"She's Asking for it"

Some time in the last century or so, "she was asking for it" quit being a valid defense on charges of assault. But it seems it's still a defense when the woman is "being uppity" toward Muslims. John Hinderaker comments at PowerLine.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the great heroes of our era. Born a Muslim in Somalia, she was subjected to genital mutilation at age five. Her family fled to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. After her father ordered her to marry a stranger, she sought political asylum in the Netherlands and eventually was elected to the Dutch Parliament in 2003.

Hirsi Ali became a feminist spokesman for women who are oppressed in Islamic societies. She wrote the screenplay for Theo van Gogh's film Submission. Van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam by a Muslim extremist who shoved a knife into his body with a note that said Hirsi Ali was next.

That made Hirsi Ali too hot to handle for Dutch authorities, so she made her way to the United States, where she now lives and continues her fight on behalf of oppressed women around the world.

You might think that would make her a heroine to American liberals, but you would be wrong. For whatever reason, they can't stand her. The latest evidence of this antipathy is Nick Kristof's review of her book Nomad in the New York Times.

She has managed to outrage more people -- in some cases to the point that they want to assassinate her -- in more languages in more countries on more continents than almost any writer in the world today.

That's only the beginning. Kristof goes on to write that Hirsi Ali "is working on antagonizing even more people," even though it "might seem presumptuous to write another memoir so soon." It is easy to see why so many want to kill her, Kristof says, since she is "by nature a provocateur, the type of person who rolls out verbal hand grenades by reflex." Bear in mind that in this case, the "provocateur's" "hand grenades" are arguments that little girls shouldn't have their clitorises cut out, be beaten for no particular reason, or be forced to marry men they haven't met. Is that provocative? To liberals like Kristof, apparently so.

In a recent post, I quoted a refrain from a country song that says, "people are crazy." But in fact, not all people are crazy. It is mostly liberals who are stark raving mad. All the liberals I know claim to be feminists, so how can they support those who mutilate little girls and sanction forced marriages and wife beating?