Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s intervention into the cartoons controversy has been rejected by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende who said “we don’t have much use” for Hirsi Ali’s views and questioned “whether this will help the debate in the Netherlands”.
For this reasoned response Balkenende has been denounced by Robert Spencer: “Jan Peter Balkenende will go down in history as a Neville Chamberlain who chose to appease thugs rather than to resist them; Ayaan Hirsi Ali will go down in history as a heroic figure who tried to stem Europe’s headlong rush to suicide.”