PALO ALTO, Calif.— Imagine Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s surprise to find that a career spent fighting extremism had landed her on a list of extremists.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a self-described “civil rights” group with a well-documented habit (or a strategy, more likely) of branding as “extremists” and “hate groups” outspoken enemies of the cultural Left. When SPLC came after Hirsi Ali, the activist and scholar vigorously defended her reputation.
“I’ve never met anyone from the Southern Poverty Law Center. I didn’t know they existed until they put my name on that list,” Hirsi Ali told reporters at a Hoover Institution media round table Monday, reflecting on the SPLC’s decision to categorize her as an anti-Muslim extremist. “Since 9/11/2001, I was used to being put on lists, and in so many different ways being vilified. So, at first, I didn’t think anything of it until I realized their level of influence, that they were actually saying you can’t invite this woman because she is an extremist. And then I went on their website and I saw who the other extremists are — white supremacists, and all the fringe, really, really radical extreme fringe groups — and I thought, who on earth are these people, and why are they taken so seriously?”
Born in Somalia, where she grew up a “devout Muslim,” Hirsi Ali was subject to genital mutilation, ultimately fleeing to the Netherlands in her early 20s to escape a forced marriage. Her career has subsequently focused on fighting Islamic extremism, especially in the context of women’s rights and, among other pursuits, she’s held positions at the American Enterprise Institute, Harvard University, and Hoover, where Hirsi Ali currently works as a research fellow.
After the white nationalist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., last summer, “Apple and JPMorgan and [George] Clooney started throwing money at” SPLC, “making them even more influential,” Hirsi Ali said, explaining why she sought out a platform in the New York Times to expose the SPLC’s practices, frustrated by that string of high-profile donations.
“It’s really kind of a scam that these people are pulling off. At one point they started off with very serious issues like civil rights groups, and stood up for these people, but after that it’s just one big fundraising machine,” Hirsi Ali noted.
Eighteen months after being published, the list of “anti-Muslim extremists” that included Hirsi Ali was wiped from the SPLC’s website this April. But a quick search reveals several negative references to her remain on the site, including one from February that refers to Hirsi Ali as “a prominent figure within the broader anti-Muslim hate movement.”
Credulous major media outlets often cite SPLC designations as objective descriptors, giving the group undue legitimacy and influence. But Hirsi Ali has been smeared by others too. Brandeis University rescinded its decision to award her an honorary degree in 2014, with the university arguing some of her “past statements” were “inconsistent” with its core values.
“I don’t have the resources, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the organization to put up a real pushback, and sometimes I wish I could, and I think a lot of people who are in my line of work who are considered to have ideas that are out of the box, they just don’t have those resources,” Hirsi Ali said on Monday. “I wish we could have an entire infrastructure to do just that, so we don’t do it. I can’t go on every single publication and tell them this is unfair, and this is what we should be looking at.”
That others face similar treatment from academic institutions leads Hirsi Ali to believe the trend is rooted in something “much deeper.”
“I also don’t take it personally, because were I the only one to be disinvited, I would have thought, ‘This is weird,’ but if people like Christine Lagarde are disinvited and Condoleezza Rice, then you think this is not something about just the issue of Islam, or radical Islam, or Islam and women, etc. or even immigration,” she mused. “This is much deeper. And every day you read something about some campus in our country that’s disinviting someone, trying to fire someone, kids becoming outraged about something because they feel empowered by their administrations and their boards.”
“And that’s a bad thing,” Hirsi Ali added. “But I don’t take it personally, because it’s happening everywhere.”
