The Hirsi Ali Case: Not: "Voltaire and Erasmus Are Spinning" but the topspinners of the neocon AEI

Spiegel Online's Henryk Broder: The Hirsi Ali Case: "Voltaire and Erasmus Are Spinning in their Graves" - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News. The lamentable Dutch handing of the newest Hirsi "Ali" sensation hasn't helped to prevent the neoconservative project with her: As a collaborator of the AEI, she will be a witness for the proposition, that Islam creates terrorism. All by itself.

During the 1.300 years that Islam exists, there have been, at given points in time, interesting precursors of the AEI's newest proposition. The Crusaders (Century XII) were awed by the "Assassins", whom they killed indiscriminately, the Spanish Inquisition (Century XVI) condemned muslims (and jews) to be burned at the stake (Erasmus was the foremost protester against it in his time) and Serbs and Croats roughly did the same during the nineties of Century XX to Bosnian Muslims.

Voltaire, another supposed "spinner" in his "grave", makes his "Candide" (XVIII Century) finally find rest and civilisation in Muslim Constantinople, after having visited all the horrors of Christian fundamentalism of his time.

Neither Erasmus, nor Voltaire would have felt much intellectual kinship with this modern "passionaria".

In spite of the fact that she was born in a well-to-do powerful family-clan, with a liberal attitude to religion (her brother was educated at a christian school in Nairobi), that she got a good education herself from age 12 to 22, paid for by the UN refugee fund, at a girls' college in Nairobi, organized as a British boarding school, she managed to make believe European authorities and public, that she is a victim of radical Islam who saved herself from an awful forced marriage. Too many of the stories she told, are frauds.

The AEI people know that, as well as her former patrons from the Dutch Conservative party did, when they engaged her to catch some of the xenophobic vote at the elections, three years ago.

A second aspect of the neoconservative projects is the contribution they hope to get from her in presenting the weak old European ruling elites as "appeasement"-prone-, also unreliable allies in the struggle for a new American century. A forerunner for that was to be found in the "Wall Street Journal" of Monday 5/15, where Ajaan is cited as condemning the "social-democrat" European authorities for their misunderstanding of the dangers of the muslim religion and their "appeasement", where an all-out Inquisition were needed.

Hirsi Ali is wicked enough, not to repeat such statements in her declarations in Holland. With tears in her eyes, she thanked her colleagues-parliamentarian deputies for their "understanding" and their fair ways of debating, only hours after the publication of her opinion in the WSJ!

Her arrangement with the AEI includes apparently also a clause, that she stops pleading for womens rights, for free marriage and freethinking. Her press representative in The Hague released: "Ms. Hirsi Magan is going to work on terrorism. Subjects like headscarves will not be discussed by her in the U.S." So much for the "Caged Virgin"'s attachment to women's liberation.

All this is spin. But in Erasmus, Voltaire's and other great humanists' graves, no spinning is observed.

Someone else is spinning.

Hirsi Ali leaves Holland for a job at the AEI in Washington

Breaking news: Dutch press reports today that Ajaan Hirsi Ali will announce tomorrow, that she has been engaged by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative thinktank in Washington. As a consequence, she will step down as a deputy in the Dutch Parliament.
Hirsi Ali (Hirsi Madan by her real name) was exposed last week as a fraud on Dutch television, as has been reported in the precedent post on this blog.
She will probably charge the Dutch for their "shameful treatment" of her, saying that she has been forced to flee for a second time a country full of Djimmis.
I do not expect that the idyll between the neocons and the black virgin will last more than two or three years.

...And the Virgin appeared to Christopher Hitchens...

...in the "hypnotizing" shape of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Listen to the story of this epiphany as it occurred in magic Sweden to a sinful soul:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke calmly and rationally about the problem. I never know whether or not it's right to mention, with female public figures, the fact of arresting and hypnotizing beauty, but I notice that I seem to have done so. Shall I just say that she was a charismatic figure in Dutch politics, mainly because of the calm and reason to which I just alluded?

(Christopher Hitchens: Holland's shameful treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. in "Slate Magazine", 05.08.06)

(To be continued)

That is what I wrote, three days ago. I had some text in mind, where Joan of Arc, the Virgin of (New) Orleans, would be compared favorably to this latter-day "Caged Virgin" (Title of Ajaan's book, published recently in the US).

But that is not needed any more, now that Dutch VARA television (in it's "Zembla" programme) on May 11, featured a 40-minute research into Ajaan Hirsi's story. Confronted with testimony by her brother, her former teachers, her aunt and her former husband (living in Toronto), she had to admit that she "lied" about

• her family, (who are not fundamentalist at all),
  
• her story as a refugee (during 10 years, from the age of 12 to 22, she lived in Nairobi, Kenya, the UN paying for her studies), living in a relative prosperity,
  
• the story of her marriage (her Canadian-Somalian husband accepted her divorce plans without any problem)
• her being menaced by her "clan" or extended family - in fact, she stayed all the time in contact with them. Although they did not approve of her behavior, they did not let her down.

Ajaan Hirsi Magan, for Magan is her real family name, is a fraud.

She is an obsessed person. Obsessed by an unquenchable hatred of Islam. If her story of being clitorextomized by her grandmother at the age of 9 (this would have happened in Ethiopia then, for the Magan family left Saudi-Arabia, for Ethiopia after one year), is true, this hatred is understandable, but we have to doubt all the stories Ajaan has told up to now.

But, even if it has happened, clitorextomizing is not linked to Islam at all. Islam condoned it in countries of Northern Africa where it has been (and still is) practiced since thousands of years, but it does not exist in countries like Morocco, Turkey or Indonesia. It is still practiced under Christianism (Copts) in Egypt and among Christians and animists in Central and Western Africa. Of course, neither Christianism, nor Islam, should have condoned this kind of practices.

That is why I agree, like every enlightened, and serious christian or islamic, person, with Ajaan, that suppression of women, let alone mutilating them, should be condemned and not be accepted in any form. Ajaan Hirsi Ali/Magan turned into a militant non-believer, while she was a member of Dutch Parliament. She had a relationship with a Dutch Professor of Leiden University, who is an extremist anti-religious pamflettist and she wrote a preface to his last book: "Atheïstisch Manifest en De onredelijkheid van religie" [Atheistic Manifest and The Unreasonableness of Religion] (Herman Philipse, 2004, Ed. Bert Bakker, Amsterdam, 198pp).

For the American public of her new book ("The Caged Virgin"), she deemed apparently inopportune to feature her rejection of all religion.

People like Ajaan Hirsi Ali are an easy victim to abuse by persons and movements who have other agendas. The Dutch "Liberal" Party, which made her MP in 2002 (as Hitchen's readers probably do not know, "liberal" in Europe means "conservative"), has (ab)used her as an easy vehicle to attract racist and islamophobic voters, without committing itself to racism. Now, Hitchens uses her as an easy vehicle to attack European double standards in the shape of the Dutch embarrassment with an anti-islamic "passionaria".

And, this is the only point, where Hitchens is right: Maybe the reaction of the apartment-owners in the rich neighbourhood (many of them members of- or voters for- the "Liberal" party she represents in Parliament) where she became a nuisance because of the surveillance she needs, provided by the Dutch Government, is only too understandable. But the fact, that no person, nor group or organisation in Holland, who say they are so engaged with her and her struggle, offered a housing for her, that is of a "double-dutchness", even I have difficulty to understand.

Now, even if she lied, even if she is a fraud, she needs protection more than ever. The leadership of the Dutch "Liberal" Party, who knew from the beginning about her fraud, but kept it silent, should be made to pay for it and explain themselves before the Dutch public.

And Hitchens, if he has some decency left, he should apologize to his readers.

From the Dutch daily NRC-Handelsblad, May 12, 2006: Caricaturist comment on television programme.
Naive, slightly racist, Fokke and Sukke say: "We understand Hirsi "Ali" completely - you should see it within the framework of a culture .... of lack of feelings of shame and honor".

Pechvogel - Geluksvogel 9.5.06 [NL]

Het leven van een Europese urban professional speelt zich voor een groot deel NIET af in een stedelijke omgeving. Tussen de te bezoeken steden ligt namelijk het platteland. Daar moet je doorheen, of je wilt of niet. In mijn geval is dat vaak per automobiel en via de snelweg. Het automobiel is een vaalgroene Renault Espace, bouwjaar 1993. En de snelwegen zijn eigenlijk nauwelijks platteland. Je begeeft je uren - of zelfs: dagen - lang in een sterk gefragmenteerde community, een multiculturele functionele gemeenschap, bestaande uit vrachtautochauffeurs, gezinsgewijs toerende toeristen,

handelsreizigers en het uitstervende volkje van lifters. Territoriaal dicht op elkaar gepakt: gebiedsconflicten en botsingen van allerlei aard zijn aan de orde van de dag. Functioneel zijn we ook verenigd: we willen allemaal dezelfde kant op. Onze club- en buurthuizen bestaan uit benzinestations en, vaak bijbehorende-, wegrestaurants, soms ook wegwerphotels in de vorm van ladenkasten. We haten die plekken, maar we doen niet veel moeite om ze te mijden.

De community wordt geregeerd en gecontroleerd door de verkeerspolitie, uiteraard. De functie van het buurtbeheer en de sociaal-culturele animatie valt toe aan het personeel van de wegrestaurants, de cassières van de benzinepompen en van de tolinzamelingsloketten. Maar er is één functie, die, vind ik, het meest lijkt op die van onze urban profs: de Wegenwacht. De ADAC, Touring Secours en, in Nederland: de ANWB. Al heb ik begrepen, dat ook in deze functies de privatisering en de marktwerking hebben toegeslagen, zodat er nu concurrerende wegenwachten zijn. Zogenaamd terwille van onze keuzevrijheid. Maar, juist als we ziek worden, een ongeluk krijgen of met pech langs de weg staan, hèbben we weinig keuze. Het schrikbeeld van het ziekenhuis dat ons wegstuurt omdat we niet de juiste polis hebben, de takelwagen die ons niet helpt, omdat hij voor een andere verzekeringsmaatschappij rijdt en de pechdienst, die ons een extra duur en overtollig spoed-lidmaatschap opdringt, dat schrikbeeld dreigt harde werkelijkheid te worden. Dwangconsumptie, koppelverkoop, ondershandse overeenkomsten tussen verzekeraars en dienstverleners: evenzovele BEPERKINGEN van onze keuzevrijheid.

Maar goed, we hadden het eigenlijk over wat anders. Over pech. Pech onderweg. Ik onderhoud m'n auto redelijk. Het is voor mij een belangrijk werk-tuig. In de stad, in de steden, is-i niet zo nodig. Hoewel - in een auto-stad als Brussel kan men eigenlijk niet zonder - zelfs om boodschappen te doen. Van de berijders van oude autos wordt echter verwacht, dat ze heel wat handiger en technischer zijn, dan ik. Zodoende, is pech mijn opdringerige metgezel, onderweg. Lekkende leidingen, stukknallende drijfriemen, sloten die niet sluiten, of juist niet willen opengaan, overkokend koelwater, slaphangende ruitenwissers in een hoosbui - een kleine bloemlezing.

Het verschil tussen een ramp en gewoon pech, heeft weinig te maken met de aard van het gebeuren. Dat heeft te maken met iets heel anders, namelijk de mogelijkheid, om een doelgerichte interventie, zo snel en zo efficiënt mogelijk te laten plaatsvinden. In het laatste geval is het gewoon, pech, vertraging, ongemak. Als ik goed georganiseerd ben, mijn mogelijkheden en beperkingen ken, kan ik een leerzaam leven leiden als pechvogel. Leerzaam, omdat het me in contact brengt met dienstverleners onder een motorhelm (zie foto), die er zijn, om een probleem OP TE LOSSEN, en niet om zo veel mogelijk geld te verdienen aan je. Dat zijn de urban professionals-van-de-weg. Ze werken, niet in functie van een "prestatiecontract", maar zoals ouderwetse artsen, notarissen of vroedvrouwen: het resultaat telt, niet de vraag of men zich aan een bepaald programma houdt. Dus: eigenlijk net zoals projectleiders, buurtbeheerders in een achterstandswijk.

Zo wordt pech bijna een plezier. Het opent nieuwe perspectieven. Het geeft energie.

Mensen met naar verhouding veel pech in het leven, zijn alleen vooruit te helpen met mensen zoals wij.