Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Mideast Protests 'Last Gasp of Islamic Hate'

The violent Islamist-led protests currently seen around the world cannot long endure, for they do not represent a beginning but a destructive end marking “the last gasp of Islamic hate.”

So writes Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim and member of the Dutch Parliament who lived for years under armed guard after questioning, and finally leaving, her Muslim faith because of the treatment of women in Islamic societies.

Hirsi Ali describes the current wave of Islamic protests as “bloody, dangerous, and chaotic,” but she believes it will pass because Islamism is ideologically Utopian. In her opinion, “Utopian ideologies have a short lifespan.” She contends this has recently been borne out in places like Iran, where the populations elected Islamists to office only to become extremely disillusioned once “the philosophy of the Islamists [was] fully and forcefully implemented.”

She says that “after the disillusion and bitterness… come a painful lesson,” that the theocratic worldview of Islamists is “foolish.” In light of this, she urges Americans to take the “long view” and understand that “just as the Iranian people have begun to, the Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, and perhaps Syrians… will come to this realization” as well.

The role America needs to fill in the meantime is the very role Obama refused to fill for the Iranian people in 2009, she concludes. Western civilizations need to “empower… individuals and groups who are already disenchanted with political Islam.”