By Hesham A. Hassaballa

One of Islam’s worst critics is now an academic ‘fellow’ in the U.S. But Ayan Hirsi Ali’s anti-Islam criticism is getting old.

She is as famous as she is notorious. Ayan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian and outspoken critic of Islam (detailed in her new book, “Infidel,” which chronicles her difficult childhood and journey out of Islam), is now a fellow at The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank. Ali is a stinging and unrepentant in her criticism of what ails the Islamic world. Yet, she does not blame individual Muslims for this, but Islam itself.

She is a celebrity of sorts among Islamophobes, and I am not sure why. But consider her personal history, the way she tells it: She had a very difficult childhood, being born into the strife of a war-torn Somalia. She moved from place to place, eventually escaping an arranged marriage to the Netherlands.

Ali then became famous with her controversial film “Submission,” which depicted near-naked women with verses of the Qur’an draped across them (and resulted in the brutal death of the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, who had a death threat against Ali stuck to his chest with a knife).

In the Netherlands Ali rose up the ranks to become a member of the Dutch parliament. But here is where the story unravels: She left the parliament and the country when she was found to have lied on her asylum application about the story of her “escape” from the arranged marriage in Somalia. By that time Ali was known to the world, and after 9/11, she permanently and publicly renounced Islam.

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