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Urgent Appeal: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali
By Sam Harris / November 20, 2007
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the most prominent advocate of free speech and women's rights in the Muslim world, and for this she must live under perpetual armed guard, even in the West. Unfortunately, on October 1st of this year, the Dutch government officially rescinded its promise to protect her. Now, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's friends, colleagues and admirers must come to her aid.
I have created a page on my website that links directly to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust. The money raised by this trust will pay Ayaan Hirsi Ali's security expenses. In the event that money remains after these costs have been met, it will be used to encourage and protect other dissidents in the Muslim world. The ongoing protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a moral obligation. It is also a strategic one: for here is a woman doing work that most of us cannot do–indeed, would be terrified to do if given the chance–and yet this work is essential for preserving the freedoms we take for granted in the West. If every reader of this email simply pledged ten dollars a month to protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the costs of her security would be covered for as long as the threat to her life remains. Thanks in advance for your support. Sincerely, Sam Harris Ayaan Hirsi Ali In 2005, TIME included Ayaan Hirsi Ali in its list of the World's 100 Most Influential People. If you would like to know more about her, please read Christopher Caldwell's fine profile in the New York Times Magazine. You can also read the essay that Salman Rushdie and I recently published in the Los Angeles Times, or the one that Christopher Hitchens wrote for Slate.
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I’m ready to contribute to the cause, but why hasn’t Ali’s question been answered yet?
Well, if the subject is merely the psychological regression represented by religion, I'm with you. But this is hardly the force of Hirsi Ali's argument; remember, she's advocating "crushing" (her term) the adherents of one religion in particular. I myself regard belief in the divinity of Jesus or eschewing the flesh of the lovely pig because such a privation pleases God as equivalent to belief in wizards and dragons, but I'll be damned if I'd support some creep who advocates crushing Christians or Jews for their beliefs.
 And Hirsi Ali's just such a creep.Â
"…worrying about the anti-democratic tendencies in some expressions of Islam is no reason to support a woman who totally rejects of one of the world's major religions"
 It's not a necessary reason, certainly, but it's a pretty good one. The best reason to support a woman who totally rejects one of the world's major religions is because the religion, like all religions, is institutionalized ignorance. Islam, again like all religions, disdains humanity's empirical abilities in favor of humanity's capacity for metaphysical whimsy, then rationalizes the subsequent psychic and physical damage as adherence to the one true way. No more is necessary for complete rejection of any religion, though Islam generally has lately distinguished itself as the faith most adept at indulging barbaric tendencies in some of its expressions.
i'm not a bleeping arab you genius. looks like you are 0 for 2, the same average as your iq.
nor did i attack her, asking a straightforward question about her funding.
http://alieteraz.com/
To begin with, I'm not a Muslim. It's deliciously ironic that troglodytes like our anonymous friend above assume that I am, while I have been taken to be Jewish by those unfriendly to Jews (and by Jews as well).
 I'd love for resident wizard Craig to figure out an algorithm which would efface such non-responsive, contentually vacuous bullshit as the above, while permitting those who have substantive rejoinders full voice. Â
I've had it with your attacks against a courageous woman. It's not surprising that two Arab Muslim men attack a women who has more courage than either of these two "middle-class couch rebels" cowards will ever have. Your reaction is typical because the hatred of  women is part of your culture just like the hatred of Jews is.Â
Arab Muslims are the most racists, sexist, bigots in the world. Jews are described constantly as monkey and pigs in the media. Arab Muslim children are taught that murdering Jews and non-Muslims is not only acceptable but something to be proud of.Â
Of course there won't be a a word about this by the two cowards above because Muslims are always right and in their view the rest of us are not even humans. Hypocrisy and lying is what they do best.
I'm all for hunting down criminals like the one who killed Theo Van Gogh, I'm an absolutist re free speech and so have little patience with the idea that someone or another's god must be insulated from being lampooned, and in several other ways endorse those elements of Hirsi Ali's platform that are not entirely unhinged.
 But I will not lionize a woman who supports "defeating" Islam-not radical Islam or political Islam or (and I use the wooden-headed term reluctantly) "Islamofascism". No, Islam qua Islam-close their schools, crush them, etc. (readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with her disgraceful performance in Reason magazine, in which she relieves herself of these and similar odious opinions. If not, it is available at  http://www.reason.com/news/show/122457.html )
 I have serious problems with a person who entertains such a casual regard for American-style freedoms, who faults Daniel Pipes (!) for coddling Muslims, who talks about "them" monolithically, in the manner of demagogues of every stripe, no matter that she may articulate some opinions I endorse.
 I understand that she has lived through some ghastly injuries, physical and psychological, and I'm sure that, like most bigots, she comes by her irrationalities honestly. But worrying about the anti-democratic tendencies in some expressions of Islam is no reason to support a woman who totally rejects of one of the world's major religions, and who equates Osama Bin Laden with the Pakistani guy running the newsstand down the street.   Â
Why did she turn out Denmark's offer to protect her?
Was it because she wants to live in the US? If so, why isn't the AEI hooking her up?
Further, who are the "other dissidents in the Muslim world."
Finally, how do you define Muslim world? Is it Muslim-majority world i.e. Asia/Middle East, or anywhere Muslims live.Â
http://alieteraz.com/
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