Britain’s Duty To Protect Ayaan Hirshi Ali
CHARLES Moore writes in the Spectator on Ayaan Hirshi Ali:
Ayaan Hirshi Ali lives in daily danger of murder. Since she wrote the script for Submission, the film about Islamic abuse of women directed by the Dutchman Theo Van Gogh, she has been on Islamist death lists. When Van Gogh was stabbed in the street in Amsterdam, her name was mentioned on the note left pinned to his corpse.
If you look on jihadi websites, you can see invitations to anyone knowing her whereabouts to post them on the internet. Ayaan Hirshi Ali was spasmodically protected by the Dutch authorities, until the beginning of this month. Now, because she is in the United States and has a green card there, that protection has been withdrawn, even though she is still a Dutch citizen.
The Americans refuse to help, saying that such protection cannot be given to private citizens. Only the Danes have stepped forward, offering her a sort of cultural asylum. If you think about it, the Dutch behaviour is scandalous, the American scarcely less so. The authorities considered the threat to her life in the Netherlands there so great that they effectively confined her to a safe house. So a country that upholds free speech refuses, in practice, to defend it, and so makes it impossible for her to make a living there. She is, in effect, a refugee — from a country which prides itself on looking after refugees.
Next month, Ayaan Hirshi Ali will visit Britain as the guest of the think tank the Centre for Social Cohesion. Wouldn’t it be an earnest of our government’s commitment to human rights if it offered this brave woman the protection which would enable her to live here?
Omar Bakri lived here. Ayaan Hirshi must be allowed to stay…
Posted: 18th, October 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
