Press Release
Ayaan Hrsi Ali to speak at Toronto Sharia law conference, August 12th
Press conference begins at 6:30pm.
Together with Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hrsi Ali made the 2004 film ‘Submission’ about the oppression of women in Islamic cultures. Dutch Muslims criticized the film for being disgraceful and blasphemous. Van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri on November, 2nd, 2004. Ayaan now lives under police protection in a safe house in the Netherlands. Time Magazine named Ayaan one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005. Ayaan has been a Member of Parliament in the Dutch (Liberal) VVD party in the Tweede Kamer (Lower House) since January 30th 2003.
Irshad Manji and Homa Arjomand will also speak.
Irshad Manji author of the #1-bestseller, ‘The Trouble with Islam’, is based in Toronto and hosts TVOntario’s “Big Ideas.” Oprah Winfrey honored her with the first annual Chutzpah Award. Ms. magazine named her a Feminist for the 21st Century.
Homa Arjomand is the Coordinator of the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada. She started her campaign at Toronto in October 2003 with a handful of supporters, and today it has grown to a coalition of 87 organizations from 14 countries with over a thousand activists. Homa is a Toronto based transitional counselor and was a human rights activist in Iran until she was forced to flee in 1989.
About the Conference:
The Toronto Conference on ‘Sharia Law and the Globalization of Political Islam’ will be held August 12, 2005 at 7:30 pm. in the Earth Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, 1050-5 Bancroft Ave. The ten-minute film ‘Submission’ will be shown and a 30-minute question period will follow the speakers.
Tickets may be ordered by calling 416-737-9500 or by email homawpi@rogers.com. Tickets are $20, seniors and students $12. The conference is produced and sponsored by the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada.
I think G.Tingey is confusing Ali with Manji; but unlike him they are both concerned with practical politics.
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Look at the explosive growth of this movement in only three years. Ni Putes Ni Soumises shows similar growth. It may or not be the kind of reform that Tingey considers reform, but it sure is encouraging.
I have seen where some of this effort has to do with making a distinction between Islam as a revelation and the cultural features that it has accreted. In Christianity this happened to some extent when Protestants started mimicking OT culture vice their own. Not perfect, but the beginning of a more critical attitude toward cultural norms in the long,long run.
We’ve already got that. Reform would do away with it, rather than exacerbate it – that’s how it would earn the name ‘reform.’