Via the blog of the editor of the New Humanist, I’ve come across a defence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Pascal Bruckner against the "attacks" on her by Timothy Garton Ash and Ian Buruma. I must admit I found Bruckner’s piece somewhat shrill.
While I haven’t got the writings of Garton Ash to hand that Bruckner quotes, I do have a copy of "Murder in Amsterdam" by Buruma that Bruckner uses as evidence of the attack on Hirsi Ali. And I have to say that I don’t recognise the portrait of Buruma that Bruckner paints from it. I thought that Buruma portrayed Hirsi Ali very sympathetically, even when he mentions what he sees as her shortcomings. His writing about the events and the participants are rounded and humane. I don’t think the same could be said of Bruckner:
It is her wilful, short-fused, enthusiastic, impervious side to which Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash object, in the spirit of the inquisitors who saw devil-possessed witches in every woman too flamboyant for their tastes.
Er, I’m sorry? As I said, Bruckner’s piece strikes me as being shrill and makes it difficult to be receptive to his argument. I felt as though I was being hectored by someone shouting in my ear and waving his arms about wildly…
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