As Pascal Bruckner pointed out in a debate some years ago on the website Signandsight.com, the writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an ability to incessantly act as a catalyst for ideological debates on the continent. The same goes for Sweden, one is tempted to add. When I interviewed Hirsi Ali in London in the winter of 2009, she quietly and kindly explained her idea of offering immigrant youths alternatives to the Islamic faith and the Islamic teaching which are not seldom propagated with great emphasis in the suburbs. At the time, I found the idea somewhat curiously idealistic, but most of all unrealistic. When the idea was then presented on a larger scale in connection with the launching of her book Nomad (2010), I quickly realized that I had misunderstood the situation. It didn’t take long before Swedish liberal opinion makers fell into one hateful tirade after another against Hirsi Ali’s proposition.

Sakine Madon of Expressen wrote about Ayaan Hirsi Ali: ”And now she says that churches should try to recruit Muslims in European suburbs. (…) We have to fight back! she warns. Are these arguments supposed to be ’in defence of the Enlightenment’? If so, we’re in a sorry state.”

And her friend and colleague at the same paper, editorial columnist Isobel Hadley-Kamptz, continues: ”Whereas she earlier considered herself to be fighting for Enlightenment and against Islam, she has now gone over to propagating Christianity.” Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s fight, she says, ”has been described as a struggle for freedom, when in reality it is mostly about denying other people the freedom she wants for herself.”

Dilsa Demirbag-Sten, cultural writer at the same paper, argues along similar lines. ”Therefore, it is all the more sad for me to see how Hirsi Ali now, like the Islamists, wants to prevent everyone from having the same freedoms she herself enjoys in the free world. To advocate (…) the conversion of Muslims to Christianity doesn’t fit well with a libertarian liberalism. Where did her earlier atheism go? Those she doesn’t sympathize with also have the right to express their opinions and religious beliefs.”

As one can see, there are mainly two arguments motivating the indignation of these writers concerning Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s allegedly problematic development: firstly, one is upset over her idea that one should, no less energetically than Muslims argue for Islam, argue for specifically Westerns traditions of ideas: Christianity, atheist Enlightenment and feminism, even though the debaters only mention the Christian tradition of ideas. Secondly, the concept of freedom is relativized: the freedom to live in the West as an atheist woman is equated with the freedom for a Muslim woman to live in accordance with a rigid Islamic religiosity. One compares, as if these were compatible things, on the one hand Islamists who wish to introduce Sharia laws and on the other hand liberals who think that one should resist Islamist ideologies as forcefully as possible and as far as possible prevent recruitment to and dissemination of Islamist ideologies. In both cases, it is said to be a matter of trying to circumscribe the individual freedoms of people.

Even though the tradition of the Enlightenment as such is markedly diverse and multifaceted, it is still possible to distil a couple of main points. Some of the most important Enlightenment ideas, which the French historian and philosopher Tzvetan Todorov brings out in his nuanced study of the heritage of the Enlightenment, L’Esprit des lumières (2006), are precisely the ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers that church and state should be separate from each other, that religion and its proponents should be kept apart from those who legislate as well as from those who do research and teach about the structure of reality at universities and colleges.

The relation between the legislative institutions of the state and religion should be limited to the state functioning as a guarantee for freedom of religion. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in no way highly original when she implies that Christianity in most modern societies is compatible with this kind of Enlightenment ideas, which in their turn constitute an important basis for liberalism. Against that background one may ask why it should be a threat to the liberal tradition of the Enlightenment to claim that we in the West should stand up for these ideas and try to counter the kind of culpabilisation of the Enlightenment tradition that for example Pascal Bruckner has called attention to in several works, most recently La Tyrannie de la pénitence. Essai sur le masochisme Occidental (2006). There he discusses how this kind of incrimination of Western culture has paved the way for various forms of political and religious extremism.

And this is precisely the subtext in Hirsi Ali’s message: that we in the West should be as proud as one is in the East over one’s cultural and religious heritage. The Swedish writers mentioned above do not only seem to end up in a relativism which is the opposite of the Enlightenment tradition; they also seem to have misunderstood that a precondition for democracy is an open struggle for the ideas, identities and interests of people, where different interest groups, political parties, churches and trade unions have the possibility to propagate their messages and try to recruit members and followers.

What is it that makes Dilsa Demirbag-Sten, on such flimsy grounds, present Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s views in terms of a ”reactionary conservatism”, far from the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment – while Sakine Madon talks about Hirsi Ali as an ”Islamophobe”? How is it that liberal debaters so easily tend not only to turn their back on other liberals, but also depict their former ideological allies with a terminology which seems to be taken from the most dogmatic anti-liberals on the Left?

If one considers the similar viewpoints which have been expressed concerning another person living under death threat from Muslims, Lars Vilks, I think that the picture may become somewhat clearer. Vilks too, as we know, has had trouble finding support in circles which in other cases talk passionately about the freedom of expression, provocative artistic initiatives, criticism of patriarchal and archaic religious structures and so forth. The most benevolent interpretation is that the people who express their scepticism regarding Hirsi Ali and Vilks from a liberal perspective may perhaps feel genuinely unsure as to what extent Vilk’s and Hirsi Ali’s criticism of Islam can be regarded as socially acceptable. Because if it is not, it might pehaps be characterized as xenophobic and perhaps even as racism, a criticism which no one in the public sphere would want to attract, obviously. However, the question is why criticism of certain elements of a religion should be perceived as racism and xenophobia. No one, I take it, would ever dream of describing criticism of Catholicism as xenophobia and racism? Or even criticism of Buddhism?

The view that criticism of Islam is to be considered as an expression of deeper problems, with racist and xenophobic undertones, has gained influence as a consequence of first Edward Said’s theories about Orientalism, and after that through the concept of Islamophobia. The latter is a concept with the purpose of pathologizing and lumping together different kinds of criticism not only of Islam and Islamism, but also of the policy held by some Arab and Persian states. In Sweden, the concept of Islamophobia gained real momentum through the book of Andreas Malm, Hatet mot Muslimer (”The Hate against Muslims”, 2007). By not making any principled distinction between on the one hand the morbid fear of Islam which is expressed in biased columns and pure intimidating propaganda about Muslims, and on the other hand for instance academic critique of Islamism and of certain proponents of moderate Islam, Malm thought he could show hos widespread and systematic the criticism of Muslims is.

Through reasonings of this kind, the distance is diminished between the racist publications of the extreme Right and the criticism against the Muslim view on women and Islamic law from right- and left-wing liberals. Andreas Malm’s book, to be sure, was far from favourably received. But the fact that it was criticized in some quarters didn’t stop Malm’s career from taking off. After the book came out, despite comments on several inaccuracies in his account, Malm has been given the opportunity to work simultaneously in several of Swedens largest daily newspapers. Nor did the criticism stop the term Islamophobia – and the view of reality which is connected to the term – from becoming accepted and adopted in the media, thus also by liberal opinion makers – as shown by Sakine Madon’s characterization of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as precisely ”Islamophobe”.

Remarkably few debaters to the Right as well the Left seem to realize that Islamophobia, as designation of a morbid fear of Islam, is a concept which is not neutral but has an ideological slant: it serves the purpose of disarming criticism of Islam, of Islamism and Muslim states, by describing this criticism as a form of racism (even though it is not seldom directed towards Muslim converts with Swedish parents, or against Swedish, strictly atheist activists for Palestine).

But it must be possible to criticize Islam as well as dictatures in the Arab world from a classical Enlightenment perspective, for example with regard to the fact that their religious leaders often show a marked unwillingness to make a sharp distinction between religion, state and legislature. This, as has been pointed out, is after all one of the basic pillars of Enlightenment thought: that the only connection of the state and the legislatures to religion is the role of the state as a guarantee for freedom of religion, and that religion in other respects is seen as an issue for the individual. This principle is important in the history of ideas also in the sense that it marks an important paradigm shift in the history of the West, namely when the proponents of religion lost their power over the findings and the truths which form the basis of education and research.

The strange thing in this context is that the same media establishment which has bought Andreas Malm’s term Islamophobia, along with its concomitant ideology, has chosen to turn a blind eye the fact that Andreas Malm himself has expressed his support for such movements as Hezbollah and Hamas. The latter, as is well known, has its origin in the Muslim Brotherhood and is based, like Hezbollah, on an ideology with markedly anti-semitic elements. The Muslim Brotherhood in their turn has clear connections with Nazism, historically as well as in the present day. Andreas Malm writes in 2006, in the editorial in Arbetaren where sides with Hezbollah: ”Not to be able to take a stand for a fight for freedom in the name of Islam is secular puritanism, anchored in Islamophobia, and disqualified from relevance in the eyes of the masses.”

Thus, anyone not wanting to be accused of Islamophobia, according to Malm, had better solidarize himself with the extreme right-wing movement Hezbollah. That the concept of Islamophobia was able to gain popularity in liberal and anti-racist circles is enigmatic, to say the least, considering the fact that the significance of the concept in this way has been linked (by the person introducing it in Sweden) to a movement with distinct anti-semitic elements and connections to present day historical revisionists and neo-Nazis.

But in order to understand the Swedish, liberal criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali in 2010, it also has to be seen in the context of a much wider, international criticism of her from liberal quarters – a criticism, however, which has not always been particularly easy to understand. In his book The Flight of the Intellectuals (2010), Paul Berman shows how Ian Buruma’s infamous (and since then often recapitulated) description of Hirsi Ali in the book Murder in Amsterdam (2006), as an ”Enlightenment fundamentalist”, is not so much based upon actual statements made by her, as upon the idea that she hasn’t been able to liberate herself from her fanatical involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood during her youth. Once an African fundamentalist, always an African fundamentalist, seems to be Ian Buruma’s and Timothy Garton Ash’s standpoint regarding Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her background in Muslim fundamentalism, and the total renunciation of Islam which was a consequence of this background, is considered to show that she is unable to assimilate the thought of the Enlightenment.

Ian Buruma’s and Timothy Garton Ash’s characterization of Hirsi Ali has – unsurprisingly – turned out to be a godsend for the Swedish Left. When Per Wirtén in December 2009 raises his voice in Expressen and says that views like those of Ayaan Hirsi Ali are not welcome in the Swedish public arena, an important line of demarcation is drawn: so far, but not further, you are allowed to go as a liberal in the debate on Islam if you want to retain your position on the intellectual arena in Sweden: ”It confirms the dawning suspicion that the hate against islam is no less deeply anchored among the educated elite than anti-semitism was in the 30’s. Her article means that a limit has been transgressed on Swedish cultural pages. Hirsi Ali deliberately refuses to make a distinction between radical islamism as a political (antidemocratic) movement and islam as a religion and way of life.”

No one challenges this. Rather, it now becomes very important, even for those in the Swedish media who see Islamism as a problem, to describe Islamists and Muslims as two completely non-communicating vessels. After Per Wirtén’s article, Ayaan Hirsi Ali appears in a different light in the Swedish debate: from now on, one desperately takes every possible opportunity to show that one does not have anything in common with her. And thereby one has accepted the opinion of Per Wirtén and his sympathizers regarding where the important limit for what is appropriate goes to the Right: somewhere in the middle of Folkpartiet. Beyond that, one is discarded as a racist and comparable to the Nazis of the 1930’s: that it to say, an inappropriate right-wing extremist.

The reason in this particular case was that Ayaan Hirsi Ali expressed her support for the ban on continued building of minarets in Switzerland. This because she – correctly – perceives the building of minarets to be initiated by the same Saudi Arabian Wahhabist factions which she herself was not able escape in her youth, except by being forced to break with all of her family and relatives. The same factions which represent a variety of Islamism which has not only supported the Muslim Brotherhood, but also does not want to make any sharp distinction between religion, state and legislature.

For my part, I do not support a ban on minarets. But I find it difficult to see that it would be incompatible with liberal values to conceive of religion as precisely a strictly private matter. I have difficulty understanding why, as a liberal, you could not advocate an Islam adjusted to Western, secular society in which the religious element of Islam, that is to say the individual encounter with a transcendental form of conception, is cultivated on its own, while resisting the establishment in Europe of Muslim and Islamist group which see religion as a set of laws and legal cases, contrary to the enlightened Western society of the 21th century.

Similarly, one must ask oneself in what way it conflicts with liberal principles to support a ban on burkas. A law banning burkas could be motivated, from a liberal standpoint, by the fact that such a legislation may work as an instrument for increasing equality, that is analogously to the way in which one from a liberal standpoint motivates laws concerning positive discrimination for boards of directors, shared parent’s insurance or prostitution. The fact that there are many women who voluntarily choose to sell their bodies or who freely choose to stay at home with their children, does not stop liberals from strongly emphasizing the importance of legislation in these areas – always with the intent of achieving increased equality in society as a whole.

Even if I myself am strongly critical of laws in all of these areas, and thus also as regards the burka, one cannot deny that it is a completely legitimate view, in liberal contexts, to be for the law against the soliciting of prostitutes. It stands to reason that if the propagation of a ban on burkas is thought to disqualify debaters from serious discussion, advocates of shared parent’s insurance and of the law concerning prostitution should also be disqualified – which is to say the better part of our Swedish cultural writers and politicians. Nevertheless, in the Swedish debate, the ban on burkas is depicted by liberal debaters like Dilsa Demirbag-Sten as a threat to ”liberal and democratic forces”, comparable to ”laws against blasphemy, as well as threats and violence against publicists and artists”.

Considering how successful Per Wirtén has been in gaining acceptance among a large number of liberal opinion makers for his cleaning operations to the right, it might be of interest to pay some attention to how effective he has been in demarcating to the left when ”a limit on Swedish cultural pages has been transgressed”. A good example might be the magazine Arena, which Per Wirtén founded and whose editor in chief he was until 2010.

I the spring issue (no. 2) of 2010 there are a number of writers that I wouldn’t dream of designating as left-wing extremists. Björn Elmbrant, Ebba Witt-Brattström and Martin Gelin deserve to be answered honestly – based upon the views which they actually bring forward and not by condemning them for writing in the same issue as some persons with considerably more problematic ideological backgrounds.

For it is hard to understand how the reasoning goes when, in this issue, room is made for two writers who have been convicted of political attacks in Swedish courts. One of them is part of an survey panel, together with Lars Mikael Raattamaa, commenting on the success of Miljöpartiet. And the other one has written a long article on racism in the same issue, together with a research colleague.

Pia Laskar, with her anarcho-feminist views, is not a wholly unknown voice in Arena. Nor is she an unknown voice within the anarchist left-wing movement of which she has been a part since the early 1970’s. There she made herself known as one of the most radical forces, and was sentenced to three years in prison – as a participant not only in the planned kidnapping of Anna-Greta Leijon in 1975-1976 (where she cooperated with Norbert Kröcher), but also for serious robbery and the attempt in 1975 to blow up a Spanish traveling agency on Drottninggatan 65 (sentence, Svea hovrätt 29/6 1978).

In an interview in Gaudeamus 2009, one reads that ”Pia Laskar, differently from many other old radicals, has not repented with time”. In an earlier issue of Arena (no. 3 2005), she discusses what has become her key issue in the 21th century, namely ”queer in the form of militant activism”. ”Non-parliamentary methods”, precisely, is a recurrent theme in this article. The choice of words, such as ”standing outside of society and an uncompromising policy of confrontation” and the talk of ”spectacular confrontational actions”, may seem to be taken from RAF:s classical manual, even though the point of departure, as already indicated, has changed over the years, from class to sexuality: ”To defend one’s life style in a non-parliamentary way can mean to disrupt heterosexual weddings, block family fundamentalist meetings and take over TV broadcasts with heterosexual features. (…) All human beings on earth should have the right and the possibility to maximize their sexual pleasure”.

And in the same issue another writer also contributes, who also has been convicted several times in Swedish courts, for example in 1992 and 1995 for vandalism, sabotage, molestation, defamation and agitation – this as a consequence of his political involvement in AFA and various allegedly anti-racist groups. As concerns racism in particular, one might also note that this writer, during his time at Stockholm University, came into collision course with both the faculty and his department, after it was discovered that his home page contained racist content. In the magazine Creol he wrote, in 1996: ”To feel or even think that the white race is inferior in every possible respect is natural considering its history and present actions. May the West of the white race become submerged in blood and suffering. (…) Long live anarchy!”.

And finally, in this year’s spring issue of Arena, he maintains that Swedes who laugh at the silly show on TV 4, ”Help, I’m stuck in a Japanese game show”, and those who enjoy Henrik Schyffert’s completely different ”Big in Japan”, actually experience ”forbidden but pleasurable feelings of white supremacy and colonial nostalgy”, and that ”Sweden, like all other post-colonial countries, is imbued with a nostalgic longing for the classical colonial epoch, when politically incorrect jokes were considered unproblematic”.

It doesn’t seem to be a very large step from on the one hand the views in the article in Arena, that ”Swedes in general entertain a more or less unconscious desire to be able to continue to exercise (…) classical racist humour”, and that this is valid for ”white Swedes of both sexes, in all layers of society and in all ages”, and on the other hand the statement expressed in Creol, ”that the white race is inferior in every possible respect is natural considering its history and present actions”.

For my part, I think forgiveness is a fine virtue, and I think one has to have the right to return as an opinion maker even after youthful ideological mistakes. What is strange, however, is the way in which the Left tends to turn a blind eye to the extremist background within the far Left, while searching high and low for racial tendencies and extremist connections among liberals and conservatives who have never been in the vicinity of the kind of violent crimes that the two writers in Arena discussed here have been convicted of.

You have to wonder how it can be that Per Wirtén apparently finds the presence of these persons in the public sphere of journalism less problematic than that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Why does he choose to declare her undesirable in Expressen, even while he as editor in chief has commissioned writers with connections to undemocratic movements on the far Right and Left? And why does a number of liberal writers rally around Wirtén when it comes to drawing demarcation lines in the public sphere for which views it is appropriate to express, demarcation lines which on the right-wing side exclude Hirsi Ali, but on the Left include Pia Laskar?

One consequence of Wirténs mapping of what is desirable and undesirable is of course that, in the long run, it risks becoming a real threat to democracy when one discards as extremism a significant part of opinion makers with liberal, liberal-conservative and culture conservative ideas, that is to say with views which ideologically are in harmony with most of the parties in the Swedish parliament. And this even while one considers it right and proper to publish writers who have views in common with extremist organizations to the far Right and Left, organizations with ideological connections to movements which in their turn distrusts the Western tradition of the Enlightenment and representative democracy.