"I, too, am from a non-Western country."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali addressed the national gathering of the Danish People's Party on September 18th. In her speech, Ali, who is Somalian, challenged the DPP's position of calling for a complete stop to all immigration from all non-western countries, although she shares the broader goal of halting and reversing the process of Islamization in the West. A complete video of her speech can be found at Vlad Tepes' blog here.

Some on the Left and in the mainstream media have tried to sieze on Ali's remarks, but what they fail to realize is that she is playing a vital role in moving forward the practical and necessary discussion of both the principles and the realpolitik of actually stopping Islamization -- as opposed to the vague generalities and short-sighted oversimplifications that might serve well to get votes and sell books, but which either do not translate into real policies, or, worse, are used to justify regressive, xenophobic policies.

The bottom line is that Islam must be opposed in the name of defending freedom, not in the name of defending the purity of the White Christian West (a fantasy which does not even exist anyway, and wouldn't be worth defending if it did). People who don't like dark-skinned foreigners who don't worship Jebus are just as much of a threat to freedom as are Islamist terrorists and their taqiyya spewing "moderate" accomplices.

Here is how the Copenhagen Post covered Ali's speech:

Hirsi Ali takes on right-wing party
Monday, 20 September 2010 14:32

Danish People’s Party’s annual congress saw prominent Somali rebuking their policies

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a 40-year-old former refugee and a prominent critic of religious extremism, addressed the 15th annual party congress of the Danish People’s Party (DF) on Saturday.

She spoke about the importance of integrating non-Western immigrants in Europe and teaching boys about women's rights and sexual morality in the West from an early age.

After building up the party faithful by suggesting that immigrants should enter into a contract to respect the conditions in Danish society, Ali stoked the fire further by saying in English: ‘I do not understand Danish, but I've heard rumours that your party will stop all immigration from non-western countries?’
After meeting applause again from the crowd, Ali turned on them with the rebuke, ‘I too am from a non-Western country,’ and that ‘it is wrong to say that all non-Westerners can’t be integrated into Denmark’.

The response that time was considerably less enthusiastic, but nevertheless party leader Pia Kjærsgaard remained supportive of Ali. As Kjærsgaard said to her: ‘You are many people’s idol, and you are my idol.’

DF has a tradition of inviting controversial guest speakers. In 2008, it was addressed by Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

Like Westergaard, Ali lives under a constant threat to her life and required a heavy security presence at the meeting. Ali has lived with death threats since composing the screenplay for the 2005 Theo van Gogh film Submission,

In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She now works for the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.

[Hat tip to the Islam In Europe blog.]