Hirsi Ali

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In a recent international debate, developing in the New York Review of Books and on Signandsight.com, you have been opposed to Tariq Ramadan. He has been banned from the U.S., and there are those who wish he were not invited to speak in Rome, like in Udine, some weeks ago.

I am a liberal in the classical liberal sense, so I do not like what Tariq Ramadan says. In fact, I think his message is the worst kind of message against liberalism, but in a free society, we have to give even those who have ideas that we do not like the freedom to debate them with us. I think this is a characteristic of this civilization. The European and Western civilization relies on that idea. So for him and me to debate, and for him to come to Rome, the US or France is fine. But what he is saying and campaigning for is against liberal and liberalism. Let Ramadan speak, and let us refute what he says, because the message that he wants to convey is more embarrassing than his presence. I have been in debate with him, and seen that he gets very angry when I touched on the core issue of what he says. He wants to take away fundamental freedoms from you and from me, and put them in the hands of God. And when I told him “If you do that for yourself it is fine, but why are you propagating it?”, then he got very angry.

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