Ayaan Hirsi Ali: abandoned to fanatics

[EFerrari]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: abandoned to fanatics

The outspoken former Dutch legislator deserves the protection her country promised before she ran for parliament.

By Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie
October 9, 2007

As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world. The details of her story bear repeating, as they illustrate how poorly equipped we are to deal with the threat of Muslim extremism in the West.

Hirsi Ali first fled to the Netherlands as a refugee from Somalia in 1992 after declining to submit to a forced marriage to a man she did not know. Once there, in hiding from her family, she began working as a cleaning lady. But this cleaning lady spoke Somali, Arabic, Amharic, Swahili, English and was quickly learning Dutch, so she soon found work as a translator for other Somali refugees, many of whom, like herself, were casualties of Islam. These women had been abused, mutilated, denied medical care and proper educations and forced into lives of sexual subjection and compulsory childbearing.

After attending the University of Leiden, Hirsi Ali began speaking publicly about the repression of women under Islam, and shortly thereafter she started receiving death threats from local Muslims. Her security situation eventually became so dire that she moved to the U.S. in 2002. However, she was soon contacted by Gerrit Zalm, then deputy prime minister of the Netherlands, who urged her to run for parliament. When Hirsi Ali voiced her security concerns, Zalm assured her that she would be given diplomatic protection wherever and whenever she needed it. She returned to the Netherlands with this assurance, won a seat in parliament and became a tireless advocate for women, for civil society and for reason.

The rest of her story is well known. In 2004, Hirsi Ali collaborated with Theo van Gogh on the film "Submission," which examined the link between Islamic law and the suffering of millions of women under Islam. The reaction from the Muslim community was nothing short of psychopathic, and it confirmed the necessity of Hirsi Ali's work and the reasonableness of her fears. Van Gogh, having declined bodyguards of his own, was gunned down and nearly decapitated on an Amsterdam street, and a letter threatening Hirsi Ali was staked to his chest with a butcher knife.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-harris9oct09,0,3734484.story?coll=la-home-commentary

[Fridays Child]

1. k/r

[NYVet]

2. But, but, but...

I thought Islam was the religion of peace?



SURELY this woman is just being over dramatic :sarcasm:

[EFerrari]

4. The Dutch government is acting shamefully. n/t

[NYVet]

6. I agree...

She was promised the protection by a member of the government and they should give it to her.

[azurnoir]

3. Where to start?

This LA times article is full to the brim with right wing anti-Muslim propaganda

Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world.

Ms Ali is hated but for thickly laid on, broad brush condemnation of all Islam which is also filled with distortions. Such as Female Genitile Mutilation being an Islamic custom, it is not and is outlawed in Islam, FGM is an African tradition that dates back to the Pharaoh's and is practiced in predominately Christian African countries such as Ethiopia.
The conditions she describes in Somalia are true but in Somalia, not anywhere on earth there are Muslims.
Her global condemnation of Islam has made her the darling of the right wing blogs sphere until recently that is, her complaints about lack of security have had them turning on her, seems she felt that the US was responsible when she is n America. LGF had a particularly terrible post the other day, look it up I won't post a link to them here.
Ms Ali has a basically good message but she carries it too far.

[EFerrari]

5. Check out the authors of the piece. n/t