Complicated Woman

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a guest, Thursday night, on The Colbert Report, which, prior to my working in the news media industry, was one of my primary sources of news (and now I realize how hilariously misinformed I was) but it's still one of my primary sources of entertainment.
I was impressed with how self-possessed and poised Ali remained (it's hard to be poised seated opposite Stephen Colbert playing Bill O'Reilly) while discussing her controversial views on Islam and religion in general.
What wasn't discussed in the interview, and which I was surprised to read later, was that Ali, a feminist and atheist, works at the American Enterprise Institute. It's easy enough to understand why she would have taken the job when it was offered, given that she was under threat of death from Muslims in the Netherlands after her collaboration with Theo Van Gogh, who was assassinated -- and also suddenly unwelcome in the country itself (where she had been a member of the Dutch parliament) for fabricating her reasons for seeking asylum there as a young girl fleeing an arranged marriage.
It's a fascinating story, which Ali recounts in her new book, Infidel.
But with this knowledge in mind, I thought it was interesting that SC asked her whether Christian fundamentalists should use the "fire with fire" approach in combating the violent element of Muslim fundamentalism (the new buzzword is "Islamo-fascism.")
This is the perfect question to have asked because it isolates what separates Ali's views from some of her neocon colleagues. But maybe not all of them, as I might automatically assume. Maybe it is possible to be a feminist and atheist at the American Enterprise Institute. As my significant other pointed out, at least it provides a little diversity over there. And at least it's genuine diversity, i.e. diversity of worldview versus merely the skin-deep tokenism so beloved of the neocons.