Fjordman: Give the Nobel Peace Prize to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Fjordman has an essay in today’s Brussels Journal advocating that Ayaan Hirsi Ali be give next year’s Nobel Peace Prize:

I have had a few minor disagreements with Hirsi Ali in the past, mainly because she has on some occasions compared Islam to other religions like Christianity and Judaism, which I believe is wrong. However, her views on this have matured considerably, and because of her background she has made criticism of Islam acceptable to people who would otherwise find it difficult to digest the arguments she presents, even though they are perfectly correct. She is no doubt an extremely courageous person. In spite of death threats she has never hesitated in pointing out that many of the problems in the Islamic world are caused by Islam itself. She is an invaluable asset to the fight against global Jihad and as worthy of the Prize as any other living person.

In my view, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will soon have to make a choice: If they want the Nobel Peace Prize to be a Global Celebrity Award for Outstanding Achievements in Political Correctness, they can give the next one to Bono of rock group U2. Or, they can do something meaningful, something that will actually advance the cause of peace and human liberty around the world, and award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2008 to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

It’s a quixotic cause, but Fjordman doesn’t stop there. He has another modest proposal for Norway:
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Being Norwegian myself, I would also like to make a suggestion to Norwegian authorities: Norway is, or at least was the last time I checked, the planet’s third largest exporter of oil, after Saudi Arabia and Russia. If Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of oil, spends money on promoting Jihad and sharia, is it not fair that Norway, the world’s third largest exporter of oil, should spend a little on combating the same? The Norwegian Petroleum Fund amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars. Norwegian authorities could easily create a fund of a billion dollars or more earmarked for the defense of persons threatened for criticizing Islam. That’s the least we can do in return for being blessed with wealth we did very little to earn.

This fund could be called the Theo van Gogh Memorial Fund, the Asma bint Marwan Memorial Fund after the poetess who was killed by Muhammad’s followers 1400 years ago for mocking Islam, or perhaps the Charles Martel Foundation for Intercultural Understanding. Most citizens in my country wouldn’t even notice if we spent a billion dollars on this, but such a fund, whatever we choose to call it, could have a big impact on the lives of people struggling to get their message across or simply to stay alive in the face of death threats.

Read the whole thing at the Brussels Journal.