Spin Doctoring at Newsweek

There is an old saw about what makes news stories; dog bites man fails, but man bites dog succeeds.  The Controversial Memoir of a Muslim Woman is a "review" of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's new book in the left wing rag, Newsweek.  The "reviewer" hoped for a "man bites dog" review but never got farther than "dog bites man."

The "reviewer" is a "Lorraine Ali," presumably a Muslima judging from what and how she writes. She tries to spin the pro-Islam side as deftly as someone making cotton candy.

[All emphases are mine.]

One of Europe's foremost critics of Islam is drawing attention stateside with her controversial new memoir, 'Infidel.' But how fair is the book?

By Lorraine Ali
Newsweek
Feb. 26, 2007 issue -

By age 14, Somalia-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali had survived genital mutilation at the hands of her grandmother, a fractured skull from her Qur'an teacher and brutal beatings from her devout Muslim mother. By comparison, her father was kind. The Somali rebel, who had largely abandoned his family to plan coups and marry three more women, only meddled when it came to arranging his 23-year-old daughter's marriage. When Ayaan refused, he disowned her.

A violent, loveless childhood. The splintering effects of civil war. The pervasive misogyny of her culture. Hirsi Ali's exceptionally harsh life story—told in her new memoir, "Infidel"—would elicit empathy from the coldest of hearts. But that's not the book's only purpose. Hirsi Ali, a 38-year-old Dutch citizen and women's rights advocate who now lives in Washington, D.C., is one of Europe's most infamous critics of Islam. She renounced her Muslim faith after the 9/11 attacks, decried what she regarded as the religion's brutality in lectures and interviews, and rode a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment all the way into the Dutch Parliament, where she gained a seat.

Let us stop right there.  Note the language:  "...most infamous critics of Islam."  Not just a critic, but an "infamous" critic, she is, according to this spin doctor.  This is the same approach all over the globe to rationalizing, if not flatly lying about, Islam.  The "reviewer" names the real problem she has with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, without elaborating on it: She "renounced her Muslim faith."

There's clearly an audience for Hirsi Ali in America too. The recently released Infidel (titled My Freedom in the Netherlands) has climbed to No. 6 on the New York Times best-seller list.

[...]

But Hirsi Ali's memoir is as much about her political agenda as it is her life, and in between tales of her youth she wedges harsh and uncompromising declarations: "True Islam," she writes at one point, "leads to cruelty." If her coming-of-age story—and the saga of her nomadic family, who moved from prewar Somalia to Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia and finally Kenya—were allowed to breathe on its own, "Infidel" would prove an eye-opening look into the plight of African Muslim women. But throughout the book, you can't help but feel manipulated, rather than moved. In describing the 9/11 hijackers, she comes up with an inflammatory conclusion tailor-made for her right-wing constituency: "It was not a lunatic fringe who felt this way about America and the West. I knew that a vast majority of Muslims would see the attacks as justified retaliation against the infidel enemies of Islam."

After many, many hours of study of Islam and Muslims, I can say that the facts about the events of 11 September 2001 support Ms Ali's statement quoted.  "Harsh and uncompromising declarations" is a statement of protest about Ms Ali telling the truth.  All peoples who base their mental functioning on the primacy of emotions feel this way and so state.  They can be Muslims, communists, Democrats, or Republicans.  ..."[R]ight wing constituency" is supposed to slur anyone who doesn't give Islam a blank check to continue its barbarism. It is just too bad that "right wing constituency" does not stand for those who see the facts and tell things as they are, but, in principle, "right wing constituency" = left wing constituency in grasping the facts of reality and telling the truth.

Oh, yes, Ayaan Hirsi Ali cannot be trusted because the motivation for her book, according to the reviewess, is to plug her "political agenda."  Left wing people have noble causes; everyone else has crass political agendas.  This reviewess has an exalted sense of herself.

Other Muslim women interested in reform aren't exactly in step with Hirsi Ali. "I wish people had been nicer to her," says Muslim author and feminist Asra Nomani. "But I don't blame Islam. I blame really messed-up people who've used religion to justify their misogyny."

[...]

And they're coming up with answers that don't require them to abandon either their religion or their culture...

Here the reader is being schmoozed, i.e., manipulated by this "reviewer."  Like all lefties, she tries to create the feeling in readers that those who disagree with her side are abnormal. 

Then she uses typical rationalizations in an effort to convey that the impossible is possible.  All you have to do is to want it and to believe in it regarding that benevolent Islam.  However, if anyone has taken Islam and Muslim behaviors derived from it to their bare bones ideas and principles, and looks at these OBJECTIVELY, then he or she quickly grasps that having Islam makes having itself and modernity (meaning, modern industrially based culture) not possible.  No one can have one's cake and eat it too, except in the propaganda of Islam.

If people choose Islam, they get the dispicable state Muslims have lived in for 14 centuries, not some bastardization of advanced capitalism and pre-stone age religion.  Reality sets the terms, not me, not Muslims, not spin doctors, no one.

Continuing, 

Hirsi Ali is more a hero among Islamophobes than Islamic women. That's problematic considering she describes herself in "Infidel" as a woman who "fights for the rights of Muslim women, the enlightenment of Islam and the security of the West." How can you change the lives of your former sisters, and work toward reform, when you've forged a career upon renouncing the religion and insulting its followers?

The leftie reviewess learned her craft well.  Only, who is buying what she is selling?  Whether you look at Islam and Muslims objectively, or whether you are on a KKK anti-Muslim crusade, you are an "Islamophobe."  "Islamophobe" = anyone who opposes us (who love the power over people we derive from Islam).  All "Islamophobes," as the sycophants use the term, are equally bad, from those who deal with the facts of reality and use logic and reason to examine Islam, to those crescent burning, hooded red necks just out to maim and kill Muslims.  No one in his or her right mind would succumb to believing such trash, but the object is to tar all opposition with a superciliously wielded verbal brush.

As for "renouncing the religion," how can anyone see Islam or any other religion in clear light of facts, principles, and their meanings, and stay with this pre-stone age ideology?  That is exactly what undercuts everything Irshad Manji does; she is bright enough to see the truth, but lacks the integrity to act on it.  Also, trying to shine the light of truth on Islam cannot be done from within Islam.  Those death sentences are show stoppers, to begin with, as is leaving Islam.  And, who ever helped someone out of quicksand by jumping in with them?

"Insulting" Islam is impossible if you criticize anything about it, however trivial.  Telling the truth is the worst of all sins, according to vocal Muslims and Islamic doctrine.  This is why Muslim children are deformed early in life by Islam so that they will give up independence of mind and thought forever, long before they are adolescents.  Questioning Islam is embedded in them as a metaphysical terror, answerable by death itself and loss of all opportunity to ascend to the Great Fiction in the Sky known as "paradise."  I am not making this up; this is Islamic doctrine and training.  As a result, all Muslims are reduced to knee jerk responses to anything that can be twisted into a criticism of Islam (i.e., anything they dislike), so insulting Muslims' religion is unavoidable.

Continuing,

Hirsi Ali says overhauling Islam is not her responsibility: she just lays out "the facts" and leaves it to others to go about fixing this supposedly broken faith. But her facts are often subjective: at one point she characterizes "every devout Muslim who aspires to practice genuine Islam" as a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood. That may have been true in Hirsi Ali's experience, but it hardly speaks for the globe's 1.3 billion other followers. It's ironic that this would-be "infidel" often sounds as single-minded and reactionary as the zealots she's worked so hard to oppose.

Not to be sophomoric, but "facts" cannot be subjective.  "Facts" address that which is real, metaphysical.  Assertions can be non-factual.  A note of caution here, before accepting the example of Hirsi Ali's "subjectivity,' as offered by the reviewess, check it out--the reader may be being offered "kool aid" by the reviewess, i.e., something different from what Ayaan Hirsi Ali actually wrote.

The Muslima concludes the "review" with one final ad hominem attack:  "single-minded, reactionary, zealots."  One can almost imagine that the reviewer hopes you, the reader, will look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali and see Pat Robertson. 

No such luck.  We look at this beleaguered apostate of Islam and see a modern giant, untouched by the smarmy terms of the review.

Comments

[Eleanor]

Bravo, George, bravo! Those that support Islam, either out of conviction or as apologists can only offer spin because the facts just don't add up.

They must resort to name calling, hoping that slinging mud on critics will transfer the blame or hide the inconvenient facts that can't be explained away.

The Muslima has been thoroughly brainwashed to the point that she doesn't understand that she is engaged in taqiyya, holy lying, and kitman, any tactic that shifts the focus away from Islam and Muslims.

[Always On Watch]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not to be believed--so says Newsweek. Of course, what else to expect from a leftist publication?

My hope is that people will see interivews of this brave lady and judge for themselves.

Not too long ago, I saw her interviewed on Glenn Beck. She came off so well! Several people previously unconcerned about Islam contacted me to discuss the interview. That's a good sign, I think.

[John Sobieski]

...undercuts everything Irshad Manji does; she is bright enough to see the truth, but lacks the integrity to act on it.

That is exactly Irshad Manji's dilemma. She is very intelligent and when she talks about itijhad or whatever 'reformation' Islam must 'recapture', it falls flat. You listen to her and see she is chasing a ghost and the sincerity if false because she doesn't really believe it but dares not to shake herself from her denial.

Regarding Newsweek, it is truly disturbing how all the major 'culture' magazines like Time, Newsweek have been infiltrated by Muslims and their leftist allies. Sometimes I feel like a Jew living in Nazi Germany in 1939.

[GM]

Eleanor,

It is a sad commentary, but I have yet to meet or to become aware of a single Muslim who can stare truth in the face and not blink. Being "Muslim" seems to unhinge rationality and replace it with emotionality.

[GM]

AoW,

Those calling you to discuss Ayaan Hirsi Ali's interview is a wonderful sign, as I see it. First, those who called see you as a bearer of truth and reason. Second, they see a soul mate in Ms Ali. Both are terrific.

[GM]

John,

I feel often like America drank "kool aid" in the 1960s and has yet to get over the intoxication. I watch organizations like Newsweek act exclusively like fifth columnists, and I see that kind of behavior to be the norm among the so-called "intelligentsia." I understand well your feeling you so eloquently expressed.

On the anti-toxin side, there are Eleanor, AoW, you, us, and a growing body so big that any new book by someone like Spencer goes to the top of the NY Times Best Seller list. That's not good: That's great!