Bankrolling Ali’s Asylum

Newsweek, December, 2007 by Jerry Adler

Ayaan Hirsi Ali stands at the nexus of forces shaping the 21st century—and it’s a very dangerous place to be. The Somali-born author, who repudiated traditional Islam in her best-selling memoir, “Infidel,” fled her adopted Netherlands for America this year in the face of threats from radical Muslims, thereby becoming, as Salman Rushdie and Sam Harris wrote in the Los Angeles Times, the first political refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust. She also lost her Dutch bodyguards. Now Harris, author of “The End of Faith,” is raising money to (putting it bluntly) keep Ali alive. It’s an issue that unites Harris with evangelist Rick Warren, who offered to help after Harris e-mailed him. (The two debated religion in NEWSWEEK this year.) “Rick,” Harris jokes, “may yet convince me...

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