“You grew up in freedom, and so you can spit on freedom, because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Not quite parody but dangerously close. How can she be so disgustingly pro-American, he wonders, and yet so stridently anti-Islamic? Doesn’t she see that Islamists and “Christianists” are two sides of the same coin?
MWV file here if you have problems with the CBC version (34 megs).
Don’t miss the comments. It seems that having one’s genitals sliced half off in the name of Muslim purity, a colleague murdered in broad daylight in the street for the crime of criticizing Islam, living in hiding under armed guard, and being forced from your home by court order because your neighbors fear the jihadists who have pledged to kill you is insufficient personal experience from which to draw conclusions about the relative merits of Islam and America.
As one of the progressive CBC faithful so eloquently explains, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is little more than a “prized puppy”.
Or, to think of in another way – of about the same relative value under his belief system as the average Somali woman is entitled to under Sharia law.
You’ve come a long way, baby.
h/t.
(It was suggested I bump this item closer to page top so that readers don’t miss the Dennis Prager link below)
Update – Avi Lewis is becoming famouser by the minute…. developing….
Wikipedia???!!!!
Mohammad sanctioned FGM. When asked about it, he said go ahead and do it. So that makes it a religious act because everything Mohammad said must be obeyed.
As for veiling, yes, it has a complex history. But radical Muslims don’t get their information from Wikipedia. THEY consider these customs to be part of the Muslim faith, so that is what matters. Not what we Westerners theorize to be or not to be “true” Islam.
If radical Muslims decide that standing on their heads is Allah’s will tomorrow, then it will be, whatever it says in Wikipedia.
Don’t you get that? What you and I know or think we know DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is what they think. We should take them at their word rather than trying to provide them with alibis.
Why is this shift in perspective so difficult for some of us to accomplish?
Trust me, if the Taliban was a Christian sect supported by the U.S and or Israel, and were oppressing the locals the lefties would be demanding we send troops in. not so much to come to the rescue of the poor “brown” locals but because their oppressors are pro-American.
On the most part the victims of Islamic based oppression are Muslims, in Egypt, Iran, Syria, and so on.Yet does the Left support the secular voices in these regions ? no!. Does the Left support the moderates ? No !, pick the moderates and the extremists and the Left will always choose the latter , look no further then Hamas and Hezbollah and the support they get from the most of our Left in Canada.
Having travelled in the Muslim countries they are the most friendly people in the world, yet their religion has been hi-jacked
by extremists they know it, but their voices are drowned out by the bombs and the shrill tones of our liberal media.
Reeves @6:40 “Having travelled in the Muslim countries they are the most friendly people in the world, yet their religion has been hi-jacked
by extremists they know it, but their voices are drowned out by the bombs and the shrill tones of our liberal media.”
Don’t equate friendliness with the equanimity of beliefs. Their religion has not been hi-jacked, simply just expressed, by extremists. Their voices are not “drowned out by the bombs and the shrill tones of our liberal media” (what simple silliness), they are muffled by fear from their own true believers, and the inner awareness, that if their faith is true, the extremists must be right. A “moderate” muslim is an infidel.
Islam has no positive role to play in western culture, here, or anywhere else.
I disagree with Skip .
‘acting friendly’ counts for little in a shame/honour society. It has to do with saving face and elaborate notions of hospitality that have more to do with how you, the host, appears than with the comfort of one’s guests.
I’m sure US visitors to Japan before Pearl Harbor got bowed at left and right…
“…North American Muslims REALLY feel under siege these days, I don’t know if you are aware of this…”
While some muslims receive death threats.
THE MANIFESTO OF 12:
Together facing the new totalitarianism
…We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia,” an unfortunate concept that confuses criticism of Islamic practices with the stigmatization of Muslims themselves….
muslim-refusenik.com/petition.html
Watch the first half of the video and imagine that instead of criticizing Islam, Ms. Ali was criticizing Christianity — then watch Avi Lewis’ facial expressions.
Was anyone else totally awed by Avi’s other-worldly dogmatism? What I saw was a one sided conversation between a reasoning person with real world experience and a secluded, indoctrinated dogmatic inebriate.
“Poor, poor Avi… he comes across like a grade 9 student working for the school newspaper interviewing a university prof. Totally out of his depth.”
Yup. In a nutshell.
“…Don’t you get that? What you and I know or think we know DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is what they think. We should take them at their word rather than trying to provide them with alibis.
Why is this shift in perspective so difficult for some of us to accomplish?”
Well said, Kathy!
When a global network of Islamofascist extremists with a globally established bloody record of murder and oppression tell us non-Muslims that they intend to conquer or kill us all, I’ll accept that those are in fact their intentions. That’s not “Islamophobic”, that’s dispassionately viewing reality.
“…North American Muslims REALLY feel under siege these days, I don’t know if you are aware of this…”
Aw, gooo gooo ga ga!
Know what makes me feel “under seige”? Watching two giant buildings crash down in NY, crushing thousands of people to bits — oddly enough!! An acutal THING, not a fake “hate crime” figment of my fevered imagination.
Maybe if Muslims did what some Japanese Americans did after Pearl Harbor, ie. signed up for what became the most highly decorated American unit in WW2 to prove their loyalty; maybe if we’d seen thousands of them hitting the streets to unequivacally condemn all violence in the name of Allah — maybe then some of us wouldn’t look at them funny on the subway.
Cuz “being looked at funny” is the biggest thing they have to worry about. No mosque or business arsons, no attacks by skinhead gangs.
They should be grateful that they live in such a tolerant country.
But they aren’t.
“Islam has no positive role to play in western culture, here, or anywhere else.” – skip
“I disagree with Skip.” – stephen Reeves
Skip is right. Stephen, like most, has no idea and only assumes. People like Stephen, by way of an equal portion of good intentions and ignorance, aid and abet the Islamist agenda.
What positive role have Muslims ever played? In the most recent example, we’ve seen how Muslims behave in one of the most trusted and respected roles, as Medical Doctors.
More critically, in this call to ‘reform’ Islam, is it possible?
How do you reform a ‘religion’ where violence is foundational. Where violence is institutionalized in their manual, the Quran, and in their prophets life example?
Here’s a question:
What if we were to take a normal, healthy human being who has not been exposed to Islam and inculcated, in fact, brain washed him into the ideology using the commands and rewards in the Quran, and told him to study and exactly emulate Mohammad’s life, in every way.
Would that person not turn into a monster?
Would that Muslim not be charged and convicted as one of the worst war criminals in history?
How do you reform a ‘religion’ like that, without gutting the Quran and trashing the evil bastard Mohammad to the dust bin of history?
The only good Muslim is an apostate.
If Canada declared Sharia Law and all women would have to have genital mutilation, I wonder how many men would be left standing.
Remarkable isn’t it. Behold the modern ( L ) liberal left.
I’m not sure what is more troubling – that the cbc promotes moral relativism, with my tax dollars, in the style of Avi Lewis or
the probability the host will come away from this “interview” none the wiser.
If policitical Islam is to be reformed, a key ingredient in the process will be achieved by women like Ayaan – paladin of our times.
Mr. Lewis has absolutely no concept of this notion. What we have here is a perfect working example of a courageous, decent, hard working, intelligent personage dedicated to exposing the very obstacles of islamic rehabilitation.
“On the map” uses exaggerated, overassertation and repetition. Ayaan Hirsi Ali offers rational engagement. Choose wisely.
What a poised and articulate woman. She is saying what Islam needs to hear. It needs to reform and modernize if it truly wants peace and social development.
It is amusing that the host criticises her for using pro US cliches while he uses every anti US cliche.
http://ianism.com/?p=783
Know what makes me feel “under seige”? Watching two giant buildings crash down in NY, crushing thousands of people to bits — oddly enough!! An acutal THING, not a fake “hate crime” figment of my fevered imagination.
And wondering if the Muslim next to you on the bus has said his final prayers.
‘Saw the video link on Kathy Shaidle’s blog (thanx, Kathy!) and have already written the CBC (Canadian Bullshitters’ Corporation–or Corpse maybe?) to object to Avi Lewis’ existen…er…infantile interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who comported herself with wit and grace, two completely alien character traits to Michelle Landsberg and Stephen Lewis’ progeny.
If I were headlining the interview between Lewis and Ali I’d call it:
Beauty/Brains and the Beast.
The easy arrogance displayed by Avi Lewis in his interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is utterly breath-taking. Whether he agrees with her or not, she displays an analytical intellect that should leave him groveling in respect.
Instead, unable to respond with questions or fact of equivalent insight, he falls back on insults and put-downs of both her, her background and of course the United States.
She is very much a self-made woman of high accomplishment, he has ridden to position on the coat-tails of his father and grand-father.
The result – I felt embarassed for him, yet he would be too cock-sure in his self-importance to understand why.
I have travelled extensively in the former Ottoman Empire, and here’s a few first hand observations:
Young men (about 10-14 years old) groping foreign women on crowded public transport. Happened every time.
Spent a few days on the beach – once, a pack of children surrounded us (group of obviously foreign students studying archaeology) and stole sunglasses, lotions etc.. until well-meaning young men scolded them to return our belongings, saying “please don’t think poorly of our country”
Another, I DARED sit on a beach with a local lady, who was cosmopolitan and therefore uninhibited – she was dressed in a bikini. I was the focus of several hundred young men’s seething jealousy, and was glad i did not speak Arabic to hear what they were saying. I was actually enjoying myself with heightened adrenalin and mild terror-induced euphoria.
I also met a community of young women who were actively trying to re-educate their community on the outside world’s version of equality among the sexes. Puppet shows were their method, demonstrating the evils of spousal and child abuse, as well as the idea of allowing women to dress in a modern way, and be part of a functional society. I am hopeful in the decade since I was there, which has seen both the resumption of Transjordan hostilities in October 2000, and the subsequent rise of terror and wars created by Islamic armies, that their work has continued.
My point is young women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali are the future for this world, and intolerant spoiled brats like Avi Lewis with his double-speak and contempt for his own privilege are the past.
The times are truly a-changin’……….!
By the way, Avi, we ALL hate air travel these days. And not because of Timothy McVeigh, if you catch my drift………….
At the CBC On the Map site, the first sentence is:
Born to an elite, political family in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was brought up Muslim
Wonder if SneerBoy found that a bit ironical.
Interestingly, I saw this clip via Hot Air and it was only after a while that I realized who the idiot was that was doing this so called “interview”. The family resemblance is there but Ayaan Hirsi Ali must have felt like she was talking to the runnerup valedictorian from kindergarden.
I didn’t even know that this was from a CBC show although it didn’t surprise me when I read it here.
Me No Dhimmi: CBC used “elite,” “right wing,” and “arch-conservative” in their intro to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Same old, same old, ad hominem CRAP.
‘Problem with Avi is, he’s such a dumb post he wouldn’t know irony if it hit him across the side of his BIG wooden head.
He talked a lot with his hands: ‘Must have thought that would compensate for the absolute garbage coming out of his mouth… ‘Didn’t work, Avi. ‘Just made you look like a hand puppet, with the CBC brass pulling your strings.
From the CBC comments thread on the Ayaan Hirsi Ali interview:
“How’s it going Avi, I saw your show today for the first time, and though it did seem a little bias at times, it is refreshing to see difficult questions being asked intelligently and diplomaticaly. I am also considering taking Jornalism – any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated. All the best. Sidd.”
You sound perfectly qualified for jornalism, Sidd.
Oy vey.
SIDD: Simpering Ignorant Dumb-Dumb
been around, been a while!
Yeah, I recall the “arch conservative” “right wing” in addition to “elite”. I guess I’m so used to the first two from CBC I paid no special notice. But this time, anyway, I was quite struck by his little “elite” smear considering he’s from a ultra-elite Rosedale communist political family. I wonder if he thinks of himself as a proletarian?
Also, really struck by the phrasing “they kill abortion doctors”. The use of “they” as if this were a widespread practice condoned by Christian religions leaders. How many do you suppose? Was it 5, 6? And her beautiful response: yes, but they were arrested, tried and convicted and jailed.
A splendid specimen of humanity, Hirsi Ali, eh? She absolutely nailed SneerBoy in that polite, sotto voce, self-assured way. But, I bet you anything, after the “inverview” Avi was all chuffed with putting her in her place, living in that lefty echo chamber as he does.
Oh, one last thing. I wonder would Avi call her tribal Islamic upbringing “arch conservative”. Nah, eh? That’s 3rd world primitive and therefore noble.
I’m 3/4 way thru Infidel. Have you read it?
I haven’t read Infidel yet. But I will!
Sneer boy! LOL!!
I am a stone cold atheist living in Indiana. One of my best friends is a speaking-in-tongues fundamentalist Christian. Whoever this fool Lewis is, he’s not living on the same planet we are.
“a secluded, indoctrinated dogmatic inebriate.
Posted by: WL Mackenzie Redux at July 16, 2007 10:00 AM ”
And a condescending little jerk as well. How is it that none of these gushing letter writers to the CBC site picked up on that? Our fellow citizens?
I can’t imagine Avi has read her book Infidel. If he had I don’t know how he could have been asking her the questions he did. They were all answered in her book! What a moron, sheesh.
Re Kate’s update on our boy, Avi, on Dennis Prager’s Web site: Prager’s really socking it to SneerBoy (h/t Me No Dhimmi). He’s planning on asking Avi Lewis to appear on his show, ’cause Avi’s got some ‘splaining to do.
That’ll be painful (for Avi), like a cat playing with a mouse. ‘Wonder if Avi will show. No doubt, he and Naomi Klein are busily planning a visit to outer spa…I mean the outer Hebrides, you know: They really need a break from all of the media demands on their time. Poor babies.
oldirishpig: You don’t know our Avi: ‘privileged and cossetted offspring of two of Canada’s most rabidly feminist and socialist activists (Stephen Lewis, son of David Lewis, both NDP leaders and cheerleaders of the New Democratic Party, whose socialist/communist ideas are neither new nor democratic, and Michelle Landsberg, feminist columnist par excellence (well, par something) in the Toronto Star and other left-leaning Canadian rags.
‘Only reason the intellectual pipsqueak-mouse-brain has a job at the taxpayer-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (aka Canadian Bullshitters’ Cabal) is that all of the movers and shakers (sic) there are friends of mom and dad: in a word: NEPOTISM. It’s not hard to spot, is it? Another planet, indeed.
I posted this on another site but it bears repeating:
“I think there are some redeeming aspects to this video.
Ms. Ali has her voice heard on the CBC.
Lewis’ statements and Ms. Ali’s eloquent rebuttals made it on air on the CBC.
Lewis’ ignorance was there for all to see and NOT edited.
Props to the CBC for the video…and I can’t believe I just typed that but I stand by the statement.”
That is all.
Kate: Do you need to push this up to the top? The Prager piece is terrific — a truly breathtaking juxtaposition of the Canadian and US divide. I found myself anticipating every single “stop the tape” instance and chuckling.
And the black caller with the Somalian fiance who (the fiance) thinks Hirsi Ali is a liar … but “he loves her very very much with all his heart”. Not for long, he doesn’t.
BATB: No way on Allah’s green earth will SneerBoy show up on the Prager show. He would be torn to threads.
What is it tho with these talk-show cats: notice how they all sound like Rush. I guess it’s a kind of dialect eh?
Well, I’m smiling for the rest of the day.
Kathy Shaidle: “Avi Lewis is too stupid to be Jewish”.
When we consistently get these messages from the mouthpieces of the left:
– that our traditions and the values that our forefathers built this nation upon are meaningless to them
– that defending those traditions and values is wrong
– that speaking out against those who wish our traditions and values to disappear from the world is wrong
IMO – that’s what constitutes and enemy of our society!
Hey Rick, let’s hope they still teach grammar and punctuation at J-school, for Sidd’s sake, eh? (Not to mention burger flipping…)
How about writing him a reference letter? 🙂
Can we find out if Avi has agreed to be on Prager? And if he has refused, can we bug him about it?
Maybe we could run some sort of Pool/Countdown:
Avi Lewis Wimp Watch or somesuch.
“Update – Avi Lewis is becoming famouser by the minute…. developing….”
With due respect I think the operative word would be “infamouser…”
Oh, let’s do a Wimp Watch. It would be SUCH FUN!
I found Avi to be a complete embarrassment. Unfortunately, this is what the CBC (aka “Pravda”) considers “journalism”. I really doubt that Avi, or the CBC, see him as anything but “hard hitting”, “courageous”, “brave”, and simply “speaking truth to power”. Whereas, uninformed, ignorant, stupid, insulting, judge mental, exclusive, and biased almost beyond belief, are more accurate, if not understated. Our TAX DOLLARS at work!
Yes, I really like Kathy’s “Avi Lewis: too stupid to be Jewish” line!
Kind of makes you proud to be a Canadian, eh? Especially as this clip is making its way around the Internet.
The web page we were directed to in order to play this clip is a perfect little, microcosmic personification of the CBC.
The heading for the page is pseudo-edgy and “current” looking. The comments were filtered and one sided. The look and feel was B-
Then there was the write up (which is merely the text version of Avi’s voice over leading up to the interview itself). Whenever a CBC journalist gets skewered on the air, they take great pains to discredit the guest after the fact. This was no exception.
The set itself had that “current” cheesy look to it, as did Avi, the hip and in-your-face host of “On the Map.”
I like how, in the write up, they describe her as “born to an elite, political family”, glossing over the fact that her family fled from country to country in fear for their lives for most of her early life, or the dreadful, impoverished conditions she and her family endured during these difficult times.
I like how it reads “..a classic immigrant story. Until she went into politics and ended up with the rightwing Liberal Party, which was exploiting a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment at the time”. Yeah…that sure sums it up!
I like how it made her short film Submission sound like another insulting Danish cartoon by highlighting “sexualized images of a Muslim woman with verses of the Koran written on her body”. It also made it sound like (when you get right down to it) that she was responsible for Van Gogh’s death.
I could go on all day on how embarrassing the actual interview was.
Compare Avi’s tone and approach with that of Glenn Beck’s interview with Hirsi Ali.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3tgY_eI_P0
“Update – Avi Lewis is becoming famouser by the minute…. developing….”
The CBC and Avi Lewis are getting attention they never dreamed of, in their existence, today in the USA.
Thank you Dennis Prager for the fisking of our MSM and the sycophants who dominate the news and documentaries ( and have for decades) at the CBC.
My only hope is that our American neighbours do not equate all Canadians with the likes of AVI Lewis.
The internet ( and Kate McMillan’s SDA is the largest part of it ) is beginning to change the landscape and allowing conservative voices to be listened to above Canadian leftist MSM.
No MSM commentator has the balls to take on the likes of Avi Lewis in Canada!
The Dennis Prager’s , Bill O’Reilly’s, are the best friends conservatism has in Canada!!
Re-post=
That should have read as – No “CANADIAN MSM” commentator has the balls to take on the likes of Avi Lewis!
Two stolen elections? If the democrats had a hope in hell of proving those elections were stolen, they would have, but they didn’t ’cause they couldn’t. Poor losers is all the democrats in America are….wah, wah!
What is Islamophobia and Homophobia anyhow? The fear of the followers of Islam and of homosexuals? I could give a couple reasons people fear both, but that would mean I would have to be politically incorrect and correct, all in the same breath.
I used to be neighbour to Avi’s in-laws at their expensive, waterfront resort property on the Sunshine Coast, BC.
I remember the night they had a reception for him and his new bride(zilla), Naomi Klein. What a mighty amalgamaton of Commie families!!
They had a rock band playing until late, mostly doing lefty stuff like Spirit of the West, the Pogues, etc. Then people got up and sand or played whatever they wanted. Mostly it was union songs, commie chants,solidarity forever; you know, songs about the working class!!!
Bah…these people wouldn’t know working class if it hit them with a baseball bat! They are the ultimate, uber-privileged, spoiled brats….who hate the society that nourished and succoured them and their pink predecessors. Making alliance once again with fascists, just like their grandparents did.
F*ck ’em. Throw ’em to the howling Turks at the gates!
I assume Avi Lewis is the spawn of two socialist Jews. If not, like Avi Lewis, none of what follows makes sense. Don’t take this wrong. I am not an anti-Semite; two of my best biological parents are Jewish.
America Jews, blacks, gays, and atheists have more wealth and more freedom in the US than they do in any other country on earth. If Avi is indeed Jewish if he lived in any muslim dominated country he would be a second or third class citizen and potentially his live would be in daily peril depending how many categories he was identified with in the first sentence of this paragraph.
Anti-Americanism and “die-versity” are left wing givens that cannot be challenged. These idiotcracies definitely trump feminism. But hey, in the real socialist world females have always received lip service and been sent for the coffee. Perhaps socialist Avi resents that Hirsi Ali, a mere uppity female, is respected in the US and that there has never been a real female leader in Russia, China or Cuba. I think Avi deserves a muslim name- how about Watan Azole for starters?
Lewis’ cliche-left blatant falsities are delivered with an air of such smugness and superiority that even the most reasonable argument would be rendered unlistenable. Just listen to his snorts and his exasperated little vocalizations at some of Ali’s statements — that’s the sound he makes whenever he’s confronted with someone more informed than he is, like John Bolton.
In this recent interview, Lewis actually had the nerve to correct Ali, right off the bat, over her take on Islam: “Whoa, whoa…” he says.
That’s his reaction to anyone who’s not on the Shining Path. At the very bottom of it all it’s the force of mob rule that gives Lewis his self-considered authority and his smug belief in the unassailabililty of each snort. His ideology, one can see, has granted him a absolute dispensation from having to respond or listen to actual facts or to arguments. When Ali completely eviscerated his argued implication that the American system is no different than Sharia law, by pointing out that in America religious extremists, such as abortion clinic bombers, are hunted down and jailed, he didn’t acknowledge in any way that what had been delivered as a self-evident coupe de grace had struck an immovable object; instead, it was as if the exchange, and her response, never happened. He simply moved on to his next lefty touchstone as if the interview was just beginning.
At one point, perhaps confusing the electoral tactics of the chafed-mouth state-tit Lib-left parties with the truth, Lewis called the U.S. “a country where evangelical…conservative social values drawn from and justified by the bible are imposed on people every single day.”
What can you say? Walk down the street in New York. In Boston. In Seattle. In Minneapolis. Go to a beach in Florida. Go to a concert. Go to a Honky Tonk. Go to Atlantic City. Listen to American radio, listen to American music. Watch American films. Watch American TV. Go to a nightclub, to an art gallery, to a rave, to a restaurant, to a pub. Rent a car. Drive around the country. And then explain how the Bible was “imposed” on you “every single day.” And compare the U.S. to countries with Sharia law.
Just prurient, inflammatory, rabble-rousing, utterly fraudulent, dangerous.
“You grew up in freedom so you can spit on freedom” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali
There is nothing progressive about his views — that’s just a front. His views are dangerous, and regressive; CBC just presents them as “hip.”
If you barely scratch the surface of Lewis’ ilk you find apologists for the most murderous ideologies that ever existed, and active saboteurs against the free world.
I think Lewis’ interview with Ali is an embarrassment to Canada. And more to the point, Canadians have paid thousands of millions of dollars to prop up the CBC’s point of view. Is this reasonable?
I certainly don’t enjoy paying taxes so that a thinly-disguised GTA communist can take a noisy shit on the head of our American friends.
It’s NOT an issue of balance. The counterbalance to Avi Lewis would be David Duke. So should we all pay, out of our pocket, to give Avi Lewis a platform?
Lot of space wasted talking about Avi, son of the father Stephen,who is Left of left with tears on tap, weeping for AIDS victims.
Who the hell looks at that crap anyway?
CBC needs to be fumigated, it’s long overdue.
Re: first comment.
Poster Andrew quotes from Wikipidea….it must be true!