The New York Times Book Review interviewed the controversial author Ayaan Hirsi Ali – too anti-Muslim for Brandeis to allow speak at commencement – for their “By The Book” feature appearing this Sunday and asked about her taste in books and writers.
When asked to name the best writers/journalists, she worked in Megyn Kelly, Anderson Cooper, and Charlie Rose:
Whom do you consider the best writers — novelists, essayists, critics, journalists, poets — working today?
Ian McEwan, Cormac McCarthy, William Langewiesche, Jeffrey Goldberg, Charlie Rose, Megyn Kelly, Asra Nomani and Anderson Cooper.
Perhaps the most provocative Q&A was this one:
What book hasn’t been written that you’d like to read?
A tell-all about the Obama White House.
Liberal journalists think every former Obama staffer who’s written a memoir wrote a tell-too-much! Then they asked her for picks about Islam and feminism:
What’s the most interesting or important book to come out recently about the Islamic world?
The Quran Speaks, by Bahis Sedq: a hugely important book by a scholar of Islam who is, to my mind, the most sophisticated of all the dissidents in the Muslim world. The tragedy is that he has to publish under a pseudonym. He could be the Muslim Luther, if there were only a way to keep him safe.
And what are the best books you’ve read about women’s rights?
Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism? and Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today.
Later, they asked about her childhood reading:
If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?
It can never be one book; it has to be several books, because as a human being you evolve. When I was 9 or 10, in Kenya, the Nancy Drew books showed me a type of empowered girl that I was not used to at all. I used to read those in secret with my sister. When I was older, Charles Dickens inspired my sense of justice and fairness. George Orwell criticized liberals for apologizing for Communism; he continues to inspire me to persist in my position that Islam unreformed, when put into practice, leads to a dystopia. Orwell today would tell us that the Islamic State is Islamic and shame those who refuse to acknowledge a truth so plain.
If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?
I suggest Fighting the Ideological War: Winning Strategies From Communism to Islamism. It is an anthology of essays edited by Patrick Sookhdeo and Katharine Gorka.
