Fraudster of the Week: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

How Ayaan Hirsi Magan invented her origin story to pursue a career in bigotry

The perennial attention-seeker Ayaan Hirsi Ali is once again in the news, this time currying favour with billionaire Bill Ackman by pleading with him to save New York City from Zohran Mamdani by declaring his own candidacy.

I have on several occasions pointed out that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fraudster who invented her origin story out of thin air. Like other immigrants who embrace far-right politics once they’ve secured their own position, she was motivated by a combination of opportunism, self-promotion, and callous contempt for those who genuinely experience the challenges she falsely claims as her own. Mix in the requisite insecurity, identity crisis, and burning desire to be accepted by the dominant culture, add a hefty dose of insufferable narcissism, and the template is complete.

I wrote the below in 2006, in response to a disingenuous defence of Hirsi Ali by the disingenuous Christopher Hitchens. I conclude it with a link to the documentary that I refer to below on multiple occasions. I found a version of this documentary with (accurate) English sub-titles, and can’t recommend it highly enough for those unfamiliar with the sheer scale and brazen nature of Hirsi Ali’s fraud:

Christopher Hitchens's most recent defence of Ayaan Hirsi Magan (aka Ayaan Hirsi Ali), "Dutch Courage", published in Slate on 22 May 2006, was – judging by the reference to a 19 May 2006 New York Times op-ed by Ian Buruma, completed on or after that date. Yet it fails to account for a slew of facts that were by then public knowledge. Together with other facts that have been in the public record for considerably longer, these collectively either undermine or reverse many of Hitchens’s assertions:

1. Hitchens states that "the Dutch courts have already required" Ayaan Hirsi Ali/Magan "to vacate her home as a result of her neighbours' petition to have her evicted", leading the reader to believe that the ruling is final, and implementation either imminent or completed. In point of fact, the court which accepted the petition gave Ali/Magan until August to vacate the premises. More importantly, the Dutch government Hitchens accuses of persecuting Ali/Magan responded with an appeal against the ruling. It was thus "a court" rather than "the courts" which ruled on the matter, and on account of the government's efforts this ruling stands a considerable chance of being overturned.

2. Hitchens's account of Ali/Magan's confession that she resorted to identity fraud to obtain political asylum, permanent residency, and later citizenship in The Netherlands suggests the relevant facts have been common knowledge in The Netherlands for a considerable length of time. In point of fact, while Ali/Magan made a general admission in 2002 that she concocted parts of her 1992 submission to the Dutch authorities to obtain political asylum (primarily relating to the fact that she arrived in The Netherlands from Kenya rather than Somalia), she did not own up to the fact of identity fraud until mid-2005. Furthermore, the latter confession appeared only in The Guardian and New York Times. When what Hitchens denounces as a "leftist documentary" about Ali/Magan was broadcast on Dutch television on 11 May 2006, the relevant facts had yet to be reported in the Dutch press. (As for the “leftist documentary”, entitled “The Holy Ayaan” and produced by the Zembla program, it was broadcast by the very, very mainstream VARA broadcasting association.)

3. Most thinking persons would agree that there are circumstances, such as those involving matters of life and death, in which an individual might justifiably resort to assuming an identity that is not their own. Yet in concluding that Ali/Magan's is one such case Hitchens overlooks a number of highly relevant factors. Specifically:

- Ali/Magan is a parliamentary representative and integration spokesperson for a Dutch political party (the liberal VVD) that has made restrictions on immigration, the expulsion of “illegal immigrants”, and punishment of immigrant crime (including fraud) central to its political programme. [NB: In Europe “liberal” is roughly equivalent to “conservative” in the US]. Ali/Magan has publicly endorsed and advocated for her party's policies in this regard. She is also not the first to be threatened with revocation of Dutch citizenship on the basis of identity fraud. The case cited by the Minister for Alien Affairs and Integration, Rita Verdonk, as the basis for her decision to begin proceedings against Ali/Magan concerns an Iraqi family that provided false names upon arrival in the Netherlands during the 1990s. They did so out of fear that their relatives in Iraq would be persecuted if the Iraqi authorities learned of their asylum application. In that case the court did not contest the veracity of the Iraqi family’s account, nor the legitimacy of its fears. The court nevertheless and despite these circumstances considered the resort to identity fraud sufficient grounds to revoke their citizenship in 2003. (The court ruled that citizenship had never been granted to the Iraqi family, since legally/technically it had been extended to different individuals). The ruling was implemented when the VVD was a member of the government coalition and in control of the relevant ministry. More recently, it emerged that the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) that operates under Verdonk's authority has also recklessly and illegally endangered the lives of political refugees from e.g. DRC and Syria by involving intelligence agencies from those countries in the asylum and deportation process. (An opposition motion of no-confidence submitted against Verdonk for improperly withholding information from parliament in this regard failed). In my view any persuasive defence of Ali/Magan needs to explain why she should be exempt from standards she endorsed, championed, and helped legislate as an elected representative. Hitchens simply dismisses this point with the unsubstantiable assertion that "if it had not been this charge [of identity fraud], it would've been something else".

- The "leftist documentary" did indeed confirm Ali/Magan's resort to identity fraud. But more importantly, it questioned the grounds on which Ali/Magan claimed necessity for her actions. After conclusively demonstrating that Ali/Magan had, contrary to her claims, last lived in a Muslim country when she was all of eight years old, had never experienced armed conflict, and had successfully obtained refugee status from UNHCR in Kenya approximately a decade before the disintegration of her native Somalia on account of her father’s persecution by the Siad Barre regime during the 1970s (a status which precluded her from applying for asylum in a third country), serious questions were also raised about the veracity of her claim that she was trapped in an arranged marriage with a distant cousin in Canada, and escaped to the Netherlands under a false name in order to avoid retribution by her family. Overwhelming evidence was produced by the documentary to challenge her version of events: according to the documentary Ali/Magan, rather than first meeting her husband on her wedding day as she claims, was in regular contact with him for some time previously; Ali/Magan never raised objections to her marriage and contrary to her claims was present at her wedding; Ali/Magan's mother, usually portrayed by her daughter as a primitive barbarian, in fact objected to the marriage on the grounds that she wanted her daughter to first obtain a university degree; Ali/Magan contacted relatives immediately upon arrival in the Netherlands; Ali/Magan played a leading part in a television documentary about asylum seekers shortly after her arrival; Ali/Magan maintained telephone and postal contact with her father and other family members when she was supposedly on the run from them; and Ali/Magan was even visited for a period of several days in the Dutch asylum centre where she resided by her then-husband. Instead of murdering her in a fit of rage, he agreed to her proposal for a divorce. While Ali/Magan continues to insist hers was a forced marriage and that she was not present at the wedding ceremony, she confirms a number of claims, including continued contact with her father and the visit by her then-husband, that would appear to undermine the image of a hunted woman on the run from her family. Tellingly, Ali/Magan's brother Mahad, who according to her version of events was scandalised by her conduct and subsequent career, spoke of his pride in her accomplishments and suggested that her move to Europe was unexceptional, part of a larger pattern by Somalis in Kenya seeking economic opportunity in the West. Her purportedly hostile parents refused to be interviewed for the documentary on the grounds that they did not want to make statements that might incriminate their daughter. It has also emerged that after the “leftist documentary” was broadcast, Ali/Magan and a friend, the columnist Leon de Winter, called Mahad in Kenya. He thereafter retracted some of the statements he had made in the “leftist documentary”.

- The unstated implications of the above are that Ali/Magan conducted herself as if she had nothing to fear because, well, she had nothing to fear, and that if her marriage was indeed arranged, it was arranged by none other than Ali/Magan herself as a vehicle to enter Europe. Hitchens neither contests any of these claims, nor the conclusion that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an invented persona in more ways than one, nor accepts them in order to claim their irrelevance. He simply neglects to acknowledge that the "leftist documentary" raises issues well beyond those Ali/Magan has recently chosen to discuss in public.

- The web of fabrications alleged by the "leftist documentary" is no moot point, because Ali/Magan's role in the debate about Islam and Muslims in The Netherlands derives primarily from the popular perception that she speaks the truth because she experienced it. It is this presumed incontestability of her views that led the producers to entitle their documentary “The Holy Ayaan”. Yet Hitchens ignores this key issue as well. In my view a single reference to the political orientation of the documentary makers is no substitute for a discussion of these highly relevant issues and the voluminous evidence they produce.

4. Hitchens states that Verdonk's determination to pursue the Ali/Magan file was perhaps motivated by the former's desire to avoid the appearance of favouritism towards a party colleague. Yet the more important factor is that Verdonk was at the time the leading candidate for the VVD party leadership, in significant part on the basis of her anti-immigrant credentials and hostility to the Muslim community in The Netherlands. More specifically, she resorted to a populist approach in order to outflank rival Mark Rutte, the nominee of the VVD establishment and party grandees, in the hope that she would defeat him with the votes of the party base. In view of the above, the more important question is the degree to which Ali/Magan's prominent role in fostering xenophobia in the Netherlands made it expedient for Verdonk to see this as a useful opportunity to play to the gallery. Yet the question of whether Ali/Magan perhaps fell victim to her own role in unanticipated ways, and whether this was a case of the counter-revolution devouring its bigoted children, is neither considered nor addressed by the self-proclaimed contrarian.

5. Hitchens discusses the "heated debate in the Dutch parliament" but omits any mention of either its substance, conclusion, or aftermath, which entirely contradict his characterisation of "a response of extraordinary and sullen ungenerousness". Almost immediately after Verdonk announced that she had reached the "provisional conclusion" that (like the Iraqis above) Ali/Magan had never been a Dutch citizen because she obtained it through identity fraud, parliament went into an emergency debate that lasted until 3 a.m. With only one or two individual exceptions, parliamentarians from across the spectrum demanded that Verdonk reconsider her decision. They subsequently passed a motion (introduced, ironically, by the VVD parliamentary faction) instructing Verdonk to re-examine the relevant laws and determine if she has any room for ministerial discretion on the basis of extraordinary circumstances, and if necessary to fast-track a renewed citizenship application by Ali/Magan. Faced with the explicit threat of an overwhelming vote of no confidence, Verdonk accepted this motion, but then again suggested the relevant laws left no room for ministerial discretion. Parliament then immediately passed a second motion (this time introduced by the governing Christian Democratic CDA), determining that the relevant laws do indeed provide Verdonk with sufficient ministerial discretion to re-examine her decisions, and that she must do so forthwith. Again faced with the alternative of summary dismissal, Verdonk capitulated once more. Yet at a party election rally the following day, Verdonk again implied that she had acted properly because the law left her no choice. In reaction, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and both Deputy PMs summoned her to a meeting, at the conclusion of which Verdonk announced that Ali/Magan's Dutch citizenship – whether on account of a reconsideration of her previous decision or a fast-tracked new application – was a foregone conclusion and not under threat. For his part PM Balkenende informed the press he would personally oversee Verdonk's implementation of the relevant parliamentary motions. While it is indeed true that Ali/Magan had become increasingly unpopular within the VVD leadership for alienating the party’s immigrant voters, and increasingly unpopular within the VVD parliamentary faction for her obsession with the limelight and lack of collegiality, and while it is indeed the case that she aroused opposition – sometimes strong – among other parliamentarians on account of her persistent hysteria against the Dutch Muslim community and advocacy of neoconservative policies so beloved by Hitchens, neither the Dutch parliament nor government can be accused of singling her out for persecution. Quite the opposite, in point of fact. Yet Hitchens suggests Verdonk was acting on behalf of the Dutch political establishment, simply ignoring the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

6. I must confess. I don't understand Hitchens's point about Ali/Magan's voters being "mere spectators to the process". Is it his view they should be consulted by parliament and the courts, or that government decisions concerning Ali/Magan be referred to them for ratification? Given the anti-immigrant profile of her voters and the real possibility they will not only endorse revocation of her citizenship but also demand her deportation irrespective of the merits of the case, is he prepared to accept their verdict? And what role, if any, does he envisage for those who during the last elections exercised their democratic right to vote against her?

In light of all the above, the one conclusion that can't be reached is that Ali/Magan faced the prospect of having her Dutch citizenship revoked on account of her views. Many others have been deported from the Netherlands – some on account of identity fraud - without so much as a whimper from parliament, government, media, or foreign pundits. Rather, they have been deported by the government on the basis of parliamentary legislation supported by the media, and championed by Ali/Magan. To the best of my knowledge the rights of none were championed by Christopher Hitchens.

In Ali/Magan's case it was precisely on account of her views that she was able to avoid the consequences of the policies she advocated and helped become the law of the land. Characterising her as a leading participant and even initiator of what is euphemistically termed the “Debate on Islam” in The Netherlands, saluting her for purported courage in expressing her bigoted views about Islam, Muslims, and immigrants, and on account of the subsequent threats to her life, parliament rose as one to ensure Ali/Magan would benefit from the ministerial discretion denied others, that she will speedily obtain citizenship in her real name if the available discretion proves insufficient, and ultimately that she will be exempted from the very laws she helped uphold.

To the best of my knowledge Ali/Magan represents the only case in Dutch history in which parliament within 24 hours convened an emergency session, and passed two motions with virtual unanimity, to prevent revocation of an individual's citizenship (her deportation was never on the agenda). Had Hitchens had the slightest familiarity with this parliamentary session or preceding commentary, he might have toned down his obligatory swipe at the left and instead noted that GreenLeft leader Femke Halsema was far and away the government’s most outspoken critic (at one point expressing the view that Ali/Magan should be the only one not to pay a price in this affair). This was at some risk to her party's standing, it might be added, because immigrants and Muslims form an important GreenLeft constituency. The same might be said of Labour Party leader Wouter Bos.

If it is indeed the principle of freedom of expression that is at stake rather than support for her specific views, does Hitchens truly believe Ali/Magan would have been accorded similar privileges if she had been a veiled advocate of Sharia under threat of death from Dutch neo-nazis? Would Hitchens have touched Ali/Magan’s case with a bargepole if she expressed the same sentiments about Dutch Jews that she routinely unloads against Holland's Muslims?

My personal view is that Ali/Magan has on account of this incident finally made a useful contribution to the debate about immigration in the Netherlands. With a little luck, the considerable sympathy accorded to Ali/Magan, and the considerable embarrassment her case has caused the government, will lead to demands for a more humane immigration policy. Indeed, some, including members of the present government that has made a vocation of harassing immigrants both legal and not, have already called for change.

On 23 May, a parliamentary majority including VVD and CDA called for an inquiry into the manner in which the government has been revoking citizenship since new legislation was introduced in 1989 and the government's powers to revoke citizenship was expanded in 2003. Perhaps the definitive response to the question of whether Ali/Magan was singled out for abuse or special treatment was provided by Foreign Minister Bernard Bot. Commenting on 20 May on the decision to ensure Ali/Magan emerges from this incident with her citizenship intact, he suggested that identical cases that have resulted in an actual revocation of citizenship may need to be revisited.

Nevertheless, it may in this case be more sensible to err on the side of caution and heed Ali/Magan's pointed warning. Holding forth in the 19 May 2006 edition of the leading Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, she informs us that we need to be particularly vigilant regarding non-practicing Muslims. They are a misleading phenomenon, she stated, because rather than having left religious orthodoxy behind, their secular habits demonstrate that Islamic radicalism still lies ahead of them; they will at some point in the future become practicing Muslims as surely as the sun rises in the east, she intoned, and thereafter it is only a matter of time until they metamorphose into full-blown jihadists. Given her conviction that every born Muslim is literally a ticking bomb, perhaps best to ship her off to the American Enterprise Institute before it is too late?