Good reading: short profiles of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Orianna Falacci.
The Ali profile appeared in The Sunday Times, and begins with a reminder: "A letter staked through the heart of the dying film director Theo van Gogh began: 'Open letter to Hirsi Ali.' " That kind of thing will get your attention.
Ali wrote the script for van Gogh's film Submission, and was until recently a member of the Dutch Parliament until stripped of her citizenship. She's moving to the United States, and Holland's loss is America's gain, I say.
Ali is compelling. But if her fervour is her strength, it is also her weakness, alienating the very liberals she should court. Throughout our afternoon together, she brands those who fail to stand up to “the historical mistake of radical Islam” as “the appeasers”. And she uses “appeasers” pointedly. When she was forced to leave her flat, she reflected: “My neighbours confirm the critical view that very few Dutch were brave enough to stand up to the Nazis.” True, perhaps, but not a way to win friends.She is surely right that “appeasers” so fear being called “racist” they would rather let Muslim women in Europe live in submission. But the modern-day Nazis are not just the Islamo-fascists. There are plenty of whites keen to attack innocent Muslims. And the “appeasers” would claim these are the people they are trying to protect. Still, if Europe is no longer big enough for Ali, we are all in trouble. It is sad that the home of the Enlightenment can no longer cope with her right to free speech.
Note her judgment of Tony Blair, too. I'm afraid that Europe is not big enough for Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Daughter of Europe Orianna Fallaci on the Ayatollah Khomeini: "What a pity that, when pregnant with him, his mother did not choose to have an abortion."
Says it all, does it not?
It doesn't get any better than that. It just doesn't, but there's more in this New Yorker profile.
Posted by Craig Ceely at June 6, 2006 09:55 PM