Boy, did she piss them off!
The Dutch establishment never liked her....
Holland's most strident critic of Islam, the Somali-born MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is today expected to announce she is quitting politics and moving to America, amid allegations that she lied to gain asylum.There's no place that has the free speech of the US.
Miss Hirsi Ali faces penalties up to and including the potential loss of her Dutch citizenship, after a leading member of her own political party, the VVD, pledged a formal investigation of her actions.
The Dutch immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, who is running for the parliamentary leadership of the VVD, said she would order a probe of her colleague's case, saying: "Laws and rules are valid for everyone".
Miss Hirsi Ali, 36, lives under constant police guard, after receiving death threats for her criticisms of the treatment of women in Islam (her own religion), a stance that won her many fans in Europe and America.
A film she scripted about abuse of women, Submission, led to the brutal murder of its director, Theo van Gogh, in 2004, by a Muslim extremist.
The MP has in fact long admitted lying to the Dutch authorities in 1992 about her name, her age, and the fact that she did not flee directly to Holland from Somalia.
She presented those omissions as necessary lies to obtain refugee status. Asylum seekers are expected to seek shelter in the first safe country they come to, and she would have been automatically deported if she had owned up to spending more than a decade outside Somalia, in Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya and, briefly, Germany.
3 Comments:
"There's no place that has the free speech of the US."
Hahah! Have you ever actually been to Europe? Don't praise the US as the model of free speech, just because the Dutch authorities are too PC to crack down on their own nutters.
The geographic centre of the US is a redneck hole that is extremely intolerant. Just because some nice-sounding rights are in their constitution, doesn't mean they're respected in practice.
Have I ever been in Europe? I lived in Europe for 3 1/2 years. No country can match the US in terms of free speech.
"The geographic centre of the US is a redneck hole that is extremely intolerant."
Hmm. That statement sounds rather ... What's the word I'm looking for?
Freedom of speech means you can say what you think (with a few exceptions) without getting in Dutch with the government.
It does not mean that people must agree with you.
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