The Odone file
Want some more Cristina Odone? Why not – she repays attention. She does a nice job of modeling the religious mind for us.
As I read Nomad, the tone of this feverish, self-justifying tome reminded me of a Dutch social worker I met once. Hirsi Ali (who indeed worked for years as a translator for the Dutch social services) shares that same intolerant world view and politically correct instincts.
This is Odone, complaining about someone else being feverish and self-justifying, and intolerant and politically correct. Does Odone think her writing comes across as placid and generous, tolerant and autonomous? Seriously?
In her autobiographical accounts, Infidel (a worldwide bestseller) and now Nomad, Hirsi Ali blames everything that goes wrong in her own and her family life on Islam.
Odone goes Kristof one better – she not only knows more than Hirsi Ali about Islam, she knows more about the cause of everything that went wrong in her life. Hirsi Ali thinks Islam was behind a lot of it, but Odone knows better. How? Well…because, that’s how. Because Islam is a religion, so it couldn’t have been a religion that was the cause, so that’s how. Odone is all-knowing and all-seeing. And humble.
Hirsi Ali’s attack on the faith she has renounced would gain credibility if she could acknowledge its virtues as well as its flaws. But no, Islam is without merit in her eyes, a religion without poetry, charity, or wisdom. Its fanatics are not extremists; they are the norm.
Now, pesky secularists might think that Hirsi Ali would know what she was talking about because she was there at the time and Odone was not, but sensible people can see through that kind of thing with no trouble, thank you very much. Hirsi Ali was there and being there was bad so it made her all like twisted and biased, while Odone was not there, Odone was in the UK where people like her don’t so much get their genitalia chopped off when they’re five or forced into marriage with some stranger a few years later, so she is in a position to second-guess Hirsi Ali about Hirsi Ali’s own experience because Odone is mellow and calm and reasonable and she loves the pope like a father.
After that powerful insight, Odone complains about Hirsi Ali’s success (though she forgets to mention the death threats, and the dead Theo Van Gogh, and the having to live as a fugitive, and the being kicked out of her apartment and then out of the Netherlands), and then she gets down to business.
A Muslim-basher, in our secular culture, is welcome everywhere. Even when they are capable only of the kind of obsessive, one-track thinking that gives social workers a bad name.
A “Muslim-basher.”
I cannot remain civil when commenting on Cristina Odone, so I had best stop. She makes me angry.
Haven’t read Nomad so I can’t judge Hirsi Ali’s arguments (heck, knowing of Odone’s rigour I can’t be sure of what they are!). Still, assuming that she does write as if “[the] fanatics are not extremists; they are the norm” and “Islam is without merit” her experiences wouldn’t be enough. To draw a parallel that would insult no one but these guys, Solzhenitsyn’s writings – however powerful – wouldn’t be commensurate to indict all socialism.
There’s a faintly noxious irony to that…
Which is the worse omission: focusing on the murder of a friend and colleague and the very real threat of death she still lives under to the exclusion of some poetry, or focusing on poetry and closing your eyes to the violence? It’s would be a pretty horrible world if more people were as willing to excuse as Odone.
And atheists are accused of being the moral relativists…
Hey, hey. If there’s violence or oppression, it isn’t true Islam.
Very true, BenSix: one woman’s experiences isn’t enough to indict Islam as a whole. But Odone is obnoxious because she dismisses Hirsi Ali’s assessment of Islam’s impact on her own life (e.g. “blaming everything that goes wrong in her life on Islam”), and because she dismisses Hirsi Ali as having nothing valuable to say about Islam at all.
Islam may have its warm fuzzy side, though its defenders would be more convincing if they cited actual humanitarian achievements and not poetry, for Loki’s sake. But even if Islam does have a better side, that’s not a reason to sneer at Hirsi Ali for committing the unbearable faux-pas of talking about her own suffering and the religious/political causes thereof.
People like Odone and Ann Widdecombe claim that England is anti-catholic, and no wonder. There’s a pretty simple answer. It’s because of really dumb catholics like them – and the pope too, of course. The idiocy coming from catholics like Odone and Widdecombe has been flooding over us fast a furious lately, till we were like to drown. There’s the nun/nurse in Phoenix, excommunicated for saving a woman’s life. Then there’s all the stuff about abused children, and hiding people like Bernard Laws out in the Vatican – and he’s not skulking around there either: the pope gave him a job. And, then, of course there’s the pope’s bright idea of sending the foxes to check out the hen house. But to come back to Odone, there’s her ridiculous challenge: I defy you to watch my family’s story and support euthanasia. This is based on the story of Lorenzo, her half brother, apparently, at the focus of the film Lorenzo’s Oil. Here’s why:
Well, let me tell gushing Christine. It’s possible to love and cherish someone until the very end, and still do what they ask, and not all the love in the world can transform slavery into kindness. Ms. Odone, the Catholic dogmatist, is perfectly content to subject others to this slavery, based on one personal experience. That is, on the strength of that, she’s willing to force those, who want to die peacefully and without distress, instead to die, possibly after years of enforced suffering, in the name of her catholic god, in the way that these benighted fools think is the will of their god.
This is why people often despise catholics – as well, of course, as many other religious believers. Why? Simple. They think they know what’s best for others, and they’re quite prepared to interfere in the lives of those others in order to force them to accept that best. And just like the priests who who tried to dress up sexual abuse to look like something else (de Sade knew a few of their tricks!), Odone is perfectly prepared to dress duress up in a fake constume, and call it cherishing love. People like this are a menace to a free society, which is why everyone should turn out and ‘Boo!’ loudly when the pope comes to Great Britain.
But, I’ve got news for you Odone. You don’t know, and that’s why you’ll never understand someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, because she doesn’t hide behind dogmas and ancient superstitions. She’s freed herself from all that. You may be envious of her success, but her success is hers. She doesn’t come riding in on Allah’s magic carpet, nor does she rely on the hocus-pocus (from ‘hoc est enim meum corpus’ from the canon of the mass) of the church (though she’s kinder to it that I would have been). So, Christine Odone, go suck eggs, and when you’ve grown up a bit, then come back and tell us what you’ve found out. Adults look at things differently, you know.
Ben Six – but Odone is saying that Hirsi Ali should have taken a particular moral view of Islam, to wit, hers (Odone’s). No one is under any obligation to “acknowledge” the poetry of Islam (or of socialism either).
Eloquently said, Eric.
Absolutely spot on, Eric.
“And, then, of course there’s the pope’s bright idea of sending the foxes to check out the hen house.”
Aye, Eric, there’ll be plenty of feed-stuff too inside the gates of the Dail for the foxes to gollop up. The cute hoores -will be only too glad for the limelight to be taken of them – with the recent findings of 188 children who died while in State care. Feigning missing files, etc. Typical. The State strategically stalled with giving revelations of numbers, almost right up to the time of the Dail summer recess. Anything to do with child abuse is dealt with according to time plans. The church does the same, with its liturgical calender. Very maqnipulative tactics. I also see that there are prelates coming to Ireland from your neck of the woods!
“frumpy, solid and sandaled social workers the world over”; what the f***’s that all about?
I really hate the way that Christians are trying to leapfrog on Muslim intolerance and extremism.
As far as I can tell, it’s about Odone’s incurably small, banal, nasty, petty mind.
Well, in her usual woolly thinking way Odone makes the common mistake of assuming that the arts are the product of religion. This is not necessarily the case at all, even if the religion is islam. Some art is religiously inspired perhaps, much is not at all. And do you seriously think that odone has actually seen any of this art or read any of this poetry that is part of the wonderful legacy of islam?
In fact islam has done much to suppress art.