A Somali Muslim, or ex-Muslim, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, wrote Infidel, her own story. She grew up in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya, and was subjected by her grandmother to female genital mutilation. Married off by her father to a Canadian Somali whom she had no interest in, she was sent to Germany to be called for. She fled to Holland, and became a refugee.

She learned the notoriously difficult Dutch language, studied, reveling in Western thought, and the idea of thinking for herself, and was finally elected to the Dutch parliament. She made the film Submission with Theo van Gogh which oddly enough in Arabic means "Islam," and for his troubles he was murdered. The murderer used two knives: one to off him and the other to stick his manifesto in the body. Ah, those manifestos. The monsters wouldn't exist without explaining their madness, would they? Makes you miss the ordinary footpad.

Ms. Ali is now in asylum in America, a fellow with the American Heritage Foundation, for the Dutch government tired of protecting her from the rage of Muslims.

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament. In 2008 he released a movie called Fitna, which is an Arabic term used to describe "test of faith in times of trial." I have also heard it described as "obligation."

The Dutch--once traders, artists, brave people--peed their pants in terror. The police cordoned off the Parliament building for a few blocks to make it more difficult for Muslims to exercise their fitna for the islam of people who don't want it. And the shopkeepers in that area sent Wilders a bill for lost earnings. Just who is now the nation of shopkeepers?

The Dutch government then sent emissaries to various Middle Eastern countries muttering, slyly, that because they had this thing called freedom of speech they couldn't control Mr. Wilders but not to worry. He's a nut, they sniggered, and don't you worry: we'll be glad to expose our soft bellies to you anytime, anyplace. Just don't say mean things about us and we'll hand you the knife you use to gut us.

At the rate they're peeing their pants I'd advise buying stock in Fruit of the Loom.

The Dutch wets--is that what Margaret Thatcher meant when she said wets?--and the usual suspects with interested motives wanted to try Wilders under the Dutch anti-hate-speech laws, for pointing out that the Muslims have been using hate speech for years. Why does everything get back to Kafka? The government declined to prosecute, saying that just because the Muslims didn't like it, it didn't make it actionable. But on January 21, 2009, a three-judge panel, whose robes must be positively soaking, ordered him prosecuted. This is like handing your executioner his rifle when he's dropped it.

Tory peers invited Wilders to appear before the House of Lords in London. A Muslim peer, Lord Ahmed, threatened the Lords that if Wilders came, he'd organize 10,000 Muslim thugs and terrorists. Well, that's not what he called them but I do. To their credit, the Lords eventually reversed themselves and re-invited Wilders, but the British secretary of state told Wilders he couldn't come in and had him stopped at Heathrow. On the pretext of course that he was preaching hate. When what he was doing was pointing out just who was hating whom and the religious document that inspires them.

The Israeli embassy in London is under siege 24/7 by Islamic demonstrators. There are marches in London all the time condemning Israel and supporting Hamas, by Muslims but also by white Englishmen who show us another side of that most useful of terms, useful idiot. The British police do nothing about this. But in a pro-Israeli march, the British police told the marchers to put up their Israeli flags because they were too confrontational.

What can be the explanation for this? It is obvious that the hatred is from the Islamists. They are after all the ones doing the murdering and it is their book which calls for conquest by the sword if necessary. To be fair, the Bible does too, and even in one or two places in the New Testament, but when's the last time you saw a Christian throwing bombs at say at a Buddhist temple? The Muslims did just that a few years ago in Afghanistan. The Koran preaches forced conversion and they are intent on practicing it. The Bible does too, especially in the older books, but it is ignored, as is the proscription against eating shrimp. It's the action that counts. The interpretation of the Bible has matured. The interpretation of the Koran has become more fundamentalist and worse.

Why are the European governments participating in their own suicide? A lot of it is, I think, the arrogance of the center-left--their entire lives are based on talking and it's been a half a century, a half century secured by American power, that has removed from their memories the fact that any school child knows: some people just hate you for what you are. Nothing in their past, their secure past, lets them think that there's anything which cannot be cured by talk and compromise. A chin-wag, some cheese and Chablis, or perhaps goat's milk, and it all ends with a group hug. The European politicians, children of talk, go home with happy faces and talk about peace in our time, while the Muslims, children of a document which demands conversion by the sword if necessary, go home, if they've attended at all, to make more bombs, and very pleased that the Europeans, who have the military and industrial power, have decided to throw it away, to let the Muslims get on with their conquest of the West, where women will be brutalized and homosexuals killed and by the way kill all the Jews, who have, as a rule, contributed more per capita to the civilization of the world than any other group. (Interesting, isn't it, that when Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jewry he was roundly and justly condemned for it. But when the Obama administration has officials who advocate giving all Israeli aid to Hamas, whose first principle is killing Jews, it doesn't seem to bother American Jews, of whom 81% vote Democrat.)

George W. Bush understood that some differences are just not reconcilable, but then he's the stupidest man ever to draw breath. Isn't he? For not to call him stupid would require a reality check by the bien pensant. But our second black president says that he will have talks with Iran without preconditions. No doubt this makes Ahmenidjad very very happy.

For the last word I give you Pat Condell, a sharp-minded Brit: