Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells the readers of Prospect magazine that she represents a force for progressive reform within Islam. This from the friend of late Dutch racist Theo van Gogh –  a woman who, according to a recent sympathetic profile in the New York Times, has “endorsed the view that Islam is a backward religion, condemned the way women live under it and said that by today’s standards, the prophet Muhammad would be considered a perverse tyrant. She had also announced that she was no longer a believing Muslim” (see here). An effective force for Islamic reform? I think not.