Ayaan Hirsi Ali in London

On Friday night, I went with a group of friends to see Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the ICA in London. The event was part of English Pen’s campaign for free-speech. Before Ayaan was interviewed by Timothy Garton-Ash, the film that she made with Theo van Gogh was shown.

Ayaan is still under death sentence from various Islamist groups, so as you would expect, security was tight. We were all frisked and had our bags searched before going into the cinema. My friend had her apple and bottle of water confiscated. The security guard said that they could potentially be thrown at the stage. We managed to get seats in the second row so I ended up sitting behind Ayaan. She was accompanied by three very tall, shaven headed men, who I assumed were Dutch police. The British police were also there in strength and the ICA had beefed up its own security. In the event, there was no trouble, not even any heckling. There were a few mildly hostile questions at the end but that was as dangerous as it got.

Friday night was the first time the film Submission has been shown in public since it was on Dutch television last year. It is only eleven minutes long and shows a veiled woman saying Islamic prayers, then describing how, although did everything Allah asked, she was raped by her uncle, whipped for having premarital sex then forced into an arranged marriage with a man who beat her. The film cuts to a shot of a naked woman covered in whip scars. The perpetrators of these crimes all quoted the Koran as justification for their actions. The woman is shown both totally covered and in a see through burka, which reveals her naked body, covered in verses from the Koran. Submission was only shown once on Dutch TV but that was enough to cause an outcry from Muslims and the death of the producer, Theo van Gogh. Tim Garton-Ash asked Ayaan whether she thought the film would ever be screened on British TV. She replied that so far, there hasn’t been any interest.

In the discussion that followed, Ayaan argued that multiculturalism is at odds with the Enlightenment tradition. Multiculturalism promotes group rights and while western liberalism was, at least originally, about individual rights. By defending the rights of minority cultures, liberals condemn individuals within those cultures, such as gays and women, to suffer oppression. Individual rights are seen as fine for other westerners but not for members of minorities. We would rather turn a blind eye to the subjugation of women than criticise Islamic culture. In this way, multiculturalism trumps feminism and gay rights.

Ayaan described this as ‘lazy liberalism’. It is not a considered stance, just one that has grown up over time because liberals are too lazy (or too scared, in my view) to confront oppressive cultural norms. “Feudalism has returned to Europe,” she said, “but it is wearing a different jacket.” The gains of the Enlightenment are being lost as western opinion formers shy away from tackling oppression and religious superstition. The results of multiculturalism, then, run counter to the western liberal values that emerged from the Enlightenment.

Needless to say, some people in the audience took issue with her but did not make any strong counter-arguments. At the end of the interview, Tim Garton-Ash said that it felt like sitting with Kant or Voltaire. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he said, was a true champion of the Enlightenment. I too was impressed by Ayaan, not just by her obvious intelligence and the power of her arguments but by her calmness and her sheer guts. Here is a woman who did not grow up in Europe and was brought up in a very different culture, yet she has become a champion of western liberal values. So much so, that she is prepared to risk her life in defence of them. How many of us native Europeans are prepared to do that? She cares more about our tradition of freedom and individual rights than we do.

In the Netherlands, though, at least some political figures are directly challenging multiculturalism. In the UK, the debate is muted and those that do question multiculturalism are usually shouted down as racists. I cannot imagine any British politician being prepared to stick his or her neck out in the defence of western values, in the same way that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has. If anything, New Labour is moving in the opposite direction by legislating against the criticism of oppressive religions and bringing the MCB into government as advisers.

I am glad that I went along on Friday and showed support for this courageous woman. It is encouraging that English Pen, Tim Garton-Ash and the ICA were brave enough to arrange this event. Public figures who are prepared to confront Islam’s challenge to our values are few and far between. In answer to Tim Garton-Ash’s question, I don’t believe that any British TV channel will show Submission in the near future. Our politicians and the senior executives in our broadcasting organisations are too scared. None of them has the courage of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

36 comments
  1. Dave said:

    Does Ayaan still regard herself as a Muslim or not though? I thought she did, but I can’t fine any info on it.
    If she does, is her attitude not a little hypocritical, afterall its not only ‘extremists’ that are the problem.

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  3. Steve said:

    Dave, she was asked whether she was still a Muslim and she said that she no longer practised.

  4. Meaders said:

    Public figures who are prepared to confront Islam’s challenge to our values are few and far between.

    Christ what a load of cobblers. Why do people who prattle most about “defending Enlightenment values” end up destroying them in practice? Why are you denying Muslims supposedly universal human rights?

  5. Dave said:

    Because Muslim human rights involve stoning people to death, wife beating, etc, etc. Giving Muslims more ‘rights’ means less rights for everyone else.

    During WW2 we denied the NAZI’s their rights to practise their ‘culture’ in the name of defending ourselves. We need to do the same again.

  6. Steve said:

    Meaders – who is advocating denying human rights to Muslims?

  7. It is only eleven minutes long and shows a veiled woman saying Islamic prayers, then describing how, although did everything Allah asked, she was raped by her uncle, whipped for having premarital sex then forced into an arranged marriage with a man who beat her. The film cuts to a shot of a naked woman covered in whip scars. The perpetrators of these crimes all quoted the Koran as justification for their actions.

    I don’t know what anyone could find in the Qur’an that would make him think it was OK to rape his niece. Apart from anything else, it’s incest. Ayaan Hirsi Ali no doubt knows this; her film is an obviously libellous, inflammatory propaganda piece.

  8. Yusuf Smith: I don’t know what anyone could find in the Qur’an that would make him think it was OK to rape his niece.

    Well, some people will twist religious verses to justify anything. I’ve no idea what verses AHA quoted or whether she has documentary evidence that they have in fact been used in that way, but it wouldn’t at all surprise me.

  9. Steve said:

    Phil – yes I think that was her point – the girl’s uncle quoted the Koran to show that women were to obey men, therefore she should do as he said.

  10. Steve said:

    Yusuf – how do you know that the film is libellous? Have you seen it?

  11. Is the film available over the Internet?

  12. Christopher Price said:

    I was at the ICA too. I know its easy to romanticise Ayaan Hirsi Ali after all she has been through, but I have to say I found her one of the most impressive speakers Ive ever seen. There was no special pleading or point scoring, just a rational assessment of the competing merits of individualism and multiculturalism.

    I think her point concerning Islam was that many of those who perform illiberal or oppressive acts justify their behaviour on the basis the wording of the Koran; it makes acceptable that which would otherwise be unacceptable.

    A Moslem woman in the audience said that Ayaans understanding of Islam did not accord with her own. She specifically referred to the section on men having the right to gently chastise their wives. Apparently this was intended to restrict what men were already doing, not authorise something that was hitherto unacceptable. Ayaan responded if that were the case why was there no similar right for women?

    I was also at the ICA a couple of weeks ago when Tariq Ramadan said that much of what Westerners find unacceptable in Islam is actually not Islam but a reflection of the cultural outlook of certain Moslems in certain parts of the world.

  13. Blimpish said:

    Steve: as you know, I probably come at this one from a similar angle to you, and have some sympathy with what was said, but I think there’s an oversimplification here, which makes it seem like an easy and cost-free choice when it’s not. You summarise Hirsi Ali’s underlying point as follows:

    “… multiculturalism is at odds with the Enlightenment tradition. Multiculturalism promotes group rights and while western liberalism was, at least originally, about individual rights. By defending the rights of minority cultures, liberals condemn individuals within those cultures, such as gays and women, to suffer oppression.”

    The oversimplification is this: can you clearly distinguish between the individual and their culture? Surely autonomy, self-determination, and freedoms of expression and association are central to liberalism; but for most of us, these find most of their substance in the communities in which we participate. Making such a clear split between ‘individual rights’ and ‘group rights’ is only tenable if we see people as rootless and isolated, or at least if we are asserting that it would be better that they were.

    Put it another way: I have no expertise on Islam so I couldn’t tell either way on how Muslims ‘should’ treat women, but Islam does conceive their role in dramatically different ways from those we expect to see in the late-modern liberal West, especially in the obligations* that it asks women to accept. Throughout, there’s an emphasis on individuality being expressed through family and community, rather than through the assertion of rights. Now, you could say (pace Mill) that that’s fine and that they can do that unless or until it comes into conflict with them as individuals, but the line here isn’t as simple as that. Community practices and mores aren’t a la carte – they constitute a whole, not a collection of rules and regulations that can be adjusted to fit the Western mind.

    So, you’re left with one of the fundamental tensions in liberalism:

    On the one hand, it’s an emphatically universalist individualism – this is where Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes in – that demands that all particular loyalties are dropped in favour of our new role as Millian Clarke Kents (but will we also be Nietzschean Supermen?). “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; render unto God that which Caesar permits.”

    On the other hand, its justification for this universalist principle is of individual freedom and autonomy – and that demands that people be allowed to do stuff that other people don’t like, toleration uber alles. So, if you want somebody to be free as a Muslim, then up to a certain point you can’t expect them to be happy about somebody’s homosexuality – all that we are left with is regulating how and how far they can express their disapproval, and protecting the affected as far as we can, and as far as they will allow. If somebody consents to some degree of persecution as part of their identity, it creates an awkward position for liberalism.

    And there is no simple answer to this, unless or until we can reduce everybody to Homo Economicus-like homunculi. At that point, liberalism’s circle becomes square, but I’d rather not see it happen…

    This country’s liberal institutions and practices aren’t, it seems to me, predicated on such a thin view of humanity, but that’s because they rest on foundations which are not liberal. And that, for me, is the real issue here – not a pissing contest over whose is the truer liberalism (individualists against multiculturalists), but the fact that we fall back to this because we have lost all confidence in any substantive notion of what it means to be a member of our society, be it England or Holland, so that we ask minorities to trade in their community not to be part of ours, but to have ‘rights’.

  14. Meaders said:

    Meaders – who is advocating denying human rights to Muslims?

    You are, by establishing an implicit tension between “Enlightenment values” and “Muslim values”. No such opposition exists, if the Enlightenment has any meaning at all.

    Can I echo the comments regarding interpretation of religious texts? The hijab, for instance, is not explicitly referred to in the Koran; there are good arguments that homosexuality is not explicitly denounced (and certainly not as clearly as it in the Bible); there’s even a literalist interpretation of the Koran that holds it’s ok to drink beer and whiskey, but not wine and brandy, due to a few lines on the distinction between drinks made with grapes, and everything else… it’s a futile exercise to search for the causes of political differences and historical movements by reference to religious texts alone.

    These things exist in a context: in the case of the Muslim world, that is overwhelmingly defined by its experience of colonialism from the mid-C19th onwards. That collision, incidentally, is where most of these terrible crimes and immoral practices for which “Islam” is held responible emerged.

  15. Blimpish: On the one hand, it’s an emphatically universalist individualism – this is where Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes in – that demands that all particular loyalties are dropped in favour of our new role as Millian Clarke Kents (but will we also be Nietzschean Supermen?). “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; render unto God that which Caesar permits.”

    That’s essentially what the Dutch state — and other European states — should do. They should say: we believe in the Enlightenment, that all observable phenomena can in principle be understood by the concentrated human intellect, in the process called science, and we believe in universal human rights, as enunciated in the European Convention on Human Rights. European states should say to their residents, and to potential immigrants: These are our values, and they are not negotiable; we will defend them with whatever level of force it takes, and if you can’t live with them, you aren’t welcome here.

    Is Islam incompatible with Western values? We must distinguish between the doctines of islam the religion, and how Muslims in reality behave — the latter is more important for the purposes of this discussion. Muslims don’t all believe the same things or do the same actions; the Islam of the Taliban, of Osama bin Laden or of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad aren’t compatible with Western values. But the Islam of Recep Erdogan, Jalal Talabani, or Mahathir bin Mohamad doesn’t seem to be fundamentally at odds with the West.

  16. DavidBruno said:

    I have a lot of time for Ms Hirsi Ali. I would like to add some comments as to the context in which Ms Ali has raised her voice over the last three years.

    I am posting from Brussels and have spent a lot of time working in The Netherlands over the last 5 years so have followed some of these events closely myself.

    The context in which Ms Ali has produced Submission 1 (and is now working on Submission 2 on homosexuals in Islam) is one in which traditional Dutch freedom of expression is under attack in a way that has not occured since the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. There have been two assassinations (Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn) and several other intellectuals, politicians and civil servants are currently under 24/7 police protection. This is an unprecedented era in Dutch peace time social and political history.

    The one thread that links these assassinations and the death threats resulting in police protection together has been the active intimidation by Islamists of anyone who criticizes in public any aspect of Islam, Islamism, Muslim cultural or social practices, or attempts to assess any of the questions around the issues of Muslim integration in The Netherlands without resort to the default “its due to racism and Islamophobia” meme.

    Ms Ali suffered genital mutilation and escaped a forced marriage in her earlier life as a Muslim in Somalia. She arrived in Holland as a penniless refugee – with these experiences seared into her consciousness – and rose through her own efforts – as a woman – to become first, a political researcher for the Dutch Labour Party, and, then an MP for the Liberal Party.

    What irony then that, as a result of her own efforts and the exercise of her own free will and freedom of expression, she should now be a virtual prisoner – in a *free country*, a progressive liberal democracy which accords a high level of individual and group rights – in the hands of the kind of men who, in her own country, tried to force her into a pre-determined role thought fit for a woman.

    While working as a researcher for the Labour Party, some years ago, she undertook research into why some Muslim women, living in Muslim communities in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, were not able to make greater progress in terms of educational and employment opportunities, compared to their peers from other ethnic minorities. Although she was expecting part of the explanation to be due to ‘racism’, she was not expecting, on such a large scale, the cultural impediments to the progress of women from within some Muslim communities that she actually uncovered. The Labour Party shelved her report and she promptly defected to the Liberal Party. I suspect that this experience of encountering politicians, in a democracy, who wanted to bury her findings because they were not politically ‘sayable’ or ‘printable’ – even though they were the truth – was another of her life experiences that further fired her determination to expose the human rights limitations for women and some other minority groups endemic in some Islamic states, under Sharia law, and which are subject to informal practice within some parts of Muslim communities within the West, overlooked and not interfered with by the authorities, due to a misplaced sense of deference to the culture of a minority group.

    Ms Ali these days can barely walk in the streets of Amsterdam without hearing the words “whore” shouted at her. She is constantly protected by her bodyguards. She has won her court battle to proceed with Submission 2. She is about to fight another court battle against a Rotterdam imam who issued a public call for her to be “blown away”.

    Submission 2 on Islam and homosexuals will also be topical given the human rights abuses of homosexuals common in Islamic states. It will also strike a note with many Dutch homosexuals, who are very aware of the large increase in street attacks against them in recent years in their traditionally liberal country, where gay bashing was virtually unknown in Amsterdam until the last few years and where, this summer, the Amsterdam Tourist Authority issued a warning to gay tourists stating that they should exercise caution given that they may become targets of street attacks by “those who do not share their cultural values”.

  17. Dave said:

    Well Meaders, leftists like you think all the problems in the world are down to European Colonialism. That is both a racist attitude and also very lazy because it saves you from having to bother to learn reality.

    Islam was a religon spread by extreme force right from the very start.
    http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina50502p3.htm

    Yusuf Smith: Muhammad himself married his relatives. “Muhammad’s marriage to Zainab, who was the wife of his adopted son,”… http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/SKM/zeinab.htm

  18. Yusuf Smith: Muhammad himself married his relatives. “Muhammad’s marriage to Zainab, who was the wife of his adopted son,”…

    The point is, the son was adopted, and Islam explicitly rejects adoption. The “son” in question was originally a slave, who was taken in when he was a young boy and was “designated” a son, but was really of a completely different tribe and was thus nowhere near the prohibited degrees. He was at one point called Zaid bin Muhammad; when adoption came to be banned, he came to be known by his original name of Zaid bin Haritha.

    So, it’s not incest.

  19. Dave said:

    It might not technically be incest because she was not a blood relative, but the actions of Muhammad have influenced a lot of people for 1400 years, he sets the example that many others have followed. He married his relative, stole his sons’ wife, married a 6 year old and enslaved many other women.
    Great example from a great man!

  20. Dave: there is nothing “technical” about it. It was not incest – full stop. People are either blood related or they are not; some cultures recognise adoption and some don’t, and Islam does not. If adoption is not recognised, an “adopted son” is not a son. And there was no “stealing” anyway. When people divorce, they are free to marry other people, as both did, with very satisfactory results.

  21. Meaders said:

    Well Meaders, leftists like you think all the problems in the world are down to European Colonialism. That is both a racist attitude and also very lazy because it saves you from having to bother to learn reality.

    Thanks Dave. Sorry for ignoring you before: I simply assumed that someone who compared a major world religion to the NAZIS (your capitals) was a) a racist fuckwit and b) mad as box of frogs more generally. (“Extreme force”! How, pray tell, do you think Christianity arrived in South America? Idiot.)

  22. Dave said:

    I didn’t compare Islam to Nazis’.

    Questioning Islam is not racist, Islam isn’t an ethnicity it’s an ideology.

    – A major World Religion?
    So what if a lot of people believe something, doesn’t make it correct.
    Most people used to believe the world was flat, and a lot of other stupid things as well.

    Yes, I know Christianity was spread through violence and colonialism, I have never said otherwise. huh?

  23. Steve said:

    Meaders, I still don’t see how I am advocating denying human rights to Muslims.

    Sure, as you say there are a number of ways in which the Koran can be interpreted. However, if you look at the way that it is interpreted throughout the Islamic world, what Irshad Manji describes as “The Desert interpretetion of Islam” holds sway. OK, there may be an argument that the Koran doesn’t forbid homosexuality or the drinking of whisky but few people are making that argument in the Islamic world, let alone implementing laws on the basis of it.

    Trying to blame colonialism (presumably European rather than Turkish) for the aggressive fundamentalism in Islam doesn’t stand up. Islam began to retreat away from science and into religious dogma during the middle ages, well before the colonial period.

    In answer to your charge, the people who do the most to deny human rights to Muslims are other Muslims, which is the reason why people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali flee to the West.

  24. Blimpish said:

    Phil: as you say, while most Muslims might behave in ways that do not conflict with an assertive secularism, there is a problem for those who want to stay true to the doctrines. This is a problem with Western secularism (is there any other sort?), perhaps – that it grows from a religious tradition (Christianity) which is rooted in the distinction between God and Caesar; Islam does not sit easily with the idea of a state rooted in raw power, detached from a public theology.

    I’d guess this is a problem (for Western nations) with Islam more than other religions, too: not because of anything wrong with Islam, but because it is a universalist faith, like Christianity (and indeed, atheist humanism), rather than being tied to particular times or places.

  25. Steve said:

    Blimpish, I don’t think this is, as you say, an easy and cost free choice. Sure, we are all members of communities which shape our view of the world. In the West though, the individual has a relationship with the state through elected representatives and has legal rights as an individual.

    The idea that some people will have the relationship with the state mediated by self-appointed community leaders and that they will effectively live under different rules, is totally at odds with our traditions, whether liberal, conservative or whatever.

  26. Blimpish said:

    As it goes, I’m pretty much against a state-individual model of social hierarchy; I’m a conservative, and so I want a ‘thick’ society, with lots of intermediation. That happens through a range of social institutions, some of which involve authority figures. Perhaps end-of-history anomie makes that a forlorn hope; but I don’t particularly like the Hobbesian alternative.

    My problem with multiculturalism is not that it sees people as belonging to communities, but that it doesn’t admit of any hierarchy under a binding common identity and set of institutions. It is a bastard hybrid, taking the Hobbesian state (politics as physics) and seeking to sit it across a range of dislocated communities.

    Basically, if pushed to choose between liberal individualism and multiculturalism, while I might choose the former, it isn’t because I’m blind to the valid criticisms of individualism that multiculturalism seeks (badly) to address.

  27. Dobb said:

    !I didn’t compare Islam to Nazis’.

    Why not? How about Yusuf Smith’s ridiculous website for a start, which begins with: “Comments insulting Islam are unsuitable ….”. Which is worse, to be a secret fascist or one who thus parades it on the armband of his website?

    The main difference between Islam and Nazism is that the former is vastly more fascist but there wasn’t a Red Army to defeat it.

    See:
    http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/http_majorityrightscom_indexphp_guestbloggers_first_post/

  28. Hodan Jamac-Barre said:

    Before I start I am so so sorry to say this but ayaan hirsi or what ever her name is.she is not a muslim or has enough knowledge to charge all muslims.what she has knowledge is somalian culcure and only the culture mybe the culture was wrong but not the believe of ISLAM.
    I dont understand why she would have security with her at all times becouse I dont think there is any muslims that want to hurt sameone like her for what?what ever she decide to be is up to her as my allah said when gudgemant day comes is for her to unswer her belives not all muslims.ok……..
    When she can trancelate the HOLY QURAN IN her language and english then she might have same knowledge of Islam but until then she shouldnt cus what other people chooce to believe without any force.Ayaan Hirsi choose to be not muslim after she got her degree.and i choosed to fellow my believe after i got my degree so less all humans around the world live in peace without butting each other downxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  29. Steve said:

    Hodan, there are plenty of Muslims who say they want to hurt her and one of them killed Theo Van Gogh, her co-producer of the flim ‘Submission’.

    I think she is very wise to have security. You may be right, Allah may judge her, but some Muslims don’t want to wait that long.

  30. George Carty said:

    Dave: Questioning Islam is not racist, Islam isn’t an ethnicity it’s an ideology.

    Islam isn’t a race, but it might as well be one. In Islam’s entire history, not one Muslim population has ever abandoned Islam.

    French colonial rule didn’t destroy Islam in Algeria.

    Russian and (totalitarian atheist!) Soviet colonial rule in Central Asia didn’t destroy Islam there.

    In Iberia and in the Balkans (except for Bosnia and greater Albania) Islam was only eliminated by outright ethnic cleansing.

    The conclusion is obvious: “Islam delenda est” is a call for genocide…

  31. rocky said:

    Sir,

    Iam from holland living in the Uk, what most british citizens doon’t know is that ms Hirsh ayan ali was taken up by the labour party many years ago. She made a quick career and moved to the right conservatives when it was the “right tme ” in holland to be at the “wright wing” . She began the express very right wings views because the majority of the ducth were ready for it , the was after September the 11th, Pim fortyn, Theo van Gogh, ( i have to corrected the gentleman in a previous mail, Pim fortyun was not killed by an islamist but by an animal right activist who was a white dutch citizen).

    Ayaan Hirshi ali then dropped the labour party and moved to the right conservatives making even quicker career. Hirshi ayaan ali has in my eyes made a great mistake by dividing the Dutch and their moslim communities by using her examples of her own somalie moslim background.
    Islam difference from region to region, the islam in turkey is different than the one in Somalia. Turkish woman do not get circumcised.

    Ayaan Hirshi ali has made the mistake in informing the White Dutch community in a twisted way. She now is the biggest allie of Minister verdonk who is very right winged and who has send back many asylumseeker to their country
    with a report to their goverment with the information of on the reason of why they had applied for asylum. To do this is illegal and several of them have been killed. Verdonk has denied sending those reports for several weeks until the journalist
    managed to come up with evidence she then had no choice but admitting having send the reports.

    Verdonk now want to send Iranian asylumseekers who are homosexuals back to Iran knowing that they are going to be killed upon return.
    Ms. Ayaan hirshi ali, Verdonk biggest allie agrees with this policy.

    I like you was very impressed by Ayaan hirshi ali
    5 years ago when it all began but i slowly started to release that this woman is there for her own reasons and that’s fame and unfinished bussiness with er own past and her family.

    This woman doesn’t really want to work on solving problems within communities but like to
    make loads of money with her retoriek which charms the white communities for the first couple of years.

    Holland has finally woken up and a lot of friend of mine who were very in favour of Ms. Ayaan hirshi ali now think that she is twisted.

    Holland can overcome this problem because it is small i am worried that if London or the Uk takes on her retoriek that it will be going dangerously wrong.

  32. rocky said:

    on other thing i think that there is a lot to solve within the islamic communities but i think Ayaan hirshi ali politics are taking further away from the solutions than moving closer to it

  33. rocky said:

    I have to tell you a bit more about Ayaan hirshi ali.

    Ayaan hirshi ali was taken on by the labour party
    in holland when she started her political career.

    September the 11th happened, holland moved to the right .

    Pim fortyn came on the “far right politician”
    60 % of the dutch voted for him.

    Ayaan hirshi ali started to ventilate her right winged views at the labour. Labour was not happy with her retoriek.

    Pim fortyn was shot, by a animal activist (not by an islamist as one comment above mentioned)

    Hirshi Ayaan ali was there at the right time and the right spot she used the reoriek which pleased the majority of the white Dutch people and was taken on by the right conservatives (not
    the liberal conservatives as one comment say’s)

    She left Labour by saying that she had different views

    She used the retoriek about and agianst islam( i am a non believer) and made career as no other.
    Hirshi ayaan ali is the bigist allie of Minister verdonk, the very right winged politician.

    Minister Verdonk has send back many asylumseekers
    and has given their goverments the reports on why they applied for aylum.

    This is illegal and is dangerous for the people who are send back.
    Several of them have been killed. Minister Verdonk denied sending any reports until some journalist came up with evidence. Minister Verdonk had no choice than admitting it.

    Minister Verdonk, Hirhi Ayaan ali biggest allie,
    want now to send back Iranian asylumseekers who are homosexual, knowing that they are going to be killed.

    Hirshi ayan ali had divided Holland with her reteroiek and one dimension explanation of the islam and women in the Islam.

    She has no genuine plans for making real changes
    for the better in the communities but act out of fustration and hunger for fame and career.

    I am pleased that a lot of Dutch people who were mesmerized by her several years ago are starting to question her motives.

    Holland is small and and will overcome the problems, however, she has messed up Holland big time.

    I am worried that it will be a difficult task for Uk to overcome such a confusion this women can bring.

    Freedom of speech is a fantastic thing but when it turns into vainity it becomes dangerous thing.

    Don’t get me wrong i think there are a lot ofissues within the moslim communities which need to be worked on. But Ayaan hirshi ali is not the answering she is the road to confusion

    I am from Holland and i woulod like to advise all of you to do some more research before starting a war.

  34. blog said:

    What a Tragedy it is to see those like Mr Garton Ash, mess with such Cheap SHOT .

    What a Tragedy to bring Votair Down to this Cheap and shallow and filthy level . That Mr Ash has been Brainwashed is obvious. He has been Brainwashed by Iranians who got him to take their SIDE and he is brainwashed by Women who want him to SIDE with their INSANE View of the World and even Religion. The Same WOMEN have Zero RESPECT for Christians and Christianity and JUDAISM.

    There are no Champions of Rights or Democracy here but simply Hysteria and DRAMA and ACTS.

    IT IS NO MORAL COURAGE to HAVE Bodyguard and open one’s BIG Mouth and start Bashing ISLAM or anything else. Any IDIOT CAN DO this.

    What a Tragedy to see Mr ASH to come under influence of such group of people to promote them and give them even Crediblity.!!! What a Tragedy it is .

  35. Ibrahim said:

    I think we know what this lady is talking about.Being a somali, learned and a researcher like she claims to be…I feel she has not read enough of Islam or was it the Somali culture she is talking about which we need to imporve…