Hirsi+Ali+Responses



= The 2015 Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture by Ayaan Hirsi Ali =

//Women in Libraries invited responses from those attending the 2015 Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture, given by// //activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Chicago. We received responses from Perry (Ohio) Public Library Director **Virginia Sharp March**, and from **Yasmeen Shorish**, ////Physical & Life Sciences Librarian at James Madison University.//

// Hirsi Ali is a controversial figure, often described in the mainstream US press as a feminist and outspoken critic of Islam. Yet she has been strongly criticized by some Muslim feminists, including Linda Sarsour, who told Al Jazeera America “The problem we have with Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not that we invalidate her own experience, but she equates violence against women to Islam,” adding that “her story does not represent Islam or all Muslim women.” //

//The American Library Association's Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture series commemorates the Mr. Curley's lifelong dedication to the principles of intellectual freedom and free public access to information. Mr. Curley was known as ////a champion of the arts and of the library’s role as a center that can transform the community. He ////was director of the Boston Public Library and ////an ALA member for more than 30 years, serving ////as president in 1994-1995. //


 * **by Virginia Sharp March **

I had the privilege of attending the Arthur Curley Memorial Lecture at the ALA Midwinter in Chicago on January 31, 2015. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was the scheduled speaker. This was the first speaker event where my ID was scanned at entry. The atmosphere did feel different than other speakers – there was a special charge in the air. There was a good mix in the audience – different genders, colors, ages and nationalities.

Hirsi Ali started by reading a passage from her book, //Infidel//. She was employed at the Labor Party in the Netherlands at the time and was working on immigration issues. One afternoon, there was a commotion in her office which led her to the television where others had gathered. It was September 9, 2001 – the Twin Towers in New York City had been attacked. Her prayer to Allah was “please let it not be Muslims who did this”. As the events from 9/11 unfolded, she had to make a choice about her Muslim religion, whose side was she on? Was this really the Islam in which she believed? // Hirsi Ali proposes that libraries //  // have a //// place //// for those who want to get past that dissidence. Libraries can revitalize stories and share them with Muslims. // When she was in Kenya as a young girl, Hirsi Ali discovered the Library and the impact of books. Through Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, she found sustenance for the mind. They planted the seeds of her intellectual life which brought her to where she is today. Prior to arriving in Kenya at the age of 10, growing up had been a collective with her relatives raising her. In Kenya, she was becoming bored and evil. Her father insisted that she attend school, and books were a way out of the boredom that helped with ethical training as she grew.

Hirsi Ali lived in the Netherlands from 1992-1998. She was shocked at the environment. When something bad occurred such as a natural disaster, the people were quick to blame the government rather than God. It was the beginning of her intellectual liberation from her beliefs all being based on her religious upbringing.

//Infidel// is a book based on the perspective of good or evil. It offended the community where she grew up because it revealed problems. 99% of the Western Response to this book has been that this is so different than what they ever knew. Though Hirsi Ali points out that beyond the genital mutilation, others can relate. Each religion and society have various degrees that the collective can inhibit the individual. Through information and knowledge, we can make the world a better place rather than resorting to military means. When the facts change, we must be willing to change our minds.

She believes that young women when believing Muslim they get into a state of dissidence. Some will clear that dissidence by becoming more fundamental. It gives her hope when people want to go to the core of the Quran.

It was asked of Hirsi Ali if the situation tends to be oversimplified. She says that we need to condemn the acts of violence and engage in messages that inspire. If Muslims should choose between their conscience and the Quran, they should choose their conscience. Muslims fail when they do not defend their conscience and hide behind the web of complexity.

Hirsi Ali proposes that libraries have a place for those who want to get past that dissidence. Libraries can revitalize stories and share them with Muslims. It will pull people to a place where the mind is forced to consider what has occurred in the past. Libraries as communities can encourage and host these conversations. They can pull people away from vulnerable ideas and enlighten them. Libraries can provide information and knowledge which can make the world a better place rather than resorting to military means.

Though Hirsi Ali’s discussion focused more on libraries than feminism, we as librarians make information equally available to people of all gender and nationalities. This allows women of all ages to become enlightened and find their own voice in whatever matters most to them. Hopefully, women will then feel compelled to choose their conscience and help advance other women into better situations.

//Virginia Sharp March is the Director of the Perry Public Library, in Perry, Ohio.//

|| n ||< ** by Yasmeen Shorish **

//*Author's Disclaimer: This response lacks citations. Some of this is opinion and some is not.//

When I first read that Ayaan Hirsi Ali would be giving the Arthur Curley Lecture at ALA Midwinter 2015, I was intrigued. As I read the press release, however, I became alarmed. The press release made no mention of Hirsi Ali’s well documented past statements advocating for the abolishment of Islam, or her views that the religion is inherently violent and indoctrinates all followers to be violent, or her position from her book //Nomad//, that Muslims be converted to Christianity. In fact, the press release positioned Hirsi Ali as a reformer, someone looking to change Islam from the inside.

The ALA press release announcing Hirsi Ali’s lecture was alarming on two levels: First, a lecture to celebrate intellectual freedom was inviting a speaker who has been forthright in her platform that Islam is a destructive, evil religion that is incompatible with “Western civilization.” As an American Muslim, this is a difficult viewpoint to reconcile. While I believe that there are many deeply entrenched issues of patriarchy and power in most – if not all – organized religions, I do not think that the tenets of Islam are any more or less out of whack with whatever one wants to deem “Western civilization.”

Second, I was sincerely disappointed that ALA – the professional organization for librarians, a group that advocates critical thinking skills, empowerment, and access to information – would use the publisher’s blurb for Hirsi Ali’s forthcoming book, //Heretic//, as its press release. There was no evidence of critical analysis, nor was there indication that the reformist views put forth in the blurb were a stark departure from her previous points of view.

As a member of ALA, a past ALA Spectrum Scholar, and a concerned citizen, I reached out to ALA to inquire about the decision to select Hirsi Ali. I also questioned the use of the publisher’s blurb for //Heretic// in the ALA press release, as the statements made therein could not be scrutinized for veracity because the book had not yet been published. While the conference contact for ALA did respond to my email and explain the selection process, the concern that I raised about using the publisher’s statement was not well addressed. I decided to take it in good faith that Hirsi Ali had changed her views and would be speaking about this change at the Midwinter lecture.

I was profoundly disappointed in the lecture. The introduction was again a parroting of the publisher’s blurb, which included the offensive statement that ISIL and Boko Haram are the faces of contemporary Islam as well as the dubious claim that Islamic Reformation is the only way to end fundamentalism. In my opinion, statements that try to address complex global problems with simple or single variable solutions should be scrutinized. This proved to be the theme of the lecture. In essence, Hirsi Ali attempted to reduce the motivations of terrorists down to a religion. Not once were the history, geopolitics, power, poverty, or above all the education of the terror groups discussed. Hirsi Ali claims that it is Islam that causes this violence and strife, when it should be clear that these groups are fighting for different agendas. ISIL, the Taliban, and Boko Haram state different “goals,” have different cultures, and speak different languages. It is true that they all claim to do their heinous deeds in the name of Islam. Rallying people who feel disenfranchised (for any reason), and who have limited access to education, around a fundamental identity – religion – is a tried and true way to recruit followers. This is hardly limited to Islam.

// People everywhere should think critically about what they read and hear, and then make a //// decision //// based on a reasoned or researched perspective. As librarians, we promote and teach //// critical thinking //// skills in our students and patrons. We should model this behavior by questioning //// promotion materials //// for materials we purchase and speakers whom we endorse, //// rather than accept them wholesale. // In addition to her failure to acknowledge any other factor contributing to this violence, Hirsi Ali made a shocking statement that the philosophy of the Enlightenment resulted in Western civilization emerging as superior to all others. I find this statement shocking when you consider the number of gun deaths that occur in America, the serious racial inequalities that exist in our justice system, and the institutionalized patriarchy that exists in every Western civilization. To proclaim one civilization superior to all others reflects the broad, shallow, and uncritical view that Hirsi Ali presented in her lecture.

Rather than pick up on any of the challenging statements made by Hirsi Ali, the moderator asked scripted questions focusing on Hirsi Ali’s use of libraries in Kenya and love of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The author had just read a passage from her book //Infidel//, wherein she states that she needed to make the world understand that Islam, and Islam alone, was the reason for 9/11. It was positively insulting to switch to a discussion of the Hardy Boys and love of books and not probe that passage further. Letting the passage hang in the air, uncontested, implied agreement. The moderator did ask about her change in stance with the book //Heretic//. Hirsi Ali acknowledged that she had shifted her views, thanks to the acts of the Arab Spring. She claimed that the Arab Spring was the only time that “the Muslim world” has challenged authoritarian rule, and so perhaps conversion to Christianity isn’t the answer (as she had previously advocated), but a complete re-evaluation of the relationship with “blood-thirsty Allah” is in order.

The idea that there have not been uprisings in Arab countries (which are not the entirety of “the Muslim world”) prior to the Arab Spring is insulting to the many people who have sacrificed their lives or their freedoms for the ideals of democracy in those countries. It is also untrue that Muslim scholars and leaders are not having conversations regarding Islamic reformation; Tariq Ramadan is an obvious example. I was glad to have the opportunity to ask Hirsi Ali how she could reconcile the complex components of human behavior with her simplistic view of Islam being at the root of these violent movements. She responded that I was looking for “complexities in the simple,” as one did not see Christians in impoverished situations taking up arms in the manner. To that I present Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army. I doubt most people believe that the LRA is spreading the message of Jesus and Moses through their heinous actions, but that is what the LRA says its mission is.

Hirsi Ali also proclaimed Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Sunni Muslim world. As mentioned above, the Arab world is not the “Muslim world” and Islam does not have a religious state hierarchy. Saudi Arabia could make a claim to be a leader in Wahhabism, the strict and repressive conservative movement formally endorsed by the House of Saud in the early 20th century, but just being the place where Mecca is located (something holy to all Muslims) does not make the Saudi government the leader of all Sunnis. Her response was, in my view, a continuation of the red herring parade that (usually) the Right has so often employed. When faced with a complex situation that requires calling the majority into question, remove the complexities and give the public an easy target.

Islam is an easy target in part because it makes itself an easy target. Many predominantly Muslim countries are or have been led by autocratic despots, uninterested in democracy yet supported by democratic countries because they serve a strategic purpose, or supply a valuable asset. They exist as nations thanks to post-WWI or Great Game land grabs or sectarian partitions. Being on the wrong side of colonization can account for some of this, but even that can only tell part of the story. The disenfranchisement of the female population will lead to any country’s ruin; rooting this in a faith is not unique to Islam, but has been heretofore very difficult to overcome.

As I said at the lecture, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram are not the face of contemporary Islam. They are the face of what the media has chosen to declare “contemporary Islam.” Contemporary Islam is not a monolithic movement. Just as every group has had to explain that the actions of the minority do not dictate the characteristic of the rest, I end this response doing the same. I welcome a critical evaluation of the way that Islam is practiced, both in America and across the world. There is wide variation, but I think definite room for improvement exists in the way that cultures incorporate the spiritual teachings of the faith. People everywhere should think critically about what they read and hear, and then make a decision based on a reasoned or researched perspective. As librarians, we promote and teach critical thinking skills in our students and patrons. We should model this behavior by questioning promotion materials for materials we purchase and speakers whom we endorse, rather than accept them wholesale. I wish that ALA had led with this standard when they accepted a recommendation that Ayaan Hirsi Ali be invited to speak.

//Yasmeen Shorish is Physical & Life Sciences Librarian at James Madison University// ||