By now, while I have been swamped with other work and haven’t been able to post anything about it, you have no doubt heard that the courageous ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali has returned to the Netherlands — whether temporarily or permanently is unclear — as the Dutch government stopped paying for her security detail in the United States. That seems to be rather an odd arrangement in the first place, particularly after the Dutch tried to revoke her Dutch citizenship, but she still retains that citizenship. And this story explains that “as a Dutch citizen, Ayaan does not qualify for protection in the United States under US laws and regulations.”
That should change. Six years after 9/11 and everyone is still playing politics with the defense against the global jihad, such as it is, and it’s just another indication of how much we are currently hamstrung by conventional thinking that no one found or apparently even thought to find some way to arrange for the U.S. government to pay for Hirsi Ali’s protection. Some money couldn’t be diverted from the iftar dinner budget to cover this? Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s presence in the United States cannot be regarded as a national asset that is worth an investment?
Moreover, everyone has grown used to this since the Salman Rushdie affair, but it is worth reminding ourselves that it is scandalous that Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs constant guards at all. What has she done? She has spoken out about Muhammad’s deleterious example and the mistreatment of women in Islam. For this she has to fear for her life and be accompanied constantly by guards. Why is there no public discussion or debate about why we are willing to tolerate this in the first place? Why is there no connection of this issue to questions of Muslim immigration? The Netherlands imported Muhammad Bouyeri, and he murdered Theo Van Gogh and threatened Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the name of Islam. How many more Bouyeris has the Netherlands already imported? How many will the Dutch import before they’re through? And how many are here in the U.S., due to the same insane immigration policies? Why is there no connection of this issue to the presence of Muslims who hold Islamic supremacist views in the United States already?
“‘We Are Making Fools of Ourselves in the Eyes of the World,'” by Leon de Winter in Spiegel Online (thanks to Fjordman):
Fear of fanatical Islamists prompted Ayaan Hirsi Ali to leave the Netherlands, her adopted home, and now she has been forced to return. Paying for her bodyguards in the United States is too expensive for the Dutch government — what a disgrace.
There are exactly five people that the Dutch government has to protect against death threats from radical Islamists.
This sort of protection is expensive. Society bears the costs because freedom of opinion, a cornerstone of our culture, is on the line. The extremists, for their part, are prepared to risk their own lives to kill those under government protection.
The costs of protection are completely disproportionate to the outcome: the continued existence of our values and norms.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the sixth person granted protection by the Dutch government. She began receiving threats when, as a Dutch citizen and member of the parliament, she spoke out critically against political Islam. After the so-called “passport scandal,” when the Dutch minister of immigration and integration threatened to confiscate her passport after Ayaan had been accused of lying about her name and birth date when she first arrived in the Netherlands, she moved to the United States, which precipitated a sharp upswing in her career within only a few months. She wrote a bestseller and landed a job at the American Enterprise Institute. But as a Dutch citizen, Ayaan does not qualify for protection in the United States under US laws and regulations.
Contrary to what many in the Netherlands believe about the success of her autobiography, she is not wealthy. She could not pay for the kind of protection she needs out of her own pocket — no matter how much she would like to do so. Besides, the Dutch government apparently failed to find the right US officials with whom they could have reached an agreement. Under a decision by Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Balin, the protection paid for by the Dutch government expired on Oct. 1. Ayaan returned to the Netherlands, because without protection she doesn’t have a day left to live.
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How many days will he give Ayaan? Another week to live? A month? And then it would be time for the butchers of fundamentalist Islam to move in?