Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali Gets A Conservative [Islamophobic] Media Spotlight

Conservative media have rallied behind Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a political activist known for her toxic anti-Islam rhetoric after Brandeis University cancelled plans to grant her an honorary degree. Right-wing media have painted Hirsi Ali as a champion for women’s rights, but instead appear to use her views on gender as a rhetorical gateway to attack the religion of Islam and highlight Hirsi Ali’s view that Islam is a religion of violence and a “cult of death.”

On April 8, Brandeis University announced that it would reverse course in awarding an honorary degree to Hirsi Ali, a visiting fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) known for her critical views of Islam.The New York Times reported that while Brandeis has invited Hirsi Ali to speak, it could not “overlook that certain of her past statements are inconsistent with” its values, labeling her past statements as the reason it revoked the degree.

Since the announcement, conservative media figures have rushed to defend Hirsi Ali, some using her life experience to explain away her Islamophobic comments. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol called the move an “example of a war on women” and argued that the university had “caved to Muslim thugs.” Fox News’ Sean Hannity said the university’s decision was an “example of left-wing appeasement.” On April 10, Fox contributor Monica Crowley asked, “Where are the moderate Muslims? Where are people who, like Ali, have left the faith and are willing to courageously speak about it? And yet when somebody does show the guts and gets out there to do it, this is how they’re treated?”

But Hirsi Ali is not moderate in her views of Islam — once referring to the religion as “a destructive nihilistic cult of death” in a 2007 interview with The London Evening Standard. The New York Times reports that Hirsi Ali has also “advocated the closing of Islamic schools in the West and said that ‘violence is inherent in Islam’ and that ‘Islam is the new fascism’.” In a 2007 Reason interview, she also called for Islam to be militarily crushed and suggested the Constitution should be amended to permit oppression of U.S. Muslims.

Hirsi Ali has similarly used her position at AEI to push for antagonistic relations between the U.S. and Muslim-majority countries, even criticizing President Obama for not “associating Islam with extremism.” In a 2010Wall Street Journal op-ed, How to Win the Clash of Civilizations, Hirsi Ali highlighted her views that Islam “is at war with America” and wrote that Western civilization “needs to be actively defended” against Islam.

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Conservative media have greatly enabled anti-Islam propaganda, and have had a significant role in propagating the belief that Islam is a violent religion and is therefore something the United States must fight against. On April 9, Fox host Andrea Tantaros exemplified this when she defended Hirsi Ali by arguing “we are” at war with radical Islam because “they are going to kill us, as the Qur’an states according to Bernard Lewis and many other scholars, they’re going to kill us, Sean, until we are all Muslims or ruled by Muslims.”

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READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE: www.mediamatters.org Friday, 11th April, 2014