"...whatever her views on Islam, they in no way impair her credibility as a feminist, her record as which, after all, is the subject of Applebaum's praise."

I see. So if someone suggests shutting down all the yeshivas in the US because Judaism is inherently bellicose, but her bona fides as a feminist is impeccable, I would be remiss in describing that person as a fanatic?

Ismail

Does Sam Boyd believe that Ayaan Hirsi Ali killed Theo Van Gogh? How about Pim Fortuyn? Does she represent a threat to anyone's security? How is Hirsi Ali -- who suffered genital mutilation, child abuse, indoctrination in a totalitarian ideology -- a "dangerous fanatic?" In the minds of leftists like Boyd (whose slandering of Hirsi Ali is even less charitable than Ian Buruma's "enlightenment fundamentalist" smear), the irrational, murderous, religious-inspired rage of fanatical Muslims (or any non-white, non-Western fanatic) can always be laid at the feet of the West. Robert Mugabe may have gone to far, but can you really blame him after so many years of British colonialism? And aren't the death threats against Ali at least understandable? She's a dangerous fanatic!

Um, when did Sam actually say any of the stuff that you attribute to him in this paragraph?  When did he blame Muslim extremism on the West?

Kirstie Alley is the greatest womens' rights activist of our time!

Who else has stood up as bravely as she has for the right of middle-aged actresses to be a few pounds overweight?

It is a TRAVESTY that she got chased out of her home country -- the Netherlands -- for not living up to the thinness standards of the uptight, overly appearance-consciouss Dutch.

Baby got back!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I'll bite. Who would you say is the second greatest women's rights activist of our time? Rather, let's not be distracted by a complicated ranking system. Can you name a single other women's rights activist of our time?

   It would seem that Mr. Kirchick has missed the following interview with Hirsi Ali in Reason, an interview in which she amply demonstrates that she is indeed dangerous fanatic:

 http://www.reason.com/news/show/122457.html

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.

Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Hirsi Ali is a hero who has now requires 24-hour security protecion because the Islamofascists are after her.  She grew up Muslim and knows exactly what the true mission of Islam is.  Gabriel, like most terrorists appeasers, would have condemned anti-Nazi activists as "dangerous fanatics."  Hisrsi has more courage and "balls" than Gabriel could ever dream of.

  Jamie Kirchick writes: "Gabriel, like most terrorists appeasers, would have condemned anti-Nazi activists as "dangerous fanatics."  Hisrsi has more courage and "balls" than Gabriel could ever dream of."

  So Jamie, Nazism = Islam?  Please note that Hiris Ali is saying, specificially, Islam not Islamofascism.  She wants to militarily crush a major world religion and you are defending her effort as antitotalitarian. Sad.

"She grew up Muslim and knows exactly what the true mission of Islam is."

 How can a religion spread out over a billion people and diverse major cultures have some sort of centralized mission? Are Fareed Zakaria, Benazir Bhutto, Shahrukh Kahn and Ice Cube and Aziz Ansari in on it?

 Jaime is a perfect example of how you don't have to be smart to go to Yale or work at TNR and Commentary.

<blockquote>She knows a hellva lot more about Islam that either me, Sam Boyd, Ali
Eteraz or anyone else opining in the blogosphere, and though I happen
to disagree with her based upon my own understanding of Islam, I am not
going to call this most courageous of 21st heroines a "dangerous
fanatic."</blockquote>

How does she know more about Islam than Ali Eteraz or Marc Lynch? She barely has any real working knowledge of her own former faith.

There are plenty of actual Muslim bloggers out there, including Islamic scholars and non-Muslim scholars of Islam, who know much, much more than Hirsi Ali. She is not an Islamic scholar, she is a secularist polemicist who has taken AEI's dollar and is running with it as best she can.

Simply having experienced oppression at the hands of an ideology does not make one an expert or a martyr. Ayman al-Zawahiri was radicalized by his torture at the hands of Nasserist Egyptian police officials. Lenin's brother was shot by Czarist police.

Hirsi Ali's stupidity abounds in that REASON interview. For instance her claim that only Muslims burn American flags, which she advocates making illegal apparently on a worldwide basis:

<blockquote>Hirsi Ali: We can make fun of George Bush. He’s our president. We
elected him. And the queen of England, they can make fun of her within
Britain and so on. But on an international level, this has gone too
far. You know, the Russians, they don’t burn American flags. The
Chinese don’t burn American flags. Have you noticed that? They don’t
defile the symbols of other civilizations. The Japanese don’t do it.
That never happens.

Reason: We should be able to piss on a copy of the Koran or lampoon
Muhammad, but they shouldn’t be able to burn the queen in effigy.
That’s not a double standard?

Hirsi Ali: No, that’s not what I’m saying. In Iran a nongovernmental
organization has collected money, up to 150,000 British pounds, to kill
Salman Rushdie. That’s a criminal act, but we are silent about that.

Reason: We are?

Hirsi Ali: Yes. What happened? Have you seen any political response to it?

Reason: The fatwa against Rushdie has been the subject of repeated official anger and protests since 1989.

Hirsi Ali: I don’t know.</blockquote>

If you actually read her speeches and interviews, she is a veritable fountain of such idiotic comedy. It's like watching a slightly better looking version of Laura Ingraham.