The new issue of Reason contains a lengthy interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brave apostate Muslim who fled the Netherlands and now lives in the US. Alas, it’s not yet online, but it’s definitely in a Baweresque vein. She pulls absolutely no punches. Like Bawer, she too blames the West for its craven passivity in the face of a violent threat. And she won’t have any of the false equivalence among Abrahamic religions. Though she is now an atheist and wishes everyone would be, she said that if people have to accept God, she would rather that they become Jewish or Catholic because both religions have a much more humane concept of God than “the fire-breathing Allah who inspires jihadism and totalitarianism.”
When the interviewer asked her if she thought Islam could bring about positive social change in the same way that religious Protestants helped end US slavery, and Catholicism helped end communism in Poland, she responded sharply:
Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.
Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, ‘defeat Islam’?
Hirsi Ali: ...There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.
Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, “Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,” he’s wrong?
Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong. Sorry about that.
Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong. Sorry about that.
Wow. Excellent!
Muslims are Varelse