Bradley Prize Acceptance Speech
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I want to begin by thanking the Bradley Foundation, and in particular
Michael Gerbe and the other members of the Bradley Prize Committee, for
considering me to be deserving of this high honor.
It matters a great deal to me to be acknowledged in this way and to find
myself sharing a platform with such distinguished individuals as Larry Arnn,
James Ceaser and Jack Keane. It is a real privilege to be joining a veritable
roll of honor of previous recipients going back to Mary Ann Glendon in
2004 and including Martin Feldstein and Harvey Mansfield.
I mention those three names because there are not a whole lot of us at
Harvard, so your recognition gives an endangered species some badly
needed encouragement.
I also need to take at least one of my eight minutes to thank two people
without whom my work in recent years would simply have been impossible.
First, Chris DeMuth, who made me feel welcome at the American Enterprise
Institute when I first came to the United States in 2006; second, my husband
Niall Ferguson, whom I met three years later, and who has never for one
moment wavered in his support for me and my work.
I am especially grateful that you didn’t rescind this award. An unfortunate
event last year has left me feeling a little wary of accepting honors in case
they are subsequently withdrawn after I have said “Yes” and invested in a
new dress for the occasion.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Bradley Foundation is committed to
“strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions,
principles, and values that sustain and nurture it.” It supports “limited,
competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual,
and cultural activity; and a vigorous defense, at home and abroad, of
American ideas and institutions.”
It may seem strange to you that I, an immigrant black woman from a Muslim
family, should identify so strongly with those goals. Let me explain to you
why I do. There are three reasons.
1
First, it is because my life’s journey – which has taken me from Somalia to
Saudi Arabia to Kenya to the Netherlands and finally here – could not have
been better designed to make me appreciate American institutions.
The majority of people here tonight have never known what it is to live
without political and economic freedom. So try imagining undemocratic
communism, of the sort that was brutally inflicted on Somalia by Mohamed
Siad Barre. Imagine unlimited, incompetent government of the sort his
dictatorship exemplified. That was the regime I was born under.
Imagine the very opposite of a “marketplace for economic, intellectual, and
cultural activity”: imagine instead a totalitarian regime based on seventhcentury doctrines and laws. That is what I experienced living as a young girl
in Mecca.
And imagine the very opposite of “a vigorous defense, at home and abroad,
of American ideas and institutions.” Imagine a feeble abandonment, at home
and abroad, of the core principles of Western freedom. I am sorry to say that
it is what I all too often witnessed in the years I spent as a European
parliamentarian.
Second, I think I can justly say that I was among the first in my age group of millions of Muslims – to admit that our faith has begotten a bloodthirsty
ideology that was determined to destroy the principles of liberty and
humanity.
Even after 9/11, there are still those who naively believe that it is a threat
only in countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The reality is that the threat is global. A recent report by the UN Security
Council confirmed that more than 100 countries are now supplying recruits
to the likes of Islamic State and Al Qaeda. And the United States is one of
them. This year alone, the number of U.S.-based individuals involved in
international terror-related cases has risen to 40.
Yet what concerns me is not just Jihad. It is also the non-violent activities,
from preaching to fundraising, that are its essential seedbed. Often, those
who engage in these activities are very skillful at representing themselves as
moderates.
2
Let me quote you the words of Abdurahman Alamoudi, a founder of the
American Muslim Council, who at one time was an Islamic adviser to
President Clinton and a “goodwill ambassador” for the State Department, as
well as being consulted by some eminent Republicans.
“We have a chance,” he declared to a Muslim audience, “to be the moral
leadership of America. … It will happen, it will happen praise [Allah] the
Exalted. I have no doubt in my mind, it depends on me and you, either we do
it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a
Muslim country.”
That is the authentic voice of the plot against America today.
I am glad to report that Mr. Alamoudi is currently serving a 23-year prison
sentence for financial and conspiracy offenses involving the Libyan
government and the Al Qaeda plot to assassinate the then Crown Prince of
Saudi Arabia.
Thirdly and finally, I have come to see that there is a related threat posed to
American institutions – the one posed by those within the West who would
appease the Islamic extremists.
Last September, President Obama insisted that the Islamic State “is not
Islamic.” Later that month, he told the UN General Assembly that “Islam
teaches peace.” Phrases like “radical Islam” and “Islamic extremism” are no
longer heard in White House press briefings. The approved term is “violent
extremism.”
The decision not to call violence committed in the name of Islam by its true
name is a strange one. Imagine if Western leaders during the Cold War had
gone around calling Communism an ideology of peace, or condemning the
Baader Meinhof gang for not being true Marxists.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it is time to drop the euphemisms and verbal
contortions. As I argue in my most recent book, Heretic, a battle for the
future of Islam is taking place between reformers and reactionaries,
dissidents and jihadists, with the majority of Muslims caught in the middle,
unsure which side to take. The outcome matters to us all. And the United
States needs to start helping the right side win.
3
Sometimes people who want to smear me use the sham term “Islamophobe,”
which is designed to imply that those who speak critically of Islamic
extremism are mere bigots.
Well, it is true that I have a phobia. But it is not directed against Muslims.
After all, I used to be one. My phobia is towards any ideology – whether it is
communism, fascism or Islamism – that threatens individual freedom and
the institutions that protect freedom.
That is why I am so proud to accept this honor from you tonight.
Thank you so very much.
4