"How do we rid ourselves of this Hirsi Ali woman?"

The bravest woman in Europe, already forced to live under police protection and then kicked out of her apartment by her thoroughly cowed neighbours, is in trouble for having lied on her asylum application 14 years ago:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch legislator who has championed the rights of Muslim women, is returning from a book tour to a firestorm for lying on her asylum application when she fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage.

Hirsi Ali, 36, said Saturday she was puzzled by the uproar since she publicly acknowledged the false refugee application when she stood for parliament in 2002.

"Have they all gone mad?" she said, accusing her rivals of a political vendetta.

"Yes, I did lie to get asylum in Holland. This is public knowledge since at least September 2002," she said in a telephone call from Hamburg, Germany.

Political opponents want her stripped of her Dutch citizenship and deported. Others say she should be expelled from parliament.

Hirsi Ali became a popular figure in the Netherlands for renouncing her Muslim faith, condemning the treatment of women in many Muslim households and criticizing Dutch immigration and integration policies.

[...]

The latest political storm followed the airing of a 30-minute TV documentary Thursday tracing her steps from Somalia, where her father was an imprisoned opposition politician, to her family's exile in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Hirsi Ali repeated on the TV documentary that when she arrived in 1992 she changed her name from Hirsi Magan and her birth date on her asylum application and did not tell the authorities that she had lived in three different countries since leaving Somalia.

If there was ever anyone I was willing to forgive for having lied on a refugee claim, it's Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And sending her out of the Netherlands - especially back to Somalia - would be a death sentence. If she is forced out, I hope Canada has the cojones to take her in.

Anyone want to bet the people demanding her expulsion from the Netherlands would never demand any other refugee claimant be expelled 14 years after the fact?

Damian P.

Posted by damian at May 14, 2006 09:24 AM