In 1922 George Bernard Shaw wrote a play about Joan of Arc. It is more than simply a true historical portrayal of Joan but instead he uses his subject to explore the volatile issues of his own time. Politics, religion, war, and the struggle for a woman's right to be heard and respected were as valid and important in 1492 as they were in 1922; and as they remain today.

Today, in the magic of this theatre, we touch a lifeline across centuries. We will experience a charmed moment in the birth of the modern world, albeit in the context of a religious war and of witchcraft. History may not repeat itself, but recently, almost six centuries later, there has appeared in Holland a double of Shaw's heroine, Somali-born, Muslim-raised, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. As a protagonist for Muslim women, she wrote the screenplay and provided the voice-over for Theo Van Gogh's film Submission which featured a female actor provocatively dressed in a semi-transparent burqa with verses from the Koran justifying the subjugation of women written on her skin. For that perceived defamation, a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam shot Van Gogh and cut his throat. A letter pinned to Van Gogh's body stated "Hirsi Ali you are next."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali came to Holland in 1992 seeking political asylum and received a residence permit. She worked at menial jobs while she learnt Dutch, then she became an interpreter and social worker. She studied political science at Leiden University and joined the centre-left Labour Party (PvdA). Disagreeing with its immigration platform, she left for the more conservative People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and was elected to parliament. Always she wrote and spoke for Muslim women and against unrestricted immigration. But the death threat meant constant police protection and frequent changes of domicile. For two months she took a leave of absence from parliament and left for an unknown location in the United States.

She returned to Holland in 2005 and to her seat in Parliament, the same year in which she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In May 2006 she was stripped of her Dutch citizenship by the Minister of Immigration and Integration in her own party because she had supposedly lied on her citizenship application. The controversy that followed led to the downfall of the government. She has more recently worked for the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. In April 2007 at a lecture given by her at the University of Pittsburgh a protester stated that Hirsi Ali deserved the death sentence but she should be tried in a Muslim country.

Ian Burama, in his book Murder in Amsterdam, sums up Ayaan's outlook. When asked about America, she said: "I feel at home in New York where you see people of all colors, some are so black they're almost blue. And there are a lot of people of color who do very well, which simply confirms that there is nothing genetic about success." Burama writes: "It was only to be expected then that Ayaan would leave the Social Democrats and join the Free Enterprise Party, the VVD. Delighted to have a beautiful black critic of the welfare state and Muslim radicalism in a party that was, over all, very male and very white, she was welcomed as a walking Statue of Liberty. In fact, she was too radical for the VVD too. The leaders of this party hate nothing more than rocking the boat, and that is precisely what Ayaan was aiming to do. She was always more of an activist than a politician, and the compromises and deals of politicians were not for her. Like Van Gogh she wanted to stir things up. Her real ambition was to be the Voltaire of Islam, to attack the faith."

Shaw says this about Joan of Arc in his Preface "Joan the Original and Presumptuous":

Joan of Arc, a village girl from the Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonized in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though a professed and most pious Catholic, she was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs....She was the pioneer of rational dressing for women, and, refused to accept the specific woman's lot, and dressed and fought and lived as men did.

As she contrived to assert herself in all these ways with such force that she was famous throughout western Europe before she was out of her teens...it is hardly surprising that she was judicially burnt, ostensibly for ... capital crimes which we no longer punish as such, but essentially for what we call unwomanly and insufferable presumption.....She lectured, talked down, and overruled statesmen and prelates. She poohpoohed the plans of generals, leading their troops to victory on plans of her own. She had an unbounded and quite unconcealed contempt for official opinion, judgment, and authority...

When she was thwarted by men whom she thought fools, she made no secret of her opinion of them or her impatience with their folly; and she was naive enough to expect them to be obliged to her for setting them right and keeping them out of mischief. Now it is always hard for superior wits to understand the fury roused by their exposures of the stupidities of comparative dullards. As her actual condition was pure upstart, there were only two opinions about her. One was that she was miraculous: the other that she was unbearable.

Based on that excerpt from Shaw, let's compare Joan of Arc (JoA) and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (AHA):

JoA - To be able to carry out her God-given mission, she deceived the French military system, pretending to be both a man and a soldier.

AHA - To claim political asylum in the Netherlands, she lied about her age, name, and the country from which she had fled.

JoA - She lectured and talked down to her superiors as one who had absolute knowledge of God's will.

AHA - She wrote and spoke to the media with the authority of one who has complete inside knowledge of Islam.

JoA - As "pure upstart" her pretensions helped her shake up France's traditional caste system.

AHA - As outsider, her rapid social and political upward mobility challenged the stolid Dutch establishment.

JoA - She was regarded as either "miraculous" or "unbearable".

AHA - She was called "an effective critic" or "too aggressive and outspoken"

JoA - She was burnt without a hand lifted on her own side to save her....comrades she had led to victory and enemies she had disgraced were equally glad to be rid of her.

AHA - She was hounded out of Parliament by a colleague in her own party, who promptly took over the policies for which Ali had been agitating.

If you are as intrigued as I am by the parallels between Shaw's description of Joan of Arc and media descriptions of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you may want to learn more about Ayaan's life and thought in her books:

• The Caged Virgin - An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2006.
• Infidel, Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2007.

Also highly recommended:

• Ian Burama, Murder in Amsterdam, Penguin Books, 2006.
• Irshad Manji, The Trouble With Islam, Random House Canada, 2003. (This book should be of special interest to Canadians, as Ms. Manji is a Canadian and a Muslim.)

Among other important women of our time to consider are the late Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto and Bangledeshi author Taslima Nasreen who was forced into hiding after her books attracted riots and death threats.

Copyright © H. David Kirk Ph.D. 2008. I am indebted to Jeremy Tow, artistic director, and David Baughan, stage manager, for editorial suggestions.