The fact that Ayaan Hirsci Ali lied on her asylum application is irrelevant – even if she had not said so herself several years ago. Prior to the New World Order and its criminalisation of asylum seekers and refugees, it was a given that many would be forced to change their identities; moreover, where a person stopped or lived before arrival was not an issue. They are now because such rules help in refusing and deporting the persecuted not because they have anything to do with the experience of flight.

Clearly, Ayaan is a ‘genuine’ refugee as is all those fleeing Islam and political Islam. The fact that her life is under threat by Islamists in Europe – let alone Somalia or Kenya – is ample evidence of this.

Why she is being scapegoated has more to do with her party’s internal politics as well as their and the Dutch government’s general anti-asylum policies and appeasement of the political Islamic movement than Ayaan herself.

Ayaan has to be unequivocally defended and supported whilst her party and the Dutch government condemned.

As an aside, though, there is a lesson here for Ayaan who is intending to join a neocon think tank in the US: The right may give a limited platform to speak against Islam and political Islam but it will not and cannot provide a platform to unequivocally defend the rights of women and others…