Saturday, March 6, 2010

Aayan Hirsi Ali Interviewed on Freethought Radio


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March 6, 2010 on Freethought Radio - FFRF.org

13 comments:

  1. I haven't listened to this yet, but, I will be interested to hear what Annie Laaurie will tell Aayan to say and how to say it.

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  2. I haven't listened to the clip yet either. In part because it's getting very late here, and partly because I lost quite a bit of respect for Ayaan Hirsi Ali when she wrote in support of the swiss ban on minarets.

    Wanting to ban minarets is akin to what her friend Geert Wilders of the oxymoronically titled "The Party for Freedom" tries to do: Banning the Koran.

    If in trying to win a culture war someone wants to ban books and certain types of architecture, they automatically lose points in my book.

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  3. Minarets are an architecture designed to declare religious dominance over an area, and designed to be used to scream calls to prayer from.  They're not just "types of archetecture".

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  4. I don't understand why people got their panties in such a twist over the banning of minarets. I'm glad the Swiss did that, maybe they're finally growing some balls and starting to realize that not every little petulant whine of religious fundamentalists needs to be met with groveling 'tolerance'. It's stupid to equate the grossly immoral and irrational act of book banning with mere building code law reforms. Do you have a right to build a massive skyscraper in DC to worship the sun god Ra with an immense pyramid? No, you don't. And this is nowhere NEAR as significant an infringement on the rights of an individual as the censorship pf literature. It's not even in the same fucking solar system as that.

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  5. No it isn't. There would be no call for prayer coming from the Swiss minarets. Please don't assume things you do not know about.

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  6. Again... There would be no call for prayer from the minarets. It's simply part of how a mosque looks. Whether you think it's "designed to declare religious dominance over an area" might be true, or it might not. In either case, it's at most an implied statement. You fight statements with words, *acts* with laws.

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  7. Aayan, intelligent and relevant, must buy her book in may.

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  8. Some interesting links:

    There is an AHA blog. Here's a post, titled: Hirsi Ali gives her side at University of Wisconsin, about the recent (Feb)  speech she gave. The post is mainly 3 embedded videos: an interview prior to the speech, the speech, and the Q&A session after the speech.

    The book Infidel is well worth reading and it's now out in paperback (there's also a Kindle edition).

    Here's a link to the book Nomad to be released in May. I look forward to it.

    And, a link to the mentioned AHA Foundation.

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  9. R€LIGION $TINKS OF MONE¥March 8, 2010 at 1:02 PM

    <span>I agree Steven. Although a call to prayer are not allowed from them.....yet.  I also doubt that a Christian movement wanting to build churches ala America would go down well in secular Switzerland. New builds with towers (bells or no bells)would be met with stringent building regulation.  
     
    I guess even in these mod-con days with GPS, google maps and road signs, you really do still need towers in the sky to guide you in the right direction ( lest you accidently stumble into a Synagogue, Church or Ashram).  
     
    Imagine if someone suggested that the local communist party have towers dotted around Zürich in order for them (in the not so distant future) to have the customary 5 a day speaker phone broadcasts of the party manifest. Imam mama mia - ring my bells Перестройка/perestroika!! You´re discriminating communist´s because of my ideology, non-beliefs and lack of faith....how dare you!!!! After the fits of laughter have subsided, a resounding go fuck yourself would probably be the response to that request. I find the cries of racism really offensive. Islam is not a race, it is a facist idealogy.</span>

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  10. R€LIGION $TINKS OF MONE¥March 8, 2010 at 3:14 PM

    Thanks MelM

    I really enjoyed Hirsi´s speech and the subsequent Q&A with the audience.

    I wonder if the nice but worried asian guy in the audience, was from Malaysia.

    I also agree with Hirsi Ali´s closing statements about Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

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  11. As long as the call to prayer isn't allowed minarets shouldn't be banned. Whatever Muslims think about them supposedly being "religious dominance over an area" doesn't matter.

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  12. It's interesting that you think you can tell me not to assume things after ranting on a clip entry that you didn't even bother to listen to.

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  13. It's strange the series of events that have come to pass where the ulrtra-conservative right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute that's normally quite pro-religion is now on the side of an outspoken no-holds-barred atheist.  Perhaps they're thinking "an enemy of my enemy is my friend" - that someone willing to speak out against Islam serves their Christian-friendly interests even though under other circumstances she wouldn't be treated so kindly by them.

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