Monday, March 21, 2005 at 10:24 AM
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The (female) Salman Rushdie and Susan B. Anthony of the Muslim World
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: A solitary but defiant voice for equal rights for Muslim women
Last week in Amsterdam, a Dutch court may have unwittingly issued a death warrant for the Somali born Dutch MP, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This is because the court dismissed a cease and desist complaint filed by Islamic fundamentalists to prevent Hirsi Ali from airing anymore of their dirty laundry.
Their complaint stemmed from the release last August of a film that Hirsi Ali wrote and co-produced with social gadfly and controversial director, Theo van Gogh (yes, of that Van Gogh family). The film, called Submission, exposes the rampant physical abuse in the daily lives of Muslim women – including beatings, incest and sexual abuse. And, in particularly provocative scenes, it features images of Koranic verses inscribed on semi-naked and horribly bruised Muslim women. The film also rails against Dutch authorities whose indifference to these crimes betray their religious and cultural ignorance, if not bias.
Unveiling the sacred abuses of Islam
Upon the film’s release, Muslim clerics immediately decreed it blasphemous and an insult to Islam. And, within short order, van Gogh was assassinated on the streets of Amsterdam and left with a threatening note in Arabic stabbed into his chest. Naturally, authorities assumed Hirsi Ali was next and, therefore, placed her under 24/7 security protection.
But if the Islamic fundamentalists hoped that their killing of van Gogh would force Hirsi Ali herself into submission, they were wrong. Because, she not only continued to speak out (calling Islam a primitive religion and the Koran a text which sanctions abuse against women) but she also announced earlier this year plans for 2 sequels to Submission.
In fact, it was this announcement that sent the clerics on their misguided mission to the Courts – since Dutch security prevented them from executing Islamic justice against Hirsi Ali in the streets.
Therefore, like their fatwa (death sentence) against Salman Rusdie for his Satanic Verses, Mulim clerics have now publicly condemned Hirsi Ali to death and are exhorting Islamic acolytes to win favor with Allah by killing her.
Below is just one of the many Koranic verses the fundamentalists cite to justify their fatwa:
4.34 Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them….
Nevertheless, Hirsi Ali remains defiant. She has said that “either I stop my work, or I learn to live with the feeling that I’m not safe [and] I’m not stopping.” And, Muslim women everywhere who continue to suffer beatings, rape and genital mutilations in silence can be thankful for her now very prominent voice.
Yet, it must be disheartening to Hirsi Ali that high profile feminist in America refuse to put aside their partisan bickering and harmonize their voices in First Lady Laura Bush’s nurturing call for the liberation of Muslim women all over the world.
May Allah protect you Hirsi Ali. And may the liberated women of the world find enlightened common cause with your struggle…before it’s too late!
