Always look on the bright side of FGM
Nicholas Kristof tells off Ayaan Hirsi Ali because of course he knows far more about Islam than she does.
To those of us who have lived and traveled widely in Africa and Asia, descriptions of Islam often seem true but incomplete.
Including, apparently, descriptions by people who grew up immersed in Islam, genitally mutilated under Islam, beaten up by their teachers of Islam, issued death threats from adherents of Islam. The descriptions are true – but Kristof wants more. He wants to hear about the pretty calligraphy.
The repression of women, the persecution complexes, the lack of democracy, the volatility, the anti-Semitism, the difficulties modernizing, the disproportionate role in terrorism — those are all real. But if those were the only faces of Islam, it wouldn’t be one of the fastest-growing religions in the world today. There is also the warm hospitality toward guests, including Christians and Jews; charity for the poor; the aesthetic beauty of Koranic Arabic; the sense of democratic unity as rich and poor pray shoulder to shoulder in the mosque.
That first list is quite a doozy! Repression of women, no democracy, anti-Semitism, anti-modernism, affinity for terrorism [and he forgot homophobia, hatred of outsiders and “infidels,” madrassas, the death penalty for leaving, and a few more large items] – with all that is it really surprising that Islam gets some criticism? It sounds absurd to admit to all that and then say yes but, especially when the yes buts are themselves dubious. Hospitality to Christians and Jews? What – they get a nice meal before they get driven out of town? And as for the sense of “democratic unity as rich and poor pray shoulder to shoulder” – well it may be democratic unity but it sure as hell isn’t gender unity; women are banished to the back of the bus. Forgive me if I can’t get too sentimental because Kristof gets dewy about rich and poor men praying shoulder to shoulder in the mosque.
Really – he should know better. He should know better to admit repression of women, no democracy, anti-Semitism, anti-modernism, affinity for terrorism and then go on to say “but it’s not all bad.” Fuck that. With that list, it’s bad enough, and good liberals shouldn’t be cobbling together feeble excuses for it.
Wouldn’t it?! Those seem to be the very reasons a lot of angry Muslim men as so passionate about their religion in the first place; it seems rather naive to assume that those aren’t traits that would attract men of a certain mindset to Islam in the first place.
Viewing this alongside the Cristina Odone piece is interesting. They’re very different stories, but with the same odd principle that is supposed to apply when we discuss religion: If you condemn the oppressor, you are expressing bigotry toward the oppressed.
But the calligraphy is lovely, you must admit.
I read this piece to Vicky, and she said, “Is Kristof a ‘liberal’?”
I’m pretty sure that’s how he self-identifies — am I wrong?
I was stunned by his assertion that she is “the type of person who rolls out verbal hand grenades by reflex.”
“rich and poor pray shoulder to shoulder in the mosque.”
That should be rich men and poor men…
Whilst women/children are left squatting on the floor in a segregated room. No shoulder rubbing between them and their female squatter property.
Timothy Garton Ash ended up apologizing to her for calling her an Enlightenment fundamentalist. I wonder if Kristof will ever apologize for the hand grenade remark.
Islam is the fastest growing reasons for many reasons, not least among them the fact that it is aggressively proselytised in third world countries. And as third world countries have high birth rates, this means it’s hard to say whether more Muslims are being made by just being born or by being converted. There are also many other social and ideological factors that keep Muslims within the fold. “Fastest growing” status is not necessarily a result of the pretty calligraphy nor social benefit – there are a range of other factors at play, and some of them are quite nefarious.
Well, and there’s another thing – this “charity for the poor” truism. Really? After the mine disaster in Turkey a couple of weeks ago, Erdogan gave a little talk in which he said such mishaps are inevitable and miners are used to them and they resign themselves to that when they choose to be miners. A Turkish commentator noted acidly that Islamists are not keen on unions, they prefer obedience.
So…what Islamists and Islam mean by “justice” and “charity for the poor” and similar is perhaps not what we mean.
So it’s kind of Islam 0 and almost any alternative 12, so far.
This reminds me of a conversation I was having today, where we basically came to the conclusion that almost every regime and ideology has something going for it, from some standpoint. That’s how they get off the ground. I once saw a leading historian lecture on the reasons why fascism ascended in Germany, to the effect that it offered jobs and opportunities to ordinary people. It’s about as legitimate to caveat every criticism of fascism with these little remarks as it is to caveat every discussion of Islam with remarks about calligraphy and remarkably vague claims about charity and so on (I take it that most criticisms of fascism neglect to do this but are still valid).
Does anyone know if there’s a logical fallacy along the lines of ‘the invalid assertion that criticizing one aspect of a position/ ideology (&c.) implies complete censure of the whole position / ideology (&c.)’? Like ‘the mereological fallacy’?
*’ordinary people’ not including Jews, homosexuals, disabled people and anyone else they hated, of course.
According to the Wikipedia article on Kristof, Kristof
Bit of a one off, isn’t he? I read the review yesterday and couldn’t believe it. (How come I didn’t see it before? It was published back in May.) What a jerk! He’s trying to compare his knowledge of Islam to Hirsi Ali’s! The mind simply reels when presented with idiocy like this.
What is it about the NYT? It finds it very hard to anything negative about Islam. NYT Mag put the seal of approval on Tariq Ramadan, as I recall, and now the Times itself accuses Hirsi Ali – of what? – apostacy?! She was beaten, married without her choice, genitally mutilated, and is under threat of death: all in the name of Allah! And he thinks she’s strident?! Just like he thinks that there’s still something we can say in favour of Islam, after you take into consideration that it is misogynist, apparently incompatible with democracy, anti-semitic, etc. etc. Has this man no conscience at all?
Kristof, they say, has won two Pulizer Prizes! The moral conscience of his generation of journalists, travelled in 140 countries and every state in the Union! Puh-lese! Spare me! This man is beneath contempt!
And where, pray tell, did Kristof get the idea that Islam welcomed Jews and Christians? True, the Jews were very often better off under Islam than under medieval Christianity. But these things are relative. Dhimmis were not permitted to sit in the presence of a Muslim; they were not permitted to bear arms (and were therefore always subject to indiscriminate robbery and violence); they could not ride horses; they were not permitted to walk ahead of a Muslim, etc. etc.; and their payment of the jizya tax on Dhimmis was the sole support (besides imperial conquest) of the government. It’s bizarre, what an unreal, romantic image of Islam so many people have.
But Kristoff was actually a tourist, who, like, met some Muslims, so he’s totally an expert on this. Ayan Hirsi Ali only lived there and was a Muslim. So Kristoff is totally right, like, really.
Absolutely – Nazism really had quite a lot to offer, to people who weren’t Jews communists feminists gays disabled etc and didn’t much mind what happened to people who were.
Eric, well Kristof has done genuinely good work calling attention to the oppression of women around the world. But honestly, this business of setting Ayaan straight about Islam…Lordy. It’s not even as if she knows only one tiny little corner of Somalia; her family lived in Saudi for an extended period (and she loathed it – her teacher called her Slavegirl) and they also lived in Kenya for a time.
The New York Times, like most mainstream media in the US and the UK, loathes atheism and atheists. Along with your list there was that really shockingly foul-mouthed review of Dennett’s book by Leon Wieseltier a few years ago – the one that prompted Michael Ruse’s malicious gloating email which led to a brief exchange (civil on Dennett’s part and infantile on Ruse’s) which Ruse then sent to Dembski without Dennett’s permission, and which Dembski published on his blog, without Dennett’s permission. I confirmed all this with Dan. I also published the reply he wrote to the Times, which the Times did not publish. A squalid nasty business all around, except on Dennett’s part.
Mind you…I think the Times mag also did a piece on Hirsi Ali.
“Islam is the fastest growing reasons for many reasons, not least among them the fact that it is aggressively proselytised in third world countries”
There is usually a very large table outside the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin on Saturdays – when the main thorough fare area is thronged with shoppers. The table is laden with Islamic literature and there are only men to be seen standing behind the last supper type table – not a woman in sight. Ireland would probably be seen by them to be a soft touch because of all the recent child abuse scandals within Catholicism.
Here is Dennett’s letter to the Times.
Great letter by Dennett – not sure I’d seen it before. As for the Kristof thing, sometimes I just despair.
“Sense” is, of course, the operative word. Because it’s not really democratic. And he knows it, because just a few sentences before he acknowledges the lack of democracy in the Islamic world as real. It may be fellowship the rich and the poor feel towards each in the mosque, but that is quite a different thing to “democratic unity”.
And I wonder, do Muslims feel a “sense of democratic unity” when they take to the streets and protest en masse, demanding that we behave how they want us to and calling for the death of infidels that dare insult their religion? Yes, I think they must: rich and poor coming together for their faith seems to be a definition for that particular phrase. But that’s okay; a sense of democratic unity is a good thing! It may not be real democracy, but if it feels like it then that’s a-okay.
The fever, the rash, the aches and pains; the eventual descent into madness — those are all real. But if those were the only faces of syphyllis, it wouldn’t be one of the fastest-growing diseases in the world today.
Kristof has certainly done great work in the past at exposing injustice against women. He’s one of the authors of “Half the Sky”. He does say in the article too, that he’s lived in Asia and Africa.
If by bigotry he means irrational hatred or fear of some religion, then I agree. But hatred or fear may be rational too, if there is a perception of threat.
Ali disappointed me greatly by going to work for that anti-global warming think tank. I’m mystified by her story about handling money. Can Muslims not count then?
Of course, Ayaan Hirsi Ali can’t know anything about Islam until it’s been mansplained to her, and Nick Kristof cheerfully obliges.
Dept of boring factuality: FGM is a cultural practice of essentially African origins, though cropping up in unrelated contexts in other parts of the world, and spread very unevenly through portions of the Arab Middle East by migration and/or localised reinvention/adoption. It is a vile thing, but it is virtually unknown, for example, in the Maghreb, or the Indian Subcontinent. Its relationship to Islam per se is thus highly contingent, and it is in no way a core religious practice as, for example, Jewish [or indeed Islamic] male circumcision is. See here for details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting#Prevalence
Roy just won the internet.
Also, tangent from Ophelia’s comment about the media’s loathing of atheists: I recently found an article (maybe old news to y’all) Media Spreading ‘Gospel of Godlessness,’ says Watchdog. The study was conducted for the Culture and Media Institute*.
From the 105 atheist-themed stories that CMI reviewed, eighty percent had a positive tone while 20 percent were neutral. Surprisingly, no feature stories were negative.
Now I admit that this is pure speculation, but something tells me that you should read “had a positive tone” as “failed to call for the immediate imprisonment of all atheists”.
*Ever notice how the more neutral and benign an organization’s name, the more rabidly partisan it is?
Well, you know, I didn’t know Kirstof before I looked him up in Wikipedia, but if he co-authored a book entitled Half the Sky, then he simply wasn’t paying attention when he read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book, because he doesn’t grant her even a little patch of sky, and she speaks more compellingly about the immiseration of women under Islam than any other author I know. So, did Kristof have a bad day, or did he just take back all his concerns about human rights, and in particular about women’s rights; because his review ignores them altogether, as though Muslim calligraphy is a good tradeoff for women’s rights, and so long as we can find some bits of beauty here and there in the Muslim world, we can tolerate any amount of inhumanity. If Kristof is concerned about human rights, it doesn’t do to say that he has written things in the past that shows some concern. If that concern was real, then it should be evident in what he writes now, and it isn’t. I may have written what I wrote last night when I was dog-tired, but I find that, having had a good night’s sleep, I’m if anything more angry at the stupid – yes, stupid – insensitivity of his diatribe against, as Andrew Roberts calls her (and I’m not a fan of Roberts), one of the most courageous women of her generation. The Times should show a little more reasonable judgement when it publishes op-ed pieces. Even its reputation is on the line, whenever it goes gaga over the wonders of Islamic ‘civilisation’, and it hasn’t shown a great track record so far as a reasonable understanding of Islam goes – one of the most violent religions to have been dreamt up by the mind of man (gender specific).
FGM’s relationship to Islam is contingent but that doesn’t make it negligible or unimportant. We have a chapter on this in Does God Hate Women?
Great point.
Another great point.
Kristof’s right. Hirsi Ali exaggerates and she is a provocateur.
Though there is this little problem about point of view…
When Kristof writes an article focusing on women he is all insight:
“any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10kristof.html
However like many writers, when he speaks generally women disappear.
Whether we’re viewing a travelogue by BBC travel channel or reading an article like this, maleness is the accepted paradigm of being human. A camel racing scene in Saudi Arabia where not one female is to be seen will have a commentary like “All the villagers rush out in excitement”. Yet those in women-only scenes will NEVER be described as the “people” or “the villagers”. It will always be something like “All the women gather at the market place…”
Kristof’s glib summary could be re-written: “Yes they are harsh on their donkeys, and often forget to feed the dog – but there is this sense of democratic unity as rich and poor pray shoulder to shoulder in the mosque.”
If Kristof had had his penis cut off and was then married off into sexual and domestic slavery for the rest of his days then he too might have concluded that there is a “propensity to violence in the family, as well as in religious vocabulary and tradition.” However Kristof’s not a woman, he’s a person, so from that point of view Hirsi Ali is indeed a “provocateur”.
One of the things one can usefully say about the connection between Islam and FGM is that the former does not (by itself) give one much in the way to criticize the latter practice. A sort of synergy of folly (or rather worse).
Bunge says something like this somewhere: the single biggest merit of the Enlightenment, which had many flaws, is that it also included seeds to transcend itself in a way that is not really possible with many other social movements.
I watched a programme once whereby villagers from an Afghanistan taleban area were being interviewed. The streets were full of men only. The programme makers never once talked to a woman. It was deplorable to observe. The only time there were shots of them, were, when they were seen squatted on mats in a separate room of the mosque. They were less than human in the eyes of their owners. The male hierarchy system stinks.
According to the first linked source below, around 3 million girls annually are subjected to clitoral hacking; the process known as FGM. Included are some girls born to Islamic families in the West. Clerics concerned with the image of Islam periodically announce that there is no Koranic justification for this, but (please correct me if I am wrong) no state in the Islamic world has chosen to take any effective action against it. The second of the two links below argues that there is Islamic scriptural justification.
An historic parallel: Between 1861 an 1865 the US went through a civil war because the confederacy of slave states found continued membership of the Union intolerable and attempted to secede. This was as much an economic as a political attack upon the Union, but I have wondered of late how long black slavery would have lasted if the Confederacy had just been allowed to go its way.
Today the divide between slave and non-slave sectors is apparent across the whole post-colonial and post-Cold-War world. Everywhere one finds tyranny, one finds also a dominant religious establishment as an essential part of that same tyranny. And it is Islam that mainly fills that bill. Everywhere in the Islamic world women have much the same status as blacks had in the American South prior to the Civil War (and for a considerable length of time after it).
Islamic civilisation would probably secede from the world if it could, if only to save the female slavery considered by its male elites as essential to it. Its lack of that option is reflected in the rise of Islamism and Islamic-inspired mass murder in the West. GW Bush was only half right when he said ‘they hate us for our freedom’. What really gets the Islamic fascists worked up is western womens’ rights and freedoms, which are (rightly) perceived as a threat to the survival of the Islamic world’s own ‘peculiar institution’ of female slavery.
If Islam were not so strategically weak, it would probably be open warfare by now, and across 3 continents.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/fgm-traditional-practice-in-32-countries-of-which-29-are-oic-states—-3-million-girls-mutilated-wor.html
http://www.islammonitor.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=540&catid=192&Itemid=68
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/beware-the-words-of-a-wolf-dressed-in-sheikhs-clothing-20100606-xn25.html
Mags:
I’ve also noted this tendency, even sometimes among those who consider themselves liberal and concerned about women’s rights. Anything relating to women’s rights or their status in society/religion often gets shoved off into a separate category, of less importance and something of a “luxury,” to be dealt with AFTER the “important” work of X, Y, and Z is completed. I was reminded of this strongly after reading some articles about the potential for “peace talks” with the Taliban in Afghanistan — sure, women might suffer, but what is that in comparison for a chance for peace? The women need to give a little to make the peace and stop being so stubborn. (Or something like that…)
Similarly, women’s rights have often been thrown under the bus in “leftist” or “liberal” campaigns (the Gita Sagal saga, for example), and sometimes such concerns are even smeared as “bourgeois, white, imperialist” concerns, which can be ignored in favor of the real issues of anticolonialism, anticapitalism, fighting wars, “supporting ‘authentic’ voices in the Middle East/Asia/Africa as opposed to those ‘corrupted’ by Western imperialism” or whatever.
And that trope Kristof uses of extolling the image of all Muslims standing shoulder to shoulder in prayer as a symbol of the brotherhood of believers in Islam is a cliche — I’ve heard it dozens of times, even among liberal Muslims who are well aware of the problems Islam has with women’s rights. When pressed on the fact that women are shoved in the back, behind a partition, or in a separate room, you get some mealy-mouthed excuse such as, “Women don’t want men staring at their behinds” (well, the men should be concentrating on Allah, no?), or “the presence of the opposite sex is distracting and they’re happier in their own single-sex environment” (which I’ve actually heard some Muslim women make; a similar point of view holds that the harem and veil are actually “empowering” for women because then they can create their own “feminine space” away from men) but then why are the men always in the front? I never got a good answer to that one…
I desperately hope that before they spread my wit across the blogosphere, folks will correct my misspelling of the word ‘syphilis’.
”The fever, the rash, the aches and pains; the eventual descent into madness — those are all real. But if those were the only faces of syphyllis, it wouldn’t be one of the fastest-growing diseases in the world today.”
Syphilis gave us the works of Oscar Wilde, Friedrik Nietzche, Scott Joplin, Schubert and Guy de Maupassant…and yet people obssess over it’s less attractive features.
If I had a choice between (i) being beheaded/stoned to death by someone who does nice calligraphy and (ii) being beheaded/stoned to death by someone who doesn’t do nice calligraphy, I’d choose the more artistic option every time.
And then with the shoulder to shoulder thing, even apart from the little matter of women, there is also the obvious and horrible downside to that which is that it is exclusively for Muslims. By the same token, the accusation is “Muslims are being killed!” which always suggests that it’s quite all right if non-Muslims are killed. The ummah is not a nice idea, it’s a nasty one, the logic of which is either a universal caliphate or frank exclusion. It’s the very opposite of universalism. It sucks.
Now the real thing that pisses me off about this review is this
I went through something very much like that thanks to a highly abusive older brother. It wasn’t sibling rivalry, it was a sustained effort to beat the social instinct out of me to the point that I couldn’t visit friends for fear of him – or have them over. He once choked me until I blacked out in an alley way. If I ever borrowed anything off of anyone he would make a point to steal it, meaning that I couldn’t be trusted. I still feel uncomfortable with people thanks to that asshole.
In school the violence I grew up with led to me isolating myself, and slowly boiling in rage until somebody managed to tap into it – then I would attack. It isn’t a part of me I like, and it is a major reason I don’t drink. I don’t trust myself. This isn’t a poor me – I am who I am and I currently like me, but rather a preamble for this:
To read that first world wanker who has never once had an undue finger laid on him talk about “beatings may be regrettable…”, he has no clue as to what he is talking about.
Yes – that sentence is quite unbelievably callous. May be regrettable? May be regrettable?
He’s an object lesson of some kind, Kristof is. Of where defending the indefensible can take you.
“may be regrettable, but”
—implies that the benefits outweigh the (optionally regrettable) costs. But there are no benefits. Excepting its local cabals of absolute rulers, religion benefits no one. The existence of benefits for anyone else is a bald-faced lie, and I cannot fathom why so many people have bought into it who didn’t have to.
Oh, come on Roy, if you can’t see the benefit of believing that your every action is endorsed by a higher power, and that it will earn you an eternal reward, you’re not even trying.
Plus of course, it benefits the clergy, who may be many things, but a C of E vicar [one-handed typists excepted] is hardly a member of a cabal.
Dave,
1. The pleasure of believing such things is meager, compared to the pleasures one might accrue if they were correct.
2. They are not correct, they are lies.
3. Most people don’t believe them. Religion is the practice of proclaiming them, not believing them.
Roy, come on, cryptic dogmatism is no contribution.
Wow. That is so unfair. I think I’ll stop reading this blog for a while.