I've been meaning to post this since Friday night. Not exactly a crack journalist, am I?

On Friday evening I went to a lecture at the University of Toronto Bancroft Building. It was to be about Sharia Law in Ontario, and I had received the invite from a pro-Israel group that I had seen in conference before. They always have amazing guest speakers. Anyhow, the invitation itself was nearly three pages long, so I skipped most of it. All I caught was that time, place, and that Irshad Manji was a speaker (For those of you who haven't read The Trouble with Islam, you really should. She's Muslim, but she's calling for a reformation. This doesn't exactly make her popular.). I didn't read the names of the rest of the speakers, but I was pleased to notice that they would be screening the short film Submission - the one for which Theo van Gogh was murdered by an extremist.

So off I went, not sure of exactly which building I was going to. U of T is so large, that I was getting worried I was heading in the wrong direction. Then I saw them. There was one on every corner, armed, radio in hand. I've been to large synagogues in Montreal, and I know that they have armed guards - I thought this was a measure of protection because of the content of the event. But these weren't private guards, they were police. I quickly deduced that I was in the right place, but I didn't understand what all the fuss was about.

As I went to walk in the side door, which was being held open by a man with a clipboard, a police motorcade pulled up. For Irshad Manji? I knew she was under protection, but I had no idea that it was so severe. It looked like a publicity stunt. The man with the clipboard advised me to go round to the front entrance, and as I walked past the motorcade, a tall, thin, beautiful black woman stepped out, surrounded by what appeared to be the Secret Service. Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And me without my camera! That'll teach me not to read the invitation next time! So that was what all the security was for... it made sense. Ever since Submission was made, she has been under fatwa. To have her friend and co-filmmaker be murdered for the film she had written had caused her to be extra cautious. Throughout the night, she was surrounded by approximately 15 armed men and women, one of whom stayed on stage with her, next to her, in case there was an attack.

The evening started with a press conference, at which she made reference to her protectors,

"It's telling that I, as a woman brought up in Islam, need security now. I need protection to fight for my rights."

Irshad Manji made what I felt to be one of the top zingers of the night, when she said that if the apologists were trying to placate the naysayers by assuring them that Canadian law would always take precedence, and it would always be there to fall back on, and that it would always trump any decision made in a Sharia court - then why are they so eager to have a Sharia court in the first place? After all, it serves no purpose, if they must always defer to the law.

There were hecklers of course. There were the three veiled women who made me think Moscow: why didn't the guards search our bags? and who argued that Muslim women subjugate themselves by not being properly educated about their rights in Islam, so it's their own fault. Hirsi Ali countered with the fact that perhaps women would be more educated if they weren't forced to leave school and marry at nine years old. There were the angry young men, as there always are at events like this. A few of them tried to debate both Manji and Ali. Manji is proficient at deflecting these people, and English is her first language, so she stayed her course and smote them where they stood. Ali, on the other hand, is more softly spoken, and more careful in choosing her words. She took the cake when she challenged one of the men who had argued that Islam and Sharia should be left to the Muslims, and if they, as an independent group want to have their own arbitration system, it's nobody elses business. She countered that he was obviously intelligent, well educated, and a handsome man, but she was concerned that he never mentioned abuses against women and children in his argument, and she wondered why men like him never talked of the protection of women from within - is it because he has a stake in their abuse? The crowd went wild, and he returned to his seat with his tail between his legs.

There was a break between the speeches and the film, and a couple of plates were brought out, mostly for the benefit of the bodyguards, who we later learned were members of the RCMP. Hirsi Ali had been whisked off to a back room where she was more protected, and her guards took turns munching fresh veggies and spinach dip.

After the evening was over, and I was on my way back out into the street, I had the opportunity to speak with one of them, and tell him how impressed I was with their performance. They were perfectly orchestrated, perfectly timed, and ever alert. I confess I spent most of the evening watching them, and following their gaze. I noticed that when the troublesome veiled women left halfway throught the evening, one of the guards follwed them out. I admit I was uncomfortable being surrounded by so many armed guards. Not because I'm afraid of guns - unlike the liberal left, I do not have visions of guns jumping out of nowhere and shooting me. No, I was afraid because I was in a room with a woman who needed so much protection in the first place. That meant that anything could happen.

And what of that woman, and those guards, and that potential for anything? Our politicians and protectors denounce the threat level in this country like it is a racist construct; they pooh-pooh our fears and concerns, and they assure us that nothing bad could ever happen in Canada. After all, there are no bad people here.

So why did this lovely, intelligent women need fifteen armed guards in a country that purportedly has no terrorists? Something tells me that someone is deluded, and it's not Ayaan Hirsi Ali.