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THE HAGUE, Netherlands – 30 minutes ago – In a press conference, Ayaan has divulged her decision to step down as Dutch member of parliament.
Many reasons for her decision:
- security precautions and housing difficulties
- letter from Minister Verdonk about her citizenship
- chance to move to the U.S. for a job at the American Enterprise Institute
● Statement of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
● BBC News Profile: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
● Fed Up with Holland, Hirsi Ali Plans to Move to America
Dutch Lawmaker Quits, Set to Leave Nation
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (ABC News/AP) May 16 — 5 minutes ago — A Somali-born member of Parliament who became an internationally known opponent of fundamentalist Islam said she will resign and leave the Netherlands because the government was revoking her citizenship for lying on an asylum application.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been under police protection since a film she wrote criticizing the treatment of women under Islam provoked the murder of its director, Theo van Gogh, by an Islamic radical.
She said she had made her decision Monday night, after Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk told her “she would strip me of my Dutch citizenship.”
“I am therefore preparing to leave Holland,” Hirsi Ali told reporters in The Hague, her voice choking with emotion. She declined to comment on what she will do next, or on Dutch media reports that she will join the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute.
A REVIEW OF MONDAY’S COMMENTS ::
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) May 13 — 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 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.
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MP Hirsi Ali may lose her Dutch citizenship as a result of her lies to the authorities in 1992 upon her request for asylum. Dutch media reported the first result of an investigation by Minister Verdonk into the case of her citizenship.
A Critic of Muslim Intolerance Faces Loss of Dutch Citizenship
PARIS (NYT) May 15 — The Dutch government abruptly threatened to revoke the citizenship of one of the country’s most prominent members of Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who arrived as a refugee 14 years ago.
“I’m speechless,” Ms. Hirsi Ali (VVD) said in a telephone interview from The Hague after she had received a call from Ms. Verdonk (VVD) . . Ms. Hirsi Ali said she considered the move to take away her citizenship, leaving her stateless, as an attempt to silence her. “I have been fully committed to my work in Parliament, and I have taken many risks,” she said. “This will make others think harder before they speak out.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali in parliament
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
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Her move to the U.S. is a loss for Dutch multi-cultural society.
In my opinion, Ayaan will either retain her Dutch citizenship or will, by reapplication for naturalization, obtain it forewith.
Our illegal immigrant who came to the Netherlands in 1992 and is now a member of Dutch parliament. Amazing.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
She’s a complete and utter opportunist with no moral compass.
Getting in to bed with the American Enterprise Institute with its savage, warmongering Right Wing pundits such as David Frum, Newt Gingrich, Michael Ledeen, Irving Kristol and John Yoo is disgusting. These people ARE the architects of the Iraq War – they augmented and pushed the lies that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens (now dying at the rate of 1000 a week).
All for the benefit of American Energy, military industrialists and Israel’s security – not for the freeing of Iraqi people, nor for the fight against terrorism.
She’s a parasite.
And van Gogh, the anarchist provocateur died in vain. She never ‘suffered’ under Islam. She simply used him as the next pulsating vein in her leap from obscurity to infamy.
She will fit in well with the liars at AEI who don’t seem to mind she was not a ‘victim’ and has been caught in her own web of deceit – but rather a good poster girl for their next ‘demonize Muslims’ campaign.
She has drained the blood from all muslim women in the Netherlands to further her own rise.
Flame on. This is my opinion.
Richard K.
Here’s another photo of her holding up a sign for Charles, the proprietor of the Little Green Footballs Blog. Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott has characterized the LGF community as “sort of like a disorganized Nuremberg Rally, a lot of angry ruffians with nowhere to go….”
LGF is the most vile, racist blog I have ever seen.
A place where you see posts like this…
Frog March, “Dark Ages Via Satellite,” 04.01.06
All Muslim MEN (radical and more) should be castrated.
I mean – that is how it should be!
In a perfect world blessed by the goodness and light – all Muslim men would have no balls and no teeth.
D’kian, “Dark Ages Via Satellite,” 04.01.06
#33 FrogMarch
I agree. It’s time we asserted our culture. In the West, pigs are regularly castrated. Ask any famer.
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During her last tour of the United States, she had already decided to accept a job at AEI. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was close to Geert Wilders ::
LGF reader Bridget saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the JFK School of Government at Harvard today, and forwarded this interesting account, along with a photo I shall treasure and the comment, “She sends her regards and thanks for your support over at LGF.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Hirsi Ali rubs up against anyone who can further her agenda.
She’s Europe’s Michelle Malkin – whom many won’t ‘touch’ for fear of backlash because she’s black, she’s a woman and she clearly hates Muslims.
Well, I’m a status Native Canadian (Metis), I’m a man and I hate liars.
She lied about her family. She lied about being ‘forced’ into a marriage. She has lied her way right to the top and now overseas.
Good riddance I say. I am sure AEI will arrange an American passport for her.
All I’d say is that a site like LGF is treated in the U.S. media as a legitimate place of public debate, as is the Free Republic site, whom even CNN has used as a source. We know that those places are vile cesspools of radical racism, but you really have to be paying steady attention and dig down in the comments to know that. As for the AEI, they’ve actually got a sizable body of pro-immigration writing whose sentiments in praise of the contributions of immigration and scorn for alarmism could have been expressed in one form or another by any liberal blogger.
Because she is useful to them, they have reached out to her on topics about which they’re goals are aligned with hers and established a relationship. Of course they’ve offered her a job, but afaict, she hasn’t accepted yet. She’s already a politician, an elected official with constituents to serve and probably every bit as busy as our own pols. Is it reasonable to expect that she would know enough about the ins and outs of US politics to see the AEI as the face of the same opinion empire that throws up people like Malkin? Would one of our congresscritters know that much about Dutch, or perhaps even British, politics? Do you think she’s likely to know who someone like Richard Mellon Scaife is and of his quest in the company of like minds to dominate US debate when most Americans don’t?
I’m in no sense a fan of the AEI and when I heard this news this morning, my first thought was that a progressive group should try making a counter offer to recruit her to research and speak out on immigration and political asylum issues. I think they realize something about her value that we’d be unwise to ignore, and it might be a good idea to reserve judgement on whether or not she has the same background information on the AEI that we do.
Wow.
Defense of LGF.
Defense of FR. (OH MY GOD – CNN LOVES THEM – THEY MUST BE TRUTHED).
Some warming over of AEI. (THEY ARE PRO IMMIGRATION).
Do you think she’s that stupid? Really… that ‘naive’?
And you are hoping some ‘lefty’ outfit will offer her a better buck for her services?
heh.
N/T
I did not defend LGF or FR, merely pointed out that it would be entirely reasonable for someone who hadn’t spent the last 1-3 years reading liberal blogs to not be aware of the hatred on those sites. It isn’t manifest on every posting and comment thread and it goes contrary to the public claims and insistences (no matter how obviously flimsy to long-time observers) of the site operators. If anything, I defended ignorance of the nature of those sites, which is widespread outside the liberal blogosphere, even among people whose job description is to obsessively follow US politics. Ali’s job was to obsessively follow Dutch politics and so I can’t say that her knowledge of these subjects is to be assumed. Don’t put words in my mouth.
And go click on the AEI immigration stuff. I expected this morning to go over and find that they were as hopped up on the xenophobia bandwagon as Michelle Malkin, but that turns out not to be the case, which surprised me quite a bit. If I were to go solely on their centerpiece (and the link to that set of publications is frontpaged at the top of their site at present) issue focus of the moment and characterize them as anti-immigration, anyone who clicked over to their site and read what they actually said would probably think that I was either ignorant or deliberately lying. There are plenty of other subjects on which to vocally disagree with them about, but they’ve actually laid out a surprisingly good case for immigration and accepting immigrants as engines of positive growth.
Should I disagree with their claimed immigration position, one I already held in large part (don’t agree with their support of the guest worker program as is, though), just because they said it? Should I claim that they hold an alternate position, just because it would fit expediently into some storyline?
You can do that if you want to, but I won’t.
And, goddammit, when I saw CNN use FR as a source, I called their viewer comment line and left the most scathing reproach I could manage on the basis of the site’s safe harbor for racists and eliminationists. I posted about it on my blog and asked my readers to do the same.
Don’t ever call me an apologist for them.
…Would one of our congresscritters know that much about Dutch…
My answer to that is a line from the movie, My Fellow Americans starring James Garner and Jack Lemmon said by the incumbent president (Dan Aykroyd) to his dumb, bumbling vice president (John Heard):
“…he’s from the NetherLANDS, not the nether REGIONS.”
That about sums it up.
Wow.
The Dutch authorities may revoke her citizenship? After all this time? I feel like I’m missing something–a BIG something.
As to her cushy digs at AEI, I’m not at all surprised. Thus my ambivalence about her. I can’t say that I blame her stance against interpretations of Islamic texts that damn women into 10th class citizen–I share them, too. Why on earth do some men have this slavish devotion to treat women “less than”??? It’s frustrating!
But AEI is quite reactionary and only seeks to hire her b/c she’s a Black face who’ll say things that they can’t get away with. They care not a whit about the status of women, but rather, demonizing all Muslims. There are so many other think tanks and such around town–why not them?
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Hi AP!
Minister Rita Verdonk will review her decision and search for leeway in jurisprudence of the immigration law to have Ayaan Hirsi Ali apply for naturalization and gain her Dutch citizenship. Members of parliament were angry for a decision taken to factually remove Ayaan from the chamber of parliament. This was unacceptable for members of her own party VVD and the coalition partners Christian Democrats (CDA), Liberals D’66 and opposition parties.
● “I will leave, saddened but also relieved”
I am surprised of her choice for the AEI, however she was close to a colleague Geert Wilders and appears to be an erratic politician making choices I cannot reason.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Verdonk should stand by her word – especially after the brouhaha when she threw out that young Romanian girl who had two months of studying left to complete her schooling.
I hope it rips the party apart – and the buzz up here amongst in-laws and friends is that this is doing damage to the VVD.
There is a LOT less support for Verdonk and the VVD up here in Groningen.
Don’t know if we mentioned it, but while we were in Haarlem, there were lots of people handing out campagin literature and trinkets–among them the local VVD folks handing out candy.
I thanked them but told them we’re Americans and can’t vote.
To this day, the husband ribs me about accepting “right-wing candy.”
I’m sure that’s probably only funny to us! :<)
It is funny, but aside from immigration, most of the right-leaning political parties in the EU are more left wing than a ‘moderate’ Democrat in the US. Regarding support of social services alone, many right wing parties there only debate such issues as national healthcare in terms of how to administer it instead of whether or not to get rid of it as an American conservative would do. There are definitely different sensibilities at play.
…most of the right-leaning political parties in the EU are more left wing than a ‘moderate’ Democrat in the US.
That is SO true! Our right wing is truly crazy as far as I’m concerned, and what’s crazier is that we have Dems who try to “one-up” them. And that’s impossible.
But FWIW, the candy was good. :<)
Her citizenship may be in question, but her right-wing digs at AEI are not:
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THE HAGUE (Reuters) May 17 — A Somali-born lawmaker who may lose her Dutch citizenship because she lied on her asylum application is welcome to move to the United States, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of Islam, said earlier this week she was resigning and leaving the Netherlands after Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, a member of her own VVD liberal party, told her she might lose her Dutch passport.
Hirsi Ali has been offered a job by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, and according to media reports had been in negotiations with two other U.S. institutes.
Zoellick, on a visit to the Netherlands, told journalists Hirsi Ali would be admitted to his country. “The government of the Netherlands is still discussing her ultimate status and that is … for the Netherlands to determine along the way, but she is obviously welcome to the United States,” Zoellick said.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
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WASHINGTON (AFP) May 18 — The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said it had extended a fellowship to the controversial MP and expressed outrage at the way she has been treated in the Netherlands.
“I have been deeply angered by the unfair and partisan attacks that have been leveled against you and have admired your courage and forthrightness in the face of this hounding,” AEI president Christopher DeMuth said in a letter he sent this week to Hirsi Ali.
“My colleagues and I are looking forward to welcoming you to AEI and to America.”
● WaPo – Intolerant Netherlands: Is It Possible to Condemn Muslim Extremism And Still Live Among the Dutch? Maybe Not
● Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk (Liberal VVD) Under Fire
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY