Banned in Australia: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is unfit for human consumption
Anyone who bought a ticket to hear Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak on her Australian tour will get a full refund. It’s been cancelled because her opinions as so outrageous they present a threat to her security and the safety of every Muslim in Oz. Stick a ‘BANNED” label on a record cover or book and we all want to listen to it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali might think about getting “Banned in Australia” on a T-shirt or a medal.
She’s banned because when 400 Muslim women petitioned for her to be stopped from spreading her “divisive rhetoric” and thus amplifying “hostility and hatred towards Muslims” the State caved in. Hard won freedoms about speech and thought were obliterated. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s words are unfit for human consumption. No debate. No ridicule. No Q and As with her sympathizers and accusers. Just banned.
Ali, a campaigner for women’s rights and a strident critic of Islam, which in her words is “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death”, is taboo. A woman who was abused under Islam cannot criticize it. However potent or toxic Ali’s view is, banning her quashes progressive moves for the airing and exchange of ideas in a public space. It increases separatism, otherness, division, conformity, intolerance and misunderstanding. Ideas hermitically sealed in closed groups fester and curdle into something claustrophobic and suffocating.
“Shame on you for carrying water for the Islamists, shame on you for trying to shut people up who are trying to raise awareness about sharia law,” said Ali is response to the ban. “We can’t have that open discussion, we can’t stop the injustices if we say everything is ‘Islamophobic’ and hide behind a politically correct screen. We should not make the mistake of finding ourselves inadvertently allied with the Islamists, as these petition-signers are doing.”
The event, “Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Hero of Heresy”, was advertised as an opportunity to “step inside the controversy” surrounding Islam and Muslim womanhood. The controversy rumbles on, albeit in private.
Spotter: SMH
Posted: 4th, April 2017 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
