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Associated Press – February 10, 2007
Critic of Islam finds new home in U.S.
WILLIAM C. MANN
WASHINGTON - As a child, Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled violence in Somalia with her family. As an adult she fled Kenya to escape an arranged marriage. She left her adopted Holland after she was caught up in political turmoil and had her life threatened.
Hirsi Ali joined the American Enterprise Institute last September, after a sometimes stormy 14 years in the Netherlands, where she was a member of parliament and became a central figure in two events that jolted the nation.
Next, a fight within Hirsi Ali's political party over her Dutch citizenship brought down the government.
"I'm an apostate. That's why the book is called 'Infidel,'" she said in a telephone interview from New York.
"We believe that she will bring an increase to the level of anti-Muslim bias in this country that we saw her bring to the situation in Europe," the council's communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, said in an interview Saturday. "Unfortunately her message is one of bigotry, not one of mutual understanding." . . .
The Council on American-Islamic Relations‘ Hooper contends that she exaggerates to further her agenda.
"She is just one more Muslim-basher on the lecture circuit," he said.
Many institute scholars have had a close relationship with the Bush administration. Among its senior fellows are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations ; and Lynne Cheney , wife of Vice President Dick Cheney .
"I‘ve been accused of selling out," she said. "I‘ve been told, ‘You‘re hanging the dirty laundry outside.‘" …..
http://www.onelocalnews.com/whiterockreviewer/ViewArticle.aspx?id=60517&source=2
Newsweek – February 26, 2007
Hirsi Ali is a hero among Islamophobes
Lorraine Ali
….Hirsi Ali's exceptionally harsh life story—told in her new memoir, "Infidel"—would elicit empathy from the coldest of hearts. But that's not the book's only purpose. Hirsi Ali, a 38-year-old Dutch citizen and women's rights advocate who now lives in Washington, D.C., is one of Europe's most infamous critics of Islam. She renounced her Muslim faith after the 9/11 attacks, decried what she regarded as the religion's brutality in lectures and interviews, and rode a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment all the way into the Dutch Parliament, where she gained a seat.
There's clearly an audience for Hirsi Ali in America too. The recently released "Infidel" (titled "My Freedom" in the Netherlands) has climbed to No. 6 on the New York Times best-seller list.
Hirsi Ali is more a hero among Islamophobes than Islamic women. That's problematic considering she describes herself in "Infidel" as a woman who "fights for the rights of Muslim women, the enlightenment of Islam and the security of the West." How can you change the lives of your former sisters, and work toward reform, when you've forged a career upon renouncing the religion and insulting its followers? Hirsi Ali says overhauling Islam is not her responsibility: she just lays out "the facts" and leaves it to others to go about fixing this supposedly broken faith. But her facts are often subjective: at one point she characterizes "every devout Muslim who aspires to practice genuine Islam" as a follower of the Muslim Brotherhood. That may have been true in Hirsi Ali's experience, but it hardly speaks for the globe's 1.3 billion other followers. It's ironic that this would-be "infidel" often sounds as single-minded and reactionary as the zealots she's worked so hard to oppose….
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17204802/site/newsweek/
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