The High Cost of Free Speech
Ayaan Hirsi Ali copes with death threats, loss of Dutch-paid protection team.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Oct. 23, 2007— -- The Dutch government's decision to discontinue security protection for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of Islam, has touched off an international debate over the limits and costs of freedom of expression.
Hirsi Ali, an author and former member of the Dutch parliament, has lived under a death threat since 2004 that was delivered when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in the streets of Amsterdam. In a letter addressed to Hirsi Ali -- impaled in van Gogh's chest by his Islamist assassin MohammedBouyeri -- the Somali-born immigrant to the Netherlands was threatened withdestruction in the name of Islam.
Hirsi Ali had worked with van Gogh, a descendent of the famouspainter and a ubiquitous political figure in Dutch society. The two produced ashort film titled "Submission" in which Koranic verses were projected acrossthe bodies of naked women in an attempt to protest what they saw as the Islamicabuse of women.
Hirsi Ali first came to the Netherlands in a successful attempt to escape anarranged marriage in her homeland. Although originally a pious Muslim, she repudiated her faith and spoke out for freedom of expression and against Islamic practices that she deemed harmful to women.
The ire raised by her publiccommentary had already required her to seek protection before to van Gogh'sassassination. After the murder, Hirsi Ali went into hiding, and the Dutchgovernment provided a round-the-clock security detail.
Last year, she moved to the United States to take a post at theAmerican Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. At the time,the Dutch government agreed to continue footing the bill for her protection, about $3 million a year.
But the conservative-led Dutch parliament this year decided to halt the paymentsat the beginning of October. Minister of Justice Hirsch Ballin justified thegovernment's stance by saying the government would continue to pay for Hirsi Ali'sprotection so long as she resided within the Netherlands.
To her supporters, the action was an act of bad faith.
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