Is Newsnight really on the side of Radical Islam?

I thought Ayan Hirsi Ali was pretty shoddily treated on BBC Newsnight last night.

You can watch it here - starts at 26 minutes and 40 seconds. I have transcribed it below because, sometimes, I think reading the words - which are very carefully chosen, distinct, measured and powerful - gives you a clearer picture.

Yes she's flogging a book, but she's also being extremely brave in what she is trying to get across in my opinion. And it's a 'proposal' that could be exactly what we need to get to in order to address the massive threat we all face from Radical Islam. She is suggesting that Islam needs some sort of 'reformation' if it is to come successfully into the modern world for the good of its moderate, modern believers and non-believers alike.

And remembering that Islam is 700 years younger than Christianity - and that Christianity was pretty barbaric in the defence of its 'God-given' power and control over people 700 years ago; it makes sense to me that Islam is in need of modernising reform and equally, therefore, I understand why those Radicals who derive their power over people - especially women - are so against such reform.

What Hirsi Ali is suggesting seems to me to be exactly the sort of reform that might give us all hope for a peaceful future for the planet - particularly those Muslims who abhor what is currently being done in the name of Islam by Radicals, yet Emily Mails and Newsnight seemed more interested in sniping  and trying to undermine what she was saying than exploring what are clearly much-needed new ideas.

And what Hirsi Ali was essentially saying, by the way, is backed (she says) by significant numbers of modern Muslims who are, it seems, under the current 'regime', being endlessly bullied into accepting or even supporting a barbarous violent 'religion-justified war of terror on its own people and non-Muslims around the globe.

The interview on one of the major problems facing the world today took up 5 minutes after 26 minutes in which the programme dealt with the Jeremy Clarkson affair and interviewed a Tory and Labour MP about who knew about their parties' PMQs pledges on tax and when did they know it. Important issues no doubt, but there seemed to me to be a hint of down-playing this area of the programme.

Maitls introduced the piece thus:

EM: '"I passionately believe in the world-changing power of Blasphemy" writes Ayan Hirsi Ali in her latest book 'Heretic'

'She calls for a fundamental reformation of Islam and recognition that it is not a religion of peace, if it wants to avoid eventual collapse.

'Is she right? Or is she stirring up trouble by suggesting it's a problem affecting an entire faith and not a tiny proportion who pervert it? We'll ask her in a moment.

'First here's Sikunda Kiarmani' (spell?) (mood setter report)

SK: 'Ever since 911 there's been an intensified debate within the Muslim community and beyond around whether the religion is in need of reform or whether the causes of extremism are linked more to politics and economics than theology. After all the majority of victims of terrorism are Muslims themselves.

'And if the religion is to be reformed, given Sunni Islam lacks central religious authority, who can do that and how? Without leaving the foundations of a religion based on a book believed to be the word of God.

'Ayan Hirsi Ali A has been one of the most outspoken critics of Islam. The Somali-born writer and survivor of female genital mutilation says she was once a strict Muslim before becoming disenchanted' -

(cut to Cameron speaking: 'We face a poisonous and fanatical ideology that wants to pervert one of the world's major religions Islam....')

SK: 'We're used to hearing messages from leaders, Muslim and non-Muslim after terrorist attacks emphasising that extremism is a perversion of the religion. (background leaders after Charlie Hebdo.. Obama '...Al Quada are desperate...')

SK 'Hirsi Ali disagrees: In her latest book 'Heritic' she states her view clearly: - Islam is not a religion of peace. It's a hugely controversial and to many offensive view. She says she's been denounced by Muslims and by what she describes as western Multiculturalists who have accused her of Islamophobia.

'Her new book lays out how she thinks Islam needs reforming. But what credibility will those calls have within the Muslim world given she once reportedly said the Prophet Muhammad would be considered a perverse man and tyrant by western standards?'

EM: 'SK there and Ayan Hirsi Ali joins us now from New York:

'President Obama said we're not at war with Islam. Do you think we are?'

AHA: 'Islam is at war with us - Islam unreformed. And in the book I distinguish, I say there is one Islam but there are three sets of Muslims. and what gives me hope is the fact that today there are Muslims who actually want reform as opposed to say  ten years ago. There were probably Muslims who wanted reform but they were not audible.

'I'll give you an example, a man I debated three years ago Majid Nowaz a British citizen, three years ago he was arguing Islam is a religion of Peace..today he's arguing alongside with me that Islam needs a reformation...'

...gap AHA 'Have I lost you?..'

EM: 'No I'm reflecting on that. I know I've spoken to highly educated Muslims today who believe that you're incredibly offensive in what you're putting forth. That you're not working within Islam you're writing this or announcing this almost as an atheist looking in from the outside. Is that how you feel?'

AHA: 'The people like this gentlemen you have spoken to who say that they're offended by pleas for a reformation and for a transformation of Islam that takes young people away from being lured into the Islamic state and into the Jihadi narrative, they're the ones who don't want change and what I find hopeful is that again there are more and more Muslims because Jihad is in Sharia Law; radical Islam is killing Muslims more than anyone else, that there is a group that is standing up today and we need to stand with them. Those individuals, Osama Hussan a cleric and also another British citizen doesn't agree with everything I say but he agrees with the assertion that today Islam is prime for a reformation -  the only way it can get out of the crisis in which it is'

EM: 'It's so interesting that but when you describe Islam in it's true form as one that is practised in the way that ISIS describe it, so a very literalist interpretation, it seems to put you and Isis on the same page and leave out most people in the middle who manage to work within and around Islam.'

AHA: 'Here's a challenge to British society. There are three young girls, straight A students of Bethnal Green and they sneak out, they sneak away from their parents' home. They are loved, they're popular, they're intelligent. And they sneak out to be a part of the Islamic State and so are many more, British citizens, French citizens, Danish citizens, American citizens.

'Listen that is a crisis. We can carry on with the drone attacks with the military means with the counter surveillance but there comes a point and more and more Muslims agree with me now, that we need a counter-narrative and that counter narrative is one of a radical transformation. That is what I'm pleading for; it's a peaceful, optimistic message.'

EM: 'But but explain what that counter narrative is? Are you asking them to believe in something different to what they understand as Islam?'

AHA: 'I think that within Islam as a narrative it is possible to review it and I identify 5 key precepts that if you change, you can still keep the five main pillars of Islam; you can get rid of Sharia law you can get rid of Jihad you can get rid of command and criteria on forbidding home, (??) you can invest in life before death and you don't have to follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad literally, but you can as a Muslim still maintain the other five pillars; you can pray, you can fast you can pay charity you can visit Mecca as much as you like and you can confess to the fact that you are a Muslim.

'So it is possible to persuade Muslims that if they changed some of these key precepts that are keeping them in a vicious cycle of violence, that it's possible to still retain their religion. And you know what Islamic state people doing and what Jihadis are doing? They're scaring Muslims into saying if you question the Prophet Muhammad's morality or the Quran you're giving up Islam and that is not true and the way to challenge it is not only through drones and military means I think it is through persuasion and I think you just can't drum bad ideas out of people's heads.'

EM 'Ayan Hirsi Ali great to talk to you thank you very much indeed.'

Just if you are interested in this subject.  I thought it was worth reproducing the above in full. I also think she's entirely right as I have blogged in the past.

Thanks for reading.