Brandeis University moved to tamp down a growing controversy when it withdrew its plan to give a notorious anti-Muslim writer an honorary degree. Yesterday, the school said it would not give Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-American, a degree because her views “are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.”
The announcement came after days of criticism was aimed at the school for their plan to give a degree to a woman who has called Islam a “destructive, nihilistic cult of death” that needs to be defeated militarily.
One of the first writers to critique Brandeis was blogger Richard Silverstein, who pointed to an interview Hirsi-Ali gave to Reason magazine in which she called for the destruction of Islam. “We are at war with Islam,” she said. In 2007, as the New York Times reported today, Hirsi-Ali said Islam is the new “fascism” and said “violence is inherent” in the religion.
A petition criticizing Hirsi-Ali started by Brandeis students picked up steam, and by today had garnered nearly 7,000 signatures. The Council on American-Islamic Relations also joined the fray, sending out multiple e-mails calling on their supporters to e-mail Brandeis President Fred Lawrence in protest.
Hirsi-Ali has been embraced by the coterie of anti-Muslim bloggers, activists and politicians whose influence grew in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. She left conflict-riven Somalia, where she said she underwent female genital mutilation, when she was young. Hirsi-Ali eventually obtained asylum in the Netherlands, where she was elected to Parliament but stripped of her citizenship and left the country in 2006 amidst a controversy over details of her application. Hirsi-Ali admitted she lied about a number of details because, she said, she was fleeing a forced marriage.
She came to the U.S. after leaving the Netherlands, and joined the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute as a fellow. Today, she is a fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Celebrated by the right for her outspoken views on how women are treated in Muslim countries, she has been praised by figures like anti-Muslim bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
Hirsi-Ali is also an outspoken supporter of Israel, and spoke at the Israeli government-affiliated President’s Conference in Jerusalem in 2012 and 2013. She told the Sheldon Adelson-owned paper Israel Hayom that a two-state solution has not happened because Arab leaders believe it would betray the Qu’ran.
when I was in college I used to be a huge fan of Hirsi Ali and Sam Harris, mainly because I was (and am) and atheist, and I bought into their propaganda about Islam being the root of all/most problems in the modern world. I am so ashamed that I ever used to support these neocon, Islamophobic, pro-Israel, ignoramoses, who clearly know absolutely nothing about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict but continue to talk about it with authority. Glad Brandeis has seen the light on this issue!
Yesterday, the school said it would not give Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-American, a degree because her views ”are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.”
Brandeis did not know that BEFORE they invited her? Not possible.
Face it, she was invited exactly because of her anti-Islam propaganda value. The Administration was called out and is now pretending they did not know. When in fact, they got caught and are backing down. Makes ’em look even worse.
Not a big fan of Hirst-Ali, but man, are you people hypocrites.
Ayaan Hirst-Ali is definitely quite an angry critic of Islam, and certainly uses some awful rhetoric, but she had to go into hiding for years because of death threats, and still has round-the-clock security.
Moreover, there is no evidence that she lied about being subjected to FGM (and no call for the “she said” language), and the only people to dispute her claim that she was fleeing an arranged marriage are, predictably, the men in her family.
You’ve frequently published the work of Israel Shahak (among others) here many times. He is exactly the same thing as Hirst Ali – a atheist who devoted a substantial part of his life to smearing the faith into which he was born because he lost his faith along the way. I cannot understand how you square stuff like that with your position on stuff like this.
It’s also very curious that rather than address what she says about the way women are treated in Muslim societies (which I’m sure you know is true), the only thing you have to say is how Islamophobic bloggers have republished her. That’s exactly the same argument as saying that everything Shahak says is incredible because neo-Nazis republish him all the time.
I saw a documentary from Dutch TV (subtitled in English) which completely blew a hole threw Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s (real name: Ayan Hirsi Magan) persona of an innocent woman victimised by evil Muslims. Seems she lived in relative luxury in Kenya, where her brother attended a Christian school (that’s how fanatic her family were) and there are serious doubts as to whether she was forced into marriage at all. Her former flatmate in Holland said that she never spoke of being on the run from her family – in fact she regularly received mail from them. She also appeared on Dutch TV in a programme about immigrants, which is hardly the way you’d expect a woman in hiding from the Muslim hordes to behave. BTW Magan was interviewed on the programme, and given a chance to respond to their findings – something she did not do at all convincingly.
In short, Magan is a fraud. She has essentially created her persona. And this really matters because at the end of the day her ‘brave victim of Islam’ persona is all she’s got. She has no academic background in Islamic studies. Other than the trip to Israel which someone bought her, and a few years spent in Riyadh as a child, she has little experience of the Middle East. Her ‘thoughts’ are about as original, sophisticated and erudite as the spittle-flecked rants of some mad old dude on a far-right march.
Magan is essentially an unrestrained bigot and preacher of hate – just the fact that a) she’s a beautiful, ‘exotic’, female ‘native informant’ and b) she fits in with the far-right agenda in the USA, means she is taken seriously rather than mocked as she deserves. I am often dismayed by the number of otherwise reasonable people who believe Magan is an authority on Islam, when in reality she hasn’t got a clue.
Well, I always have some regret about disinvitations, which should in themselves conflict with the core values of a university. I wouldn’t have wanted them to disinvite a Jewish writer who claimed that Christianity was an odious, imperialist death/crucifixion cult or a militant Catholic who regarded Anglicanism as a detestable heresy that has made England a moral cesspit. Much as those opinions would hurt me.