Ayaan Hirsi Ali film ignites row over Islam, censorship

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There is a concerted effort in the Muslim community to silence Muslim women of faith who speak out against violence toward women.

"Honor Diaries," a new film associated with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a critic of Islam, has sparked a series of protests since premiering on March 8 — International Women’s Day — at the United Nations in New York. The documentary chronicles violence against women in Muslim-majority communities, and last week's decision by Brandeis University to withdraw Hirsi Ali's honorary doctorate coincided with heated debates on campuses across the United States about the merits of discussing the cultural roots of gender-based violence at the risk of furthering what activists say is the film's anti-Islamic agenda.

The film alternates between opinions from self-proclaimed experts and ominous statistics and vignettes about gender-based violence. Those include interviews with a 10-year-old child bride in Yemen, murder trials for honor killings involving Muslim immigrants’ daughters in the U.S., images of women’s faces disfigured by acid attacks and a testimony about a forced marriage in the United Kingdom that ended with the bride’s committing suicide. Nine women’s rights advocates share their stories of abuse and give advice during round table discussions on honor violence.

The women in the film are unsure whether to blame culture, religion or other women for the atrocities. "Is this Islam?" one participant asks. "If not, what are we doing to change it? And if there is anything within our faith that allows that men feel empowered to do that," she adds, "how are we fighting that?"

But other activists say that the film’s funder, the Clarion Project — which has been responsible for documentaries such as “The Third Jihad” and “Radical Islam’s Vision for America” — and executive producer Hirsi Ali’s hostility toward Islam leave little doubt that the documentary has an anti-Islamic agenda.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/15/ayaan-hirsi-ali-honordiariesbrandeisuniversity.html

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