West challenged by one of its own

RON CSILLAG


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."

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Ron Csillag is a freelance writer.

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