Avi Lewis is a Canadian television host and the husband of Naomi Klein, author and columnist for the Nation and herald of the anti-American, proto-socialist, “anti-globalization” movement. (Klein is infamous for a 2004 column she wrote the week of the Republican National Convention in New York City entitled, “Bring Najaf to New York.”) Klein and Lewis make, as you might imagine, a politically pugnacious couple.
Recently, for his show “On the Map,” Lewis interviewed the prominent ex-Muslim critic of fundamentalist Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who, next to Burmese democracy activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, qualifies as perhaps the most remarkable woman of our age. By way of introduction, Lewis glossed over Hirsi Ali’s childhood as a Muslim in Somalia (from which she escaped to the Netherlands), informing viewers that she got her start in politics with the “right-wing Dutch Liberal Party” and now holds “a job at the arch-conservative American Enterprise Institute.”
Lewis was, apparently, incredulous that anyone could be as stringently critical of Islam as Hirsi Ali, and appeared doubly perplexed that the person in front of him spouting what he considers “Islamophobia” is a black woman. He challenged Hirsi Ali’s unremarkable statement that Islam is the only religion that threatens liberal democracy today, pointing south to the United States as the prime example of a country where “evangelical Christianity has ascended to the highest ranks of power, where conservative social values drawn and justified by the Bible are imposed upon people every day.” Lewis didn’t not stop there. “North American Muslims really feel under siege these days,” he informs Hirsi Ali. (How Muslims feel under the rule of the Saudi monarchy or the Mullahs in Iran is something Lewis doesn’t bother to consider.) What causes peaceable, everyday North American Muslims to feel this way? Are they being rounded up and sent to prison in massive police sweeps? Are prominent American political figures calling for their deportation? Not exactly: Lewis’s claim that “North American Muslims really feel under siege these days” rests on his contention that “People don’t want to travel because flying is such a hassle.”
Towards the end of the interview, Hirsi Ali praised the prosperity of the United States and the opportunities it provides to immigrants such as herself. Lewis, really sinking his teeth into the role of a provincial twit, replies sarcastically: “Your faith in American democracy is just delightful,” and chides, “Is there a school where they teach you these American clichés? Is it part of your application process?” Hirsi Ali took this in stride. A lifetime spent dealing with intimidation and vitriol has given her the ability to suffer fools with considerable grace.
As one already too familiar with Naomi Klein’s work, I never thought I would call her her husband’s better half. Either way, they deserve each other.
