The Southern Poverty Law Center is a left-wing group attempting to pass itself off as an objective guardian against dangerous people and organizations. One person who can personally attest to that is Hirsi Ali.

Ali was born in Somalia and grew up a devout Muslim. At the age of 5, she was a victim of female genital mutilation.

In her early 20’s, she fled to the Netherlands in order to escape her arranged marriage. Since then, she has dedicated her life to fighting Islamic extremism. A champion of women’s rights, she has worked for the American Enterprise Institute and Harvard University. She currently serves as a research fellow at the American public policy think tank, the Hoover institution.

Despite her mission to speak out against the oppression of extreme ideology, she eventually encountered the bizarre and contradictory nature of the Left: she was branded a hateful radical and added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of “anti-Muslim extremists.” She discussed her experience Monday at a Hoover media roundtable:

“I’ve never met anyone from [the SPLC]. I didn’t know they existed until they put my name on that list. Since 9/11/2001, I was used to being put on lists, and in so many different ways being vilified. So, at first, I didn’t think anything of it until I realized their level of influence, that they were actually saying, ‘You can’t invite this woman because she is an extremist.’ And then I went on their website and I saw who the other extremists are — white supremacists, and all the fringe, really, really radical extreme fringe groups — and I thought, who on earth are these people, and why are they taken so seriously?”

“Why,” indeed, yet they are: after the racially charged protests in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, Ali noted, “Apple and JPMorgan and [George] Clooney started throwing money at [the SPLC], making them even more influential.” Subsequently, she wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, “Why is the Southern Poverty Law Center Targeting Liberals?”

A year and a half after the NYT piece was published, the list was removed from the SPLC’s website. However, several references to Ali remain on the site, such as a February entry labeling her “a prominent figure within the broader anti-Muslim hate movement.”

Ali shouldn’t feel too insulted. As The Washington Examiner points out, the leftist group isn’t too discriminating:

“The SPLC routinely lumps conservative advocacy groups in with legitimate hate organizations, putting proponents of traditional family values in the same category as neo-Nazis and the KKK. In a July note to supporters, the Family Research Council, a conservative nonprofit the SPLC has attacked, referred to the center as ‘a left wing smear group who has become exactly what they set out to fight, spreading hate and putting targets on people’s backs.'”

In this current climate of so-called political correctness, any speech against the Muslim culture is bound to receive radical condemnation, even when it comes from someone decrying injustice of which they have been a victim. This is, sadly, par for the course in the new playbook of the “tolerant” Left:

The four exceptional organizers of the @womensmarch are on the 2017 #TIME100. It was an honor to write about them. https://t.co/c1M4VbDgJm pic.twitter.com/QR1FY6oyF3

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) April 20, 2017

https://twitter.com/ShireenQudosi/status/824762593940164608

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