Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Niall Ferguson

                         A Case Study in the Inferiority of a Culture

The Comical Contradictions of the Multicultural Idea

Few things demonstrate the sheer stupidity, self-hate and capacity for self-delusion  of Left-Liberalism more than their professed belief that there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, a belief which underpins the ideology of multiculturalism.

Left-liberals deal with the cognitive dissonance then involved when faced with the amazing advances of the West on the one hand and the moribund medievalism and /or barbarism of other cultures on the other by, on the one hand denigrating the West’s glittering achievements  as hard as they can and on the other, puffing up the comparatively minor achievements of these other civilisations and slapping thickcoats of gloss over their glaring imperfections. They must however use some standardto judge not just the West but these other Civilisations.  Despite their denials  they continue to judge the West and other Civilisations by the yardstick of the  standards of the  Christian  West.

‘Reason’ is not ‘Universal’

They try to get round this blatant contradiction. if they are aware of it, by calling on the alleged universalism of ‘Reason.’ The moral standards of the West are, they say, in fact the products of the Enlightenment,  the 18^th Century intellectual movement which placed  Reason above all else.  Unfortunately for this argument, while the Enlightenment certainly clarified Christian moral standards, our standards  remain just that: Christian.

Faith in Reason is Western

As it happens, like it or not, and there are plenty who do not like it for one reason or another in our increasingly secular society, the faith in Reason which produced the Enlightenment and Modern Science was itself a product  of Christianity.  And the idea of a universalising morality: Human Rights (the idea has been widely abused in the interests of Left-Liberalism) is also Western and specifically Christian in origin and can have no foundation and therefore  meaning without this religious basis.

Different approaches to Reason

Apart from these considerations, different cultures have different approaches to ‘Reason’ (eg not the ‘either /or’ of the Western intellectual tradition  but the ‘both and’ of the East). Moreover ‘Reason’ as a totally objective process somehow above and distinct from the reasoner is in any case often (always, according to some thinkers) fraudulent, being used merely to ‘tease out’ and ‘rationalise’ ideas which are emotional / psychological or spiritual in origin. David Hume the 18th Century Scottish Philosopher said that Reason was the ‘Slave of the Passions.’ This has always been recognised by Christianity, the origin of our faith in reason and a prime reason for the advances of the West.  From the first it regarded Reason as the  illuminator of an already existing faith. 

Left - Liberals having it both Ways

Left Liberals can be ambiguous or contradictory about Reason however. In line with their nihilism they can dismiss Faith in Reason as a phenomenon of Western Civilisation whilst at the same time claiming that they themselves are the unique  inheritors of  Reason.  But that’s Leftist thinking for you.

Left – Liberals are sawing off the Branch on which they (and we) sit

So here they are then, these Left Liberals, sitting on the benefits of two millennia of Western Christian Civilisation and taking them for granted whilst busily denigrating this same Civilisation  which has given them everything, whether they know it or not: the thoughts they think, the higher culture which they enjoy, the political freedoms they take advantage of and try to deny to others, every social benefit and  all the modern comforts of life, even their very lives themselves, perhaps.

Like it or Not, Christianity and  Greek Critical Enquiry are the Twin Foundations of Western Civilisation

Without the inspiration of the Christian religion there is no good reason for thinking that we in the West, however intelligent and capable we might be, would have any other morality than the slave society of Greece or of Rome which saw centuries of torture in the amphitheatres, the power –crazed barbarism of Genghis Khan and his Mongols or the industrial scale murders of the atheistic Nazis and the Marxists

There is no reason either for thinking that we would have advanced in any other way beyond the medieval barbarity of Islam or the highly intelligent but culturally moribund  Chinese. To think otherwise is to fall into the ‘Progressive’ fallacy; that the advances we see around us were inevitable and can only continue to a Scientific, Marxoid Utopia. They weren’t and they won’t.

The West contrasted With Islam; Blatant Contradictions and Left –Liberal Self Deception

The capacity of Left- Liberalism for the self –deception is necessarily truly heroic. Left –Liberals continue to hold on to their ideology which fatuously asserts the intrinsic equality of cultures in the face of the  plain far superiority of the West in every important  respect. In particular it asserts the intrinsic equality of the sexes whilst simultaneously confronted with the dreadful oppression of women in Islam and that culture’s total lack of visible internal resources for change..

What Islam means for Women

No amount of Doublethink  though can possibly obliterate the sheer awfulness of genital mutilation and the ideas of male oppression that lie behind it  which is such a feature of Islamic societies across the Middle East and Africa. What follows conveys something of the barbarity not just of the procedure itself  but of the ideas that lie behind it.

The Barbarity of the Genital Mutilation of Women.  It’s their Culture.  So that’s alright, then?

These ideas are part of cultures we are required to respect on the same level as our own by these left -liberal nincompoops .  The repulsion we feel on reading this personal account of  genital mutilation gives the lie to this fatuous and dangerous proposition.  The procedure is undertaken essentially to keep girls ‘pure,’ ie as a guarantee of their being virgo intacta and therefore marriageable and faithful. It is a quintessential marker of societies where the women are deeply inferior to men whose actual property they are seen to be.

The slavish submission of women was assumed to a great degree everywhere Ayaan Hirsi Ali. went in the Moslem world of Arabia and East Africa in her early years. This is her first- hand account of genital mutilation. Ayan Hirsi Ali is the ex-Moslem Somalian  women  whose anti-Islamic crusade brought her a Fatwa  and a death threat pinned with a knife to the chest of Theo van Gogh the Dutch film make by his Moslem assassin.. She was in the news recently when it was announced that Niall Fergusson the historian and Cameron’s think-Tank Guru was leaving his wife for her. She writes (Infidel’):-

‘In Somalia,, like in so many countries cross Africa and the Middle East, little girls are made ‘pure’ by having their genitals cut off. There is no other way to describe this procedure which typically occurs around the age of five. After the child’s clitoris and labia have been carved out scraped off or, in more compassionate areas merely cut or  pricked, the whole area is often sewn up, so that a thick band of tissue forms a chastity belt made of the girl’s own scarred flesh. A small hole is left is carefully situated to permit a thin flow of pee. Only great force can tear the scar tissue wider for sex.

‘Female genital mutilation predates Islam, Not all muslims do this, and a few of the peoples who do are not Islamic. But in Somalia, where virtually every girl is excised, the practice is always justified in the name of Islam. …Uncircumcised girls will … fall into vice and become whores. Imams never discourage it‘

Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes her own ordeal.

This took place in a room full of her female relations at the hands of ‘a man who was probably an itinerant circumcisor from the blacksmith clan’:-

‘Grandma swung her hand from side to side and said, ‘Once this long kintir is removed you and your sister will be pure.’ From Grandma’s words and gestures I gathered that this hideous kintir (clitoris) would grow so long that it  would swing sideways between my legs. She caught hold of me and gripped my upper body.. The man .. picked up a pair of scissors. With the other hand he caught the place between my legs and started tweaking it, like Grandma milking a goat. ‘There it is, the kintir’ one of the women said.

‘Then the scissors went down between my legs and the man cut off my inner labia and clitoris. I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat. A piercing pain, indescribable, shot between my legs and I howled. Then came the sewing; the long blunt needle clumsily pushed into my bleeding outer labia. My loud and anguished protests. … That is all I remember of it.’

Islamic Submission and training Women to be Docile

Individualism in the West is the product of the doctrine general in Christianity with some exceptions that we have Free Will; that we are the captains of our souls; that it is up to us to accept or to reject Jesus’ message.  In Islam, there is no such doctrine.

On the contrary, in Islam we are all predestined by Allah to heaven or hell; everything we do depends on his will (‘Inshallah’). This accounts for the fatalism and much of the inertia which is so much a feature of Islamic societies. There is no idea of ‘Progress ’towards the Kingdom of God in the Christian sense nor the concept that all are equally loved by God which lies behind so much social improvement and politicaladvance in the West. So there is not the same cultural drive towards the equal treatment of women.  Here is  Hirsi Ali again:-

‘A muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other (romantic) emotions and longings…A Muslim woman does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a muslim girl, you disappear until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam becoming an individual is not a necessary development; many people especially women never develop a clear individual will. You submit: that is the literal meaning of the word Islam. Submission. The goal is to become quiet inside so that you never raise your eyes, not even outside your mind.’

The Fate of Single Mothers in Islam

‘Most unmarried Somali girls who got pregnant committed suicide. I knew of one girl in Mogadishu who poured a can of gasoline over herself in the living room, with everyone there and burned herself alive. Of course, if she hadn’t done this, her father and brothers would probably have killed her anyway’. And what is true of Somalian Moslems is true of many other Moslems also.

The Duties of a Moslem Wife

Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes how she discussed with her father the duties of a wife.  For example her duty to ask  permission to leave the house. ‘My father told me, you can do the following; you can agree together early on, that permission is permanently given. That is a form of trust, his trust in you, so you don’t have to ask permission every time you go out for the groceries’…. There is a Quranic injunction to women to be sexually available to their husband at all times. My father didn’t go into details but he read it, ‘Your wives are your tillage, go unto your tillage in what manner so ever you will.’

Beating a Wife: It’s in the Quran

Marriage was only the beginning of misery for some women.  When Ali was living in Saudi Arabia ‘some of the Saudi women in our neighbourhood were regularly beaten by their husbands. You could hear them at night. Their screams resounded across the courtyards; No ! Please! By Allah!’.

Ali notes regarding the  foolishness of liberals, ‘Many well meaning Dutch people have told me that have told me in all earnestness that nothing in Islamic Culture incites abuse of women that it is just a terrible misunderstanding. Men all over the world beat their wives. I am constantly informed. In reality it is these Westerners who misunderstand Islam. The Quran mandates these punishments. It gives a legitimate basis for abuse so that the perpetrators feel no shame and are not hounded by their conscience or by the community’.

Islamic Women’s Garb

And of course there is the Islamic women’s garb. Hirsi Ali makes an important point when she remarks of the Netherlands that, ‘when the number of women wearing headscarves in the street became impossible to ignore, my (Dutch) Labour Party colleagues thought it was only recent immigrants who would soon abandon the practice. They failed to realise that it was the second generation who were rediscovering their ‘roots’ brainwashed by jargon I recognised;  taheed, kufr, the evil Jews.’  

Once Islamic garb begins to appear in area, the trend quickly catches on. Hirsi Ali remarked on how quickly wearing black tents became common in Nairobi where she lived for a time.

There is no Moderate Islam.

Hirsi Ali remarks, ‘you may not interpret the will of Allah and the words of the Quran; it says so right there in the book. This is a read-only lock. It is forbidden to pick and choose: you may only obey. The Prophet said. ‘I have left you with clear guidance; no one deviates from it after me, except that he shall be destroyed’

Islamic Barbarity Cannot Possibly Enrich Us, only Detract

What exactly is it about Islam that our rulers think is going to ‘enrich’ the West? These stupid fools (I use the term advisedly) hate our country and the West for their very success. They are in the process, deliberate or unintentional, of transforming a European, Western Christian Civilisation into an Asian /African Islamic one.

Don’t they realise that their lifestyles will disappear and that their children and all the minorities they love; Homosexuals, Jews etc will be the first to suffer in a Britain ruled by Islam or where Islam calls the shots?

Apparently not. How dim can you get?