Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, formerly a member of the Dutch parliament, and writer of the controversial film Submission, is now with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C. Her 12-minute film powerfully examines domestic violence in Islamic households. Ali was a guest on CBS 60 minutes this evening.

Ali has written a book entitled The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam in which she examines the question of "whether the roots of evil [referring to the 9/11 attacks] can be traced to the faith I grew up with: was the aggression, the hatred inherent in Islam itself?"

Her story is interesting given the irony of a former representative of a very "liberal" country now working for a "conservative" organization. It is also a noteworthy contrast between depictions of women's worth and dignity in the Koran versus the Bible (not that Ali is a Christian, to the best of my knowledge).