Freedoms and rights of the group, or of the individual?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes at the Harvard Crimson,

...somehow we have got so caught up in the pursuit of diversity that we have drifted away from the core of what it was all about, the core of liberalism: the individual.

Instead of struggling and campaigning for the freedoms and rights of the individual, some of us seem more focused on the freedoms and rights of the group.

...It is not good for the individual, for example, when diversity means accepting harmful traditional practices against women, or religious sanctioning of child marriage, or shariah laws that criminalize rape victims and dissidents.

We claim to fight for women’s rights, but we are not supposed to talk about the immense suffering of women in the Middle East because that might be construed as being offensive to Muslims. We are witnessing a major cultural shift in support for gay marriage across the West, but Iran remains beyond our criticism, even as the regime hangs gays, because that might be condemned as Islamophobic.

Worse still, those who speak out against these injustices are vilified and accused of “bigotry.”

...the First Amendment was not written into our constitution to protect the status quo — it was written into the constitution to allow for criticism of those in power and to foster the diversity of ideas.

...Those today who seek to limit free speech in the name of diversity are betraying true liberalism. Liberalism means standing up for the rights of every individual regardless of race, ethnicity, class, faith, gender, or sexual orientation. It means condemning oppression regardless of the form it takes and the cultural justifications given for it. It means recognizing that it is the individual who has rights and freedoms, it is the individual who suffers discrimination, and it is the individual we should be fighting to protect.

Read more here.