Rita Verdonk Dented by Hirsi Ali Affair

Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk during a debate at the parliament in the Hague, Netherlands, Tuesday May 16, 2006. Rita Verdonk's threat to revoke Hirsi Ali's citizenship for lying on her asylum application forced the Netherlands' best-known critic of fundamentalist Islam to resign. Verdonk, known as 'Iron Rita' for her merciless enforcement of the Dutch government's strict immigration policies came under fire from parliament in a debate that lasted into the early hours of Wednesday morning. (AP Photo/Martijn Beekman) (Martijn Beekman - AP)

"Privately, I wish her the best," Verdonk said of Hirsi Ali during the debate. "It was terrible for me to have to write a letter like that" _ informing Hirsi Ali that her naturalization was invalid.

Unlike Verdonk, Hirsi Ali, 36, has been watching her ratings fall and her personal life grow more difficult.

She wrote the script for Van Gogh's film "Submission," which criticized the treatment of women under Islam and offended many Muslims.

Death threats forced her to go into hiding for months in the United States after Van Gogh's murder by a Muslim radical who is now serving a life sentence. When she returned she was given 24-hour police protection.

Verdonk, too, is under heavy personal security, and has confessed the protection is a burden on her husband and three children.

Verdonk burst onto the national stage the day of Van Gogh's murder when she addressed thousands of angry, mournful people on Amsterdam's Dam Square.

"We say: This far, and no further. Stop!" she shouted, to a roar of approval to the crowd. "We say: We will not accept this. This is not the society that we envision."

As immigration minister since 2003, she tightened rules that had sharply curbed immigration applications, and began deporting a backlog of 26,000 people whose asylum requests had been rejected five or more years ago _ measures that proved highly popular.

At times, she displays a softer side and a quick sense of humor. When visiting a mosque, she was told a Muslim priest she was about to meet would refuse to shake her hand _ a religious practice she says underscores the failure of many Muslims to accept Dutch norms.

"Well, we'll have a lot to talk about," she quipped.

But nothing served her so well as her refusal to bend in high-profile cases.

She denied Ivory Coast-born soccer player Salomon Kalou's request for fast-track naturalization so he could play for Holland in the World Cup, snubbing an appeal from national coach Marco ban Basten.

She also ordered the deportation of Kosovo-born Taida Pasic, who had lived in the Netherlands since she was 12, a month before graduating high school.

Hirsi Ali said she had pleaded Pasic's case with the minister. "I said, 'Rita, come on, please. I lied, too,'" Hirsi Ali said, recalling for The Associated Press last week the conversation that took place two months ago. "And she told me, 'If I was the minister then, I would also have evicted you.'"

Galen Irwin, Hirsi Ali's former mentor at Leiden University, said Verdonk's decision in the Hirsi Ali case was politically motivated.

"Rita Verdonk has party leadership elections to confront, hence the need to show her toughness," he said. "I think there is plenty of opportunism here."

An Internet survey by pollster Maurice de Hond released Tuesday found 49 percent agreed with Verdonk's decision in Hirsi Ali's case, versus 43 percent who opposed it. De Hond claims a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.