You can tell a lot about a person by what they bold when quoting

Yglesias links and quotes Ayaan Hirsi Ali on what is coming in Egypt

Ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali warns us to be very afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt. And maybe she’s right. But it’s difficult to take her word for it. After all, she thinks that Islam in general needs to be extirpated from the planet:

He then quotes her piece, bolding certain bits:

“I’ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate – a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren’t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.”

Now of course bolding a piece is meant to draw your eyes to the bolded section and to avoid the unbolded sections. Yglesias having a liberal audience is trying to stress Ali “intolerance”. How dare she be intolerant of Islam. Now lets look at the same piece with different words bolded:

I’ll tell you why: because Islam is the new fascism. Just like Nazism started with Hitler’s vision, the Islamic vision is a caliphate – a society ruled by Sharia law – in which women who have sex before marriage are stoned to death, homosexuals are beaten, and apostates like me are killed. Sharia law is as inimical to liberal democracy as Nazism. Young Muslims need to be persuaded that the vision of the Prophet Mohammed is a bad one, and you aren’t going to get that in Islamic faith schools.”

Now I would think that these things about Islam and Sharia law would be significant to liberals. After all if I as a believing Roman Catholic am repressive because I oppose sex before marriage, gay marriage and believe in God, how much more would they oppose Sharia, which stones women, beats (and kills) gays and slays apostates.

But we can’t stress these facts, because it promotes “intolerance of Islam”. Maybe it’s just me but I think we shouldn’t tolerate Sharia law, stoning of women, beating of gays, and killing of apostates.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali “intolerance” of Islam is based on a standard of Islam’s actions. Yglesias critique of Ali and defense of Islam is based on a standards of her thoughts.

That to me is the perfect illustration of how liberalism works.