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Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Hirsi Ali: Deja Vu all over again : Fled Holland in 2002 to return to hero's welcome - playing media and public for fools

Hirsi Ali: Deja Vu all over again : Fled Holland in 2002 to return to hero's welcome - playing media and public for fools

Expects Dutch to fund protection in U.S.
May 23, 2006

MIM: Deja vu all over again as this article from 2002 shows :

Magen alias Ali still playing the public and media for fools.

MIM:In 2002 Ali fled Holland, after receiving death threats for deriding Islam while lambasting an Imam on television. Even back then Magen deemed Holland too small for her ego and fled the United States. Upon her return to Holland she was given a hero's welcome and a seat in parliament. The Dutch public and political elite rallied around and assured her she would be protected. She was given bodyguards and allowed to pursue her private agenda which would have been considered a conflict of interests in the case of her colleagues.

Anno 2006 Magen alias Ali repaid the party which gave her a chance by portraying them as persecutors with her as the victim. The public and media have bought into her self promotional hype without critically examing the facts. It is not Ali who is the victim. On the contrary. She has stated that "she had done more harm then good in Holland" and the facts speak for themselves. She has undermined her party which was tough on immigration and in doing so handed a victory to the radical Islamists.

This story in 2002 could have been written yesterday:

"...One thing is certain: the death threats against Ms. Hirsi Ali have given more prominence to her ideas, which have now become the subject of intense debate among Dutch policy makers. The Dutch Liberal Party has invited her to become a candidate in the parliamentary elections next January.

"...She says she has accepted and hopes to return to the Netherlands, though she fears for her safety. "Either I stop my work, or I learn to live with the feeling that I'm not safe," she said. "I'm not stopping."

Though absent, Ms. Hirsi Ali seems very present here. Her portrait has appeared on magazine covers and television and there have been indignant newspaper editorials and questions in Parliament. Some have called her the Dutch Salman Rushdie. In paid advertisements, more than 100 Dutch writers have offered her support..."

NY Times 2002

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http://www.racematters.org/ayaanhirsiali.htm

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AyaanHirsiAli.jpg

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

November 9, 2002

Behind the Veil: A Muslim Woman Speaks Out

By MARLISE SIMONS

MSTERDAM — Ayaan Hirsi Ali had done well in the 10 years since she arrived in the Netherlands as a young refugee from Somalia and, until a few months ago, she lived a quiet life in her adopted land. Never did she intend to create a national commotion.

She studied Dutch, took on cleaning jobs, went to university and worked as a political scientist. She made a name for herself pressing for the emancipation of Muslim women and documenting how thousands, living even here, were subjected to beatings, incest and emotional and sexual abuse.

To the surprise of many, she became a leading voice condemning the government's support for multiculturalism, programs costing millions of dollars a year that she considers misplaced because they help keep Muslim women isolated from Dutch society.

Then Ms. Hirsi Ali, 32, began receiving hate mail, anonymous messages calling her a traitor to Islam and a slut. On several Web sites, other Muslims said she deserved to be knifed and shot. Explicit death threats by telephone soon followed. The police told her to change homes and the mayor of Amsterdam sent bodyguards. She tried living in hiding. Finally, last month, she became a refugee again, fleeing the Netherlands.

"I had to speak up," she said, in a telephone interview from her hiding place, "because most spokesmen for Muslims are men and they deny or belittle the enormous problems of Muslim women locked up in their Dutch homes."

Her ordeal has caused an outcry in the Netherlands, a country already uneasy with its recent waves of immigrants and asylum seekers, now representing almost 10 percent of the population. Many Dutch see the threats as an intolerable assault on the country's democratic principles. The threats have also intensified a fierce debate — one that can be heard these days across Europe — about what moral values and rules of behavior immigrants should be expected to share.

Though absent, Ms. Hirsi Ali seems very present here. Her portrait has appeared on magazine covers and television and there have been indignant newspaper editorials and questions in Parliament. Some have called her the Dutch Salman Rushdie. In paid advertisements, more than 100 Dutch writers have offered her support.

"I've made people so angry because I'm talking from the inside, from direct knowledge," she said. "It's seen as treason. I'm considered an apostate and that's worse than an atheist."

The theme of injustice toward women in Islamic countries has become common in the West, but it has gained fresh currency through Ms. Hirsi Ali's European perspective, her study of Dutch immigrants and her own life. Born in Mogadishu, she grew up a typical Muslim girl in Somalia. When she was 5, she underwent the "cruel ritual," as she called it, of genital cutting. When her father, a Somali opposition politician, had to flee the country's political troubles, the family went to Saudi Arabia, where, she said, she was kept veiled and, much of the time, indoors.

At 22, her father forced her to marry a distant cousin, a man she had never seen. But a friend helped her to escape and she finally obtained political asylum in the Netherlands.

She was shocked when, as a university student, she held a job as an interpreter for Dutch immigration and social workers and discovered hidden "suffering on a terrible scale" among Muslim women even in the Netherlands. She entered safe houses for women and girls, most of them Turkish and Moroccan immigrants, who had run away from domestic violence or forced marriages. Many had secret abortions.

"Sexual abuse in the family causes the most pain because the trust is violated on all levels," she said. "The father or the uncle say nothing, nor do the mother and the sisters. It happens regularly — the incest, the beatings, the abortions. Girls commit suicide. But no one says anything. And social workers are sworn to professional secrecy."

More than 100 women a year have surgery to "restore" their virginity, she estimates in her published work. While only 10 percent of the population is non-Dutch, this group accounts for more than 60 percent of abortions, "because the Muslim girls are kept ignorant," she said. Three out of five Moroccan-Dutch girls — Moroccans are among the largest immigrant groups — are forced to marry young men from villages back home, to keep them under control, she said.

A year or so ago, Ms. Hirsi Ali's case might not have attracted so much attention. But the mood in the Netherlands, as in much of Europe, changed after Sept. 11, 2001. In the month that followed, there was an unheard of backlash against the nearly one million Muslims living in the Netherlands, with more than 70 attacks against mosques. Sept. 11 also gave politicians licence to vent brewing animosities.

Among them was Pim Fortuyn, a maverick gay politician who was killed in May, apparently by an animal rights activist. He said out loud what had long been considered racist and politically incorrect — for example, that conservative Muslim clerics were undermining certain Dutch values like acceptance of homosexuality and the equality of men and women.

What Mr. Fortuyn did on the right, Ms. Hirsi Ali has done on the left. Many in the Labor Party, where she worked on immigration issues, were shocked when she told reporters that Mr. Fortuyn was right in calling Islam "backward."

"At the very least Islam is facing backward and it has failed to provide a moral framework for our time," she said in one conversation. "If the West wants to help modernize Islam, it should invest in women because they educate the children."

To do this, she argues for drastic changes in Dutch immigration policy. The government, she says, should impose Dutch law on men who beat their wives and daughters, even if the Muslim clergy say it is permissible. It should also end teaching the immigrants in their own language and stop paying for the more than 700 Islamic clubs, most of which, she said, "are run by deeply conservative men and they perpetuate the segregation of women."

Her views, and the death threats, have divided Muslims, who account for most immigrants here. Almost 20 Muslim associations have condemned the threats, but at the same time faulted her for criticizing Islam. Hafid Bouazza, a Dutch-Moroccan author who in the past has received letters saying he will burn in hell for his writing, said the threats were shocking. "No criticism of Islam is accepted from women," he said. "Muslim women are particularly vulnerable."

Others were bitter. Ali Eddaudi, a Moroccan writer and cleric living here, dismissed "all the fuss" over a Muslim woman who "panders to the Dutch."

Ms. Hirsi Ali agrees that the criticism is so intense in part because she is a woman. "I am a Muslim woman saying these things, and it has provoked a lot of hatred," she said.

One thing is certain: the death threats against Ms. Hirsi Ali have given more prominence to her ideas, which have now become the subject of intense debate among Dutch policy makers. The Dutch Liberal Party has invited her to become a candidate in the parliamentary elections next January.

She says she has accepted and hopes to return to the Netherlands, though she fears for her safety. "Either I stop my work, or I learn to live with the feeling that I'm not safe," she said. "I'm not stopping."

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Hirsi Ali wants Dutch to fund protection in US

23 May 2006

AMSTERDAM — Muslim critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali is demanding the Netherlands retains partial responsibility for her protection after she moves to America.

Her spokesperson said Hirsi Ali wants her current bodyguards to move with her. If that is not possible, she thinks the Netherlands should contribute to the cost of hiring new security personnel in the US. Her representatives are talking to the government about her future security.

Continuing her current protection after she moves is by no means guaranteed. Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner said last week that her safety would be a matter for the American authorities when she relocated there. ..

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=30254&name=Hirsi+Ali+wants+Dutch+to+fund+protection+in+US+

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Ayan Hirsi Ali, 24 x 7

May 22, 2004 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - What is it about Ayaan Hirsi Ali that makes terror experts, conservatives and secular Jews lose their grasp on reality?

Ali came to general public attention outside of the Netherlands on November 2, 2004 the day Theo van Gogh was slaughtered by Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri.

Bouyeri killed van Gogh because of the perceived anti-Muslim nature of his controversial film "Submission," scripted by Hirsi Ali who received 18,000 Euros for her efforts.

Since then it has been non-stop self promotion on the part of Ali, who fled Holland in the wake of the van Gogh murder only to return in hip new duds and sporting a movie star coif to pursue further self-aggrandizement.

Apparently Ms. Ali's ego driven, delusional nature knows no bounds, having claimed that she "would like, for example...to write philosophical pieces like Karl Popper."

Karl Popper, actually Sir Karl Popper was certainly one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century, having been called the most important philosopher of science since Francis Bacon. Having Hirsi Ali even place her name in the same geographical region as Popper's is such a monstrous demonstration of self-possession that in more normal times it would merely have produced howls of laughter instead of job offers.

As Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor observes:

The Muslim goddess has feet of clay, but supporters of Ali have rallied around her in a manner bordering on mass hysteria, the idolization which could aptly be referred to as a Mor'ali'relativism' movement.

Although touted as a poster girl for Muslim integration, Ali is a case study is failed affirmative action.

Ali demands and feels that she deserves special privileges based on her minority status. She exploits her ethnicity and religion to point out to the native Dutch all that is wrong in the Islamic world, but charging them with correcting it.

While receiving media attention as the champion of downtrodden and oppressed Muslims, Ali provokes them by expressing her contempt for Islam and its believers, taunting them under the guise of "education, emancipation and enlightenment".

Ironically the atheist/moral relativist Ali is working on a book called "A Short Path to Enlightment," in this case an exercise in the blind leading those blinded by rage.

http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=ali52206%2Ehtm

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http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=ali51506%2Ehtm

Hirsi Ali Climbs Over Corpse Of Theo Van Gogh, Lands Gig At American Enterprise Institute

May 15, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - As our associate Beila Rabinowitz, Director of MilitantIslamMonitor.org notes - Muslim Dutch politician Ayan Hirsi Ali is jumping ship after finding herself at the center of storm that revealed her to have lied about her background [claiming that she was fleeing an arranged marriage] in order to falsely obtain asylum in Holland, under the very rules she as a member of the Dutch parliament is charged with enforcing.

After exploiting Holland's tolerance and goodwill for personal gain, Ms. Ali is deserting the Netherlands, announcing she will be starting a new life with the help of gullible supporters in the United States who are hailing her as the new Muslima Messiah.

This despite Ali's own admission that she, "has done more harm then good" in Holland.

The former leader of the political party to which Ali is a member - Hans Wiegel - states that he is "not sorry to see her go." Wiegel has accused the Somali immigrant of neglecting her duties in parliament.

Not surprisingly Ali has decided that since she is leaving Holland anyway, she might as well take advantage of her parliamentary salary and perks while promoting her book in the United States.

Ali's celebrity came as a result of the November 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh - at the hands of Mohammed Bouyeri. She had collaborated with the incendiary filmmaker, providing the script - for which she was paid 18,000 Euros by Van Gogh - for the movie "Submission," which depicted battered Muslim women with Quranic verses painted on their naked bodies.

The outrage in Muslim circles generated by the film eventually resulted in Van Gogh's ritual murder and near decapitation by Mohammed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants.

Ali, unlike Van Gogh has little to fear since she has been under the protection of Dutch bodyguards since 2002 when she received threats after calling Mohammed a pedophile and referring to Islam as a backward religion.

Though few would be talking about Ayan Hirsi Ali today absent her association with Van Gogh, in the wake of his assassination Ali didn't even attend his funeral, choosing instead to flee the Netherlands to be feted in New York.

Not one to share the spotlight, Ali never refers to Theo van Gogh and has done nothing to see that his film, "Submission" will once again made publicly available, though she has in fact garnered publicity by claiming that she was planning to make a sequel which never materialized.

Journalist Ebru Umar - a close friend of Theo van Gogh and who took over his column in the newspaper Metro after his murder wrote, "who has benefited from Ali's involvement in Dutch society?"

That question was answered by Ali herself who recently told a Dutch paper, "I have done more harm than good. My message has come across to the public wrong."

In a letter written a month after the death of Theo van Gogh, Ebru Umar shows that Ali's message was not simply 'misconstrued' by the public, but that Ali was herself responsible, hiding her lack of substance under a blizzard of media hype.

"You sit in the Lower House because you want to serve yourself. You are surely not the only house member with that mentality , Ayaan, but you are the only one who has gotten all the freedom from your party, rightly or wrongly, to wage your own private war. What have you ever done in your capacity as House member...Ayaan?" - Ebru Umar

One can only hope that the American Enterprise Institute will be asking similar questions. In the light of Ali's still-unravelling facade it would be wise for the AEI to reconsider taking on someone whose only political legacy is the damage to her party's credibility. Her machinations continue to divert attention and resources away from the war on the Islamists and towards her own personal agenda.

Researcher Peter van Ham of the Clingendael Institute said Ayaan Hirsi Ali will be out of place at the American Enterprise Institute, "You would sooner expect Geert Wilders to be there than Hirsi Ali...It is definitely not a liberal bastion."

Ali's confrontational methods might very well be incompatible with the corporate culture of the AEI. Her need to generate controversy - such as a planned film about the sex life of Muhammed - could harm the reputation of the AEI and even endanger its staff.

Because Ayan Hirsi Ali has demonstrably done more harm than good in Holland, and is crawling over Van Gogh's corpse in a relentless drive to promote herself, the American Enterprise Institute should take heed before it's too late.

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