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"The Caged Virgin" Part II

Tony

Penultimate Amazing
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Mar 5, 2003
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http://www.slate.com/id/2142147/

In the two weeks since I wrote about the increasing isolation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian, her isolation has markedly increased. Dutch courts have already required her to vacate her home as a result of her neighbors' petition to have her evicted, and she was on the verge of resigning her seat in the Dutch parliament and of requesting the right of residence in the United States. But this was not enough to satisfy her critics. A leftist news team in the Netherlands has broadcast an item about the way in which she had initially entered the country, and now the immigration minister has proposed stripping her of citizenship (and thus of her seat in parliament) as a result of the irregularities involved.

It will be delightful to have Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Washington. But the American Enterprise Institute, which has offered her a perch, is not the place where she is most needed. In Holland, every day, extremist imams preach intolerance and cruelty, and, when they are criticized, invoke the help of foreign embassies to bring pressure on the Dutch authorities. They face no risk of expulsion. In my youth, the action of lighting one person's cigarette with another was called—don't ask me why—a "Dutch f***." I once heard a young lady, offered a light in those terms, respond loftily by saying, "Doesn't say much for the Low Countries, does it?" No, it didn't, and neither does this mean and petty harassment of a woman who has also redefined that old expression "Dutch courage."

emphasis mine

Is that an accurate reflection of the state of affairs regarding Islamic hate-mongers in Holland?
 
One of the complexities of the case is that Hirsa Ali herself argued for the same zero tolerance policy under which she has now fallen. Her and the hardline immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, were actually political allies in the same party.

I do have to at least give Hirsa Ali the credit for not trying to put all the blame on the immigration minister... I've never read that she did that, even though plenty of her supporters do. What Rita Verdonk did was an extension of the political beliefs both of them were supposed to have shared.
 
Hirsi Ali has been a member of the parliament all this time, under a false name. It was no secret, but strangely no one ever saw it as a problem. Now the immigration minister Verdonk, in order to keep up her tough image during her campaign to become party leader, singlehandedly declared that Hirsi Ali has never legally been a Dutch citizen, after only one day of investigation, following a tv-program about Hirsi Ali's past. The rest of the Dutch cabinet and 149 of the 150 parliament members were furious with Verdonk and motioned her to reconsider Hirsi Ali's status. Verdonk has now garanteed that Hirsi Ali will keep or regain her Dutch citizenship. Now every other case of immigrants who have lost their citizenship because of lying about their identities has to be reconsidered as well, because the law should be applied equally to all.

Because of one decision of one minister, which she quickly revoked under immediate pressure from the rest of the government, the Netherlands has gotten bad press worldwide, with nitwits like Christopher Hitchens making sneers about "Dutch courage".

In Holland, every day, extremist imams preach intolerance and cruelty, and, when they are criticized, invoke the help of foreign embassies to bring pressure on the Dutch authorities. They face no risk of expulsion.
The last sentence is untrue, because, as AWprime mentioned, several radical imams have been expelled already. Since 2002, Imams in the Netherlands are required to follow a special 'intergration course' for imams. Not sure what they teach them there. I don't know how much is true of the statement that "every day, extremist imams preach intolerance and cruelty."

Today in the news: Amnesty international criticizes the Netherlands for passing new anti-terrorism laws which outlaw the promoting, trivializing or denying of terrorism. By the way, Hirsi Ali is also against those laws, saying those issues have to be solved through dialogue, not in court. Then again, she had already thwarted that dialogue by calling Islam 'backward', and calling the prophet Muhammed a pervert and a pedophile. The muslim women for whose rights Hirsi Ali claims to fight didn't want anything to do with her after those insults.
 
Amnesty international criticizes the Netherlands for passing new anti-terrorism laws which outlaw the promoting, trivializing or denying of terrorism. By the way, Hirsi Ali is also against those laws, saying those issues have to be solved through dialogue, not in court. Then again, she had already thwarted that dialogue by calling Islam 'backward', and calling the prophet Muhammed a pervert and a pedophile. The muslim women for whose rights Hirsi Ali claims to fight didn't want anything to do with her after those insults.
In other words, you and I can have a dialogue, as long as I don't say anything that offends you.

Are there any ideas that are so dangerous that they must not even be discussed?
 
In other words, you and I can have a dialogue, as long as I don't say anything that offends you.
No. In other words: you can't start a dialogue by insulting the other's beliefs. You start an argument that way, which isn't an effective way of reaching a concensus. Hirsi Ali realized this herself afterwards. She said herself that she has done more harm than good for the dialogue.
 
No. In other words: you can't start a dialogue by insulting the other's beliefs. You start an argument that way, which isn't an effective way of reaching a concensus. Hirsi Ali realized this herself afterwards. She said herself that she has done more harm than good for the dialogue.
And when one side is insulted and offended and wants to kill you when you even question his beliefs, then what do you do?
 
In other words, you and I can have a dialogue, as long as I don't say anything that offends you.

Are there any ideas that are so dangerous that they must not even be discussed?

I know Denmark has a whole list of ideas that could get you prosecuted if you put them into the public square... ;)
 
And when one side is insulted and offended and wants to kill you when you even question his beliefs, then what do you do?
get bodyguards :)

But seriously, the dialogue I'm talking about is between the native dutch and the muslims (6% of our population), not the fundamentalist terrorists. I don't think there's much use in trying to reason with them.
 

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