27 July 2007

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I have a new hero. I have heard for some time and read about a woman, who was born in Somalia and fled to the Netherlands, became an educated writer, outspoken critic of Sharia states and Islamist behaviour in the west. She has lived under threats of death from Islamist authorities and extremists since her picture "Submission" came out in 2005. As a result of this ten minute video her partner in the production, Theo van Gogh, was brutally murdered and a death threat pinned to his chest with the knife used to butcher him.

This is a woman who has been through extreme hardship since childhood and suffered severely under the laws and traditions of Islam. For the audacity of proclaiming herself a free woman and criticizing such Islamic practices as she has survived she is branded an apostate who must be killed.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali became known to me in more than a passing sense during an interview with Avi Lewis on his programme "On the Map". Avi Lewis has not lived a life of hardship. He is a spoiled and pampered, and apparently relatively uneducated, child of Leftist globetrotter Stephen Lewis and journalist Michele Landsberg. I say that he is relatively uneducated because the most detailed bio I could find stops the narrative of his education by saying that he attended Upper Canada College. In other words, he went to High School.

Lewis' treatment of this heroic woman was childish and embarassing to anyone whose taxes are wasted on a government broadcaster that would field this trash. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's responses, on the other hand, were even and dignified. This enraged Lewis to the point he started speaking in tongues. By calm responses to Lewis' attacks she exposed him as the idiot he is and destroyed the cliché Leftist fare that he spewed. The Left's showpiece came to a gunfight armed with a knife.

Click "Play" below and enjoy the show.