Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Islam, Western Culture & the Theo van Gogh Film (2007)

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• published: 10 May 2015
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Working with writer and director Theo van Gogh, Hirsi Ali wrote the script and provided the voice-over for Submission (2004),[28] a short film that criticised the treatment of women in Islamic society.[29] Juxtaposed with passages from the Qur'an were scenes of actresses portraying Muslim women suffering abuse. An apparently nude actress dressed in a semi-transparent burqa was shown with texts from the Qur'an written on her skin. These texts are among those often interpreted as justifying the subjugation of Muslim women. The film's release sparked outrage among many Dutch Muslims. Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan Islamist and alleged member of the Muslim terrorist organisation Hofstad Group, assassinated Van Gogh in an Amsterdam street on 2 November 2004. Bouyeri shot Van Gogh with a handgun eight times, first from a distance and then at short range as the director lay wounded on the ground. He was already dead when Bouyeri cut his throat with a large knife and tried to decapitate him. Bouyeri left a letter pinned to Van Gogh's body with a small knife; it was primarily a death threat to Hirsi Ali.[30][31] The Dutch secret service immediately raised the level of security they provided to Hirsi Ali.[32] At van Gogh's funeral, his mother urged Hirsi Ali to continue the work that she and Van Gogh had done together.[33] Bouyeri was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.[34] In 2004, the group The Hague Connection produced a rap song, "Hirsi Ali Dis", and distributed it on the Internet. The lyrics included violent threats against her life. The rappers were prosecuted under Article 121 of the Dutch criminal code because they hindered Hirsi Ali's execution of her work as a politician. In 2005 they were sentenced to community service and a suspended prison sentence.[35] Hirsi Ali went into hiding, aided by government security services, who moved her among several locations in the Netherlands. They moved her to the United States for several months. On 18 January 2005, she returned to parliament. On 18 February 2005, she revealed where she and her colleague Geert Wilders were living. She demanded a normal, secured house, which she was granted one week later. In January 2006 Hirsi Ali was recognised as "European of the Year" by Reader's Digest, an American magazine. In her speech, she urged action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. She also said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be taken at his word in wanting to organise a conference to investigate objective evidence of the Holocaust, noting that the subject is not taught in the Middle East. She said, "Before I came to Europe, I'd never heard of the Holocaust. That is the case with millions of people in the Middle East. Such a conference should be able to convince many people away from their denial of the genocide against the Jews."[36] She also said that what some have described as "Western values" of freedom and justice were universal. But she thought that Europe has done far better than most areas of the world in providing justice, as it has guaranteed the freedom of thought and debate required for critical self-examination. She said communities cannot reform unless "scrupulous investigation of every former and current doctrine is possible."[37] In March 2006 she co-signed a letter entitled "MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism".[38] Among the eleven other signatories was British writer Salman Rushdie, against whom a fatwa had been pronounced which Hirsi Ali had supported as a teen. The letter was published in response to protests in the Islamic world surrounding the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in Denmark, and it supported freedom of press and freedom of expression. On 27 April 2006 a Dutch judge ruled that Hirsi Ali had to abandon her current secure house at a secret address in the Netherlands. Her neighbors had complained that she created an unacceptable security risk, but the police had testified that this neighborhood was one of the safest places in the country, as they had many personnel assigned to it for the politician's protection.[39] In an interview in early 2007, Hirsi Ali noted that the Dutch state had spent about €3.5 million on her protection; threats against her produced fear, but she believed it important to speak her mind. While regretting van Gogh's death, she said she was proud of their work together.[40] A private trust, the Foundation for Freedom of Expression, was established in 2007 in the Netherlands to help fund protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and other Muslim dissidents. She was born as Ayaan Hirsi Magan in 1969[13] in Mogadishu, Somalia.[14] Her father, Hirsi Magan Isse, was a prominent member of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front and a leading figure in the Somalian Revolution. Shortly after she was born, her father was imprisoned owing to his opposition to the Siad Barre government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali