Don't confuse us with the facts!

A random follow of a link from the CiF pages under the heading "Brian Whitaker's best blogs and analysis from the Middle East" led me to "Jadaliyya" which has a fascinating take on Ayaan Hirsi Ali's claims that Muslims are conducting war on Christians across the world.

It's clear that the author (Anthony Alessandrini) is not that keen on Ms. Hirsi Ali:

Having already reached her inevitable conclusion in her opening, Hirsi Ali appears to feel little need to support it with anything so mundane as actual facts, instead offering a loosely-connected cherry picking tour that ties together incidents of violence against Christians and other religious minorities in Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, and Indonesia.

although interestingly he doesn't dispute any of the facts she offers; instead aiming at the context of her data:

[about Indonesia]...she cites data complied by the Christian Post suggesting an increase in violent incidents against religious minorities of nearly forty percent between 2010 and 2011. Again, this is certainly a cause for concern, but it would be interesting to ask Hirsi Ali how she would compare this increase to the more than fifty percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims in the United States between 2009 and 2010, as reported by the FBI.

and the time-honoured strategy of playing the (wo)man, not the ball:

What is more worthy of note, however, are those claims by Hirsi Ali that suggest a number of moves taken out of the contemporary neo-conservative playbook. Hirsi Ali's connections to the neo-con movement—she is, among other things, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute—have been widely noted.

So in Muslim nations across the world, Muslims are indisputably persecuting, killing and driving out Christians, in many cases with their nation's acquiesence, but we shouldn't be too concerned about that because a) American citizens badmouth Muslim neighbours and b) the person pointing out the facts hangs around conservative American politicans?

Whew, I was nearly worried for a minute.

[A note for Anthony who may have forgotten a point in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's motivation: do you remember what happened to her Dutch friend Theo van Gogh when he helped her make the film "Submission" criticising Islam? Perhaps you should refresh your memory. ]