Is she right?

Author, activist condemns Muslim faith at Palm Beach talk

By JAN SJOSTROM
Palm Beach Daily News
Saturday, March 21, 2009
PALM BEACH — Anyone who believes that Muslims can be assimilated into Western societies is in for a rude awakening, according to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ali, who spoke at The Society of the Four Arts Tuesday, has reason to suspect Muslims' good will. She was born in Somalia, suffered genital mutilation as a child and was forced into an arranged marriage, according to her official biography. She rejected her Muslim faith and fled to The Netherlands, where she became a member of the Dutch parliament.

She's been under protection since 2004, when a death threat against her was found pinned to the murdered body of Theo van Gogh, who directed her short movie documenting the suffering of women under Islam.
Today she lives in the United States and is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. She's written a memoir, titled Infidel, and co-founded the AHA Foundation, which works to combat the oppression of women by fundamentalist Islamic regimes.
In his introduction to her talk, Winston Churchill, a Palm Beach resident and the British prime minister's grandson, called her "quite the most courageous woman it's ever been my privilege to meet."
Some aspects of her biography have been disputed, and her political views are controversial.
There are two schools of thought in the West regarding Islam, she said. One says that radicals have hijacked Islam and that peaceful co-existence is possible with adherents of the faith.
Ali subscribes to the second point of view.
"Islam is not a religion of peace," she said. "It's a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can."
In her opinion, European society is in danger of being hijacked by a rapidly growing population of Islamic immigrants, who lack the means or the inclination to assimilate and are supported by Muslim nations in their efforts to undermine their host countries.
Islamic thought and practice is incompatible with that of the West, because in Islamic societies, religious law is supreme, she said.
"All aspects of the life of a person in public and private, down to the most intimate details, are regulated," she said. "In liberal democracies, laws are not made by God."
According to the prophet Muhammad, whose example is one of the foundations of Islamic law, associating with infidels is a sin; women should not be allowed to leave the house without their husbands or a guardian; polygamy and sexual intercourse with a child are permitted, and homosexuals should be executed, she said.
"This is not my opinion," Ali said. "These are facts."
But John Ederer, imam of the Islamic Foundation of South Florida, said Ali is ascribing the teachings of fringe elements to all Muslims.
"... I can say with certainty that poor Ayaan is a victim of some men who call themselves Muslims but are not in accordance with our 14-century-old legacy of authentic scholarship," he said in a statement. "It is their lack of knowledge of the 'fundamentals' of Islam that would have them interpret a few texts to hold such unorthodox beliefs and practices.
"No doubt Ayaan and the people who affected her thinking can bring you a few verses of the Koran or sayings of the prophet Muhammad to prove their point. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups can do the same with the words of the Bible to convince a commoner of their ideology."
Many people believe that prejudice accounts for the high number of Muslims in Europe living on welfare, when the truth is that poorly educated Muslim women are ill-equipped to help their children succeed in school, and many Muslims use religious objections as an excuse not to work, Ali argued.
Negotiating with radical Muslims won't succeed, she said.
"Every accommodation of Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that Allah is on their side," she said. "They see every act of appeasement as an invitation to make fresh demands."
Ali warned that European societies are in danger of being subverted by Muslim immigrants as European populations age and decline and the number of young Muslim immigrants explodes.
"The most pressing question of our time is this: Is European society to be taken over by a radical invasion of Muslim immigrants?" she said.
Ali's views are disputed by many authorities, including Robert Rabil, director of graduate studies in the political science department at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Rabil teaches the school's Muslim studies courses.
There are Islamic extremists in Europe who are trying to radicalize the Muslim population, he said.
But "Islam is a monotheist religion embraced by 1.4 billion people," he said. "You don't lump all these people with the Islamic fundamentalists."