Hirsi Ali, fraud

Not only is Hirsi Ali, the conservative “hero,” in reality a libertarian leftist who seeks to ban conservative and Christian political parties in Europe and regards “theocracy,” i.e., Christianity, as the enemy, she is a fraudulent immigrant. The then 22 year old Hirsi Ali (real name Hirsi Magan) got asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 by claiming that she was being persecuted in Somalia. In fact she and her family had been living in comfortable middle class circumstances in Kenya for the previous 12 years when she applied for asylum. She had no basis to claim a fear of persecution. She claimed that she was fleeing a marriage into which she had been forced under Muslim customs. Now witnesses say the marriage was voluntary and that she merely used her husband of one week to get a visa to fly to Europe where she fraudulently claimed asylum and dumped her husband. Some politicians in Netherlands are seeking her removal from the parliament and her deportation, as explained here and here.

A reader in England sums up her knowledge of the case, which goes well beyond what is in the two linked articles—meaning that I do not have independent verification of all the statements below. But the reader provides a more coherent picture than the two articles and I am posting her comments, subject to future corrections. The reader writes:

Essentially

1. She lied about her name and date of birth.

2. Her father had been jailed as an opposition politician in Somalia but had subsequently lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya. The family had lived comfortably and safely in Kenya for the last 10 years prior to Ali’s departure for Europe and Hirsi Ali would have no reason to claim asylum or fear persecution.

3. Her marriage was by choice and it would appear that her husband was callously exploited and then dumped after he bought her a ticket for Canada and got her a visa. He claims they were in love and spent a week together after the marriage, very happily. He left for Canada and had made arrangements for Hirsi to follow him there. She embarked from Kenya and absconded from the airport in Germany. After sometime, she spoke to him and told him that she was in a refugee camp in Holland. He came from Canada to visit her there and asked her to come back to Canada with him. She refused and told him the marriage was over. He could not persuade her to return.

4. The husband was a Somali, a distant cousin, who had emigrated to Canada and settled there. The marriage was in Kenya just before she claimed asylum in the Netherlands. One week after the marriage, she took a flight to Canada via Germany but got off the flight in Germany and disappeared over the Dutch border. She told the Dutch that she had come from Somalia, as an aunt advised her to do, because at that time there was a famine in Somalia and it was easy to get asylum. That explains why she went to Holland and did not claim asylum in Germany. If she had claimed in Germany, the Germans would have been able to trace her arrival on the flight from Kenya and that would have invalidated her claim. She is a fraud!

5. She made up a story which she thought (correctly) would get her asylum and then went on to work and study in Holland and the rest of the story we know.

6. She was an African Moslem living safely in Kenya who fancied her chances in the West, probably could not get a visa to travel and so used the marriage as a means of obtaining a visa and an air ticket out of Kenya. Once the husband had come up with the goods, he was ruthlessly dumped and then portrayed as an abusive monster. Some gratitude! Given these facts, she has systematically lied her way into obtaining asylum, citizenship, education and political office. One must wonder how genuine her criticisms of Islam are and if these are just a means of getting her attention and adulation. She is untrustworthy. The Dutch should send her back to Kenya.

And as if that’s not enough, the reader informs me that Ali has gotten permission to immigrate to the U.S. “She is leaving the Dutch parliament and the Netherlands for good. She is leaving the Netherlands and coming to you in USA in September 2006.”

Here is Robert Spencer’s defense of Ali’s fraudulent behavior. He says it doesn’t matter, since the real problem is Islam. By Spencer’s logic, one wonders if there is anything that Ali could do that would alienate him, since Islam is the real enemy.

Ali is a brave and effective critic of Islamic tyranny. But I think conservatives are making the same mistake with regard to her that, mutatis mutandis, FDR made with regard to Stalin in World War II: going beyond treating Stalin as a useful ally about whom we had serious doubts, and instead treating him as a hero and bosom buddy. This too eager embrace of a foreign ally (and, in Ali’s case, soon-to-be immigrant ally) makes us lose sight of our true national interests, as George Washington so wisely warned in his Farewell Address.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 15, 2006 10:14 AM | Send