As Pascal Bruckner pointed out in a debate some years ago on the website Signandsight.com, the writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an ability to incessantly act as a catalyst for ideological debates on the continent. The same goes for Sweden, one is tempted to add. When I interviewed Hirsi Ali in London in the winter of 2009, she quietly and kindly explained her idea of offering immigrant youths alternatives to the Islamic faith and the Islamic teaching which are not seldom propagated with great emphasis in the suburbs. At the time, I found the idea somewhat curiously idealistic, but most of all unrealistic. When the idea was then presented on a larger scale in connection with the launching of her book Nomad (2010), I quickly realized that I had misunderstood the situation. It didn’t take long before Swedish liberal opinion makers fell into one hateful tirade after another against Hirsi Ali’s proposition.

Sakine Madon of Expressen wrote about Ayaan Hirsi...