I came late to the table on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, so it was fascinating to read Paul Berman’s 50-page defense of the woman he calls “the best-known feminist intellectual ever to come out of Africa” in The Flight of the Intellectuals, published last month. He recounts the charges that she is “strident,” “disdainful,” and “aggressive” — what? Is this the same warm and effervescent woman I saw speaking Tuesday night?
Berman’s words:
“The campaign in the intellectual press against Hirsi Ali seems to me unprecedented … A sustained attack in the intellectual world on a persecuted liberal dissident from Africa, a campaign in the press that has managed to push the question of women’s rights systematically to the side, a campaign that has veered more than once into personal cruelty, a soft vendetta, but a visible one, presided over by the normally cautious and sincerely liberal editors of one distinguished and admired journal after another, applauded and faithfully imitated by a variety of other writers and journalists, such that, in some circles, the sustained attack has come to be accepted as a conventional wisdom — no, this could not have happened in the past, except on the extreme right…
How did this happen? The equanimity on the part of some well-known Western intellectuals and journalists in the face of Islamist death threats so numerous as to constitute a campaign; the equanimity in regard to stoning women to death; the inability even to acknowledge that women’s rights have been at stake in the debates over Islamism …”
He also quotes Pascal Bruckner: “A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today’s directors of conscience.”
Perhaps a culture of interest, too. Hirsi Ali’s Bay Area appearances went completely unnoticed by the media. No press coverage that I can find, other than this lone blogger. (Haven’t given up yet. I’ll keep looking.)
Tags: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Paul Berman