'The Trouble Is the West'

As the former executive director of the Institute for the Secularization of Islamic Society and an open advocate of Islamic apostasy, I nonetheless take strong exception to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's call to close down Muslim schools in this country by force of law and, in effect, by force of arms in reason's interview with her ("'The Trouble Is the West,'" November).

For one thing, as someone with far more firsthand experience than Hirsi Ali with American Muslims and their institutions, I can say with some confidence that her categorical identification of Muslim schools with jihadi activity is embarrassingly ill-informed. If she has evidence to support her claims, she should provide it, but I am not aware of any, and I don't think any informed observer would agree with what she has to say on the subject.

Second, it is a basic principle of classical liberalism that force may be used only in retaliation against the initiatory use or threat of force; force must never be initiated. In a police context, searches, seizures, and closures must be based on evidence of criminal wrongdoing, not whims or insinuations. Where there is no evidence of such wrongdoing, there can be no legitimate use of the police power. In the case at hand, there is no conceivable justification for closing down all Muslim schools in the U.S. simply because it's possible that some individuals in some of them might be engaged in criminal activity. After all, if the mere capacity to commit a crime were itself a crime, we would all be criminals.

The principles to which I've alluded are nonnegotiable features of the U.S. Constitution and of liberalism. If Hirsi Ali regards them as somehow dispensable in the case of Muslims, her views express not "classical liberalism" but its abrogation, and she ought to defend them under their proper description.

Irfan Khawaja

Glen Ridge, NF

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