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“She’s No Fundamentalist”

Hitchens’ brief rebuttal to Timothy Garton Ash’s (in the New York review of Books) and Ian Burma’s (in the New York Times Book Review) review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book Infidel. Hitchens takes the reviewers to task for labeling Ali as a “fundamentalist.” He writes, “In her book, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says the following: ‘I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values’ …what is ‘fundamentalist’ about that?’ ” Indeed.

Link to short film by Dutch director Theo van Gogh and Ali about the abuse of women in the muslim world. van Gogh was assassinated by angry muslims and Ali had to flee to the US for protection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGtQvGGY4S4

New Learning: The Newsweek review of the book, which Hitchens also cuts up in this essay, was “unbelievably headed: ‘A Bombthrower’s Life.’ ”

New word: trahison des clercs = Literal French translation, “treason of the clerks” usually meant to mean a compromise of intellectual integrity.