AYAAN HIRSI ALI COMES BACK TO THE US

The brave critic of Islam is now back in the US again, and this time, she's thankfully got security funding to back her (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin). But is Holland retreating on their image as a free country that they'd seemed to cultivate in the years gone by?

Last week, the Dutch government abruptly cut off her security funding, forcing her to return briefly to Holland.

The reasons given were financial, but there was clearly more to it. To put it bluntly, many in Holland find her too loud, too public in her condemnation of radical Islam. She doesn’t sound conciliatory, in the modern continental fashion. Compare her description of Islam as “brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women” with the German judge who, citing the Koran, in January told a Muslim woman trying to obtain a divorce from her violent husband that she should have “expected” her husband to deploy the corporal punishment his religion approves. Hirsi Ali herself says she is often told, in so many words, that she’s “brought her problems on herself.” Now the Dutch prime minister openly says he wants her to deal with them alone.

Fortunately, Hirsi Ali is already back in the United States, under professional, full-time, well-resourced and for the moment privately organized protection. But this week, the Dutch parliament is due to debate her status once again. And once again, the Dutch will be confronted with the facts that Hirsi Ali remains a Dutch citizen; that the threat to her life comes at least in part from groups based in Holland; that she lives abroad because the Dutch political situation forced her to; and that when she speaks out, she does so in defense of what she believes to be Dutch values.

Whether or not the Dutch like it — and I’m sure most of them don’t — revoking her police protection will send a clear message to the world: that the Dutch are no longer willing to protect their own traditions of free speech. Resources will be found, and she will recover. But will Holland?

If the Dutch are in any ways taking a similar path to that of Britain, by living in a bubble and acting as if the victim/target is the one to blame, then how can they expect to recover?

Christopher Hitchens has come out in defense of Hirsi Ali (via Hot Air), and says that America should stand behind her.

Here's Hirsi Ali's AEI page with info for anyone who'd like to know how to contribute to funding her security needs.