Election to change face of Dutch politics

THE Netherlands is set for a cliff-hanging general election today. A year ago, a dapper gay populist who railed against immigrants in general and Muslims in particular and then was shot to death in a car-park nine days before elections.

As the Dutch return to the polls, a new face has caught their eye: a 33-year-old woman from Somalia who defied death threats to take up the fight to emancipate Muslim women.

Like the assassinated Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali denounces Islam as backward and repressive to women. She says she wants to take shelters for battered women and turn them into liberation camps, teaching women to be free of their abusive environment.