The details of this story are still unfolding. Irrespective of these, the Dutch appear to have lost a brave, eloquent and credible voice against the backward Islamic extremism that is threatening their liberal traditions.
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Hirsi Ali heads to the United States of AmericaMay 15th, 2006 |
 38 comments to Hirsi Ali heads to the United States of America |
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This sends a terrible message about what Holland, the land of Erasmus and Spinoza, has become. A place where a woman cannot speak her mind freely. It is too depressing for words.
Nonsens, she is not moving because she is afraid of muslims, but because she got some problems in her own party.
As I understand it AYH is leaving because serious doubts have been cast over the reasons she gave for claiming asylum in the Netherlands, and ultimately gaining Dutch citizenship. If all this proves to be true, and she really did live for twelve years in a middle-class district in Kenya and that her story about fleeing an oppressive arranged marriage turns out to be a made-up sob story, then she would lose her right to live in the country, and become just another fake refugee, and an embarrassment rather than an asset to her party. Which is why she jumps, into the arms of a US think-tank, before she gets pushed. She must be pretty desperate, because the American Enterprise Institute is said to have quite a few very religious people in it who are unlikely to have “Dutch” attitudes to issues like abortion and euthanasia (see this Expatica report).
It’s kind of like a Monty Python sketch isn’t it? A bunch of miners watch the canary muscle up to the bars and… voom! Out of there. Since the bird is still alive, they keep digging. Beautiful plumage the Hirsi blue.
As far as I know I can concur with the story that Yusuf Smith paints regarding Hirisi Ali. If the claims are true about her former life in Africa before coming to Holland, then her credibility has been completely “shot out of the water”. It maybe that even her Dutch nationality is stripped off her. I suppose she has outdone her usefulness in Holland now and is of to greener lands west wards.
The rumours about her lying when she came in to the country, was spread in the Dutch TV program Zembla in which the brother and the former husband of ALi testified against her. However, after the broadcast the brother admitted that what he was saying was wrong.
In my view, Ali doesn’t flee because she is afraid of terrorists but because she made herself a bit impossible in her own party. Remember, she moved from the socialist PvdA to the “liberal” (conservative) VVD just because the PvdA didn’t give her any real powers.
She also proposed in a debate in Belgium to abolish the farright party Vlaams Blok (Flemish Blok). So, I don’ t think she is fleeing because she is afraid.
Thank you for that link Yusuf Smith,
Which only goes to show exactly how dreadfully parochial are the views of so many people in Europe now, regarding the United States of America. I am quite sure that Ayaan will find more of a receptive open-minded audience in just one city in the USA than she might find in all the hatred-fuelled mosques in the Netherlands. Personally I wish her all the very best in her new country and hope she finally finds the freedom from the Islamic sexual and religious bigotry she has spent so many years escaping from.
I did not read the lede as, “The dutch lost her due to Islamic extremism”. I read it as “The dutch lost a warrior” (heavily paraphrased to condense the essentials).
Although it is known that she did lie in order to get asylum (she admitted lies in 2002), I don’t think we can take at face value the people who were supposedly doing the forcing. It is also possibly a matter of perspective in which what is normal to the guys (“she was speaking to him, she loves him”) is seen as an imperative to her (“if I don’t marry him, I will probably be hurt”).
Maybe it is just my perspective, but I don’t see how you necessarily lose all credibility because you stretched the truth in order to win the lottery, something which at best just gave her the opportunity to make loud her voice.
So, she lied as a desperate 22 year old woman fleeing a forced marriage – in which she would have been treated as her Muslim husband’s chattel. So what? She admitted this years ago.
Haven’t any of the compassionless moral high-grounders commenting on here noticed how much lying is routine in every day politics in The Netherland and – dare I say it – Tony Blairs’ Britain.
More recently and more to the point, Ms Hirsi Ali has been one of more honest and lucid politicians on the need to stand up against Islamist extremism.
She has been a champion of traditional Dutch democratic values of freedom of expression, tolerance and women’s rights.
She has paid for her honest freedom of expression with death threats and living in a safe house.
The Netherlands needs Ms Ali more than she needs the Netherlands. How pathetic that a lie on an application form completed years ago should count for more than her exemplary working her way up from nothing to achieve something valuable in life…of course some believe she should just have known her station in life as a chador-wearing chattel at her husband’s mercy.
God bless – and protect – Ms Hirsi Ali.
In the USA she will be able to learn to live again like a free human being in a democracy.
In a list of sins by severity, where d’ya think lying comes versus hijacking a plane to Stansted Airport?
Show me an Asylum Seeker who hasn’t lied and I’ll owe you a coke.
This is a clear example of how laws can be enforced when the powers-that-be want to enforce them, for their own reasons, and ignored in millions of other cases. It sounds like HYA was a legitimate refugee, but got bad advice about lying on her application. Then she made the further mistake of publicly opposing the received craven cowardly wisdom. So she was made an example of, a burnt offering to the self-satisfied status quo. And now the Islamofascists are three for three in the Netherlands. Does anyone really think this will appease them?
Ms. Ali is heartily welcome here in the U.S. Perhaps she can convince Paul Belien to accompany her.
The Left in Holland and Belgium seem determined to deliver their countries into the hands of the Islamofascists.
Morons.
I am thrilled that she is coming to my country. I hope she will take an active role in our punditocracy and culture this side of the Atlantic. How long will it be until we see her on Fox News or CNN? (She may be a bit too hot to handle for our so-called mainstrem media.)
The AEI seems to be more statist than her. Congratulations to them for expanding their philosophical scope, if that was their intention.
Some of those calling Hirsi Ali a liar in the thread above are perhaps not the most credible of sources, if their blogs are anything to go by.
Melanie Philipps (the journalist) discusses this here. Phillips is an outspoken critic of Islamofascism and points out that one reason Hirsi Ali (whose status is of course apostate- i.e. someone who has rejected Islam) is moving is because the neighbours reckoned her presence endangered them and got a court ruling against her.
Yes she did lie to get into the country- (like no one else ever did that!) but not about coming from Kenya but that she came via other counties first. She has been open about this all along. She has been made a scapegoat by Dutch media who are afraid of Islamofascism. The Dutch people should be ashamed of this.
I detect the faint aroma of hyperbole. Does it say anywhere that she’s emigrating (as in changing citizenship etc). It seems like she’s taking a break from the public sector as elected officials do often enough, especially when they’re not being assets to their parties. I suspect that she’s not making any absolute decisions now, but will law comparitively low and see what develops.
As much as I admire her courage and outspokenness, I’m not surprised that she’s not an asset at present. You can’t do two things at once: simultaneously agressively confronting someone and convince them that you can work things out peacefully.
Her MO is necessarily confrontational and polarizing (in a country that favors give and take and negotiation over lines drawn in the sand). She’s publicized a problem that’s serious but she’s in no position to actually, you know, make things any better (often how it works).
Think of it in terms of Good Cop, Bad Cop. She’s been the Bad Cop so far, but part of the scenario depends on the Bad Cop leaving the room for a while so the Good Cop can get the maximum amount of cooperation from the suspect.
One thing that has surprised me is that no mention has been made here of the fact that a Dutch court recently agreed that it was incompatible with Hirsi Ali’s neighbours’ Human Rights to have her to living in their apartment block. (Link). This is also interstingly discussed here. This of course raises interesting questions about the status of laws on “Human Rights” but that’s another thread.
As for everyone who talks about credibility, there has to be a logical link between the purported lie and the views expressed, in order for the one to damage the credibility of the other. That one of my heroes, the philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege, turns out to have been an anti-Semite, does not detract in the slightest from the cogency (or otherwise) of his views on logic and the philosophy of language for example. Yet in politics for some reason, everything is thought to be connected to everything else; but in what sense can what she said some years ago to gain access to the Netherlands reflect on the truth or cogency of the arguments she has since put forward concerning the evil of Islamofascism? It is quite evident which parties have an interest in connecting the two issues.
Maybe she could run for Congress once she gets her citizenship.
Completely off-topic. Deteled.
Christopher Hitchens has recently written an article about Holland’s Liberals mistreatment and disregard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It’s relevant to this discussion and worth a read.
“The Caged Virgin: Holland’s shameful treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.” – Christopher Hitchens(Link)
I am surprised to see so much hostility to Hirsi Ali on this blog. She strikes me as an exemplary person: calm, lucid, and brave.
I don’t think you’ll find hostility towards Hirsi Ali from (and I am possibly being a little presumptuous here) any of the Samizdata editors or contributors. Nor any of the regular commentariat that spring to mind.
The American Enterprise Institute is niether particularly religious nor is it statist.
“AEI’s purposes are to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism–limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate. ”
http://www.aei.org/about/filter.all/default.asp
It seems to me that Peter van Ham of the Clingendael Institute who said of the AEI: ““The people who work there have a very religiously-tinted worldview. I think Hirsi Ali will feel totally claustrophobic there”, is simply a parochial bigot.
I don’t even comprehend where the “statist” notion expressed in a comment above comes from.
I agree,I don’t think you’ll find much hostility to Hirsi Ali from the regular visitors to this blog.
However you will find plenty of hostility to your bog standard asylum seeker who lied on his/her application
Do we stand up for Hirsi Ali because she happens to help us with our battle against the extremes of Islam or because we accept that some of the asylum seekers legal or illegal( like Hirsi Ali) might have something to offer our countries?
Personally I would stand up for her on both those counts.
So how does an immigration officer know which scared african asylum seeker will turn out to be a cogent defender of the freedoms of liberal democracy.
My point is if Hirsi Ali ( a now illegal immigrant) turned out to be cleaner or worse a labour politican, would our howls of outrage at her being hounded out of her job be as loud.
If by that do you mean “should we judge her by her actions rather that her origins or the nature of her visa requirements?”, then I think you can guess my answer.
If a person does wicked things then I am certainly less likely to consern myself when they encounter misfortunes than if they are on the side of the angels (or are at least not on the side of the devils).
I think people who have something to offer our countries should be able to stay for that reason alone.
The only asylum seekers I object to are the complete freeloaders who never bother to learn the lingo and scrounch off benefits living in little ghettoes of their original culture while enjoying (at our expense) the material benefits of our culture.
Sorting the wheat from the chaff can be done. And the chaff can be discarded.
Hirsi Ali is not a “now illegal immigrant”. She still has a Dutch residency permit.
As far as I can see, this lady deserves our respect for her stoicism in the face of thuggish threats and for her willingness to speak out, something that is pretty obviously dangerous in Holland. Yes, she bent the rules, although from what I have read she has been straightforward about her intentions. In any event, I find the snide carping and nit-picking about her motives to say more about the people making these points than the woman herself. The United States has gained itself a smart and brave woman.
Maybe she is accused of bending some rules, bit at least she took the field of competition to bend them. She will be a breath of fresh air here in the USA in that she will actually come in publically instead of sneaking in. One can tell the quality of a person by the enemies they keep. I say welcome Ayaan! Our gain is the loss of the spineless Eunichs who seek surrender to the Islamofacsists.
I am sure no one here is surprised to hear that she is the brunt of smears. She is one of the worst possible spokeswomen against Islamofascism in their eyes. Her moving to the US will give her an even bigger stage to get across her important message. It is too bad she is being driven out of Holland but it will probably be all for the best.
I suspect she will end up “contributor” to Fox very soon after her arrival.
All I want to know is: what happened to the guy who granted her asylum status? Surly he got fired, right? RIGHT?
Why? In my view any woman in an Islamic society needs asylum simply by virtue of being a woman in such a society.
Moreover in this case in particular Hirsi Ali has helped ‘lift the veil’ on Islamic repression and thus has been a major benefit to Dutch society and polity. To want to throw her out after that, well, most likely such a person would either be an Islamist or a flea-brained racist (and it is interesting how similar those two groups can be).
It’s sad to see that the spirit of appeasement is still alive and well in the Netherlands and Europe, and that the new Nazis are also alive and well. It seems some people never learn anything. It’s good to see that the USA is still the land of the”Land of of the free and the home of the Brave”. Ms. Ali you are welcome here. Let be the first to welcome you to America and buy you dinner.
If it’s any consolation (and it is for me) Rita Verdonk, the main force in causing AHA’s citizenship problems is in very hot water over her handling of this.
-It looks like it will probably kill Verdonk’s campaign to become party leader.
-If AHA is found to not be a Dutch citizen, then Verdonk will probably be forced to grant her accelerated naturalization.
The Dutch might not endorse untruths by asylum seekers, but they don’t cotton to grandstanding by ambitious blowhards either.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=30073&name=MPs+order+Verdonk+to+reconsider+Hirsi+Ali%27s+status
Hear hear! Perhaps the same could be said of any society with a high prevelance of female genital cutting.
Everyone on this forum should take the time to read this shocking piece of news. It’s outragious. Looks like the Nazis are back. “Peaceful Religion”… my arse.
“Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical “standard Islamic garments.”
The law, which must still be approved by Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.
Iran’s roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.”
Iran eyes badges for Jews – Law would require non-Muslim insignia(Link)