Saturday, October 07, 2006

RELIGION NOT RECOGNISED

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's The Caged Virgin is "reviewed" by Irfan Yusuf in the Weekend Australian. Actually, it's a subtle attack on Hirsi Ali masquerading as a review.

Yusuf doesn't recognise the Islam described by Hirsi Ali:
One would expect Ayaan Hirsi Ali's criticisms of Islam to be based on knowledge and experience. She was, after all, born into a conservative Muslim environment, reared "to be a Muslim, a good Muslim" with family life dominated by Islam "down to the smallest detail". Further, her book, subtitled A Muslim Woman's Cry for Reason, would also be expected to contain elements of Islam that Muslims immediately recognise.

Ali and I were born in the same year, and we grew up in middle-class, culturally Muslim families. Yet I found her descriptions of a typical Islamic upbringing almost completely unfamiliar.
Without realizing it Yusuf, a male, accounts for his non-recognition of the Islam Hirsi Ali describes:
Its difficult themes reflect her troubled upbringing as the daughter of a political dissident frequently on the move.
It could be that Yusuf, as a Muslim male, just doesn't want to acknowledge that Hirsi Ali accurately describes the plight of many Muslim women. The fact that most of the "review" is devoted to discrediting Hirsi Ali leads me to think that's the case.

It's also worth noting that Yusfu's review is strikingly similar, especially in describing Hirsi Ali's background, to an earlier, equally scathing review in The Nation.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Irf said...

Thank you for defaming me on your blog by suggesting I may have plagiarised from someone else's review.

In fact, my review of Hirsi Ali's book is my own work. Had it been plagiarised, I doubt the Review Editor of The Oz would have published it.

The Review contained in the Canadian newspaper The Nation was much longer than mine. Further, it reviewed not one but two authors (the other being Irshad Manji).

Accuracy is not something the lunatic fringe of the Far-Right are known for. Once again, the far-Right authors of this blog have shown why they will rarely if ever make it to the mainstream of any Western country.

I recognise that Muslim women are oppressed. If I didn't, why would I have penned the following article in a Muslim website? ...

http://www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1570_0_25_0_C35

There's a word in the English language. It's called 'logic'. Try to understand it. When you do, take your head out of the neo-Nazi sands of the far-Right and join the mainstream.

Thanks again for mentioning me on your blog. Your criticism says more about you than it does about me.

12:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What can you say? Irfan is beyond parody. There's the defamation allegation (which as a lawyer he professionaly counters with defamation). Then a call for logic (where he proves Godwin's Law before a discussion starts).

It's just beautiful. Truly, if you build it, they will come...

9:27 PM  

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