Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dutch Somali-born MP, has lost her Dutch citizenship because she provided inaccurate information when applying for asylum in the Netherlands back in 1992. The fact that she did so is, however, something which she already revealed years ago, and - until just a few days ago - that appeared not to have been a problem.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's press conference on 16 May, in which she announced her departure - permanent or otherwise - from the Netherlands, was certainly impressive and 100 percent reflective of her style. There stood the strong and bright individual who - as she herself said - has always wanted to be in control of her own destiny; this being the very reason which she fled to the Netherlands in 1992 in order to escape an arranged marriage.
Record speed
After her arrival here, she learned the Dutch language at almost record speed, and with similar speed she also began her upward climb through Dutch society and a number of its institutions. A mere 11 years after entering the country as a refugee, she made her debut in parliament. From the very outset she was one of its most controversial members, taking a leading role both inside and outside the chamber in the national debate about the integration of ethnic minorities and asylum seekers, and more particularly the integration of Muslims into Dutch society.
Admiration
I have always had great admiration for Ayaan Hirsi Ali's courage and determination in - as she has described it herself - continuing to ask difficult questions. On the other hand, however, I have found her answers and more particularly her 'crusade' against Islam to be lacking persuasion and indeed lacking the power to persuade many people. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been and is, of course, totally right in wanting to raise the issue of the oppression of women across the globe, and particularly within the world's Muslim communities from which she herself has come.
Solidarity
It was indeed an outrage that she received death threats following the release of the - admittedly - provocative film Submission, in which lines from the Qu'ran were projected on a woman's visibly naked flesh. And the fact that she must now leave her most recent 'hiding place' because her neighbours are scared of her presence is indeed depressing. But one's feeling of solidarity with a fellow citizen whose life is threatened does not mean there's a similar obligation to support her opinions or her methods.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali continually creates the impression that the suppression of women in Islamic countries is closely tied to the very nature of Islam itself. In other words, she presents it as not primarily the fault of the traditional patriarchal structures so neatly served up with an 'Islamic sauce' by the ruling male classes, but the product of unchanging texts and doctrines contained in the Qu'ran, and of the pronouncements and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad.
During Tuesday's press conference, she even said once again that on a number of key points Islam is simply incompatible with a constitutional democracy.
She regularly creates the impression that the only enlightened Muslim is one who has abandoned the faith. This is undoubtedly the reason why - with just a few exceptions - she has met with such little understanding or appreciation within the very group which she - initially at least - so badly wanted to reach: young Muslim women.
Shame
She's clearly a woman who stirs up ambivalent emotions - but the feeling that one was left after Tuesday's press conference, besides a sense of admiration, was one of shame. Shame at the fact that there's clearly no longer a place in a country like the Netherlands for this flamboyant, dissident personality.
Whether you share her views or reject them - absolutely or in part - Ayaan Hirsi Ali at least deserved the chance to win or lose in an open debate, and not to be hounded out.
Only way to escape
Of course, she did lie, but she used the kind of small, self-interested lies told by many thousands of asylum seekers both past, present and future, simply because that's often the only way to breach the high walls surrounding the rich fortresses of Europe and America, and the only way to escape a future with no prospects other than poverty and war.
Of course, there is also the matter of her unequal treatment in comparison with all the other asylum seekers who have indeed been sent back from whence they came.
It's a dilemma for which there are no perfect solutions, only creative ones. But the country which came up with the untranslatable notion of 'gedogen ' ('toleration' being perhaps the best rendition in English) for complicated issues such as drug use and euthanasia, apparently can't come up with anything else in this case other than to proceed overzealously to withdraw Ayaan Hirsi Ali's passport, and in so doing provide depressing evidence as to the sorry state of its national politics.
RNW Internet translation (tpf)
Tags: Ayaan, controversial, death threats, democracy, Dutch, euthanasia, gedogen, Hirsi Ali, Muslims, Netherlands, oppression, poltics, refuge, submission, Theo van Gogh, tolerance, women's rights