Ayaan Hirsi Ali Interviewed On Channel 4
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; born Ayaan Hirsi Magan 13 November 1969[1] in Mogadishu, Somalia) is a Dutch feminist and political writer, daughter of the Somali warlord Hirsi Magan Isse. When she was six, her family left Somalia, eventually settling in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 — under circumstances that later became the center of a political controversy.
She is a prominent and controversial author, film maker, atheist, and critic of Islam, and Christianity. She was a member of the Tweede Kamer (the Lower House of the States-General of the Netherlands) for the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) from January 30, 2003 until May 16, 2006. A political crisis surrounding her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and indirectly to the fall of the Second Balkenende cabinet.
She has received numerous awards for her human rights work, and in 2005, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is currently a fellow at the think tank American Enterprise Institute.
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Hirsi Ali wrote the script and provided the voice-over for Submission,[7] a film directed by Theo van Gogh, which criticized the treatment of women in Islamic society. One woman was provocatively dressed in a semi-transparent burqa, under which texts from the Qur'an were projected on her skin. The texts referred to the subordinate role of women. Other women in the film showed signs of physical abuse. The film's release sparked much controversy, and became violent when radical Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri, a member of the Hofstad Group, murdered Van Gogh in an Amsterdam street on November 2, 2004. A letter attached to Van Gogh's body with a knife was primarily a death threat to Hirsi Ali. After this incident, the Dutch secret service raised the level of security that they provided to her.[8] Hirsi Ali has said that although she deeply regrets the murder of van Gogh, she is proud of the film and does not regret having made it. "To feel otherwise would be to deny everything I stand for." [9]
Submission by Theo van Gogh/Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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