Hitchens doesn’t agree with that Ian Buruma piece on Hirsi Ali I commented on the other day.

Ian Buruma said that Ayaan Hirsi Ali ought to have spoken out more for those who had been denied asylum in the Netherlands…This point doesn’t seem to me to carry much weight. If she had become the spokeswoman for other refugees, her own story of making a partially false application could (and would) have been used against her even more. Instead, she pointed out that many perfectly legal immigrants to Holland were trying to import dictatorship rather than flee from it, and for this she attracted lethal hatred…Hirsi Ali calls for a pluralist democracy where all opinion is protected but where the law does not – in the name of some pseudo-tolerance – permit genital mutilation, “honor” killing, and forced marriage.

There’s one very bizarre remark in this Observer article, a remark about the tv documentary that (apparently) prompted Verdonk to revoke Hirsi Ali’s citizenship:

The fact that she had lied was well-known, retorted Hirsi Ali, making the point that was she was fleeing a forced marriage. Not so, said van Dongen, using testimony from her brother and husband to allege that the marriage was not made under compulsion.

Oh, from her brother and husband! The ‘husband’ she went to the Netherlands to avoid marrying. Oh, well then, clearly they’re telling the truth about her, because, being her brother and husband, they couldn’t possibly be doing anything else. The reporter making that remark could have interjected just a little note of caution, I’d have thought.

Homa has set up a petition. It has lots of signers one is happy to join – Homa, Maryam, Irshad Manji, June Callwood, Caroline Fourest; Anne Zelensky, Présidente de la Ligue du Droit des femmes; Mohan Ashtakala, Publisher, The Himalayan News; Michel Virard, President, Association Humaniste du Québec,Canada; and lots more. It may make Hirsi Ali feel that bit more welcome over here, if nothing else.