Nicholas Kristof tells off Ayaan Hirsi Ali because of course he knows far more about Islam than she does.

To those of us who have lived and traveled widely in Africa and Asia, descriptions of Islam often seem true but incomplete.

Including, apparently, descriptions by people who grew up immersed in Islam, genitally mutilated under Islam, beaten up by their teachers of Islam, issued death threats from adherents of Islam. The descriptions are true – but Kristof wants more. He wants to hear about the pretty calligraphy.

The repression of women, the persecution complexes, the lack of democracy, the volatility, the anti-Semitism, the difficulties modernizing, the disproportionate role in terrorism — those are all real. But if those were the