On 9/6/2021, atheist and ex-Islamic believer, Somalin-born, Dutch, and now American citizens and intellectual, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, narrated a video for Prager U, entitled What Radical Islam and The Woke Have in Common. I took notes on the video and will comment on them.
Ali: “There were many American heroes on 9/11 but the greatest were the crew and passengers of Flight 93. They saw and prevailed the plane from hitting the White House. They embodied Patrick Henry’s motto: “Give me liberty or give me death.’ Do these words still hold meaning?
For 20 years I have spoken out against those strands of Islam that gave rise to Al Qaeda. I have faced many death threats,”
My response: The very courageous Ali faced and faces numerous death threats, and this is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that the threat-givers are vicious, violent group of fundamentalist thugs, but why does not the majority of Muslims, who are always telling they are peaceful and nonviolent (and perhaps most of them are), but no other great religion’s leaders and theologians would fail to publicly so shame these potential killers for threatening to kill dissidents and outspoken critics, that they would not be able to make these public threats without severe condemnation and isolation.
Ali: “I have always consoled myself that freedom of conscience and expression were paramount values.”
My response: Her encountering the murderous, violent, mass movement, fanatic outcry against dissidents, shouted out by angry, mobs in her faith, may have been a factor in her becoming an atheist. Now, radical fascists or Communists, secular, irreligious or pagan, can be just as vicious and intolerant to their opponents.
I agree with Dennis Prager that more murder is committed by the godless—especially in the 20th century—than by the religious. Fanaticism is the enemy, not religion. If what is good spiritually and morally is what is rational more than emotional, moderate more than fanatical, individual more than groupist, egoist more than collectivist, peaceful more than violent, then Islam can still be a viable, great faith in the future, but its followers must shed the violence, the intolerance, the fanaticism, the concepts of jihad and holy war against infidels and apostates. These are from Satan not from God.
Ali: “This is part of why I moved here in 2013. It never occurred to me that free speech would be threatened here but in 2014 I was offered an honorary degree at Brandeis University and then ungraciously disinvited. My early encounter with cancel culture did not stress me too much.
I was inclined to dismiss the alliance of campus Leftists and Islamists as the lunatic fringe. They are not the fringe anymore. Academia, the media and corporations have inculcated a generation of students with an ideology that has much in common with the intolerant doctrines of a religious cult, than with the secular political thought that I studied at Leiden University.
In the debate after 9/11 many sought materialist explanations for the attacks the jihadis that they lacked educational and employment opportunities. They were angry at American foreign policy. I argued that none of these explained the motivations of the hijackers most of whom came from middle class or upper-class families.
Their goal was religious and political to denounce Arab governments as corrupt and its Western allies as infidels. Their ultimate goal was to overthrow the existing order in the Middle East and establish a caliphate.”
My response: Below the brilliant, principled Ali will show what the woke Left and the Islamists have in common (and where they differ), but I want to point out another similarity. Just as the jihadis and hijackers of 9/11 were excused by their Progressive apologists as doing what they did for material reasons, when in fact their immaterial, ideological, religious grievances were what propelled them onward to terrorism and war, so to the cultural Marxists today claim to social warriors bringing revolution and totalitarianism out of their outraged, compassionate need to do something for the downtrodden identity groups that they champion, in truth they want to take over all countries and the world—it is all a power grab in disguise and their fanatical ideology is their cover. Marxism and Islamists seek raw power in the name of being noble ideology when they are but killers and butchers.
I did some moderate online research and the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to Ali as an anti-Muslim extremist (typical of Islamists and Leftists to label as extremist and haters, those critics that oppose them, when it is the Leftists and Islamists doing extremist, intolerant canceling of alternative voices.) and some sources, I could not re-find them, call her a neo-Orientalists (According to Wikipedia, “. . . contemporary neo-Orientalists are not, however, merely ‘native informants or ‘comprador intellectuals’ . . . but rather Middle Eastern women and men who use their native subjectivity and new-found agency in the West to render an otherwise biased account of the region . . .’) but her personal suffering as a Muslim woman and her subsequent university education, and her brilliant, critical mind do not make her a traitor to her people whose bias is slandering a perfect religion and culture.
She is legitimate, accurate and objective—note how she criticizes American Leftist excesses as well as those of the Islamists from her own faith and region. She is warning us that fanatics and ideologues of any stripe anywhere are dangerous and favor world conquest. For me this makes her a wise, brave truth-teller to be respected and heeded.
At another spot on the Internet, they dismissed her criticisms of Islam as uninformed and without merit because she is not a PhD scholar and expert on Islam and the Koran. Experts and professors and mullahs run in packs as a mob, so such group-oriented, elite class rulers of the masses, are devoid of wisdom and truth, so they are capable of the dumbest and most cruel solutions to keep the people down and in check. Dennis Prager repeatedly notes that any Catholic school or Jewish school 12 year-old possesses far more God-based wisdom than any self-righteous, arrogant, atheist secular, ideological professor, Leftist or Islamic mullah, Their groupism and their fanatics converts their highly credentialed brightness and goodness into folly, cruelty and human rights abuses. I will stick with Ali and her criticisms of Leftism and Islamism though her amateur, not-expert opinion of these two groups is insightful and correct.
Ali: “American policy-makers preferred the materialist explanations as they implied actions to solve the impasse: invasion, regime change, democratization.”
My response: I have been a neo-conservative but these efforts may not work in the Middle East if the people are not ready to modernize and have working democracies.
Ali: “It was unpopular to suggest that the terrorists might have unshakable convictions having nothing to do with material considerations.
Now to the American Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 explained as the result of the material disadvantages. These are real as are the far more serious socioeconomic problems of the Arab world.
But they hide the leaders’ real motives. Their ideology goes by many names: social justice, critical race theory, intersectionality but I call it all Wokeism.
Wokeism cannot be equated with Islamism. Islamism is a militant strain of an ancient faith. Its believers have a coherent sense of what Allah wants them to achieve on earth to earn rewards in the afterlife.
Wokeism is just another version of Marxism. It scorns the idea of religion and an afterlife. Wokeism divides society into myriad identities (Ed Notes: identity groups). Islam’s division is simpler: believers and unbelievers.
There are other differences but consider the similarities: The adherents of each pursue ideological purity, certain of their own rectitude.”
My response: both Leftists and Islamists are true-believing promoters of their fanatically praised, mass-movementized, holy cause to be spread across the world. We are all correct, all—knowing, all-good, and those that criticize us even a little and accurately are all-evil, all-wrong, all-subhuman, all-worthless so we are allowed by our own perfect status and state to deal with them as cruelly as possible as this extermination of enemies is for their sake and the world’s sake.
Ali: “Neither will engage in debate. Both prefer indoctrination of the submissive and damnation for those that resist.”
My response: Westerners must not submit to their indoctrination or forget to defend ourselves should they take up holy war against us infidels.
Ali: “Both have distinctive rituals. Islamists shout Allahu Akbar and Death To America. The Woke shout Black Lives Matter and I Can’t Breathe.
Islamists pray to Mecca, the Woke take a knee.
Both burn the American flag.
Both take offense at every opportunity and demand not just apologies but concessions.”
My response: We must pride ourselves at speaking the truth and speaking unpleasant truths and our unwelcome opinions. If Islamists, the Woke or other fanatics furiously take false offense as an attack ploy and seek to see us wilt under their withering assault that we are Islamophobic or racist, we should assertively repeat our claims to their face without flinching, offering neither apology nor concession where none is deserved.
We will speak our truth, and if they do not like to bad. If they threaten us, we will defend ourselves vigorously and be bullied or intimidated by no mob of thugs.
Ali: “Both ideologies aim to tear down the existing system and replace it with Utopias that always turn into hellish anarchies.
Both are collectivist and group identity trumps the individual (Ed Notes: Collectivists and group identifiers are altruistic, fanatical and imperialistic, so they are evil by definition, not to be heeded or surrendered to.).
Both glorify and celebrate violence carried out by zealots (Zealots using violence to ‘convert’ apostates are walking devils on earth.).
The grievances of the Woke and Islamists are not just economic. They won’t be satisfied with entitlements or other blandishments offered by politicians. Their motivations are ideological, and they will not be satisfied only power and then they will demand more power.”
My response: It is hard for the naïve and foolishly optimistic to understand that fanatics or ideologues, of any stripe, will talk peace, free speech, coexistence, tolerance, nonviolence and mutual cooperation, but, they are lying and buy time. They have the one true, holy cause, and that is their only and all-consuming loyalty. They intend to take all that you have: your wealth, your women, your property, your freedom, your land, even your lives. All they live for is absolute control of everyone and everything everywhere by any means necessary to win. They live in a bubble of total lies, so they can justify whatever horrors and suffering their inflict on outsiders and infidels, and they will square their actions with their coopted consciences quite easily as they sleep well at night and rule supreme. There is no goodness or honesty in them. Do not compromise with wicked people. Fight them to the death and give them not one inch ever, and stay armed no matter what they Biden Administration preaches after the Maine shooting by Mr. Card.
Ali: “I cling to the hope that most Americans are still willing to fight and if necessary, die to preserve our freedoms, rights, customs and history.”
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