Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I understand that she's controversial. I understand that she talks about a controversial subject.

But, just the fact that she has an official death threat over her head, merely for speaking about her experiences, says quite a lot about the extremists against whom she speaks.

Here in the US, we have a very different lifestyle than in the Middle East and Africa. Even a Muslim woman here cannot necessarily comprehend the experiences of a Muslim woman in the Middle East.

If you want to be angry at Ali for speaking "for all Muslim women," then don't try to speak "for all Muslim women" yourself. It's hypocritical and ridiculous.

Also, if you want to be taken seriously, calm down a bit. Angry rants in an academic setting against someone who is being relatively calm while debating with you don't make you seem credible. They make you seem emotional, which is fine in other settings. In a formal question/answer (or, in this case, debate[question]/rebuttal[answer]) forum, it is inappropriate to be so emotional that you are incredibly disrespectful and rude to the guest speaker.

Maybe I would have listened more closely to their opinions if they appeared to be based more on fact than on emotion. Maybe, if Ali had been yelling passionately, I wouldn't have taken what she said seriously.

In any case, Ali was not talking about all Muslims, nor was she condemning Islam as a whole. She wasn't talking about Islam in the US - the experiences of the women who disagreed so passionately with her at her lecture. No, she spoke of experiences under radical Islamic rule, where women are not heard, and are kept out of sight. She spoke of her own experiences, which cannot be refuted. They don't belong to anyone but Ali, and she can speak of them how she wishes. If you try to silence her, you have no right to talk, yourself.

Next time, also don't mutter "fuck you, fuck you" while she's speaking. It's rude.

ALQ