She pauses, breaking into a grin: “I am no longer a politician. I can say such things now.”

Go. Read the wonderful interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the Times UK today. She's a superstar in the fight against Islamofascism.

You won't beat terror with tolerance

A letter staked through the heart of the dying film director Theo van Gogh began: “Open letter to Hirsi Ali.” So the men in black detailed to protect today’s special guest were bound to be twitchy. [...] Her zeal made her a Dutch MP, international talk-show darling and one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. But it also made her many enemies.

[...]

She is a curious mix, Ali. Her hardline image has won her a job at a right-wing think tank. [Ali has been offered a position at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.] But her critique of Muslim immigrants is a liberal one: that they reject Dutch freedoms such as the sexual revolution. [Note to the Times UK: In America, Modern Conservativism means conserving Classical Liberalism. I know the labels are different in Europe. - ed]

And at the end the interviewer tries to temper her views with some lefty euro-pap. No wonder she's coming to the US in September.

Ali is compelling. But if her fervour is her strength, it is also her weakness, alienating the very liberals she should court. Throughout our afternoon together, she brands those who fail to stand up to “the historical mistake of radical Islam” as “the appeasers”. And she uses “appeasers” pointedly. When she was forced to leave her flat, she reflected: “My neighbours confirm the critical view that very few Dutch were brave enough to stand up to the Nazis.” True, perhaps, but not a way to win friends.

What Ali understands, and what the interviewer clearly does not, is that "winning friends" must take a necessary back seat to staying alive. Still, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Ayaan Hirsi Ali's website.

UPDATE: Whoops, forgot to credit Andy for the tip. He notes:

And with her new project she reveals, once again, how she is a true child of the Enlightenment. It’s a book “dealing with Muslim treatment of gays. It will also feature the Prophet transported to modern-day New York, forced by three great western liberal philosophers, Mill, Popper and Hayek, to recognise the failure of many Muslim societies."

Fasten your seatbelts.

Yep. She ain't out to "win friends."