Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaks for us 68

This is from an interview by the Daily Beast with the greatest living woman – no, the greatest living person of our time, Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Q: You’re giving the keynote speech at the American Atheists National Convention [on April 3]. Are you going to talk about Islam primarily?

A: I am. And I think I have the same message as I have for feminists and for other groups who are addressing various issues in the world we live in today. For atheists, it’s: You address the issues of organized religion and atrocities committed in the name of organized religion. And I want them to focus on Islam today, because it’s in the name of Islam that most lives are taken, that most subjection, most intolerance is spread around the world. So for my fellow atheists, it’s a matter of: Listen, it’s one thing to protest about Christmas trees on December 25, but it’s quite another to witness fellow human beings in cages and burned alive, and women taken as slaves, again, in the names of this religion. So it’s very much a matter of organizing our priorities.

There’s a view in the United States that atheists can be overly intolerant toward nonviolent expressions of religion in public life — Christmas crèches and other religious displays on public property. Do you think atheists can be too aggressive on these issues?

This is so unfair. For centuries — centuries — quite honestly, it’s in the name of religion that people’s rights are violated, and atheists are finally getting together and reacting to that. If we just look at facts, I don’t think we need to fear atheist intolerance. The biggest threat to human rights is religious intolerance, not atheist intolerance.

Do you think there is prejudice against atheists in the United States? You see surveys, for instance, in which most people would not vote for a politician who is not religious.

There is that kind of intolerance. But as an atheist, I don’t fear that I’m going to be killed in the U.S. by believers who can’t tolerate my atheism. Whereas in my own family, my own religion, the community I was born into, when I said, “You know, I really don’t think I believe in life after death, and this Mohammed guy, I don’t believe in everything he said,” it was like, “Death unto you.” There is a massive difference. Same thing with the feminists. Listen, if you’re not allowed into a golf club, that doesn’t sit well with me, but if I were to prioritize, I would say: This girl, she’s just been denied her right to school, she’s just been forced into marriage, she’s just been genitally mutilated. That’s the sort of thing that we need to be, as women, signing up against — and as atheists. And by the way, the LGBT community — I think it’s awesome, and it’s taken some great steps. But in the name of Islam, gay men, or men who are accused of being gay, are put on the roofs of buildings and thrown down by a mob shouting “Allahu akbar!” doing this in the name of their faith. And it’s time that the gay community stood up to this. HIV is no longer the biggest killer of the gay community; it’s violence in the name of Islam, and no one’s talking about it.

Posted under Atheism, Islam, jihad, Muslims, Religion general by Jillian Becker on Sunday, April 5, 2015

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