The big question surrounding Hirsi Ali is whether her story is primarily concerned with Islam or feminism. I think the latter. Hirsi Ali's story is repeated millions of times across the globe and transcends cultures.

Global misogyny is now in pandemic proportions. The figures put out by aid agencies and governmental bodies are staggering. Here is one many examples that can be cited;

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr62/en/index.html
http://www.who.int/gender/violence/who_multicountry_study/en/index.html

Seen as a feminist issue Hirsi Ali's story needs to be told over and over again as a necessary catalyst for action. Indeed, trying to sweep feministic issues under the carpet just because they are intertwined with religion is a crime against women.

There is a mountain of evidence that Muslim women are abused within their respective Islamic societies at a rate similar to non-Muslim societies. Many studies have suggested that Muslim societies are probably worse that initially assumed because of under-reporting, poor statistics and under-representation at the political level.

This example comes from Malaysia, a supposedly more progressive Islamic society. God help the women in Saudi Arabia or East Africa;

http://www.wao.org.my/index.htm
http://www.wao.org.my/research.htm#dv

I would suggest that Greg Barnes is out of touch with the global issue of womens rights. He should be praising women who stand up for women, not denigrating them.

Greg, in your moral equivalence between Christian-Jews and Muslims you nullify your intelligence, your sense of history and reality. Certainly there are fanatic Christians and Jews, but they don't threaten the existence of Western civilization as fanatic Muslims do.

Moreover, life for Muslims is difficult because of their bigoted attachment to an atavistic religion, not because of the "pop star" status of Hirsi Ali.

Further, by giving fanatic Muslims a piggyback you play the role, in the unfathomable depths of your ignorance, of the tortoise, in the unforgettable fable of Orson Welles, THE SCORPION AND THE TORTOISE. When the former convinced the latter that in its transportation on the back of the tortoise from one side of the river to the other, it would be silly to sting it as it itself would drown, nonetheless, midstream it did sting it. And in the dying question of the tortoise why it stung it, the scorpion replied, "this is my nature".

Likewise you will be stung by the "Muslim Scorpion" that you carry on your back.

See Australia Calls America-http://australiacalls.blogspot.com

I heard Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the radio this morning, an extended interview of nearly an hour with Richard Fidler. Here is a link to the podcast http://www.abc.net.au/queensland/conversations/stories/s1941807.htm?nsw

The interview began by traversing her history and I found myself nodding along to her explanations of how she abandoned her faith and embraced a secular western life. I felt I understood her reasons for fleeing an arranged marriage and could sympathise with (if not condone) her dishonesty in obtaining refugee status. After all, wasn't it done to escape a brutal misogynistic patriarchy, to forge a new future in a liberal democracy? Even her partnership with the charmless Van Gogh seemed a serious attempt at coming to grips with Islam. Van Gogh might have been a sleazy provocateur, bu no-one deserves to be killed for their ideas.

I was shaken out of my complacency, when Hirsi Ali began stridently insisting that the west had to disarm Iran. Otherwise Iran would mount a nuclear assault on Israel and an atomic war would erupt. She brushed aside the debacle in Iraq, saying that it was essential to stop the "death cult" of Islam. Of course, soon afterwards it was revealed that Hirsi Ali is now a Resident Fellow at the belicose American Enterprise Institute. http://www.aei.org/scholars/filter.all,scholarID.117/scholar.asp Undeterred by the calamity their policies caused in Iraq, the AEI is now at the forefront of pushing for intervention in Iran. http://www.mediatransparency.com/story.php?storyID=180

So it seems that Hirsi Ali has abandoned one brutish patriarchal culture only to join another.

Let us not forget quotes like this;

"Reforming Islam, changing it from what it is now, will benefit women and as women benefit from it they will become educated, become owners of their own bodies and their own destinies."

Especially in the light of;

'Ali has had an around-the-clock guard since 2004 when death threats were made against her because of her outspoken views on Islam.'

Because of;

'She says Muslims must examine their religion and "review the example of the prophet Muhammad. Muslims are not used to criticising Islam, they are not used to criticising the prophet Muhammad", she told a sell-out audience at the Sydney Theatre.'

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/author-calls-on-muslims-to-reform/2007/06/02/1180205582657.html

TR,

I grew up in a north african country and there were a lot of 'bad habits'one could see that people liked to pin on religion. One have a duty to stand up for his/ her rights and many times I challenged cultural habits but I never threw the blame on someone else.
Islamic history shows in the time of the prophet, a man tried to force his daughter to marry and she challenged him in front of the prophet using the Quran (chapter 3 named women) and she won the argument. Another challenged one of the caliphates (Omar) on dowry and he conceded. Go to :
www.readingislam.com.

The issue with Hirsi Ali is she was happy to be treated like a potato by her culture and just pin it on the Islam 'hanger'.
Tunisian women stood up for themselves and they are now more that 11% females in the tunisian parliement: same Islam, same Quran and a country poorer and an hour away from Somalia.

Boaz,

Any muslim or non-muslim will know that the Quran makes sense with 'reasons for revelation. They would also know that all chapter 9 refers to times of wars when few tribes initiated wars and broke peace treaties with the early Muslims and claimed to be Jewish and Christian holy wars.
This also explains why chapter 9 is the only one of the 114 chapter that does not start with "in the name of God most gracious, most merciful".

But as usual, you fail the intellectual honesty test everytime you write about Islam. I also noticed you never concede or apologise for your intentional misrepresentations you just duck and reappear on another thread with the same "facts".

Greg, anyone who calls a person right or left in politics or religion is ignorant about the past history of its use, probably because they were not alive to experience it.
The left was the working class who were wanting better conditions, the right were the bosses of industry who did not want the workers to have better conditions, this is when the unions were formed to bring about improved conditions for the workers and their families.
Now we have the business class, which exists in both Labor and Liberal parties. The workers have lost their workers rights, in the interests of the corporates and politicians who run government on a business model.
The money seeking Western religions of today have joined the American led business class in wishing to dominate the globe with their brand of capitalism.
Ms Ali is a female wanting change for the betterment of women, within the Muslim male dominated communities, just the same as Western women have been attempting to do in the male dominated communities. The catholics have denied women equality forever, and the same situation with the Muslims.
Greg, are you a male who dislikes honest intelligent women, fighting for equality with males, anywhere in the world?. Have a look at what powerful males are doing in Iraq, killing and maiming women and their children. Get real.