Somali-born Hirsi Ali is one of the country's foremost critics of fundamentalist Islam. She quit as a lawmaker in May after hard-line Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk applied political pressure to Hirsi Ali for lying about her name when she fled an arranged marriage in 1992 and requested asylum in the Netherlands.

Senior Cabinet ministers, including Verdonk, discussed the case June 26 and sent a plan to parliament on June 27 allowing Hirsi Ali to keep her passport.

Hirsi Ali, 36, has acknowledged her real name was Ayaan Hirsi Magan, that she had lied about her age and had not told the authorities she had lived in three countries since leaving Somalia when she applied for asylum. She is due to start work at a conservative Washington-based think tank in September.

The Japan Times Weekly: July 1, 2006
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