This is an abridged version of the speech Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have delivered to the students of Brandeis University if the "progressives" (also known as Left-Fascists) had not revoked her invitation.
Here's What I Would Have Said at Brandeis - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
We need to make our
universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking.
One year ago, the city
and suburbs of Boston were still in mourning. Families who only weeks earlier
had children and siblings to hug were left with only photographs and memories.
Still others were hovering over bedsides, watching as young men, women, and
children endured painful surgeries and permanent disfiguration. All because two
brothers, radicalized by jihadist websites, decided to place homemade bombs in
backpacks near the finish line of one of the most prominent events in American
sports, the Boston Marathon.
All of you in the Class
of 2014 will never forget that day and the days that followed. You will never
forget when you heard the news, where you were, or what you were doing. And
when you return here, 10, 15 or 25 years from now, you will be reminded of it.
The bombs exploded just 10 miles from this campus.
I read an article
recently that said many adults don't remember much from before the age of 8.
That means some of your earliest childhood memories may well be of that
September morning simply known as "9/11."
You deserve better
memories than 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing. And you are not the only
ones. In Syria, at least 120,000 people have been killed, not simply in battle,
but in wholesale massacres, in a civil war that is increasingly waged across a
sectarian divide. Violence is escalating in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Libya, in
Egypt. And far more than was the case when you were born, organized violence in
the world today is disproportionately concentrated in the Muslim world.
Another striking feature
of the countries I have just named, and of the Middle East generally, is that
violence against women is also increasing. In Saudi Arabia, there has been a
noticeable rise in the practice of female genital mutilation. In Egypt, 99% of
women report being sexually harassed and up to 80 sexual assaults occur in a
single day.
Especially troubling is
the way the status of women as second-class citizens is being cemented in
legislation. In Iraq, a law is being proposed that lowers to 9 the legal age at
which a girl can be forced into marriage. That same law would give a husband
the right to deny his wife permission to leave the house.
Sadly, the list could go
on. I hope I speak for many when I say that this is not the world that my
generation meant to bequeath yours. When you were born, the West was jubilant,
having defeated Soviet communism. An international coalition had forced Saddam
Hussein out of Kuwait. The next mission for American armed forces would be
famine relief in my homeland of Somalia. There was no Department of Homeland
Security, and few Americans talked about terrorism.
Two decades ago, not
even the bleakest pessimist would have anticipated all that has gone wrong in
the part of world where I grew up. After so many victories for feminism in the
West, no one would have predicted that women's basic human rights would
actually be reduced in so many countries as the 20th century gave way to the
21st.
Today, however, I am
going to predict a better future, because I believe that the pendulum has swung
almost as far as it possibly can in the wrong direction.
When I see millions of
women in Afghanistan defying threats from the Taliban and lining up to vote;
when I see women in Saudi Arabia defying an absurd ban on female driving; and
when I see Tunisian women celebrating the conviction of a group of policemen
for a heinous gang rape, I feel more optimistic than I did a few years ago. The
misnamed Arab Spring has been a revolution full of disappointments. But I
believe it has created an opportunity for traditional forms of
authority—including patriarchal authority—to be challenged, and even for the
religious justifications for the oppression of women to be questioned.
Yet for that opportunity
to be fulfilled, we in the West must provide the right kind of encouragement.
Just as the city of Boston was once the cradle of a new ideal of liberty, we
need to return to our roots by becoming once again a beacon of free thought and
civility for the 21st century. When there is injustice, we need to speak out,
not simply with condemnation, but with concrete actions.
One of the best places
to do that is in our institutions of higher learning. We need to make our
universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking,
where all ideas are welcome and where civil debate is encouraged. I'm used to
being shouted down on campuses, so I am grateful for the opportunity to address
you today. I do not expect all of you to agree with me, but I very much
appreciate your willingness to listen.
I stand before you as
someone who is fighting for women's and girls' basic rights globally. And I
stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about
the role of religion in that fight.
The connection between
violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be
ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith
when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.
So I ask: Is the concept
of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it
blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain
seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have
had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim
Reformation.
Is such an argument
inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the
wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed
quotas on Jews.
The motto of Brandeis
University is "Truth even unto its innermost parts." That is my motto
too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can
hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of
the sexes.
