Political writer Hirsi Ali discusses democracy and Islam
The word "apostate" has fallen into relative disuse in the West in the last couple of 100 years. The idea that leaving your religion, apostasy, should be punished, has largely died out since the Enlightenment. But Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's been in Australia over the last few days, is in continuous fear for her life because she is an apostate from Islam.
In 2004, in the Netherlands, her friend, the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, was stabbed to death for an anti-Islam film for which she wrote the script. A death threat against her was pinned to the corpse with a knife. In her subsequent book, Infidel, she stepped up her attack on global Islam. And in Australia she's been talking about the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali says the creed of Islam itself, rather than the way it's practised, is the problem, because the ideas of Mohammed are incompatible with the ideas of liberal democracy.
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