Suffering a Fool

contentions ^ | 10.3.2007 | James Kirchick

[dmh191]

Avi Lewis is a Canadian television host and the husband of Naomi Klein, author and columnist for the Nation and herald of the anti-American, proto-socialist, “anti-globalization” movement. (Klein is infamous for a 2004 column she wrote the week of the Republican National Convention in New York City entitled, “Bring Najaf to New York.”) Klein and Lewis make, as you might imagine, a politically pugnacious couple.

Recently, for his show “On the Map,” Lewis interviewed the prominent ex-Muslim critic of fundamentalist Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, next to Burmese democracy activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, qualifies as perhaps the most remarkable woman of our age. By way of introduction, Lewis glossed over Hirsi Ali’s childhood as a Muslim in Somalia (from which she escaped to the Netherlands), informing viewers that she got her start in politics with the “right-wing Dutch Liberal Party” and now holds “a job at the arch-conservative American Enterprise Institute.”

[padre35]

From the article:

Lewis was, apparently, incredulous that anyone could be as stringently critical of Islam as Hirsi Ali, and appeared doubly perplexed that the person in front of him spouting what he considers “Islamophobia” is a black woman. He challenged Hirsi Ali’s unremarkable statement that Islam is the only religion that threatens liberal democracy today, pointing south to the United States as the prime example of a country where “evangelical Christianity has ascended to the highest ranks of power, where conservative social values drawn and justified by the Bible are imposed upon people every day.” Lewis didn’t not stop there. “North American Muslims really feel under siege these days,” he informs Hirsi Ali. (How Muslims feel under the rule of the Saudi monarchy or the Mullahs in Iran is something Lewis doesn’t bother to consider.)

So a refugee from an chaotic Islamic country is somehow less qualified to speak on the state of Islam in the US then some white bread Canadian media twit sitting safely in his studio?

What bothers me about that is Lewis more than likely feels justified in saying that because he “feels” that he is the intellectual superior to this Muslim Woman.

The old proverb is quite true:

“Trust the experienced, not the learned”

[Tabi Katz]

“People don’t want to travel because flying is such a hassle.”

And it's all because of what evangelical Christians did on 9/11!

[Blind Eye Jones]

He's chardonnay socialist drinking the last dregs of a bitter cup to avoid reality. What got him into the media is that he is the son of Stephen Lewis — nepotism and riding coat tails are his impressive calling cards. Sons and daughters of famous people invariably start out in Canadian media, even John (JD) Roberts of CNN did a stint on City TV as a VJ in the 80s. Moredici Richler’s son Daniel was also a VJ on that show. But Lewis & Naomi have their collective heads up their tres chic & funky Canadian butts. If they lived in any country other than a liberal democracy, say, a well-known tyranny like Saddam’s Iraq, their funky lives would not be the stuff of dreams but of plastic shredders. Only Canada gives them the voice to rail about infantile grievances, grievances that they have never experienced first hand. So why would they believe anyone else when they can make a career of railing about Bush and making up sheer nonsense.