Great piece by Brian Whitaker
For a long time now, I have been meaning to take a cool, reflective look at Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji. The ordeal of keeping calm long enough to write about them and avoiding serious damage to my blood pressure at the same time was mainly what prevented me.
Now, thankfully, someone else has done the job. There’s a long essay about them in The Nation magazine and, considering the subject, its restrained tone is admirable.
In the academic world, people like Hirsi Ali and Manji are known as “native informants”, though Issandr el-Amrani of the Arabist blog has another term for them: "courageous reformist Arab personalities (CRAP).
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2006/06/native_misinformants.html
I wish gupshup coconuts weren’t so shy :bummer:
I once saw an episode of question time in London all about the iraq war, they had the usual politician panel, but the audience were almost all Muslims. All Muslims who agreed with the war. I mean how sick can you get and still get away with it in the US/UK media?