Chris Navin

Full piece here.

After the outrage and faux outrage (so hard to tell these days) eventually cools down, and Brandon Eich, fired from Mozilla, boxes-up his belongings from work: After Ayan Hirsi Ali likely nods and clicks ‘End Call’, a blander, more conformist society remains.

Malik, as a British Muslim, is still looking for a more classical liberalism instead of the standard Leftist fare:

‘There is a difference between creating a society in which we have genuinely reduced or removed certain forms of hatreds and demanding that people shut up because they have to conform to other people’s expectations of what is acceptable. To demand that something is unsayable is not to make it unsaid, still less unthought. It is merely to create a world in which social conversation becomes greyer and more timid, in which people are less willing to say anything distinctive or outrageous, in which in Jon Lovett’s words, ‘fewer and fewer people talk more and more about less and less’…’

The thoughts we so often think, often-times true, many times not, often with at least some truth in them, remain that much less likely to be brought-out and tested, challenged, joined in common cause, scoffed-at, ignored, laughed-at, endorsed, dismissed, etc.

Ayan Hirsi Ali responds to having an honorary degree from Brandeis…not bestowed, as it turns out:

‘What did surprise me was the behavior of Brandeis. Having spent many months planning for me to speak to its students at Commencement, the university yesterday announced that it could not “overlook certain of my past statements,” which it had not previously been aware of. Yet my critics have long specialized in selective quotation – lines from interviews taken out of context – designed to misrepresent me and my work. It is scarcely credible that Brandeis did not know this when they initially offered me the degree. ‘

Malik disagrees with Hirsi Ali on many issues, but doesn’t want her to simply to shut up:

‘I know Hirsi Ali and I admire her courage. I also trenchantly disagree with many of her views. She has, for instance, opposed Muslim immigration to Europe, supported the Swiss ban on the building of minarets and declared that ‘we are at war with Islam’. Such views I find deeply objectionable. But equally objectionable is the insistence that her anti-Islamic and pro-Israel views are of themselves reasons to deny her an academic award.’

On a related note, here’s a debate from Intelligence Squared with Ayan Hirsi Ali on one side, arguing that Islam is the problem (the same absolutism in Islam that will not tolerate questioning of its tenets, its many violent passages, and its unreformed worldview which has a prescription for pretty much all aspects of the culture and public square). A member of the opposing side suggests that Muslim alienation in British life, combined with a European influenced fascist inspired-Islamism is the problem, not Islam itself (yes, it’s colonialist Europe’s fault).

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And Hitchens, no fan of religion, still makes for compelling and interesting listening on speech:

See his piece: Yale Surrenders

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And also one more video from here at home: Comedian Patrice O’Neal defends the aim of comedians simply aiming to be funny and saying some of those things we all think out loud: