THE RIGHT DEPORTATION FOR THE WRONG REASONS:

Hard Luck for a Hard-Liner (IAN BURUMA, 5/19/06, NY Times)

WHEN Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk of the Netherlands suddenly decided last Monday that the Somali-born politician and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali should never have been granted Dutch citizenship because she had lied about her name, a storm was unleashed. Ms. Hirsi Ali resigned her seat in Parliament. Her supporters spoke of "judicial murder." Ms. Hirsi Ali herself had referred a few weeks ago to the "terror regime of political correctness ruling our nation." It was as though she were being punished in a timid country for being an outspoken critic of Islam. [...]

Rita Verdonk is far from being "politically correct." In fact, she is running for the party leadership as a hard-liner with a "straight back" who will no longer tolerate bogus asylum seekers, radical imams and immigrant youths "terrorizing" Dutch cities. In Dutch politics, Rita Verdonk was Ayaan Hirsi Ali's ally. They were fighting for the same cause. So why this sudden ruckus?

The Netherlands, proud of its multicultural tolerance, its hospitality to strangers, its free and easy social ways, used to be thought of as a soft touch for would-be immigrants with a story of persecution or war. Once you got across the Dutch border, officials of the welfare state would take care of you. Ms. Hirsi Ali was even coached by members of Dutch refugee organizations on how to finesse her story in order to get asylum. Economic immigration from outside the European Union was (and is) almost impossible, so such finessing was often the only way to get in.

The free and easy climate began to change in the late 1990's, and even more so after 9/11. Pim Fortuyn, the populist leader gunned down in 2002, gained a huge following by saying that the country was full, and warning that Muslims posed a danger to Dutch society. Mr. Fortuyn was an extraordinary figure, for he was not only a populist promising law and order, but also an openly gay man who saw Islam as a threat to his own sexual freedom.

In this new climate Ayaan Hirsi Ali began to flourish. Though neither a populist nor a xenophobic opponent of immigrants (how could she be?), she warned the Dutch about the Muslim menace. In the name of the Enlightenment, she would do battle against the new counter-Enlightenment, and she found allies among a variety of conservative intellectuals and politicians — and some former leftists, too — who were convinced that multiculturalism had failed, that the Dutch were timid, even cowardly, in the face of the Muslim challenge and that a tough line had to be taken.

Except that Holland's problem is the Enlightenment and her allies aren't conservative--no one was ever more multi-culti than Pim Fortuyn, an advocate of not just homosexuality but pedophilia.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 19, 2006 10:47 AM