“Ayaan Hirsi Ali Gets Confronted on Islamophobia - Her Answer Takes the Debate in a Completely Different Direction” Student : You speak of Islamophobia and classes like Black Studies as phony, ideologically driven things. But what makes white supremacy or Islamophobia different from antisemitism? America imported millions of African slaves, Native Americans faced forced marches and genocide, and Muslims are being massacred in China today. So what makes antisemitism so different? Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Two things. First, America and Western Europe have reckoned with their past. We had slavery, we fought a war and ended it. We had segregation, we fought another major battle and ended it. We had the Civil Rights Movement. And the people leading many of those emancipation movements were Christians inspired by the Bible. Second, antisemitism is the oldest hatred in humanity, and you find it across the entire world. What made the West different was that after nearly exterminating its Jewish population, it looked honestly in the mirror and confronted what it had done. Islamophobia is a made-up word. It's been created by a political movement that wants to exploit Western guilt to achieve its ultimate goal: the revival of the caliphate. And the goal of that movement is to convert people to Islam whether they want to or not. Those who refuse, she says, could face violence. That's part of what I mean by subversion, active measures and asymmetric warfare. The Islamists have become incredibly successful against nations with enormous military and economic power. Islam is spreading. They've regained Afghanistan. They have Iraq. They have Syria. And Muslim governments themselves are afraid of what the Islamist movement could do to them. They're exploiting principles like freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association. We need to understand that and find a way to preserve our principles while beating the Islamists at their own game. Student : Is there room for compromise between principles? Ayaan Hirsi Ali: If I want to kill you and behead you unless you convert to the religion I dictate, what would be the place of compromise? Student : I wouldn't mind converting, since I'm agnostic, but I understand some people wouldn't share that vision...