Love

I'm in love with this woman. It's a long article, but here are some good parts.

Growing up in a Muslim school, upon hearing about Salmon Rushdie's book:

We had heard that there was this book," Hirsi Ali says, "and that the author had said something horrible about the Prophet, which was extremely blasphemous. And the first thought that came into my head was simply, 'Oh, he must be killed.'

This is so honest...

And here is a brilliant quote, regarding journalists who insist she is a trauma victim from childhood, and that explains her "radical" point of view:

Why are journalists obsessed with personal history?" she asks in her quiet, Africa-lilted English (one of six languages she speaks, including Somali, Arabic, Amharic, Swahili and Dutch). "From my background, being an individual is not something you take for granted. Here it is all you, me, I. There it is we, we, we. I come from a world where the word 'trauma' doesn't exist, because we are too poor. I didn't have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn't all that bad. I know that to some people I am traumatised, that there is something wrong with me. But that just allows them not to hear what I say.

Everyone is so damn afraid of offending people, particularly Muslims, that we are afraid to talk about the much bigger and scarier issues going on. A left wing politician in the Netherlands thinks everyone is overreacting to the Van Gogh murder - it's just an isolated event. It's the same thing left wing Americans say about 9/11, oh it's a one time event. Or the left wingers in Spain, or 3/11 is a one time event. On Salmon Rushdie, it's a one time thing, oh, and I didn't even know this before, but "the Japanese translator of The Satanic Verses, Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death in Tokyo in 1991." And if you dare say anything, you're branded a racist. There is a pattern, a very frigging scary pattern, something we ought to acknowledge, talk about, if not outright blame. The things Ali says are bold, potentially offensive, but I think needed, especially for a politician. I think that's why I love her.