BY CARL ROSENSTEIN | In light of the recent federal indictment of two Michigan doctors charged with genitally mutilating two 7-year-old girls, the fact that Linda Sarsour was picked to be the commencement speaker at the CUNY School of Public Health is deeply troubling.
Opponents claim her virulent opposition to Israel disqualifies her from such an honor. The City University of New York has countered she has the right to free speech. But the First Amendment doesn’t mean that hate, bigotry and misogyny should be given a stage. Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, calls herself a “racial and civil-rights activist.” That’s a good one.
In 2011 Sarsour attacked Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a true champion of Muslim women seeking liberation from the cruel cultural practices of female genital mutilation imposed in the Middle East. Sarsour tweeted of Ali, “She’s asking for an ass whippin’. I wish I could take their vaginas away — they don’t deserve to be women.” That the CUNY School of Public Health is allowing an advocate for female genital mutilation to address the graduating class of health professionals is outrageous. To balance out the program, so there are no claims of sexual-mutilation discrimination, the warm up act should include a mohel from Williamsburg.
In 21st-century America, F.G.M. is now imported, along with carpets and baklava. Customs from the Middle Ages aren’t blocked at Customs and Immigration in airports. All the while, the Democratic Party and its liberal base remain silent. Their unholy alliance of political convenience with proponents of this misogyny is immoral and a betrayal of Muslim women globally, especially to the 500,000 Muslim-American girls who are at risk. To the culture police, denouncing this barbarism makes one a “racist.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was an F.G.M. victim when she was 5 years old in Somalia. First as a refugee, then as a Dutch politician, Hirsi Ali courageously denounced F.G.M., forced marriage and honor killings. Multiple fatwas were placed on her head, as they were for writer Salmon Rushdie for his authorship of “The Satanic Verses” and his portrayal of the prophet Muhammad. Hirsi Ali went underground and fled Holland, so not to suffer the fate of her colleague Theo Van Gogh, who was horrifically murdered in 2004 by a jihadist on the streets of Amsterdam. The pair collaborated on the film “Submission,” which deals with violence against women in Muslim societies.
Van Gogh was shot multiple times at close range. The murderer cut the filmmaker’s throat with a large knife and tried to decapitate him, after which he stabbed the knife deep into Van Gogh’s chest, reaching his spinal cord. He attached a note to the body with a smaller knife. The note was addressed to and contained a death threat to Hirsi Ali.
Hirsi Ali now resides in the U.S. and is the founder of the AHA Foundation, dedicated to protecting young Muslim women from these atrocities. For die-hard, politically correct liberals, the following graphic description should convince you — women’s rights are inherently incompatible with Islamic fundamentalism.
F.G.M. procedures include the removal of the clitoral hood and clitoral glands; removal of the inner labia; removal of the outer labia; and the closure of the vulva. In the last procedure, known as “infibulation,” a small hole is left for the passage of urine and menstrual fluid. This is not done in a hospital or clinic. The sick rationale for this horrific act is to ensure girls’ “purity” and virginity by desensitizing the female erogenous zone.
A month ago, in the first case of its kind in the U.S., a grand jury issued a federal indictment against two doctors, Jumana Nagarwala and Fakhruddin Attar. They were charged with performing F.G.M. on two minor girls at Attar’s medical office in Livonia, Michigan.
Daniel Lemisch, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a statement, “This brutal practice is conducted on girls for one reason, to control them as women. F.G.M. will not be tolerated in the United States.”
Prosecutors say they believe there are many other victims.
Sarsour, of course, was a leader of the Women’s March in D.C. Only in this twisted time can “feminists” assemble in mass to protest 10-year-old vulgar locker-room comments by Trump — yet be led by the worst sort of demagogue, whose beliefs would eliminate the last 100 years of victories for women’s rights and turn back the clock centuries.
In this new dark age of newspeak and groupthink beware the rise of Trojan Horse Linda Sarsour.
