Two EA women who flew out of the cuckoo's nest...

On August 15, a very interesting East African event happened on CNN. On his Global Public Square programme, Zakaria Fareed interviewed two beautiful and intelligent women: Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The two women faced off on the state of Islam.

Manji is, easily, the most influential and exciting advocate and thinker on moderate Islam in the world today. She has been called “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” Ali is probably the most fluent and outspoken female critic of conservative Islam.

Manji’s book, The Trouble with Islam Today, was a bestseller. So far it has been translated into more than 30 languages. Ali’s latest book, Nomad, has a very controversial take on Islam. And, not surprisingly, has been flying off the shelves.

Manji is also director of the Moral Courage Project at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. Ali is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Before she moved to the US, she was a Dutch MP.

That is their story today, and recently. However, for both, it began in East Africa.
Manji was born in Uganda in 1968. Her family moved to Canada when she was four, as a result of Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians in 1972.

Ali was born a year later in Somalia. Her family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, and moved to Amsterdam.

The dictators of East Africa have done a disservice to the region by chasing away thousands of their citizens, but they have done the world a great service.

These circumstances of repression are probably the reason why East African women exiles like Manji and Ali live on the intellectual edge and are so questioning of authority and orthodoxy.

In Ali’s case, her script for Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh’s movie Submission, led to the murder of the poor fellow by a young radical Muslim and death threats for her.

If all had been well, and Siad Barre had not sent Somalia into the upheaval that left the country to the warlords, Ali would probably be a good burqa-wearing Muslim married to the largest camel owner in Bossaso.

And if Amin had not expelled Asians, Manji would be spending most of her days behind the counter of her husband’s textile shop in Old Kampala, and being tormented by an obnoxious mother-in-law.

Instead, what has happened? Well, Ali actually stole another woman’s husband. Her current squeeze is historian and millionaire TV presenter Niall Ferguson, who left his wife of 16 years, with whom he has three children, for our Ali.

If she did that in Somalia today, Al Shabaab would stone her to death for it. That small detail illustrates the scale of Ali’s rebellion.

Manji, on the other hand, bless her, is openly gay. If she were gay in Kampala today, she would be facing the prospect of a death sentence if the moral fundamentalists in Uganda manage to pass a law that seeks to hang homosexuals.

When East African women break from the cage, you cannot get them to drink Kool Aid again.