Ayaan Hirsi Ali To Receive AJC Moral Courage Award

The Dutch moderate-conservative parliamentarian, feminist, and best-selling writer (pictured) - who lives under constant death threats by Islamic extremists - will receive the American Jewish Committee’s Moral Courage Award at the organization’s 100th Annual Meeting on May 4 in Washington, D.C. “Ayaan Hirsi Ali has literally put her life on the line for her beliefs,” said David Harris, the organization's executive director. “She is indefatigable in her efforts to wake us up to the dangers that threaten our value system, indeed our very way of life.”

Since arriving in the Netherlands as a refugee in 1992, MP Hirsi Ali has been an outspoken advocate for the rights of Muslim women, especially after she found Muslim women in immigrant communities in the Western world subjected to abuses and discrimination commonplace in Islamic countries. She also has criticized Western governments for allowing such practices to persist in violation of Western societal norms and laws. “Submission,” the short film by Theo Van Gogh about the treatment of Muslim women by male relatives, was written by MP Hirsi Ali. Mr. Van Gogh was murdered two years ago by a Moroccan immigrant, who stabbed a five-page death threat letter to MP Hirsi Ali into Mr. van Gogh's corpse. In addition to defending women’s rights, Hirsi Ali is outspoken on virulent anti-Semitism that pervades much of the Islamic world. “She is determined to confront the Islamic world with the long overdue challenge of adapting to modernity, and she believes that examination must start with Muslims living in the West, as only they have the liberty in which to operate and to bring about change,” said Mr. Harris.