Racist. Xenophobe. These are just a couple of the epithets Europe’s cultural elite like to hurl at critics of Islamic fundamentalism. Bruce Bawer reports on the character assassination of Hege Storhaug, author of the new book Covered. Uncovered., and a courageous advocate of freedom.
By Bruce Bawer
As Europe’s Islamization proceeds apace, the gap widens between ordinary folks’ growing recognition of the outrages that are going on all around them and the movers and shakers’ cynical insistence on pretending that everything’s just hunky-dory.
Case in point: the responses to Covered. Uncovered., a new book on hijab. Its author, Hege Storhaug of Norway’s Human Rights Service, is this country’s answer to Ayaan Hirsi Ali – a gutsy advocate of freedom who doesn’t mince words about the illiberal conditions (especially for women and girls) in Europe’s Muslim communities. In Covered. Uncovered. she explains why the increasing visibility in these parts of hijab – a potent symbol of totalitarianism and sexual oppression – should not be taken lightly.
The result? A full-scale media assault – marked not by honest engagement with Storhaug’s arguments but by lies, more lies, and sheer personal abuse. Norway’s Dagbladet alone has published pieces by Amin Asskali of the Arabic Student Association, who accused the “woman-hating” Storhaug of “creating intolerance”; by Iffit Qureshi, who labeled her a “totalitarian…out to crush religious freedom”; and by Dagbladet opinion editor (and, ahem, former head of the Communist group Red Youth) Marte Michelet, whose litany of charges against Storhaug included “burkaphobia,” an “irrational fear of Islam,” “paranoid delusions,” and “hateful contempt” for Muslim girls. “It is absolutely crucial,” said Michelet in a radio interview, “that Hege Storhaug’s campaign to undermine the Muslim religious minority’s rights in Norway be stopped.”
Yes: “Storhaug’s campaign…must be stopped.”
As some readers will recall, it was just this sort of rhetoric that led to the 2002 murder of Pim Fortuyn. Fortuyn, like Storhaug, believed passionately in individual rights – but because he dared to point out that many Dutch Muslims despised those rights, his country’s pols, profs, and pundits labeled him a racist and xenophobe (precisely the words, by the way, that Magnus E. Marsdal, a veteran of the Communist organizations Attac and Red Youth and of the Communist newspaper Klassekampen, hurled at Storhaug the other day on taxpayer-supported Norwegian public radio). In short, Fortuyn was demonized as a threat to the very liberty he was fighting to preserve. Among those who heard that this fascist must be stopped was a man named Volkert van der Graaf.
http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/11/meet_norways_answer_to_ayaan_h.php