Video: Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Bill Maher - Panel Discussion of Islam

Is Islam a religion of peace? A panel discussion (shown in this Youtube video) has some people who know a lot about Islam (and several people who don't!) all expressing their opinions: Steven Weber, Bill Maher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). They discuss terror, religion, and freedom. Hirsi Ali outshines them all-- her presentation is quite knowledgeable, clear and to the point.

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Watching the video, I was very impressed with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She really has an in depth understanding of Islam, having been raised as a Muslim.

In contrast, it amazing how some of the others on the panel really don't know much about the subject and are obviously merely repeating politically correct cliches they've heard. (Actually, I think a lot of people in the media don't really know a lot about Islam, so they repeat politically correct things, and try to sound like they know what they're talking about).

Here are some brief excerpts from this article about Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

Born in Somalia, her family lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. As a young Muslim girl, she was forced to undergo the cruel practice of female genital mutilation (AKA "FGM", or "female circumcision").

Later, following Saddam's invasion of the fundamentalist Islamic Republic of Iran, she sympathised with Iran and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and also wore a hijab. She supported the fatwa against British writer Salman Rushdie following the publication of his controversial novel The Satanic Verses.

She moved to the Netherlands in 1992, where she worked as an interpreter and translator for Somali women in asylum centers and hostels for battered women. She saw firsthand the way certain practices she thought she had left behind in Africa continued in the West, as well as the workings of the Dutch immigration system, and became severely critical of the way it handled asylum seekers.

Inspired by The Atheist Manifesto she renounced Islam and became an atheist writing a book called De Zoontjesfabriek (The Son Factory) that criticized Islamic culture, which is a dangerous thing to do. Not surprisingly, after its publication she received death threats for the first time. (cont'd)