Islam critic seeks French haven

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born former Dutch MP and outspoken critic of Islam, says she is seeking French citizenship.

Ms Ali says she cannot be assured of protection back home, after receiving death threats from Islamist extremists.

The Dutch government has been refusing to pay for the protection of Ms Ali, aged 38, who now lives in the US. The US does not pay for her security.

Separately, the Dutch government has backed down from plans for a total ban on head-to-toe Islamic robes in public.

Instead, it said it would now seek to discourage the wearing of the robes - known as burkas - in schools, government offices and on public transport.

The government has been under growing pressure from conservative parties to ban burkas outright.

Right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders has warned that the Netherlands is being swamped by "a tsunami of Islamisation". He is expected to release his own controversial film about Islam soon.

European fund?

Ms Ali has been living under police protection since the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004.

She was threatened in a note left on his body for writing the script for Van Gogh's Submission - a highly controversial film alleging that women were being abused under Islam.

"I would be very honoured and grateful if I were to become a French citizen, and the question of my protection could be resolved once and for all," Ms Ali told France-2 TV during a visit to Paris.

I live under protection now, but it's a protection in which I still have to move from place to place, and look for donors to pay for my protection Ayaan Hirsi Ali

She said the campaign for her to receive honorary French citizenship was being spearheaded by a group of French intellectuals and was supported by the country's political leaders.

In 2006, Ms Ali stepped down as an MP and left the Netherlands after admitting that she had lied when applying for asylum in the Netherlands in 1992.

She now works for a conservative think-tank in the US.

The Dutch justice ministry said last October it could not justify paying for Ms Hirsi Ali's protection while she was in the US.

But Ms Ali said that the US government "doesn't pay for protection of foreigners".

During her visit to France, she suggested that another possible solution could be "a European fund that will protect people like me, whose lives are threatened in the name of Islam," the AFP news agency reported.