Ayaan Hirsi Ali sounds like the best type of intellectual writer - this side of Greer.

Ali is full of contradictions - forcing the reader to sort them out - and therefore forcing them to learn more about such important issues as religion and terrorism. No neocon white male Americans, who preach on the "evils" of Islam, need apply.

Meanwhile, I think Shakira Hussein is a real VIP and what an evocative name :)

Pete

Well what a heartwarming, balanced and positive contribution from Shakira Hussein... we can all learn much from her complete objectivity, sympathy with the author (Hirsi Ali) and lack of bias......right?

I don't care if Hirsi Ali's methods are a little 'artistic', or a few ends are left ragged, as with the given example of the disjuncture between her personal lack of religious beliefs, and her call for the Catholic Church to reach out to Muslim women.
She is discussing incredibly important issues, and her own personal religious beliefs are not really the central point.

She is doing an incredible service for oppressed women everywhere. Nitpicking on the details doesn't undo her good work.
Muslim women who are not oppressed should not deny the possibility that oppression can and does take place in the name of that religion.
We must reach out to our sisters, for if we don't, who will? Freedom to live without fear is a human right.

I agree floatinglili

All thinking shades of political opinion and genders should be supporting the liberation of woman - whatever their religion.

With the passing of Rudd the conservative churches in Australia have lost an ally - and hopefully Conroy to boot.

High Church Abbott, formerly of the Jesuit Order, needs to divest himself of his quiet allegiance to the odd Pell before he can honestly say he has a balanced view about woman of all religions, contraception, abortion and gay parenthood.

Regards

Pete
(a centrist atheist who's "calling" is nuclear weapons owned by Australians in 15 years)

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10598#174816

plantagenet, you are an odd fellow to pin down on your views, opinions, like myself, i suppose.

Greer is the worst "intellectual" the world has ever known.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-louis-nowra-exclusive-germaine-greer-and-female-eunuch-2309

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236#

Radical, Extreme, Fe"Man"Nazism has been proven wrong in everything it has ever preached, repeatedly.

http://www.reich4.de/Begriffe/sittlichkeit/?lang=en

http://www.warrenfarrell.com/

http://www.cruelhoax.ca/#top

The Loony, Left, Fauxmanista's introduced Radical, Fe"Man"Nazism to poison the relationship between men & women in the western world.

It is a divide & conquer technique.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10598#174866

ALGOREisRICH, have you seen this one mate?

http://www.henrymakow.com/australian_satanist_exposes_wo.html

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10598#174874

floatinglili, your last 2 sentences could be better interpreted, the other way around.

There is almost no such thing as oppression of women, anywhere in the world.

Radical, Extreme, Loony, Left, Lesbian, Fe"Man"Nazi, Paedophiles have been lying about everything, since day one.

http://www.savethemales.ca/000185.html

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10598#174879

plantagenet, i am a centrist & libertarian myself, but its men who are being oppressed, in order to promote incompetent women, like Gillard, above their station in life, in order to "Accidentally On Purpose" create dysfunction within Modern Western Democracies.

Formersnag: << ALGOREisRICH, have you seen this one mate?

http://www.henrymakow.com/australian_satanist_exposes_wo.html >>

From the linked article:

<< The US-based "Church of Satan" was the public face of "an ancient body whose very existence had never before been imagined." He lists as "influential members" J.P. Morgan, Drs. James McDonald and Rene Hardy, the Kennedy's (including Jackie), Irving Berlin, Groucho Marx, Elvis Presley, Garner Ted Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr., Ronald Reagan, Edward Heath, Thomas Plantard de St Claire and the Bushes. He later mentions Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas and Gerald Ford as members. >>

Too funny. You're off with the fairies, old son.

<< There is almost no such thing as oppression of women, anywhere in the world. >>

What world do you live on?

Thanks Formersnag

"hard to pin down" is the highest accolade. I've experienced many sides of politics but follow none. The need to question is too strong.

I wrote fo the National Civic Council's "News Weekly" for more than a year. see the righthand margin of my website http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/ scroll down a bit for the News Weekly articles. You'll note that Abbott (a supporter of the late, great, Bob Santamaria) also wrote for News Weekly now and then.

On News Weeekly is such articles by my "DEFENCE: Should Australia have nuclear defence capability?" http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2008jun21_d.html

However while News Weekly and I agreed on the need to be wary of Rudd's buddy communist China I disagreed with that journal's position on abortion, contracepton, gays and its support of Palin early in her cheerleading campaign. Also I was uneasy with that journal's unsurprising association with Pell.

So anyway with som regret (because News Weekly were nice guys) I decided to cease that association and I chose to mainly publish articles with On Line Opinion again.

If there was a decent conservative Australian journal which did not push a high church moral agenda I would offer to write for it (while still writing for OLO course).

Pete

Snaggy.... the link about the Satanist thing :) errr not a big fan of that stuff.. and I'll tell you why.. that particular one is a scam.

The scam bit is the links to the 'free energy' stuff.. all they want to do is sell you the info kit :) imagine $100 or $47 from a few thousand gullible people.. and u can retire.

There are plenty of them some are about Solar and this one about 'magnets'.. the realllly esoteric ones are about 'Tesla' energy etc.
Then there is the 'car runs on water' scam.

As to your comment:

//The Loony, Left, Fauxmanista's introduced Radical, Fe"Man"Nazism to poison the relationship between men & women in the western world.//

I only disagree with the 'loony' bit..they are well educated and intelligent.. and are operating to the very real plan of (as you say) *divide and conquer*.

When someone exposes that strategy.. suddenly CJ and Pericles with their politically correct harem Foxy, Fraccy and Ginxy (they have a new apprentice or 2 as well.. Benq and Westralis).. jump out of the woodwork to mock ridicule and condemn.

Makes for a nice passionate and vigorous debate though.. boring otherwise.

Dear Floatinglilli,
There is only one way to be set free from fear and it definitely is not a human right. The truth you know sets you free so the right we have is to seek the truth. Pride is the biggest barrier to the truth. I was watching Jimmy Little talking to a religious man on TV and the religious man said that we must be peace makers. The only way to gain peace is to come into Gods rest, an absence from striving as opposed to an absence from work, which is mans way. We need to untangle our mind called repentance (about face) and go to God. Jesus is the only one the father provided. Not the Pope or Muhammad or Buddah or Joseph Smith. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light. Jesus is the true vine and peace is one of the fruit of the spirit. only in the true vine do we bare fruit. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. God is love. There is one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, for God so loved the world (us) that he gave his only begotten Son.

Who wants to start a wager that Hirsi Ali's next book will be about how she has finally seen the light and become a born again Christian?

As a former Dutch citizen I've followed her career since she started as a eager recruit for the PVDA, a left wing party that is more left wing than the left wing faction of the Labour party. She switched over to a centrist party the VVD, stridently feminist and anti patriachal religions. Hence Dawkins' endorsement.

After leaving the increasingly skeptical Dutch audience she moved to the US and joined a Christian right wing think tank.

She is now calling on Christianity to assist in the fight. Her conversion must be imminent.

And then she'll have a new audience for her new book. 'The Homecoming' perhaps.

In agreement with Anansi

(while doubting Richard the X)

I say that religion is the hooch of the masses (I have a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiate_of_the_masses therefore I am)

We are here to live together, Grasshoffer, here on Earth, right now.

And not to blow each other up into little bits in one holy city, (not quite) shared by Jews with Christians and Muslims (followed always by Sherut haBitachon haKlali (a la Israeli FBI)) in Jerusalem.

Not funny or fair.

There is no diversion or afterlife. wrong-thinkers.

Money talks - as Gates or Marx would say. And that is that - except for sex of course.

I am but a conduit, when I look skyward, of my buddy JC and Goddard.

That is all.

Bless you

Pete

(I be of China's Rolling Nuptials
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/ )