One of the Most Important People In the World

I find Ayaan Hirsi Ali to be one of the most important voices in the world today. I agree with everything she says in this interview.

This is a particularly good section:

SPIEGEL: But Muslims, like any religious community, should also be able to protect themselves against slander and insult.

Hirsi Ali: That's exactly the reflex I was just talking about: offering the other cheek. Not a day passes, in Europe and elsewhere, when radical imams aren't preaching hatred in their mosques. They call Jews and Christians inferior, and we say they're just exercising their freedom of speech. When will the Europeans realize that the Islamists don't allow their critics the same right? After the West prostrates itself, they'll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.

It is true, I think, when Islamists preach hate, our gut response is "freedom of expression," yet when the cartoon issue comes up, our first response is, "That's offensive." There is something deeply perverted about this world view.