Anti Islam author Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancels Australian and New Zealand speaking tour over Mulim protests
SHE was meant to be on Q&A tonight. But security concerns have forced anti-Islam campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali to cancel her Australian tour.
SECURITY concerns have forced author and anti-Islam campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali to pull out of a planned speaking tour of Australia.
Hirsi Ali, who lives with around-the-clock security protection due to her criticisms of radical Islamists, was due to speak at events in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland in New Zealand this week.
She was also due to appear on ABC TV’s Q&A panel this evening. Organisers of her trip Think Inc said they were disappointed at her last minute cancellation.
“Ayaan Hirsi Ali regrets that for a number of reasons including security concerns she must cancel her upcoming appearances,” Think Inc said in a statement to AAP on Monday.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali cancelled her tour to Australia at the last minute and will not be appearing on tonight's #qanda. #staytuned
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) April 2, 2017
“She wishes the event organisers success in their future endeavours and hopes to return to Australia in the not too distant future.”
About 2,000 tickets had been sold to Hirsi Ali’s speaking events in Australia.
Buyers were being notified by email about the cancellations and will receive refunds.
Hirsi Ali’s trip to Australia had sparked protests from a group of Muslim women who accused her of hate mongering and bigotry.
Nearly 400 people signed an online petition against Ms Hirsi Ali’s speaking tour.
“Against a backdrop of increasing global Islamophobia, Hirsi-Ali’s divisive rhetoric simply serves to increase hostility and hatred towards Muslims,” the petition, posted on Change.org, said.
Hirsi Ali has repeatedly criticised radical Islamists and sharia law and wants moderate Muslims to reform their religion.
She was raised a Muslim by her family in Somalia, but later renounced her religion after seeking political asylum in the Netherlands in the early 1990s in an attempt to escape an arranged marriage. She is an opponent of female genital mutilation and is an atheist.
Hirsi Ali was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005.
Hirsi Ali joined Geert Wilders’ far right party in the Netherlands and was elected as a MP in 2003 before being forced to resign over the validity of the Dutch citizenship. She moved to the US after receiving death threats for helping to make a short film that showed images of violence against women alongside verses from the Koran. In a paper written for the Hoover Institute at Stanford University last month, Hirsi Ali argues the public needs to be better educated about the political ideology of Islamists and the ways they recruit and finance their operations so they can reach their ultimate goal of imposing sharia law.