Anti-Islamic writer 'stirs hatred'

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A VISIT to Sydney by a controversial Somali writer who calls the prophet Mohammed a pedophile and says Islam is inferior to Western culture has outraged Muslims, who accuse her of inciting hatred.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali will arrive in Sydney today amid tight security normally reserved for foreign dignitaries or royalty.

Her writings and talks focus on what she calls the backwardness of Islamic culture and the persecution of Muslim women.

The Somali-born Muslim - who fled to The Netherlands, became a Dutch citizen and renounced her religion - has been under 24-hour guard since the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh in November 2004 by a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam.

Van Gogh's film Submission, which examined the oppression of Muslim women, was written by Hirsi Ali. His killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, left a five-page death threat addressed to her, pinned to the filmmaker's chest.

However, University of Technology Sydney Islamic law lecturer Jamila Hussain said Hirsi Ali's ideas were extreme and stigmatised Muslims.

"I think she'd be better staying where she came from," Ms Hussain said. "I've read enough of her thoughts. It's a narrow and radical opinion, and I don't agree with it. She's obviously had some dreadful experiences, but they're not typical."

In her writings, Hirsi Ali describes being circumcised as a young girl and how she escaped an arranged marriage.

Nada Roude, of the NSW Islamic Council, said Hirsi Ali's comments on the prophet Mohammed were a "no-go zone".

"They (prophets) are not just like you and me, they have special status - you're supposed to show respect," Ms Roude said.

"There have to be boundaries in how far you go in respecting other's beliefs. The reaction from the community is likely to be quite worrying."

Hirsi Ali has written that under Dutch law, Mohammed's marriage to six-year-old A'ishah (whose age is disputed by Muslim scholars) and his subsequent consummation of the marriage when she was nine would make him a pedophile.

Ms Roude said there seemed to be a double standard about who was allowed to visit Australia, particularly as Hirsi Ali's visit appeared to have the potential to incite hatred.

"Muslims are not treated the same," she said. "There are a set of rules for one community and another for the rest of the community. Anyone who causes harm to our society because they have the right to express their opinion is not welcome."

Hirsi Ali's latest book, her autobiography Infidel, has been a bestseller. She now lives in the US after losing a parliamentary seat in The Netherlands when it was discovered she had lied on her application for asylum.

She has two public functions at the Sydney Writers Festival: a discussion on Saturday and the festival's closing address on Sunday. Both are sell-outs.

By Simon Kearney

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(CNSNews.com) - Journalists must acknowledge incompatible differences between Islamic and Western beliefs to effectively facilitate debate between them, in the view of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an advocate for women's rights in Islamic cultures.

Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., this week, the Somali-born Hirsi Ali said the 21st century began with a battle of ideas "about the values of the West versus those of Islam."

"Journalists ... face the unpleasant reality of taking sides or getting lost in the incoherence of the so-called middle ground," she said. "The role of journalists serving the West, who understand what this particular battle is about, will be to inform their audiences accordingly."

Hirsi Ali said journalists must acknowledge the discrepancies between tenets of Islam and foundational beliefs of the West before they can accurately report on Islamic-related events.

Although Hirsi Ali praised journalists' work since the Sept. 11th attacks, she said reluctance to defend Western values against Islamic threats surprises her.

"Why are Westerners so insecure about everything that is so wonderful about the West: political freedom, free press, freedom of expression, equal rights for women and men and gays and heterosexuals, critical thinking, and the great strength of scrutinizing ideas - and especially faith?" Hirsi Ali asked.

She said Western journalists appeared hesitant to defend free speech - "the very right from which they earn their bread."

The daughter of a Somali rebel leader, Hirsi Ali left the Muslim faith and pursued a career in activism for women's rights. Since 1992, she has been an outspoken critic of Islam's subjugation of women and quashing of free speech.

She served three years as a member of Dutch parliament but left after threats from Islamic extremists and amid a row over having given false information on her asylum application in the early 1990s.

She moved to the United States and is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she researches Islam's influence in the West and Europe and on women.

In her speech, Hirsi Ali said the West is battling for its cornerstone ideas of political freedom, freedom of expression and equality for women. Islam, on the other hand, is hostile to everything Western, she said.

Muslims, Jews and Christians should have equal access to Western freedoms, but some basic teachings of Islam inevitably hold Muslims back from fully assimilating into Western society - particularly teachings about women, she said.

"This obsession with subjugating women is one of the things that makes Islam so low," Hirsi Ali said. "And the agents of Islam ... know that any improvement in the lives of women will lead to the demise of Islam and a disappearance of their power. This is why, among other things, they are so desperate to cage in women. This is why they also hate the West."

She challenged journalists directly. "If we do not understand the differences between Islam and the West - why one is so great and the other so low - and we don't fight back and win this battle of ideas in order to preserve our civilization, in my view there is no point to your profession or mine," she said.

A Muslim journalist in the audience said Hirsi Ali was too aggressive and disrespectful toward Islam.

"I think now the easiest way to be famous is attacking Islam" and depicting it as "a threat to the West," said Nayef Alkhawaldeh, an intern with a magazine published by the Center for Arab Unity Studies in Lebanon. "I don't understand. I don't feel that I want to destroy the West."

Alkhawaldeh said the women in his home country, Jordan, have equal rights and his sisters are educated and have jobs.

He said he thought Hirsi Ali's opinions were so strongly anti-Muslim because the suppressive Islam she experienced growing up was too fundamentalist and backwards. He pointed to Jordan, Egypt and Syria as examples of civilized Islamic countries.

"She's talking about historic Islam, not Islam nowadays," Alkhawaldeh said. "The Koran is just a historical document. You can't apply it for the present or the future."
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