In 2004 Theo Van Gogh was murdered in the street of his beloved Amsterdam by an Islamic man furious at the movie "Submission" Van Gogh had produced with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim woman from Somalia. The movie was about defiance, about Muslim women and the oppression and abuse they suffer under the precepts of the Quran. Muhammad Bouyeri shot Theo and after Theo begged, "Can't we talk about this?" Bouyeri shot him 4 more times and sawed Theo's throat with a knife then stabbed a 5 page letter onto the dying man's chest. The letter threatened Western Governments, Jews and Ayaan who had to go into hiding. Van Gogh was the great grandson of Theo Van Gogh, Vincents brother.

The moment was a defining one for Holland. They finally realized that their western values were incompatible with the Islamic faith practiced by the many Muslims in Holland. It set the country on fire. As Hirsi Ali says, "Opinion makers were now saying that it was irresponsible and indeed morally wrong to pretend that appeasing Islamic leaders would magically lead to social harmony. Dutch society was churninng with discussion over how to best integrate Muslims, and Muslims in Holland also seemed largely aware now that they needed to choose between Western values and the old ways."

The freedom of expression that liberated Hirsi Ali once she moved to Holland is unknown in most if not all theocratic Islamic countries. Theo's murderer and others like him don't realize how deeply people in the West are committed to the idea of an open society, she points out. Even though open societies are vulnerable, they are stubborn. It is the place where she ran for safety and freedom and she wants to keep it that way: safe and free.

Hirsi Ali grew up in a culture of death in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya. She wrote in her book "Infidel" that "death lures many to take their own lives in order to escape the dismal reality. For many women, because of the perception of lost honor, death comes at the hands of a father, brother or husband. Wishful thinking about the peaceful tolerance of Islam, she points out, cannot interpret away this reality: hands are still cut off, women still stoned and enslaved.

Ayaan has made this her lifes purpose: to educate those of us who are free that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.

The fact is that hundreds of millions of women around the world live in forced marriages, and six thousand small girls are excised every day. As was Hirsi Ali. With a pair of scissors wielded by a local religious man while being held down by adults.

The apologists for militant Islam do the West no favors when they run in with their politically correct mega-phones directing us all on what to think when another Muslim commits terror and murder in the name of his religion. The apologists for militant Islam do the Muslim faith no favors when they tamp down much needed discussion on how we in the West are to cope with a population that has gone through no reformation and often does not seek to assimilate in the country that opened its doors to them, but instead to take it over. The next time you see a woman in a burqa shopping, ask her if she was excised as a girl. Ask her what level of education she was allowed to achieve. Ask her if she was forced into her marriage. The women of the West have fought too hard and too long to be "free" to throw it all away by calling the oppression and abuse of millions of women in the name of religion just another lifestyle choice.

It is oppression and abuse.

We in the West are a tolerant people. Freedom of speech is protected by our constitution. Religious freedom in protected by our constitution. And women have been liberated, to run their own lives. All three of these are in direct conflict with strict Islam. You are not allowed to criticize or even question Islamic precepts. They tolerate no religion but their own. And women are subjugated with no voice or power either within the religious arena or at home. Peaceful Muslims are just as victimized as the rest of us by strict Islamists. [Writer Heather Michon points out that Islamic feminism is on the rise in the Muslim world and Europe is going to play a huge part in that development.]

Even American muslims who have grown up in America enjoying the perks and benefits of an open society, such as Major Hasan and his Imam, dare to embrace the belief that Islamic law trumps the U.S. Constitution. This sets up a dangerous conflict because

We are not a theocracy. The goal of a global Islamic Government is incompatible with religious tolerance.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali made her mark in Holland. She pushed through legislation that caused the Dutch government to register murders in that country based on honor killings and to register the domestic violence, sexual abuse and incest and the number of excisions of little girls taking place every year on Dutch kitchen tables. The Dutch government registered the number of drug-related killings and traffic accidents every year but not the number of honor killings because no Dutch official wanted to recognize that this kind of murder happened on a regular basis. Once these figures were clear, the facts alone shocked the country and helped her reach the goal of eliminating the complacent attitude of moral relativists who claimed all cultures are equal. She took away the excuse that nobody knew.

The creeping in of Shari'a law is incompatible with Western values. It is mainly muslim men in England who stridently demand to follow only Shari'a law instead of the laws of England, much to the horror of Islamic women who have fled brutal theocracies to escape Shari'a so they might attend universities and not marry if they wish and not be killed for being raped. And part of that creeping Shari'a law that is marking itself in free countries is the criminalization of religious talk and discourse if it involves Islam. That is Shari'a law. In our country Christians and Jews, Catholics and Baptists [and Hare Krishna's] are routinely debated, ridiculed and admired at various times and by various factions. Islam does not get a pass in a free society, which becomes un-free once freedom of speech is suppressed.

As a free society it is our duty to engage in vigorous discourse on the violence in our country being perpetuated on the innocent in the name of Islam. We are not the ones who are bringing up religion. When you shout "Allahu Akbar" before engaging in murder, you bring religion to the table. Now is not the time to apologize or wish away the realities. Now is the time to confront and hold feet to the fire: we have shed literal blood, sweat and tears to form a more perfect union, an open society that relishes its freedoms. And we won't be held hostage to the notion we must tolerate the intolerable.

There are times when silence becomes an accomplice to injustice. Or as Winston Churchill put it: "The malice of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous." Unfortunately, Theo Van Gogh learned that the hard way.