A group of French intellectuals are demanding that Ayaan Hirsi Ali be given honorary French citizenship and that France provide the former politician with the protection that the Netherlands no longer wants to provide now that she lives in the US.
In a petition in the newspaper Libération the intellectuals express annoyance at the "unacceptable cowardice of a European government." The petition is signed by among others philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut and André Glucksmann. "Europe was the cradle of the Enlightenment tradition," says the declaration, "and Western values must guarantee freedom of expression." |