Ayaan Vs Avi
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has her share of admirers and detractors. When she claimed that there was no such thing as Islamophobia, Avi Lewis, host of On the Map (a Canadian TV program) just couldn’t let that go unchallenged. He had her as guest on his TV program.
I had never heard of Avi Lewis before this but based on this one show with Hirsi Ali, all I can say is that he exhibits the kind of condescension, smugness, and moral superiority over Americans or Americanism that plague many Canadians. He was simply incredulous when Hirsi Ali said that “America is the best place to be in”. He just couldn’t believe that someone like Hirsi Ali would say that, and he even had the audacity to ask her if there “was a school where they taught you all these cliches”! At the beginning of the program he even called Hirsi Ali a born-again American Booster.
Throughout the interview it is obvious what Avi Lewis thinks of American society. He claims that the evangelicals who have “ascended the highest ranks of power” are imposing conservative and social values, “drawn and justified from the Bible”, on the people every single day. That is so laughable!
I am glad that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is no dummy. She was not afraid to tell Lewis that he was exaggerating when he makes ridiculous claims such as “homophobia is rampant”, “they shoot abortion doctors”, “North American Muslims feel under seige”, and American democracy is completely broken “because of a couple of stolen elections” in America.
I like the part at the end, where Hirsi Ali told Lewis that because he grew up in freedom therefore he could spit on freedom, but she had lived in countries that had no democracies and therefore knew what it meant to grow up in countries that didn’t have freedom. Because of that freedom, despite the problems that Americans have, she still believes that “America is the best nation in the world”. Good for her!
Still on the subject of this interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dennis Prager has an interesting commentary on Avi Lewis’ comments about America. You can watch the 2 part audio/video here and here. I agree with Prager’s assessment of Lewis -”intellectually shallow when compared to his guest”.
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