NETHERLANDS: A Somali-born Dutch politician threatened with death after making a movie critical of Islam with murdered film maker Theo van Gogh returned to parliament yesterday after two months in hiding.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of parliament for the VVD liberals, has been under police protection after repeated threats to her life following the airing of the film Submission about violence against women in Islamic societies.
A five-page letter pinned to Van Gogh's body with a knife was addressed to Hirsi Ali, accusing her of "terrorising Muslims and Islam".
Media reports said she was spirited out of the Netherlands to the United States after Van Gogh's murder on November 2nd.
"It's great to be back," said Hirsi Ali as she returned to parliament in The Hague for a meeting of her VVD party flanked by bodyguards. Dutch Television NOS showed a cordon of police as her car arrived in parliament.
The 11-minute English-language film tells the fictional story of a young Muslim woman who is forced into a marriage with a man who beats her, is raped by her uncle and later punished for falling in love with another man.
The woman wears a transparent gown, making her body visible, while another female victim of abuse exposes her naked shoulders and back covered with lash wounds and painted with texts from the Koran that the film says encourage violence against women.
Hirsi Ali has angered Muslims with her outspoken criticism of their customs, calling Islam "backward" and saying last year that by today's western standards, the prophet Mohammad was a perverse man and a tyrant.
Several Muslim organisations say Hirsi Ali, who fled to the Netherlands after escaping an arranged marriage and renounced Islam years ago, is traumatised by her past and has insulted the nearly one million Muslims in the country.
However, she has become increasingly popular among non-Muslim Dutch.