Western Resistance

Leaving the Netherlands

On May 16, 2006, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somali-born critic of Islam, resigned from her post as a member of the Dutch parliament. A documentary screened fon May 11 on Netherlands TV had claimed that Hirsi Ali had lied when she had first applied for asylum in the summer of 1992. This had led to calls from opposition politicians for her to resign. The "lies" were minor - she had changed her name from Ayaan Hirsi Magan to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and had given her date of birth as 1969, rather than 1967. She had not mentioned that her family had lived in three countries before she claimed asylum. Her decision had been made because her family were trying to force her into an arranged marriage, and she did not want them to trace her. She became a naturalized Dutch citizen in 1997.

Though Hirsi Ali had openly admitted the discrepancies from her asylum application, Rita Verdonk, the immigration and integration minister (a fellow member of the VVD or Liberal Party) bizarrely claimed ignorance of these facts. Hirsi Ali had been a member of parliament for the Liberal Party since January 2003. Hirsi Ali said at this time of the barrage coming from her opponents: "Have they all gone mad? Yes I did lie to get asylum in Holland. This is public knowledge since at least September 2002." On May 15, Verdonk announced that Hirsi Ali could lose her citizenship.

A Muslim website with a reputation for fanaticism carried ecstatic comments when the news broke that Hirsi Ali could lose her citizenship. The Elqalem website, founded by has since shut down. In May 2006, it carried a leading article which claimed "she should be weighed down by the curse of Allah". Contributors to the website's forum were jubilant at the traducing of a woman they perceived to be an "enemy". Hirsi Ali had long been a hate figure for the columnists on the site. In January 2005 she had been listed among individuals who were to be sarcastically "thanked" for making "young Muslims in the Netherlands more aware of their Islamic roots."

In response to Verdonk's threat to remove her citizenship, Hirsi Ali said: "I came to Holland in the summer of 1992 because I wanted to be able to determine my own future. I didn't want to be forced into a destiny that other people had chosen for me, so I opted for the protection of the rule of law. Here in Holland, I found freedom and opportunities, and I took those opportunities to speak out against religious terror."

Ayaan Hirsi Ali had spoken openly and critically about Islam since 2002. In 2004, she had collaborated with film-maker Theo van Gogh on a TV documentary about women's rights in Islam, called "Submission". Hirsi Ali had written the script. The presentation had featured verses of the Koran (including the infamous Sura 4:34, which advocates the beating of a wife who is not submissive) written onto the semi-clad bodies of women.

On the morning of November 2, 2004, as he cycled to work, Theo van Gogh paid with his life for making the documentary. A Dutch national of Moroccan origins called Mohamed Bouyeri attacked him on an Amsterdam street. The film maker was shot twice, and then, in broad daylight, Bouyeri had tried to sever his head. The killer pinned a note to van Gogh's chest with a knife. This contained a hit list of other targets. The names included right-wing politician Geert Wilders, an outspoken critic of Islam, and also Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Van Gogh's killer had been part of a circle of individuals known as a Hofstadt Group, Islamists whose name derived from a slang name for The Hague. Several members of the group were subsequently jailed for terrorism offenses. Mohamed Bouyeri had no remorse. At his trial in July 2005, Bouyeri addressed van Gogh's mother directly, saying: "I don't feel your pain. I have to admit that I don't have any sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because you're a non-believer." He told the court: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."

The death threat pinned to van Gogh's chest caused Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders to go into hiding. Between 2005 and March 2006, there were 121 recorded cases of death threats made against Dutch politicians, according to the public prosecutor's office. The major recipients of these threats were Hirsi Ali and Wilders. In January 2005, two rappers were given suspended jail sentences. The pair, as "DHC", had made threats against Hirsi Ali on a recording which was circulated on the internet. They were additionally sentenced to 150 hours' community service.

On May 16, 2006, Hirsi Ali referred to the upheaval which had been caused to her life by threats. She said: "It is common knowledge that threats against my life began building up ever since I first talked about Islam publicly, in the spring of 2002. Months before I even entered politics, my freedom of movement was greatly curtailed, and that became worse after Theo van Gogh was murdered in 2004."

"I have been obliged to move house so many times I have lost count. The direct cause for the ending of my membership in parliament is that on April 27 of this year, a Dutch court ruled that I must once again leave my home, because my neighbors filed a complaint that they could not feel safe living next to me."

She told reporters: "Ladies and Gentlemen, as of today, I resign from Parliament. I regret that I will be leaving the Netherlands, the country which has given me so many opportunities and enriched my life, but I am glad that I will be able to continue my work. I will go on."

She had been invited to work in the United States, for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI).

Rita Verdonk, the politician who had threatened to remove Hirsi Ali's citizenship, paid a high price for her actions. These were perceived by members of her party to be a "betrayal". Verdonk, a former prison officer, had previously been admired for her uncompromising style. This had earned her the sobriquet of "Iron Rita". Verdonk had been in a contest to lead her party, and before her attack on Hirsi Ali, she had been tipped as the favorite to win. She lost the election as her party rebelled against her. On June 26, the Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, agreed that Hirsi Ali should retain her citizenship.

The row which was triggered by Verdonk eventually caused the Dutch government to fall on June 29, 2006. In the morning, the D66 party, which was in the ruling coalition, sided with the opposition in a call for Rita Verdonk to resign. Only two D66 members were in the cabinet, but their opposition to Verdonk caused rifts. Balkenende declared that despite D66's position, Verdonk would continue as immigration/integration minister. The two D66 ministers resigned later the same day and at 8.30 pm, Balkenende announced the fall of the government.

Living In America

Hirsi Ali arrived in the US in August 2006, receiving her Green Card on September 24, 2006. Emilio Gonzalez, Director General of USCIS said: "Today, we welcome her to the United States as a permanent resident. We welcome her to the protection provided by the U.S. Constitution and encourage her to continue speaking out regarding those issues she feels passionate about."

While she was working as a Fellow at AEI, her autobiographical book Infidel was published in the US by New York Free Press. The publication of this book, combined with her public appearances, increased the level of threat that she lived under. When she had arrived in the US, she had only needed two security guards, who kept watch from a distance. This was a decrease from the level of security she had needed in the Netherlands.

Fred Thompson described the situation: "But her new autobiography, Infidel, is out now and the usual suspects are furious that she would argue for the liberation of Muslim women. Due to serious and credible threats, she is once again surrounded by guards. There were many Germans and other Europeans who came to America and warned of the Nazi threat in the 1930s, including writers and filmmakers. Can you imagine that any of them would have ever needed bodyguards? Hirsi Ali does - right here in America. Yet too many people still don't understand what our country is up against. They might if they read her book."

By the end of March 2007, she was needing to have the same level of security as she had done when she lived in the Hague. There she had traveled in an armored car, accompanied by six bodyguards. The Dutch Justice Department had funded her security in the US since her arrival, and her bodyguards were provided by a US firm. By this time, Infidel, which had been published in the US two months earlier, had sold 148,000 copies. The "Land of the Brave, Home of the Free" was no longer so free for a brave woman migrant.

Infidel described Ayaan Hirsi's life, starting with her upbringing in Somalia: "When I was born, my mother initially thought death had taken me away. But it didn't. When I got malaria and pneumonia, I recovered. When my genitals were cut, the wound healed. When a bandit held a knife to my throat, he decided not to slit it. When my Koran teacher fractured my skull, the doctor who treated me kept death at bay."

She had been subjected to Type 2 FGM at the age of five. She described how her clitoris and inner labia were removed with scissors. "I heard it, like a butcher snipping the fat off a piece of meat."

Her father had been imprisoned for opposing the Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. When she was aged six, her family left Somalia during the unrest which would eventually lead to the ouster of Barre. They moved to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. She would write in Infidel: "The kind of thinking I saw in Saudi Arabia, and among the Muslim Brotherhood in Kenya and Somalia, is incompatible with human rights and liberal values."

In the Netherlands, she had acted as a translator for the social services, and here she found women from migrant communities who were still experiencing the oppression and violence that she had both experienced and witnessed in her youth. Some Muslim migrants in the Netherlands, mostly from Morocco and Turkey, were importing the same cultural misogyny that she had fled from.

She wrote in Infidel: "A woman... is like a pious slave. She honors her husband's family and feeds them without question or complaint. She never whines or makes demands of any kind. She is strong in service, but her head is bowed. If her husband is cruel, if he rapes her and then taunts her about it, if he decides to take another wife, or beats her, she lowers her gaze and hides in tears. And she works, hard, faultlessly. She is a devoted, welcoming, well-trained work animal."

She took a degree in political science at Leiden University, and became influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. A year after her graduation from Leiden, 9/11 happened. The chairman of the Labor party which she was then allied to, said: "It's so weird, isn't it, all these people saying this has to do with Islam?" She had responded: "But it is about Islam. This is based in belief."

She would claim: "The little shutter at the back of my mind, where I pushed all my dissonant thoughts, snapped open after the 9/11 attacks, and it refused to close again. I found myself thinking that the Koran is not a holy document. It is a historical record, written by humans. It is one version of events, as perceived by the men who wrote it 150 years after the Prophet died. And it is a very tribal and Arab version of events. It spreads a culture that is brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war."

A the time of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie, issued on February 14, 1989, she had believed that the author deserved to be punished. Her epiphany after 9/11 led her to transform the perceptions she had grown up with and become an ally of Rushdie. In the United States, at New York Public Library on April 30, 2006, Ayaan Hirsi Ali took part in a discourse with Philip Gourevitch. Salman Rushdie was in the audience. After the speaking engagement, she discussed the 1989 situation with Rushdie. She had been a teenager in Kenya when she had been caught up in the hysteria surrounding his novel "The Satanic Verses".

She said: "When I learned about it, that he had to be killed, I agreed with it fully. There was this community center close to where I went to school and there were a number of students and, you know, we were discussing there were so many attacks on Islam, and this was now coming from a Muslim, and we felt the betrayal. And there were some guys who said 'We are going to burn his book', and I joined in and I am ashamed I did that now. But, I am so sorry... What I learned from it was that I was trying to have a man killed who I had never met, and I was participating in the burning of a book I had not read. So actually, what I was doing was, I was demonstrating for ignorance."

"...I have grown up. I have lost the fear of Hell. I have lost the fear of - if I am seen with Salman Rushdie, that there are people within my family, among the Muslims as well, who will say 'She too deserves to die', and see that as a betrayal. I've learned to tell the truth to myself, and to lose the fear of Hell, and to value knowledge for what it is, and for the truth that it brings to us, and not to hide away from it or react aggressively because I've been programed to react in that way."

Rushdie said: "I am very proud of her for what she has been brave enough to begin, because I think that these are only beginnings... There is a great deal that is not done and that neither of us may by ourselves may be able to do. But I think that what you see now is that almost every week there are new voices, speaking (out)."

During her public conversation with Gourevitch, she said: "I don't consider myself a Muslim in the sense that I believe in God, that I believe in hell and heaven, and the angels and the books and for Muhammad as the messenger, the last prophet, I don't believe in prophets anymore. But I am a part of that identity, I guess, I grew up in Islam, I was raised in Islam, and four years ago, after 9/11, there was this huge appeal unto Muslims, like please speak up and say this is - the terrorism or the terrorist acts in New York - this is not done in the name of my faith." When asked if she was an atheist or an unbeliever, she replied: "I think I'll call myself a Muslim atheist."

Though the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy had given her a space to study and work, the threats from Muslim fanatics was proving too costly for the Netherlands Justice Department to maintain. They announced that funding for her security retinue would cease at the start of October. She arrived back in the Netherlands on Monday, October 1.

Return To The Netherlands

The issue of funding a retinue of bodyguards for someone who had left the country was not even supported by her long-time political ally and friend, Geert Wilders. He said on Tuesday that it was "absurd to expect the Netherlands to continue to pay forever... I am very concerned about her protection. But the Netherlands' responsibility is not never-ending."

The Dutch parliament on Tuesday announced that it will hold an emergency debate to discuss the return of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. At the present time, she is at a secret location, and her friends have not spoken to her. The parliament wanted a letter from the Dutch cabinet explaining the security situation surrounding Ms Hirsi Ali and asking if her security will be guaranteed. The parliamentary requests had been initiated by the Green Left party.

The news of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's return was first reported by newspaper NRC Handelsblad. On Monday night, Rita Verdonk told the current affairs TV show NOVA that the government in the Netherlands should fund Ayaan Hirsi Ali's security. Verdonk has been expelled from the VVD party, but has refused to resign.

Over the past three years, the Netherlands government's cost of funding security arrangements for Hirsi Ali has come to $4.8 million. Speaking on Dutch TV Sybrand van Haersma Buma, spokesman on security for the ruling Christian Democrat Party, said that the Netherlands had only agreed to pay for Hirsi Ali's security in the US for one year because of the "extraordinary circumstances". He said: "It was a temporary measure. The responsibility for her security should be taken on by the US Government."

Apparently, Washington has refused to foot the bill for Ayaan's security in the US as the law "does not permit it." The Dutch Green Left has claimed that there are similarities between the situation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie after he had been issued a death fatwa. The British government had paid for the security of the author for several years, even when he was living outside of the UK.

In an interview earlier this year on Canadian TV, she said: "Islam means submission to the will of Allah - a doctrine that requires from the individual to become a slave. In my view, it's bad. Islam limits the imagination to what you can find in the Koran and to following the example of the prophet Mohammed. I think that's bad, and that's what keeps people in the Islamic world backward. Islam treats women, at least says, subordinates women to men, is obsessed with obedience, calls for the murder of gays, for adulterers and is therefore very violent and inhuman. All this is in the Koran, all this is in the Hadith, anywhere where the Sharia or Islamic law is implemented, you see that these things occurred."

"Islam as a faith, as a doctrine, defined by what's in the Koran and the example of the Prophet Mohammed, and unreformed, unchallenged, is a monolith. "

She shocked interviewer Avi Lewis when she said: "There's no Islamophobia. It's a myth.... Racism is a universal trait - so is anti-Semitism, by the way. I want us not to confuse a set of beliefs that is Islam with ethnicity such as the hatred against the Jews just because they are Jews, or against blacks just because they are black...or against gays, just because it's something you can't do anything about. Whereas Islam is simply a set of beliefs. It's not Islamophobic to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy. It's not Islamophobic to say, to point to those people who use the Koran and the Hadith to conduct war, and to say 'This is being done in the name of your religion - do something about it', that's not Islamophobic. That's fair."

"I've had a bad democracy and I've lived in countries that have had no democracy, that had no Founding Fathers, that could not - have not invented or could not resolve.. So I do not find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom, because you do not know what it is to have no freedom. I haven't. I know that there are many things wrong with America, and I know that there are many thing wrong with Americans, but I still believe it's the best nation in the world."

The future for Ayaan Hirsi Ali is uncertain. She has returned to a country that used to have a reputation for liberalism and tolerance. Yet in the Netherlands, which helped to found the Enlightenment when it gave sanctuary to Jewish philosopher Spinoza, a refugee from the Inquisition, a new intolerance abounds. The same intolerance that saw politician Pim Fortuyn, another opponent of Islam, gunned down in 2002. That led to Theo van Gogh, a descendant of Vincent's brother, butchered in a busy thoroughfare in 2004. An intolerance that caused one Amsterdam school to stop teaching young children about farms, because Muslim pupils got angry at the mention of pigs and smashed up a classroom. An intolerance that led to selfish neighbors of Hirsi Ali demanding her eviction, because they thought that they might get hurt by the Islamists who wished to kill her. Amsterdam, once the hub of liberalism in Europe, is now the hunting ground of angry young Muslims who regularly beat up homosexuals for sport.

Unable to fund the costs of protection from Islamist fanatics in the United States, Hirsi Ali's return to the Netherlands has been viewed by some as a defeat that should be celebrated. On one internet forum, fanatical Muslims celebrate her perceived downfall. One Muslim of Pakistani origin, now living in Canada, writes: "I want to shoot her in the neck, so that she bleeds nice and slow."

A Muslim from Galkacyo in Somalia writes: "If I ever saw Hirsi Ali I would chop her head off. She is a disgrace to us Somalis and us Muslims." He later writes: "I hope she dies a horrible and painful death. Do you know that my father knows her father personally? Many people say how her whole family disowned her and her father keeps saying, 'I have no daughter named Ayaan'."

Reading these comments, one is reminded of just what it is about Islamist indoctrination that has inspired Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak out.

Adrian Morgan

© 2003-2007 FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 4, 2007 7:28 AM

Comments

Post a comment