Last year her virtual imprisonment in The Netherlands became so intolerable that she fled to the United States. Salman Rushdie and Sam Harris noted she "may be the first political refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust." As a Dutch citizen she is entitled to protection from her government, but that government’s will has abjectly collapsed. Ms. Hirsi Ali, who is working on her third book, must now take care of her own security — an annual expenditure in excess of two million dollars. A campaign is underway to cover the cost and has attracted support from atheist writer Christopher Hitchens and evangelical pastor Rick Warren.

Unfortunately they may be unable to raise enough money to keep her safe from the Muslims who wish to murder her. If Ms. Hirsi Ali’s security cannot be assured, she will be forced into permanent hiding and the vital work she does will be at an end. Such a terrible defeat for freedom of expression and thought must not be permitted. The United States government should intervene and provide for her security indefinitely. She is as formidable an ally in the war against radical Islam as any dissident-refugee from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union was during the last century.

Liberals have treated Ms. Hirsi Ali with scorn and have generally blamed her for bringing this fiasco on herself. Apparently their view of dissent is confined to screeching about blood for oil and pretending such pronouncements put them under government duress. But here is a woman whose journey has taken her from tribalism and Islam to cosmopolitanism and humanism and whose very life is in danger because of it. Her stay in the United States should be occasioned by an open-ended embrace and an absolute, unqualified guarantee of her right to criticize religion without fear of death. Those whose sympathies lie elsewhere should be excoriated in perpetuity.