Hitchens on Ali

Following the shameful revocation of Hirsi Ali's passport by the Dutch immigration Minister Rita Verdonk mentioned here earlier this week, it's worth reminding yourself why this woman matters, and why this latest insult has been the last straw for her any love she might have for the Netherlands -- a place once known for being a haven from oppression.

Fortunately, Christopher Hitchens has done the job [Hat tip Julian Pistorius]. Sample:

Originally born in Somalia, she had been a refugee in several African countries and eventually a refugee from her own family, which had decided to "give" her in marriage to a distant male relative she had never met.
    Thinking to escape from such confines by moving to the Netherlands, she was appalled to find that radical Islam had followed her there—or in fact preceded her there—and was proselytizing among Turkish and Moroccan and Indonesian immigrants. In ancient towns like Rotterdam and Amsterdam, where once the refugees from Catholic France and inquisitional Spain had sought refuge, and where Baruch Spinoza had been excommunicated and anathematized for his opposition to Jewish fundamentalism, there were districts where Muslim women were subjected to genital mutilation and where the Dutch police were afraid to set foot.
    Entering politics to try to alert the European left to this danger, she was first elected as a deputy for the Labor Party, but after 9/11 she changed her allegiance to the Liberals. This, she explained, was because many Labor spokesmen preferred to think of immigrants as possessing "group rights." They had become so infatuated by their own "multi-culti" style that they had ignored the rights of individuals—especially women and girls—who were imprisoned within their own ghetto...

Before being elected to parliament, she worked as a translator and social worker among immigrant women who are treated as sexual chattel - or as the object of "honor killings" - by their menfolk, and she has case histories that will freeze your blood.
    These, however, are in some ways less depressing than the excuses made by qualified liberals for their continuation. At all costs, it seems, others must be allowed "their culture" and - what is more - must be allowed the freedom not to be offended by the smallest criticism of it. If they do feel offended, their very first resort is to violence and intimidation, sometimes with the support of the embassies of foreign states...

Read on here. (And if you're interested in finding out more about Baruch Spinoza and just how radical he was, here's an excellent interview and podcast with his biographer Rebecca Goldstein about her book Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity.

She explains why for Spinoza the concept of deity could not be reconciled with the Jewish God and Jewish Law, and why -- in a sad parallel to the treatment of Hirsi Ali -- the Dutch authorities sat back while the Jewish rabbis condemned Spinoza in their own sectarian courts.)

LINKS: The Caged Virgin: Holland's shameful treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Christopher Hitchens, Slate
 Free Radical: Baruch Spinoza inspired Rebecca Goldstein, so why is she out to betray him? - Nextbook
  Dutch appeasers reject Ali - Not PC 

TAGS: Politics_Europe, Immigration, Multiculturalism, Religion, Philosophy