University sides with Islamists who mutilate women

Islamic critic Ayaan Hirsi

Creeping Sharia

Liberal Brandeis University caves to CAIR and 
sides with Islamists who mutilate women 

By Mike Renzulli 
From the Libertarian Republican

Recently Islamic critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali had an honorary degree she was to receive from Brandeis University nixed by the institution's President. Apparently, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (aka CAIR) and a few other Leftist and Islamist groups complained to Frederick Lawrence about the honor she was to receive. 

Consequently, Ali's award was bagged.
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of my personal heroes. She grew up in a strict Muslim household in Somalia, had her genitals mutilated in addition to being subject to other kinds of physical and mental abuse and was going to be sent to Canada on an arranged marriage. Fortunately, she was able to escape to Holland while staying overnight in Germany awaiting a connecting flight.
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She is a well-spoken, highly educated and articulate woman who is hiding in fear for her life with armed bodyguards after receiving death threats while she served in Holland's Parliament for publicly criticizing her former religion: Islam. One of the points of contention CAIR raised was her appearing and being a producer of a film entitled The Honor Diaries which discusses the status of women in Islam.
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To express our solidarity with Ms. Ali my Objectivist club will soon host a public screening of the movie. In the meantime, please send an email to Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence and (politely) express your disappointment with his decision. He has sided with the very ideology that Ms Ali escaped and threatens not only to kill her but destroy the very fabric of Western Civilization. 

His email address is: lawrence@brandeis.edu. 

Editor's note - Renzulli is a former member of the Arizona Libertarian Party Executive Comm. He is also a local Tea Party activist in the Phoenix area.

 

Brandeis University

'We only allow speakers who praise Islam

and keep women in their place.'

 

 

(New York Times)  -  Facing growing criticism, Brandeis University said Tuesday that it had reversed course and would not award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a campaigner for women’s rights and a fierce critic of Islam, who has called the religion “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.”

 

“We cannot overlook that certain of her past statements are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values,” the university said in a statement released eight days after it had announced that Ms. Hirsi Ali and four other people would be honored at its commencement on May 18.

At first, it was bloggers who noted and criticized the plan to honor Ms. Hirsi Ali, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Within a few days, a Brandeis student started an online petition against the decision at Change.org, drawing thousands of signatures. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group, took note, contacting its members though email and social media, and urging them to complain to the university.

 

On Tuesday, a student newspaper, The Justice, reported on the controversy, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations sent a letter to Dr. Lawrence, referring to Ms. Hirsi Ali as a “notorious Islamophobe.”

“She is one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America but worldwide,” Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the group, said in an interview on Tuesday.

A native of Somalia, she has written and spoken extensively of her experience as a Muslim girl in East Africa, including undergoing genital cutting, a practice she has vigorously opposed, and her family’s attempts to force her to marry a man against her wishes.

She moved to the Netherlands as a young woman, and she was later elected to the Dutch Parliament. She wrote the screenplay for “Submission,” a 2004 film critical of the treatment of Muslim women. Shortly after its release, the director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered on an Amsterdam street by a radical Islamist, who pinned to the victim’s body a threat to kill Ms. Hirsi Ali as well.