Kamala Harris, Speak Up. Don’t Be Silent on Women’s Rights.

[Valin]

NY Times

AYAAN HIRSI ALI and ASRA Q. NOMANI

JUNE 22, 2017

 

Last week, Senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, made headlines when Republican senators interrupted her at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee while she interrogated Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The clip of the exchange went viral; journalists, politicians and everyday Americans debated what the shushing signified about our still sexist culture.

The very next day, Senator Harris took her seat in front of us as a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. We were there to testify about the ideology of political Islam, or Islamism.

 

Both of us were on edge. Earlier that day, across the Potomac River, a man had shot a Republican lawmaker and others on a baseball diamond in Alexandria, Va. And just moments before the hearing began, a man wearing a Muslim prayer cap had stood up and heckled us, putting Capitol police officers on high alert. We were girding ourselves for tough questions.

But they never came. The Democrats on the panel, including Senator Harris and three other Democratic female senators — North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan and Missouri’s Claire McCaskill — did not ask either of us a single question.

 

This wasn’t a case of benign neglect. At one point, Senator McCaskill said that she took issue with the theme of the hearing itself. “Anyone who twists or distorts religion to a place of evil is an exception to the rule,” she said. “We should not focus on religion,” she said, adding that she was “worried” that the hearing, organized by Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, would “underline that.” In the end, the only questions asked of us about Islamist ideologies came from Senator Johnson and his Republican colleague, Senator Steve Daines from Montana.

 

(Snip)

 

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NYT Pick of the comments

 

Catastrophist

Adelaide 40 minutes ago

Kamala Harris did not silence you. She herself remained silent. She observed you being questioned but chose not to question you. Was she right to do so? Lets see: the hearing was called by Republican senators at a time when the Republican Administration continues to press, against judicial defeat after judicial defeat, for a travel ban against Muslims. This ban, extensive reporting shows, is the brainchild of Trump advisor and former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon, who apparently believes that the greatest threat facing western civilisation is jihadi extremism. With all due respect and without for one moment downplaying the appalling experience of women in many Muslim communities, this hearing was called, and you were invited to testify, for the sole purpose of boosting the case for a travel ban by stoking the hatred of Muslims in America, not to provide a forum for Muslim women to air their (quite understandable) grievances against certain practices in certain Muslim communities. The treatment of women is a major public relations vulnerability for the faith, and the Republican senator who called the hearing knows that. That's why the hearing was called--not because of a deep sympathy for your plight. The women senators on the panel recognised this and determined not to be used by this man for this frankly un-American agenda. I don't blame you for availing yourself of a high-profile forum for your cause, but neither can I blame the women senators for their silence. Unfair.

 

WIllis

USA 49 minutes ago

These comments are revealing just how dogmatic progressives can be when there is a conflict in their worldview. We are the side that is supposed to break through party lines and correct the wrongs of the world. We can do this because we are not restricted to dogmas of the past. Even if you hate the organizations/groups Ayaan represents, it does not change the fact that Muslim women are abused in a statistically overwhelming fashion the world over. It is incredibly disheartening to hear people who claim to be progressive, liberal, and moral get swept up in a partisan tornado. Do yourself a favor and just listen to her thesis . Then try to refute the message with evidence and statistics. The partisanship will melt away on this issue.

[Valin]

Kamala Harris goes silent when confronted with true sex-based oppression

Paul Mirengoff

June 23, 2017

 

Last week, Sen. Kamala Harris became the left’s designated victim of the month because she was interrupted by Republican Senators during a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Harris kept interrupting the witness, Attorney General Jeff Session, so it’s debatable whether she had a genuine grievance. Nonetheless, the Democrats and their media allies were quick to level hackneyed allegations that, once again, sexist patriarchs have tried to silence a woman “speaking truth to power.”

The next day, two women with genuine grievances of sexism testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, of which Harris, regrettably, is a member. The women were our friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Q. Noman.

Both were born into deeply conservative Muslim families. Ayaan is a survivor of female genital mutilation and forced marriage. Asra defied Shariah by having a baby while unmarried.

 

 

(Snip)

 

Sen. Harris and her fellow female committee members are cowards. If they believe Ayaan and Asra are presenting a misleading picture of Islam, based on their “exceptional” experiences, then take them on. Make the point by asking probing questions, the way Harris’ cheerleaders think she did with Jeff Sessions.

Harris wouldn’t do it. She probably recognized that Ayaan would have carved her up to the point that even her cheerleaders couldn’t have declared her the victor. So the supposedly fearless ace ex-prosecutor took the coward’s way out and tried to minimize the extent to which Ayaan and Asra were heard.

 

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Found It!!!

 

 

[Draggingtree]

6/24/2017

Two Noted Feminists And Scholars Ignored By Female Democrats Respond To Reader Questions

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:41 am

[guest post by Dana]

Last week I posted about a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee hearing in which two of the four witnesses invited to testify about political Islam were female scholars with unique insights and real-life experiences to offer: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani. This in spite of New Republic’s Sarah Jones notifying readers from her perch that they were unreliable witnesses and should be disqualified from giving testimony. When the hearing was held, it was clear that the two women of color, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani, in a “strategy of deflection and demonization,” were pointedly ignored by the four female Democratic senators, and instead chose to turn their attention to the two white males on the panel.

Given that the report in the New York Times about this generated an unbelievable amount of comments, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani have responded to a few of the many questions posed by readers. Both women noted, after not being asked relevant questions about political Islam, that it was “an experience…emblematic of a troubling trend among progressives to overlook the brutal reality of Islamist extremism”.

Perhaps Kamala Harris, one of the four Democratic women who ignored Ali and Nomani,   http://patterico.com/2017/06/24/two-noted-feminist-scholars-ignored-by-female-democrats-respond-to-reader-questions/