Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, but they deserve each and every hit that she can deliver.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch deputy who became a target of Islamic extremists, Friday hit out at the government of the Netherlands for refusing to pay for her protection in the United States.

It was not a question of money, but of principle, she said in an interview published in Friday’s edition of the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.

“It costs less to pay an American company to protect me than to assure my safety in the Netherlands, because the threat there [the Netherlands] is a lot more real,” she told the paper.

Earlier this month, Hirsi Ali returned to the Netherlands from the United States after a year in voluntary exile there, after the Dutch reportedly refused to continue paying for her protection in the US. Washington has also refused to foot the bill.

She suspected the real reason for the decision was that the ruling coalition thought that her work had caused a radicalization within the Dutch Muslim community.

“The government wants to warn others to shut up,” she said. “At the same time, they want to calm down the country’s Muslims, saying ‘we are on your side, Hirsi Ali is the bad one.'”

In other words, the Dutch government is practicing dhimmitude.