Aren’t there more important causes to support than the protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali?
There are countless worthy targets for our generosity. Whether it is helping to alleviate hunger in the developing world or building a new pediatric hospital in the United States, one must choose between absolute need and absolute need, and such choices often defy rational justification.Allow me to briefly make the case, however, that in this wilderness of competing needs and limited resources, the ongoing protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves our special commitment. In fact, few projects represent such a perfect marriage of moral and intellectual necessity. While the threat of Muslim extremism still seems distant to many of us living in the developed world, I think it is the one problem that has the potential to suddenly eclipse all others.When one considers the cascading effects of what 19 jihadists did with box-cutters on September 11th, 2001–now measured in the trillions of dollars–it is difficult to imagine how the world might look after a single incident of nuclear terrorism.
