Ayaan Hirsi Ali Interview

Grant Jones at the Dougout posts on an interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Reason magazine. If you read the whole article he links to, you'll see her level of conceptualization is considerably more advanced than the interviewer's. Consider this exerpt:

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.

Reason: Are we really heading toward anything so ominous?

You'd think this last question was asked by a liberal or leftist in denial of reality but no, it was a conservative.

Or this exerpt from the article:

Reason: I want my government to protest the Rushdie fatwa. I’m not so sure they ought to diplomatically engage some idiots burning a piece of cloth or a straw figure in the streets of Islamabad. Isn’t there a huge difference between the two?

Hirsi Ali: It’s not just a piece of cloth. It’s a symbol. In a tribal mind-set, if I’m allowed to take something and get away with it, I’ll come back and take some more. In fact, I’ll come and take the whole place, especially since it’s my holy obligation to spread Islam to the outskirts of the earth and I know I’ll be rewarded in heaven. At that point, I’ve only done my religious obligation while you’re still sitting there rationalizing that your own flag is a piece of cloth.

We have to get serious about this. The Egyptian dictatorship would not allow many radical imams to preach in Cairo, but they’re free to preach in giant mosques in London. Why do we allow it?

Wow! Is this lady tuned in to a reality that the interviewer-and many in America's educated class-isn't? Read the whole article, an intellectual breath of fresh air.