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Ayaan Hirsi Ali — Super Hero

The once proud and tolerant Dutch should be ashamed of themselves and their government: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is being legally evicted from her apartment because her neighbors “don’t feel safe.” It’s bad enough that Hirsi Ali had to flee the Islamic oppression of her Somali homeland, but now her adopted refuge, the Netherlands, is throwing her out of her house. So much for protecting the individual against the tyranny of the majority. More follows…

Bryan at hotair.com has this report.

Via Peaktalk, the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali just gets worse. Hirsi Ali is the Somali-born Dutch parliamentarian whose outspokenness on the rights of women under Islam has made her a marked woman. Islamists have issued a fatwa calling for her death. And now she’s been evicted by court order at the request of her neighbors, who find her security concerns a nuisance. The Dutch court used superseding European law as the basis of its ruling:

The court considers in its ruling that the neighbors have been put into a situation that has contributed to them feeling less safe in their own house. That feeling is extended to the communal living spaces of the apartment complex, but also to their own apartments. The court argues that this is a severe violation of one’s private life (as per Article 8 of the European Treaty for Human Rights).

Hirsi Ali hasn’t broken any laws; she has criticized the lack of women’s rights under Islam, which under Dutch law she is supposedly free to do. The threats against her for speaking out are for real: Her friend and co-producer on the film Submission, Theo Van Gogh, was brutally murdered by an Islamist on the streets of Amsterdam. But the law that isn’t doing anything about the Islamists issuing fatwas and threatening death evicts Hirsi Ali from her own home because her security problems are too much to bear for her neighbors, citing an abstract violation of private life. It would seem to me that if there’s a violation of one’s private life going on here, it’s being done by the Islamists who are stalking Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Wherever she ends up, they will continue to stalk her. If her new neighbors sue, she will be evicted again.

Where can she possibly live where her neighbors won’t be similarly inconvenienced by the fatwa against her? I doubt the Dutch court realizes what it has wrought here. Her eviction, supposing it stands up all the way through the Dutch supreme court, is empowering to the Islamists, who can now hound the outspoken via word, action and now by proxy through the Dutch courts and the squeamishness of the average Dutch citizen. This is the beginning of state-sanctioned dhimmitude in Europe.

Dutch Parliamentarian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Here’s the PeakTalk article that Bryan refers to, Hirsi Ali, The Hunted :

Just to show how far Dutch tolerance goes: Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s neighbors have sued the Dutch state in order to get her to be removed from the apartment complex in which she is living under police protection. The request was initially rejected, but following an appeal a higher court has now ordered Hirsi Ali to leave her house within four months, I translate:

The court considers in its ruling that the neighbors have been put into a situation that has contributed to them feeling less safe in their own house. That feeling is extended to the communal living spaces of the apartment complex, but also to their own apartments. The court argues that this is a severe violation of one’s private life (as per Article 8 of the European Treaty for Human Rights).

A few things. Firstly, it should be noted that Hirsi Ali is now booted out of her own house by virtue of the European Treaty for Human Rights which does indeed supersede Dutch law. Many cases are adjudicated by referring to this treaty, but given the subject matter here I would say: Euroskeptics, go knock yourselves out.

Secondly, and this is the one that really bothers me, is that somehow Hirsi Ali’s neighbors self-interest runs so deep that they are prepared to use the court system to throw someone whose life is in danger out of her own house. It goes like this: we’re tolerant, we support free speech and a critical attitude, but if it comes too close to our front porch, sorry, we are no longer interested. On the contrary, self-interest is the deciding motivator. True, Hirsi Ali’s flatmates do have a reasonable point in arguing that the Dutch State has an obligation to ensure that their security measures benefit the entire complex. If the State has dropped the ball in that respect, they should be compelled by the courts to correct this, but to put the burden on Hirsi Ali is a very disturbing precedent. Yet, the plaintiffs are quite happy with the ruling:

“We are relieved. We just didn’t feel safe any longer in our own homes. Of course, we consider it to be terrible for Hirsi Ali to have to leave her house. The case was not directed at her personally. The point was that the State should not open us to so much danger”

The State may appeal this ruling, in which case it will go to the Dutch Supreme Court. The potential of a ruling that will favor Hirsi Ali and is able to address the upset neighbors may turn out to become a costly adventure for Dutch authorities as it is not just about one outspoken member of parliament. Beyond a number of politicians there is a growing constituency of writers, artists and cartoonists who may rightfully claim government protection. And in most cases their neighbors are equally likely to take a less than charitable view of their right to exercise free speech. This is once more evidence of how Europeans fail to understand the bigger picture and are more than willing to let some short term comfort prevail over the long term survival of core values that built their societies in the first place.

So there are no winners here. The neighborhood is unmasked as a group whose shallow self interest is paramount, the State may have made a few mistakes and will have to spend yet more on security and Ayaan, well, she remains the hunted one. It seems that those responsible for threatening her will have the last laugh.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali should be the National Hero of the Netherlands: she is a black, female immigrant from an Islamic, African society that subjected her to genital mutilation and forced marriage. She fled to the Netherlands becoming an outspoken advocate for oppressed, Islamic women; an elected member of Parliament in the Dutch government; a playwright; etc.

In the Dutch war for tolerance and freedom, Ali is ground zero. Lose her at your peril.

Not surprisingly, this is the logical conclusion of the utopian welfare state. Some citizens of the Netherlands are so dependent on their government that, when one of their bravest champions of freedom is threatened by Islamic goons, they cry to the government: not to protect her rights, but to sacrifice her so they’ll “feel safe”. It should come as no surprise that socialists — who by definition live at the expense of others — have no problem sacrificing others to protect…in this case, their “feelings”.

Ayaan, when the Dutch abandon you, please come to the United States and continue the fight here. We need brave women like you to fight for the rights of women and free peoples everywhere. We’ve got our own problems to be sure, and Islamists are a threat to Americans as well, but we still know how to fight back. We don’t turn tail and run, and we sure as hell don’t whimper to the government to sacrifice one of our bravest in order to save the useless.

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Previous Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Cartoons and Islam
A Manifesto for our Destiny

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 11:49 pm and is filed under General, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.