
Scroggins joins the team of Ian Buruma, Nicholas Kristof and Timothy Garton-Ash in trashing Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the most courageous defender of women’s rights of our time. The men suggested Ali was too beautiful to be smart (they couldn’t call her a dumb blonde but they used the equivalent). They wrote their tirades against her with their Thesaurus open in front of them (as Scroggins seems to have done too) so as to find the most pejorative adjectives available to express their wrath and consternation that a black Somalian woman who suffered genital mutilation, death threats and Islamic abuse had the audacity to actually SPEAK OUT against those who oppressed and mutilated her.
The nerve of that woman!!!
What gives her the right to speak with authority on these issues? So ask middle brow Kristof and Buruma, and now Scroggins, the Lady High Executioner, for a refreshing change (aren’t women more credible nowadays when they attack other women? Ad feminem insults are now the latest fashion, SO much more credible than men’s…you can’t accuse them of sexism.
Attention must be paid if it is a woman speaking. If readers are reluctant to recognize the superior intellect, analysis and conclusions of white male elders, public intellectuals of reputation and long standing, now there is a feminine alternative one can trust for objectivity.
What ego, what hubris! says this woman. But if you think it is just male chauvinism at work, why then, you can be assured of the validity of their attacks by consulting a woman! Doesn’t that make you feel more comfortable?
Putting Aafia Siddiqui on the same footing as Ali is like putting Nelson Mandela on the same footing as Heinrich Himmler….the former a champion of freedom, the latter a champion of genocide. Scroggins will rake in the dollars as so many other cerebrally and morally challenged writers. But history will relegate her to the same dust pile as writers like Jacqueline Susann and Dan Brown. Her agent of course will rake in the dollars.
PS: Not content with slander, Scroggins then states baldly that those concerned with women’s rights are hypocrites
who only use the issue to bash Islam. This is another way of dismissing the validity of women’s oppression under Islam.
This is what feminism has come to: denying any and all threats to women in the Muslim world. In this twisted way of thinking, Muslim women deserve LESS protection that women in the rest of the world. I wonder how they would feel about this double standard.
I can’t wait for it to become fashionable for the elite to convert to Islam—you know in your heart it’s coming. These people are brain-dead.
No, you’re not being alarmist. I read the review–I didn’t find it “glowing,” but I couldn’t believe the book had been written at all. I couldn’t believe it was being taken seriously by The New York Times.
I also couldn’t believe it when Nicholas Kristof reviewed Infidel and said something along the lines of her having joined the wrong think tank–the conservative one. Hello? Mr. Kristof has never been and will never be through what Ayaan Hirsi survived. She is brilliant and brave and amazing. I can’t believe The New York Time chose Kristof to review Infidel. How about Ann Jones, author of Kabul in Winter, who knows something about women living under fundamentalist Islam?
O Patriarchy, you are global. Feminists are asleep. But Phyllis, the truth is that most feminists won’t read this book because they’re not paying attention to the human rights of women living under fundamentalist Islam.
Islam has insinuated itself as a non-white victim group amoungst the minds of the university left. “Zionism-is-racism” dovetails quite nicely w/ the anti-colonial crowd who pushed Western Civ classes from colleges. They wish to deny us our culture and our history.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a giant. She is one of those few people who is completely honest. She emerged from a primitive culture to stand up aginst a totalitarian islam. She has payed a price for her courage with death threats. Even though she is an athiest, I will pray for her every night.
The NY Times are immoral to take the lib-cudgel to somebody who has been targeted for death by the killers with petro dollars, and I do not mean the Kock Brothers.
I’m a leftist, but my leftism is basically a package deal. Anyone who wants me to condemn the oppression of Palestinians will also find me condemning the oppression of women, gays, secularists, and others by Palestinian society, and for that matter, by all of Muslim society.
And I know this is a very minor point compared with all the other things that should be said, but using two colons in a title, as Scroggins has done, is pretty lame.
Insanity like this has liberated me from caring at all about feminist tripe. Why in the world should anybody think of women as an interest group? Just another excuse to hate, blame and feel like a victim. Phobia – Shmobia. Whatever happened to Right and Wrong?
The greatest Feminist ever was the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, formerly known as Mirra Alfassa (1878-1973). In her importance writings “on women”, she stated:
1) “It is certain that purely masculine politics have given proof of incapacity; they have foundered too often in their search of strictly personal interest; and in their arbitrary and violent action. Doubtless, women’s politics would bring about a tendency to disinterestedness and more humanitarian solutions…”
This is supported by recent statements by Eckhart Tolle on the ascending role of, and to, enlightenment by women, and the influence that that will bring on mankind.
2) “The problem of feminism, as all the problems of the world, come back to the spiritual problem”. She advocated…”true relation of the 2 sexes in an equal footing of mutual help and close collaboration”.
3) “A woman has to liberate herself and not depend on a man to liberate her. A woman should liberate herself from slavery to the 3 attractions of masculine strength, security of home, and motherhood”.
The final solution, according to her and Sri Aurobindo, was the creation (or coming) of a New Species. In the Supramental Species, needles to say, inequality of sex would totally disappear, thus, spiritually, there would be no need for “feminism”. Real feminism was necessary because:
4) “As soon as great events and work are in question, the custom is to relegate women to a corner with a smile of patronizing contempt which means – this is not your business, poor, feeble, futile creatures…and women, submissive, child-like, have accepted…in many countries, this deplorable state of things”.
The Mother wrote, wisely.
Thus feminism, women emancipation, is the greatest threat to Islam, they know it and will try to prevent it, however the tide, the future, and the Spirit, are against them.
Excellent article. Quite why the left despises one of the greatest champions of free speech and women’s rights so much is beyond me.