Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "Everyone Is Afraid to Criticize Islam"

Ayaan Hirsi Ali in an interview with Der Spiegel available on the American Enterprise Insitute site

SPIEGEL: Was apologizing for the cartoons the wrong thing to do?

Hirsi Ali: Once again, the West pursued the principle of turning first one cheek, then the other. In fact, it's already a tradition. In 1980, privately owned British broadcaster ITV aired a documentary about the stoning of a Saudi Arabian princess who had allegedly committed adultery. The government in Riyadh intervened and the British government issued an apology. We saw the same kowtowing response in 1987 when (Dutch comedian) Rudi Carrell derided (Iranian revolutionary leader) Ayatollah Khomeini in a comedy skit (that was aired on German television). In 2000, a play about the youngest wife of the Prophet Mohammed, titled "Aisha," was cancelled before it ever opened in Rotterdam. Then there was the van Gogh murder and now the cartoons. We are constantly apologizing, and we don't notice how much abuse we're taking. Meanwhile, the other side doesn't give an inch...After the West prostrates itself, they'll be more than happy to say that Allah has made the infidels spineless.

SPIEGEL: What should the appropriate European response look like?

Hirsi Ali: There should be solidarity.

Solidarity? Isn't it only with victims that you can show solidarity? Could she be suggesting that Europeans are the victims here? Ludicrous idea! (Unless linked to the US).

Meanwhile, she is preparing Submission 2, which will deal

with the dilemma into which the Muslim faith plunges four different men. One hates Jews, the second one is gay, the third is a bon vivant who wants to be a good Muslim but repeatedly succumbs to life's temptations, and the fourth is a martyr. They all feel abandoned by their god and decide to stop worshipping him.

Who is going to show it? If Idomeneo is too 'offensive', what outrages will Submission 2 be used to justify?

She doesn't appear to have left her office since she arrived at the AEI. She's also posted these:

Women Go "Missing" by the Millions
Let's Talk about How to Close the Identity Gap
Unfree Under Islam