Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali woman who has spoken out in favor of the emancipation of Muslim woman and against clitoridectomy, arranged marriage, and other abuses, has been stripped of her Dutch citizenship and expelled from the Dutch parliament, where she was a deputy for the conservative party VLD. Reason: A documentary shown on the left-wing TV channel Vara demonstrated that she lied about her background in the early 1990s when she came to the Netherlands.

Problem: The documentary contains nothing new. When Ali was elected to Parliament in 2002, she admitted that she had lied a decade before in order to ease her way to asylum. Nothing was done about it, nobody seemed to care, until the TV documentary.

Here's the difference between Ali and Rigoberta Menchu: Menchu's fame is based exclusively on the lies she told about her background that were immortalized in her phony book, I, Rigoberta Menchu, actually written by a French lefty feminist activist. Ali's fame is based on her activities in favor of Muslim women, her parliamentary career, and on her participation in the film Submission by Theo Van Gogh; her partially made-up background is secondary to her fame. Ali admitted her lies four years ago, before she was pressed by anyone, while Menchu has never admitted her much more serious lies.

The Spanish media is making a huge deal out of Ali's case; TV3 ran a major story painting Ali as a liar with no redeeming virtues, and La Vanguardia said, "Her reputation is ruined...The legend of Saint Ayaan has come crashing down."

Why? Because the anti-Islamist West treats Ali as a heroine, and the anti-Western Spanish media opposes anything that smells pro-Western. They're having a field day with Ali's decision to move to the United States and take on a position with the American Enterprise Institute, not-so-subtly painting her as an American puppet. 

I don't think this attempt to ruin Ali will affect her moral authority in the least among her supporters.