I believe the issue here is one of culture. Countries that are predominantly Islamic tend to have a restrictive views towards social doctrines of fairness and the rights of women. Maybe it’s a religious thing but maybe its more of a problem with the culture itself. Ali is speaking about Islam in the context of where she grew up. I think it is easy to confuse a religion with culture.

I do believe this though. When you have a Islam as a national identity it is more likely that your society will adopt ancient approaches to human rights and social policies.

Tolerance goes so far when these attitudes are brought to countries that embrace differences.

father of night

You quote the following:

'It is well past time that Muslims cease using the charge of ‘Islamophobia’ as a tool to intimidate and blackmail those who speak up against (..) those who rightly criticize current Islamic practices and preachings.’

The term ‘islamophobia’ is not a tool of blackmail or intimidation. It describes a very real and dangerous social virus that is ripping through the Western world. Here is a tiny fraction of recent alarming examples:

• In the UK, a bank’s decision to discontinue issuing piggy banks is widely reported in the media as bowing to pressure not to offend Muslims. The charge turns out to be false – the bank had simply decided on a change of approach and its decision had nothing to do with Muslims – but no retractions were published.

• Three days before the Cronulla riots, in response to a caller who complained of ‘really derogatory remarks’ being aimed at Middle Eastern people on Cronulla beach, a high-profile Sydney shock jock warns her ‘not to get carried away’ because ‘We don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in western Sydney’.

• An op ed writer for The Australian takes feminists and left-wingers to task for supposedly not speaking out enough against Islam’s treatment of women. She then warns us that she is ‘fighting to prevent the possibility that [her] granddaughters – our granddaughters – will one day be forced to wear a burka’. (25 August 2006)

• A British airline pilot refuses to take off when his passengers request the removal of two ‘suspicious’ men from a plane on the grounds that they were speaking in a foreign language thought to be Arabic. A search of the men and the plane found nothing suspicious.

These are not examples of people ‘rightly criticis[ing] current Islamic practices and preachings’. They are examples of mass hysteria, which our guardians of public debate are ruthlessly exploiting for their own political agenda – and that agenda is certainly NOT the cause of women, Islamic or otherwise

The Muslim world needs more honest people like outspoken Ayaan Hirsi Ali (and for that matter Sheikh Hillali) if they will have a faint chance in hell to ever reforming and become part of the human free race.

The Qur'an forbids inquiry. Islam is to be accepted as it was practiced by their beloved prophet and his disciples, in 7th century Arabia. It is this mentality of slavery to their god that blocks all hope of free speech and intelligent debate.

If a born Muslim is not "in the fold" i.e. a state of total slavery (submission) like the rest of them - he/she is not considered to be a Muslim - therefore he/she deserves to burn in hell with all non-believers (in Islam), Christians, Jews, Women and Daemons (Jinns).

Women are enslaved to men through Qur'anic dictates and Shari'a law. If they dare to think differently, it is up to their husband (or the next family male present) to discipline them. Women don’t dare to revolt against mistreatment and risk being divorced and or bitten.

So how can Islam reform when any external criticism is viewed as blasphemy - and any internal investigation is not allowed?

Of course there are always the proud defenders (Hi FH) who will argue that Islam is the perfect political and social system that need not change but be imposed on all humanity...to establish true peace and harmony on earth.

Islam is Allah's perfect gift to humanity. After all how could anyone doubt Allah or his prophet? How could the slave question the master?

Well what do you know? Irfan has a say. And calls this women a "pathological liar".

Read here about her : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali

I would suggest Wikipedia may be a touch more unbiased than a person who says what Irfan does. Not just on this thread as we all know.

I would read Irfan's "pathological liar" as "critic of Islam". Words from Wikipedia.

Another comment from there about this lady :

"She has received numerous awards for her human rights work, and in 2005, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world."

Obviously a decitful, nasty woman, right? We all know Islam does not support human rights. Except for men.

Perhaps Irfan covets her place as a writer. Good of him not to mind her visiting Australia. Wish he hadn't. However he got here.

A word Irfan. Just between you and I. Australians don't hate Islam. Never have, never will. It's people like yourself that are hated as it is people like yourself that keep trying to create problems between religions.

I think Greg Barnes can be accused of trying to influence public opinion in favour of some of his clients, who are Muslims facing terrorism charges. He has an interest in having the public thinking that Islam is not a violent religion, and so seeks to denigrate a woman whose experience of Islam has been disastrous, and violent.
He reminds me a lot of Irfan, in that he spends at least as much time denigrating his opponent as he does addressing the subject (actually Irfan usually spends a good deal more on the former, so the comparison is perhaps unfair to Greg). And Irfan's contribution is typically tendentious.
As for the Koran being a book dedicated to peace and unity, what rubbish. The book is a call to continuous war, because that was what was thought necessary to establish and maintain the community which formed around Muhammad. Might it be wondered: there were many communities with their many gods on the Arabian peninsula at that time. There might have been a lot of intercommunal fighting, but there were also some hundreds of idols in their holiest place. There was a lot of live and let live. Why did so many of them decide that the new fellow, Muhammad, had to go? Not, I'll bet, because he was the nice tolerant fellow scholars like to make him out to be by the 'early' (Meccan) sayings. Certainly, by the time he got to Medina, his nasty side was clear to all. What a way to start a religion.
Islam started nasty, and continues to be (according to its book, if not all its adherents).

Irfan,

Whether Ayaan Hirsi Ali lied to enter a country, or what her attitudes about Jews are, is not the issue. Whether she is lying about Islam is. You are using the typical lawyer's method to taint the victim and confuse the issue; a ploy used in rape cases.

Irfan, I do not know whether you are a strong and vocal activist against Islamic practices of public execution, flogging, stoning, and removal of fingers, hands etc. Not only are the faithful expected to attend, but where stoning occurs, audience participation is mandatory. I hope Irfan, you are indeed a strong activist against these attrocities. I may be wrong, but your website indicates that you are not, in fact, you seem ambivalent.