More on the Ayaan Hirsi Ali controversy, and accusations of “enlightenment fundamentalism” (via b&w):
Ayaan Hirsi Ali positioned herself explicitly in the tradition of eastern European dissidents who turned away from communism in favour of Western freedom. “The dissidents of Islamism, like those of communism, possess neither atomic bombs nor other weapons. We don’t set embassies and flags on fire. We are too few and too dispersed to become anything significant as a collective. The only thing we have are our thoughts and the only thing we demand is the chance to express ourselves freely. Our opponents want to use violence to silence us. They claim that we are spiritually and mentally unreliable and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Communism’s defenders used the same methods.”
The sympathetic reading of Islam recalls that of communism before 1989. At the time, the West’s self-hatred and invalidation of the accomplishments of free democracy were expressed in a generous interpretation of communism. A similar phenomenon is to be seen in attitudes towards Islam today, in large part thanks to its anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism. Many Western intellectuals had reservations about eastern European dissidents because they were only fighting for the so-called “bourgeois liberties.” Many dreamed at the time of a “third way” between capitalism and communism. The analogy is evident in the terminology: Stalinism could be criticised but communism was handled with kid gloves. Today, criticism of Islamism is common sense, but criticism of Islam has to be conducted with care.
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