"Islam is not just a belief; it is a way of life, a violent way of life. Islam is imbued with violence, and it encourages violence."
"[A] strict interpretation of Islam is preparation for bigotry, violence, and oppression."
"It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women ..."
"All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. ... The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better." (Emphasis in original.)
There is a price for speaking one's mind about Islam, as Hirsi Ali is aware. She wrote and coproduced the 10-minute 2004 film Submission (a translation of the word Islam) about the treatment of Muslim women. Three months after the film aired on Dutch television, coproducer Theo van Gogh was shot eight times while cycling to work. His jihadist killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, tried decapitating the filmmaker and then plunged two knives into him. One knife pinned a five-page note to the body that, among other things, threatened Hirsi Ali's life. She has been in hiding, or under 24-hour guard, since.
Violence, threats, and fear take their toll, she told me during a June 3 interview before she spoke to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia at the Union League.
"[They] turn the Western mind to an attitude of 'OK, let's not offend them, let's just stay away from the whole concept of Islam,' " she said. Thus the fight against Islamic fascists is waged by military means but not on an intellectual level.
"We're not fighting the ideological war," she says. "There's no counter to the propaganda that the jihadists offer."
The result, she says, is, "you waste the opportunity of converting people who now identify themselves as Muslim into a better idea of how society can and should be built."
