How to create enemies out of potential friends

Oddly enough, since Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parlimentarian who became famous because of her crusade against Islam, left the Netherlands, Muslim women resident in Holland - who she was presumably attempting to speak on behalf of - are telling Reuters that, for the most part, they are relieved that she is gone.

From Reuters:

"I am glad that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is gone, because now the tone has softened, it has become less extreme and tensions have eased," said Nermin Altintas, who runs an education centre for migrant women.

"Let her call one woman forward and show how she really helped her," another woman, Famile Arslan, described as a 35-year-old family lawyer told Reuters, adding:

"We worked for 10, 15, 20 years to help emancipate Muslim women... and she stole the respect we should have had as grass- roots movements working for change."
..."Her statements on Islam were very harsh. I have a completely different experience of Islam... as I come from a Turkish cultural background," said Altintas.

As Reuters reported:

Hirsi Ali caused uproar by calling Islam "backward," and by branding the prophet Mohammad a pedophile and a tyrant. However, it was the film "Submission" she wrote for Dutch television which most provoked. In the short film, an actress whose naked body is covered with a thin veil appeals to God about the violence she believes she must endure in his name, while in other scenes naked women cower with texts from the Koran inscribed on their bodies.

The film's director, Theo Van Gogh, was gunned down as he biked along an Amsterdam street in broad daylight. His killer appended a note to his corpse saying that Ali could expect to meet the same fate for her part in having insulted Islam.

But rather than rallying around Ali, Muslim women who she was purportedly trying to help were mostly alienated by Ali's methods according to Reuters:

"If she wanted to campaign against violence against women then she shouldn't have written the Koran text on the body, because that was offensive to many of the religious women she claimed she was trying to help," said Altintas. "Her methods were such that rather than attracting Muslim women she pushed them away... She polarized things," said 19-year-old student Suzan Yucel from Eindhoven.

I've often wondered how all the slamming of Islam can be productive when it seems to me (and apparently to these Muslim women as well) that vilifying the religion only alienates the good-willed Muslims.

Wouldn't it be far easier to limit the critique to sworn enemies, for example, the violent jihadists?

For the record, I think Ali raises many valid points and her voice should not be suppressed.

But still, I can't dismiss what these women are saying as easily as, well, John Hood did at The Corner. He wrote:

[It] sounds like much of the "relief" expressed in the Reuters piece has to do withfear of what Ali provoked from Dutch Muslims rather than a fundamental misunderstanding of Islam on her part. It's essentially another example of Mark Steyn's quod erat demonstrandum: Don't say we're violent, or we'll kill you.