Outspoken convert to Islam says she's still a feminist, but critics can't see past the hijab

> West challenged by one of its own TheStar.com - living - West
> challenged by one of its own
> Outspoken convert to Islam says she's still a feminist, but critics
> can't see past the hijab
>
> September 29, 2007
> RON CSILLAG
> special to the star
>
> http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/260456
>
> Once a hard-nosed, hard-drinking Fleet Street reporter, Yvonne Ridley
> today is a proud, pious and unapologetic Muslim. Islam is "the biggest
> and best family in the world," she says, but deeply misunderstood.
>
> The 48-year-old London-based journalist and political activist brought
> her campaign against the West and its war on terror to Canada this
> month, visiting Toronto, Waterloo and Montreal to speak at fundraising
> dinners for the Canadian Islamic Congress.
>
> "I've always been a fighter for women's rights. I still am. I'm still
> a feminist, except now I would say I'm an Islamic feminist. I have
> been supporting the Palestinian cause for three decades now. That
> hasn't changed. What has changed are people's perceptions of me.
>
> "As soon as I put on a hijab, it was like, `Oh my God, she's a
> radical. She an exremist.' And suddenly, I moved from being a
> journalist to a Muslim activist."
>
> But her visit here inflamed critics. B'nai Brith Canada, protesting
> she's a "terrorist sympathizer" whose views are "extremist and
> dangerous," called for her talks to be monitored by police.
>
> Ridley has been called an Islamist dupe and an apologist for
> terrorism. Remarks attributed to her include a reference to Jewish
> critics as "those nauseating little Zionists who accuse me of being an
> anti-Semite" and a characterization of London cleric Abu Hamza
> al-Masri, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence for soliciting
> murder and inciting racial hatred, as "quite sweet, really."
>
> Asked prior to her Toronto talk to comment, she denies nothing. Those
> reported remarks "are regurgitated by people who have an agenda
> against me," she tells the Star.
>
> Yes, she called al-Masri sweet, but "that was part of a one-hour,
> 20-minute talk in which he was featured for about 30 seconds."
>
> She was quoted "totally out of context," she says.
>
> "It would be like you looking at Hitler and saying, `Apparently, he
> was a very gifted artist and I looked at his work and it moved me.'
> The next thing you know, you pick up the paper and somebody is saying,
> `Oh God, that man said Hitler was gifted and he was moved by him.'"
>
> Ridley blames journalists, always out for a juicy sound bite.
>
> "This is the trouble with the media. I'm not having a go at you," she
> says, "but you do try and simplify issues....If you tell me what story
> you've been told to get and what headline you need, then I'll try and
> help you."
>
> Would she characterize a Muslim who calls for violence as un-Islamic
> or radical? "Historically," Ridley points out, "violence has worked."
>
> The Irish Republican Army "bombed their way to the negotiating table."
>
> And the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun, pre-state
> Israel's Jewish militia, was "a defining moment in the British army's
> desire to get the hell out of Jerusalem."
>
> There's no difference, Ridley says, "between a suicide bomber and a
> Stealth bomber because they both kill innocent people. And the death
> of innocent people is always to be condemned."
>
> Ridley's extraordinary journey to her present activism began just
> after the 9/11 attacks when, as a reporter for Britain's Daily Express
> (which calls itself "The World's Greatest Newspaper"), she donned a
> burqa and sneaked into Afghanistan to cover the war on terror.
>
> At the time, she was an Anglican who attended church about twice a
> month, "which in Britain, is regarded as fanatical." She had a
> knowledge of Islam "you could probably write on the back of a postage
> stamp, and it was incorrect."
>
> Her assignment finished, she was making her way out of Afghanistan
> when the Taliban discovered she had camera tucked beneath her robes.
> Held and interrogated for 10 days in Jalalabad and Kabul, she was
> released after promising her captors that she would read the
>
> Qur'an. She kept her word and read the Qur'an. In 2003, she converted to Islam.
>
> Ridley, who wears a black hijab and jilbab, or floor-length cloak,
> prays fives daily, eschews alcohol, and bristles at suggestions she
> represents a textbook case of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological
> condition in which the captive empathizes with her captor.
>
> "That comes from people who cannot accept that a Western woman has
> rejected what they see as Western values (in order) to embrace Islam,"
> she says.
>
> The Taliban have been "demonized beyond recognition, because you can't
> drop bombs on nice people."
>
> But "I did not bond with my captors," she says. "I spat at them. I
> swore at them. I threw things at them. I was aggressive. I was rude
> (and) obnoxious. I was the prisoner from hell."
>
> But what about her conversion? Has she compromised her journalistic
> objectivity by embracing the philosophy of her captors?
>
> "I didn't embrace the philosophy of my captors," is the crisp reply.
> "My captors were the Taliban, and (they) have a very specific type of
> doctrine. And I didn't embrace that.
>
> "I embraced Islam. I embraced what I consider to be pure Islam."
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ron Csillag is a freelance writer. Email:
> living@thestar.ca.