The interviewer was Tavis Smiley of PBS. You can watch the interview here.

It’s also important to know that Hirsi Ali lives under the constant watch of security guards, since her life continues to be threatened by Islamic extremists.

This was the woman who walked onto Tavis Smiley’s PBS show to promote her new book. Nomad calls on key institutions of the West — universities, feminists, and Christian churches — to wage a war of ideas against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

However, Smiley was in no mood to hear Hirsi Ali’s arguments that placed Islam in a bad light. He wanted to assert the old leftist claim that Islam is always and everywhere “a religion of peace.”

Look at this jaw-dropping exchange between Smiley and Hirsi Ali:

Smiley: But Christians do that every single day in this country. …

Ali: Do they blow people up every single day?

Smiley: Yes, Christians. Every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine — I mean I could do this all day long. There’s so many more examples of Christians — and I happen to be a Christian — that’s back to this notion of you idealizing Christianity to my read. There’s so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country where you live and work.

Beyond the irritating liberal arrogance is the complete ignorance of the facts involved here.
Let’s ignore momentarily the dozens of terror plots — all designed and organized by Muslim-Americans — that have been uncovered and thwarted by this nation’s security forces. I will instead direct Smiley’s attention to these attacks against Americans:

• 1993: The World Trade Center bombing in New York killed 6 people.
• 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing killed 20 and wounded 372.
• 1998: The bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania left 224 dead and 4,000 injured.
• 2001: On 9/11, 19 hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 perished.
• 2009: U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 at Texas’ Fort Hood.
• 2010: Faisal Shahzad attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.

Uh, where’s a similar listing of Christian-inspired acts of violence, Mr. Smiley? The sweeping ignorance, or political blindness, of Smiley’s claim that “Christians do that (commit acts of terror) every single day in this country” is nothing short of astounding.

Unlike Islam, Christian scripture does not guarantee paradise to those who kill in the name of their faith. But the Koran does offer the fruits of paradise to “those who kill for Allah.” Suicide bombers have been lured to their deaths with this promise and the offer that they will be free from the fires of hell if they kill an infidel and, in the process, die.

[My emphasis.]

That last, right there, is the key that makes Islam so toxic. Even turn-the-other-cheek, meek-inheriting-the-earth Christianity can be perverted to excuse violence in its name, but Mohammed actively encouraged it, and led Muslim armies against the infidels in his own time.

Nevertheless, let me for a moment be the devil’s advocate.

First, if you want the list of Christian terrorist acts here in America, look up abortion clinic bombings and murders. However, note that these acts are committed not to force the Christian faith on others, but because the anti-abortionists believe that a wholesale murder of innocents is taking place. I happen not to agree with that, although it’s a close call, but if I did, I hope that I too would be doing everything in my power to stop it. Not to terrorize, mind, but to directly disrupt a human slaughterhouse. I hope I’d do the same against guard barracks in Nazi concentration camps or Soviet gulags or, um, Save The Earth re-education camps, should they ever come to pass.

Outside of America, look at Northern Ireland. However, while that conflict has a religious cast to it, the underlying conflict is one for political independence. It’s ugly as hell, and the actions involved are totally unjustified, but it’s not a war of religious expansion.

I’ll also note that both clinic bombings and the Irish fight have died down considerably in recent years. The practitioners have either fallen to attrition, or realized they were not getting the kind of sympathy they hoped for.

Second, although I don’t have a list to hand, I think there have been many nut jobs who do commit horrible crimes in the name of Christianity. Thing is, they are nut jobs, acting in direct contravention of the scriptures they cite, and they do not remotely have the support of mainstream Christian clerics.

Finally, undoubtedly many Christians do commit ordinary crimes, but not in the name of Christ — the Roman Catholic Mafioso is a classic stereotype. However, the attraction of this stereotype in fiction is precisely the huge disconnect between the professed faith and the daily life.

“Uh, how about the Spanish Inquisition? Galileo, dude!” The Inquisition was indeed brutal, but it was only carried out against other Christians, not as a weapon of evangelism against other faiths. And even the Catholic Church eventually realized that the Inquisition was not only against scripture, but counterproductive in practice, actually turning people away from the faith. It forced Western Civilization to grow the hell up.

The Islamic Jihad is the only longstanding and still very much active, program of violence against non-coreligionists, is strongly rooted in scripture, and is endorsed, advocated, and managed by the highest ranks of the Muslim clergy. It spreads an oppressive creed of utter intolerance towards the highest ideals of classical liberal, and even neo-liberal, political ideology. (Except statism. Neo-liberals love them their statism.)

And it is vastly more promiscuously lethal than the anti-abortionists, or even the Irish Republican Army, ever dreamed of being.

Smiley here is covering for evil on the largest scale. He is not hiding Nazis in his attic, he’s openly shilling for them.

He calls himself a Christian, but in fact is calling for the eradication of the faith he claims to serve.

Shame.

The Jewish homeland is, in fact, Israel, and has been “since time immemorial”:

There are archaeological remains that attest to this fact. The holy books of the Jews and the Arabs also confirm this. So Jews don’t have to go back home ~ they are already home. The Jews in Europe, Asia, and America are in the Diaspora because they were summarily expelled from countries throughout the ages. The term “wandering Jew” comes from the historical facts that Jews were expelled from England in 1290; from France in 1393; from Berne, Switzerland in 1427; and from Spain in 1492, to name only a few places.

In her book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, author Joan Peters, proves with historical data and other archival information that Jews did not displace Arabs in Palestine-just the reverse: Arabs displaced Jews. In fact, the blurb of this 1984 book relates that:

A hidden but major Arab migration and immigration took place into areas settled by Jews in pre-Israel Palestine; that a substantial number of the Arab refugees called Palestinians in reality had foreign roots; that for every Arab refugee who left Israel in 1948; there was a Jewish refugee who fled or was expelled from his Arab birthplace at the same time. . . .

Recently, filmmaker Pierre Rehov created the film entitled “The Silent Exodus” about these Jews who were kicked out of their Middle Eastern homes. Between 1946 and 1974, there were a million of forgotten Jewish fugitives expelled from the Arab world. These Jews had been living in Arab lands for thousands of years but their homes were stolen from them; they literally had nothing but the clothes on their backs when they fled. They were received in Israel. They did not remain refugees; they had no special United Nations agency to assist them. Israel welcomed them and they rebuilt their lives.

Related, and linked here for reference, “Genetic Evidence Shows Common Origins of Jews“, by David Bernstein at the Volkh Conspiracy. From The New York Times:

Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East share many genes inherited from the ancestral Jewish population that lived in the Middle East some 3,000 years ago, even though each community also carries genes from other sources — usually the country in which it lives.

But note this comment by Bernstein:

I don’t think that Zionism, etc., depends on whether Jews really have common genetic origins or not, anymore than Palestinian identity is any more or less real depending on whether, as some claim, a large percentage of “Palestinian Arabs” had immigrated rather recently from other countries in the Middle East. But I do think that manipulating history for ideological purposes is bad…

Every major war we have fought since Vietnam has been a proxy war for Muslims. Whether we were bombing Saddam on behalf of the royals of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, or bombing our former allies in Yugoslavia on behalf of Muslim Albanians, or dying in order to provide electrical generators to downtown Baghdad and ferry schoolteachers into Kabul. We have not fought a single significant war since Vietnam that was not on behalf of, or intended to benefit Muslims. Not a single one. The Ottoman Empire had a name for this. It was Janissary.

It is only common sense to say that people who act like slaves, are slaves.

via the Flea, who observes:

The analogy is far from perfect. If the West provides Jannissary slave warriors for the sheiks then we should expect to take over their figurative-Ottoman Empire presently. Hardly the worst case scenario.

Pat Condell, Speaker of Truth.

I don’t give a burning shit about the tolerant, peaceful Muslims out there, because they’re not trying to convert, enslave, or kill me.

It’s the radical ones that worry me, and they’re the ones behind the Cordoba Mosque and the evil terrorism it celebrates.

You can build your Cordoba Mosque when I, a faithless kafir, can visit Mecca; when Jews can build a synagogue in Riyadh; when Catholics can build a cathedral in Tehran.
Till then, piss off.

[update]
via David Horowitz:
[click for full size]

And via the Jawa Report, we learn that

Bülent Yildirim, the main organizer of the Gaza Flotilla, explained at a Hamas rally in Gaza that the operation was no humanitarian effort but part of a global Jihad to overthrow governments and install Islamist dictatorships.He made no secret of that fact, as shown in the MEMRI translation and video.

Keep in mind as you read this that his group originated the project and was the main funder, that his followers controlled the biggest ship, and that they were most of those who attacked the Israeli soldiers. Thus, more than any other individual, Yildirim represents the thinking behind the operation, its direction, and the organization of a militarized group that started the violence in order to achieve the intended result. Notice, too, that he–and thus the organizers of the operation and those who created the violence–are totally indifferent to the loss of life they cause[...]

Their goal is not to succor the people of Gaza but to wipe out Israel and kill the Jews as “rightful” (his words, not mine) successors to Muhammad in continuing this task.

Read the whole thing at the Gloria Center.

All you people barking at Israel for defending itself, this is what you support: the total eradication, not just of Israel, but of the Jews themselves.

And once those damn filth Jews are out of the way, everyone else in the dar al-Harb, the House of War. That would be you and me, infidel kufir.

Finally, a comment on the Cordoba Islamic center. I can’t find the source, but it suggested that an interfaith center be built on the proposed Islamic center site. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus — all the major world religions would be represented, and have a common ground to work out their common goals philosophies. I’m reminded of the the Orange Catholic Bible Frank Herbert wrote about in Dune. [wipes hopeful teardrop from cheek.] Surely, since understanding and harmony is said to be the aim the Cordoba center, there can be no better way than to house all the religions as equals under one roof, yes?

Oh, wait: Muslims > Jews, Muslims > Christians, Muslims >>>> than Hindus, Buddhists, etc. No, that could never work. All must submit.

Nevermind.

Speaking of which, Israel stopped and bordered the MV Rachel Corrie as it attempted to run the blockade. No lives lost.

I’m guessing that the people aboard that ship, and the people supporting it, do not realize that some of us regard the name “Rachel Corrie” not with sympathy for a righteous stand against tyranny, but rather with contempt for deceit, treachery, and above all, useful idiocy.

The Hamas pseudo-government in Gaza, on the other hand….

Is there a state of belligerency between the Palestinian authorities who govern Gaza and the State of Israel?

Yes. The Palestinian government of Gaza has repeatedly declared itself to be at war with Israel, conducted attacks on Israeli territory, civilians, and armed forces. It has refused to negotiate with the government of Israel. If you accept that the Palestinians govern Gaza, they are at war. If they do not govern Gaza, then the area and its inhabitants are pirates, bandits, etc. and are outside the laws of nations.

And again:

If Palestinian Gaza is a state, which is at war with Israel; as a non-signer of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, neither those in arms against Israel, nor their civilian counterparts are covered by them. If Palestinian Gaza is NOT a state, and is not under the jurisdiction of a state [and no one I know of claims them] they are at best “unlawful combatants” and more like “hostis humani generis“.

That status accrues also to foreign nationals who act on their behalf as part of their war effort.

Incidentally, I’d never run across the term “hostis humani generis“ before; it translates as “enemy of all mankind”.

The attempt to divert or capture (52a) the blockade running flotilla was in fact what was required by international law as a first resort. They were attempting to exercise military control (52b) as allowed under the laws of naval warfare in maintaining a blockade. Since the blockade is in place to bar offensive weapons, especially rockets and missiles, from reaching Gaza to prevent further firings on Israeli civilians, a refusal to allow inspection or diversion does raise a reasonable assumption that it is carrying weapons, regardless of what they claim. That makes them a legitimate military objective (52c).
…
Israel had every legal right to declare the blockade, to enforce it where their judgment of military requirements says to place the blockade line, to stop, to board, to search, or to divert any ship attempting to approach the blockade line. Under international law. And under that same international law, once there was resistance or refusal; they had every right to sink those vessels. And they still do for the next wave coming at them, and any after that.

Yes, international law grants rights and protections in war zones to innocent civilian traffic. But to keep those rights and to not be re-classified as a target, it also imposes responsibilities and duties of compliance. Failure to fulfill those responsibilities, or comply with directions means you are no longer an innocent civilian, but rather an enemy belligerent, subject to treatment as such.

Well worth your time and study.

It always strikes me that most people think the Geneva Conventions mean, more or less, that America and Israel must not defend themselves, that we are forbidden any but the most cautious self-defense.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, the sense I’ve gotten from my own study of these Conventions, cursory as it’s been, is that vigorous self-defense, and unrelenting pursuit of outlaw nations, was regarded by the Convention authors and early signers to be necessary for the maintenance of peace and the rule of law among nations.

Here’s a summary of last month’s activity in this rather massive relief program:

Weekly summary of the Gaza crossings: 16-22 May 2010

• 523 truckloads (13,517 tons) of goods were transferred to the Gaza Strip.
• 938,127 liters of heavy-duty diesel for the Gaza power station, and 645 tons of cooking gas were delivered.
• 281 Gaza residents entered Israel for medical reasons via the Erez Crossing.

Weekly summary of the Gaza crossings: 9-14 May 2010

• 637 truckloads (14,069 tons) of goods were transferred to the Gaza Strip.
• 810,209 liters of heavy-duty diesel for the Gaza power station, and 897 tons of cooking gas were delivered.
• 781 Gaza residents entered Israel for medical reasons via the Erez Crossing.

Weekly summary of the Gaza crossings: 2 -8 May 2010

• 714 truckloads (17,060 tons) of goods were transferred to the Gaza Strip.
• 1,535,777 liters of heavy-duty diesel for the Gaza power station and 293,796 liters for transportation, and 917 tons of cooking gas were delivered.
• 370 Gaza residents entered Israel for medical reasons and 93 entered Israel for other reasons via the Erez Crossing.

Yep, those evil Israelis, committing genocide against the innocent Palestinians, through the unusual method of giving them large amounts of food, electricity, medical services, and other necessities. Diabolical.

I look for the fall of your enemies, who are also my enemies.

I call shame upon those who revile you, even unto my countrymen.

Ghost of a Flea has the goods on Israel defending its naval blockade against Gaza.

Statement from the IDF:

Early this morning, IDF Naval Forces boarded six ships attempting to break the maritime closure of the Gaza Strip. This happened after numerous warnings from Israel and the Israeli Navy that were issued prior to the action. The Israel Navy requested the ships to redirect toward Ashdod where they would be able to unload their aid supplies which would then be transferred over land after undergoing security inspections.

During the boarding of the ships, the demonstrators onboard attacked the IDF Naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs. Additionally one of the weapons used was grabbed from an IDF soldier. The demonstrators had clearly prepared their weapons in advance for this specific purpose.

Go read the whole thing.

Statement from the Flea:

Only for Israel – and Arizona – is it a crime to enforce national sovereignty.

Here’s The Flea again on an outrageous United Nations “resolution” calling for a nuclear free Middle East singling out Israel, but saying nothing of Iran. I am disgusted and ashamed that the traitor governmentregime now sitting inoccupying Washington, D.C., apparently “supports” this resolution. Of course, this is cited as indicating “American” support, but no. Fiercely no. I am more American than BO (but then, Israel itself is more American than BO, at least in spirit), and I condemn this resolution, and will personally rejoice at whatever actions Israel takes to defend itself against the enemy we share.

Including the stationing of nuclear submarines off the coast of Iran, also reported by the Flea. Any sane person hopes, prays, fervently, that those manning these terrible weapons are never called upon to actually use them — but if this happens, I for one will be relieved at the destruction of a threat my own government is too cowardly to counter, or even name.

Today, it is those who condemn Israel who are full of crap, not those who stand with her.

On this Memorial Day, I honor those who have fought, are fighting, for liberty everywhere, not just my countrymen.

No shalom for Israel today, or for us. I look for it, but today is not it.

There is no shalom in defeat.

An Islamist rebel administration in Somalia has had a 13-year-old girl stoned to death for adultery after the child’s father reported that she was raped by three men.

O.K. I’m just going to try to get my head around this.

[Deep Breath]

Thirteen year old girl gets gang raped by three men, and is then punished for her wanton seduction of those good Allah-fearing gentlemen by being stoned to death. I’m sure the world is a cleaner place without her in it, right? Um, let me think for a moment….

No.

OK then. Moving on to Meyer’s response to the question of, can he, “as a godless humanist, say that this is wrong?”

Yes, I’m sure I can. It is morally reprehensible, it is not fair or just, it does great harm not just to the victim but to the people who perpetrate such hateful acts, and to the rapists who are granted freedom to destroy more lives. The culture that would tolerate and encourage such behavior is not one I want to be a member of, and not even one that I want to share the planet with.

It is very hard to think about it purely rationally, though, when all you can feel is grief for a lost life and so many minds destroyed by hatred.

Right on, P.Z. Right on. Good call.

As I always say at around this point in the conversation:
There is no god, especially not Allah, and Mohammad, may piss be upon him, was no prophet, but a child molesting, mass murdering, cultist.

[NB: This is a fairly old story, and I'm sure if P.Z. looked around, he could probably find more current examples, but damn it, right is right, and evil is evil. Prove to me that Islam in general, and Somalia in particular, is struggling mightily to cleanse itself of this kind of barbarity, and I'll think about admitting them to the 21st Century World of the Future.]

Many of these are from classical sources, many are sympathetic.

Also of interest: the amazing emails and letters from Mohammed’s supporters.

Religion of Peace. Oh, yeah.