I’m glad you wrote to them, Heather. I’m not surprised that their response is appalling.

I’m looking forward to your article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the SPLC’s response. Thank you for taking the time to do such a good job of it.

I’ve now written a post in defence of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I need to check some stuff , and I’ve got some other things I have to do as well that will keep me away from the computer, but it will be out later today.

I also wrote to SPLC following my first post and they have responded. I’ll post both of those emails and some more thoughts as well. Their response is, imo, appalling, but I’ll let readers make their judgment of that too.

Could not agree more. It borders on despicable. Ayaan is about as close to a “leftist” archetypal heroine as is likely to occur in real life and instead of supporting her they label her an extremist and shun her. Pathetic.

Regarding the typical criticisms of her by these leftist virtue signalers, in addition to laziness they are being intellectually dishonest, or perhaps unreasonably uncharitable, by not considering the context of her life experience. What percentage of those people, or any group, could emerge from such a life history with the character that Ayaan has displayed? Very few.

In the Netherlands she was disliked by the ‘left’, because she joined a ‘right-wing’ party, the VVD (note that this ‘right-wing’ is somewhat left of Obama), not because of her atheism, which is mainstream in Holland.

Retraction was short hand for changing her opinion in some way. Coel has it more exactly.

I find it pathetic that leftist organizations and leftists who bend over backwards to excuse terrorists if they are “angry”, label Ayaan an extremist because of a sentence or two that they were too lazy and ignorant to understand.

OK, but talking about a “clash” of ideologies is not the same as advocating military action. Last century one could have written about the “clash of civilisations” between the capitalist West and the communist world, without being an advocate of a military invasion of communist countries.

The term perhaps recognises the *potential* for military confrontations, but does not necessarily advocate them.

Not “crush”, “clash” of civilisations.

As for her retraction, I’m just referring to what Yakaru and Heather said.

I wouldn’t regard “crush” as a “meme” in this context, since I’ve not heard it widely, so I would not over-interpret it.

And she hasn’t “retracted”, she has merely said that more recently she’s got a lot more optimistic about the progress of moderate reformers within the Islamic world, and wants to support them as the best hope for reform.