in this very interesting exchange with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I have to say the woman does not lie once. I don't know what her current political sympathies are as an American or how conservative she is, but going by this conversation alone, she seems to have a correct perspective on things.
Avi Lewis brings up good points about misrepresentations often made about American life, American political beliefs and American excesses, but she is punctilious in speech and her precision on these matters is completely on target.
Submission is the chief doctrine of Islam. Anybody who has spent even a brief time studying the religion will know that.
She articulates the difference between a theocracy and a Western democracy (which happens to contain some fringe elements of fundamentalism) well, and clarifies this by showing the very different types of response which occur in each respective culture to crimes committed by religious zealots.
If she's a conservative mascot now, he could probably catch her out with further conversation, but what she's saying here is all completely just and accurate in my opinion.
More and more we are seeing intellectuals going after Islam as it is currently practiced, from this woman to Houellebecq.
The real kernel of this argument is the idea of Islam practiced in a theocracy compared with Islam practiced in a free democracy. The end results will always be vastly different.
We can look to the past to see the same sorts of excesses have occurred with Christianity when it was practiced as a theocracy. It's the same principle; it's nothing inherent in Islam, per se, and I think that's the argument Lewis needed to make, instead of going to more pallid examples of recent excesses by Christian fundamentalism. The real excesses of Christianity are bloody enough if you look to the past.
Okay, I should qualify. Actually, it is something inherent in Islam...or Christianity...if you are a fundamentalist, because as Lewis points out, you can find exhortations to horrible violence in Christian scripture as well. Right now, it just tends to be Islamic individuals who are interpreting these exhortations in a literal manner more, and commiting more violent acts. And again: it all comes down to separation of church and state. As Ali mentions, it is the nature of the sharia.
I am impressed with Ali's intelligence, her strength and especially her bravery.
She has been marked for death and still she continues to speak.
I would like to read her book, Infidel.
I wish Avi Lewis's show On the Map would be available in America.
The Take was one of the most moving things on film I've seen in the past few years.
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