Ayaan Hirsi Ali Supports Missionaries?
I’m on the mailing list of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the humanist and author of Infidel. In the latest newsletter from her AHA Foundation I got this message:
“Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Muslim human-rights activist who lives under armed guard for fear of her life, is author of the powerful new book “Nomad.” As secular as they come, she advocates that Christians become more active in countering the growing reach of Islamic radicalism in the Western world with their own outreach program.
“Next to every mosque, build a Christian center, an enlightenment center, a feminist center,” Hirsi Ali explained. “There are tons of websites, financed with Saudi money, promoting Wahabism. We need to set up our own websites – Christian, feminist, humanist – trying to target the same people, saying, we have an alternative moral framework to Islam. We have better ideas.”
Uh…yeah. This is a really bad idea. Many developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, already have quite a few Western Christians preying on their weaknesses in order to foment fundamentalism. I recommend Ali read about the anti-gay laws in Uganda which were strongly supported by US evangelicals.
Ali really needs to be careful. Her personal past with Islam could easily lead her into the hands of fundamentalist Christians, many of which are as intolerant and nefarious as the worst Muslim fundamentalists of her Somalia. Islam and Christianity both originated from elsewhere and became widespread in Africa through aggressive proselytizing.
As for humanist and feminist centers, I’m all for the former and possibly for the latter, depending on what kind of feminism it is that we’re talking about.
