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From a recent Time article on Geert Wilders:
"His weakness is that he plays the renegade, he still wants to position himself as being outside the establishment," says Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an author and former Dutch parliamentarian whose critiques of Islam have been ferocious in their own right. "Once upon a time it was necessary for him to distinguish himself by saying, 'I take a stand, and I am a man of clarity.'"Since when has any shade of Muslim been an ally to non-Muslims? It is astonishing that after so many years studying and writing about Muslims, and at one point living the life of a Muslim, Ali can make such nonchalant and ignorant remarks about Muslims and their interaction with non-Muslims. And not only that, it is astonishing how much she undermines the work the Wilders has done which has placed him in the awful predicament he lives in now. The moderate shades of Muslims that Ali talks about have not made a single attempt to get him out of this predicament, since they don't exist. And Wilders himself is hardly the extremist that Ali makes him out to be, although he has no illusions about Islam.
"He has to move to the middle," urges Hirsi Ali. "He has to distinguish between violent Islamists and nonviolent Muslims. You know, there are so many shades of Muslims right now, and he could use some of them as his allies."
It is no wonder that Ali is safe and living openly in the US since her stance, underneath all her belligerence, has been that Islam can be reformed, and that Muslim extremists (terrorists) are on the periphery and have nothing to do with the real Islam. And I don't think she has ever renounced her Muslim cultural background (despite her strong rhetoric), and I wonder if at some point, now that she has a son, she will pick up whatever of the religion she can without losing too much face.