“Please, Go Wake Up!”

Abstract

Measured to our western standards, [the prophet] Mohammed is a perverse man. A tyrant. He is against the freedom of speech... Mohammed is a role model for all Muslim men. Do you find it strange that so many Muslim men are violent? You are frightened when I say such things, but you make a mistake that most native Dutch make: you forget where I'm coming from. I was a Muslim, I know what I'm talking about. (Ayaan Hirsi Ali cited in Arjan Visser 2003 Visser, Arjan (2003) ‘Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Politiek schadelijk voor mijn ideaal’, Trouw, 25 Jan. [Google Scholar] ; our translation) It is one matter to suffer violence and quite another to use that fact to ground a framework in which one's injury authorizes limitless aggression against targets that may or may not be related to the sources of one's own suffering. (Judith Butler 2004 Butler, Judith . 2004. Precarious Lives: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, London : Verso. [Google Scholar] , p. 94)