Film-maker is murdered for his art

Times Online - World: "A descendant of Vincent van Gogh who championed free speech has been shot dead over his portrayal of Muslim violence to women. A DIRECTOR who outraged Muslims with a film about an abusive arranged marriage was murdered in the street yesterday.
Theo van Gogh, 47, the great-grand nephew of the 19th century painter Vincent van Gogh, was shot and stabbed to death while cycling past Amsterdam’s city council offices. Police arrested a 26-year-old man of dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality after a gunfight in a nearby park, which wounded a policeman and the alleged assailant.

The incident sparked immediate comparisons with the assassination two years ago of Pym Fortuyn, the right-wing politician, who campaigned against immigration. Van Gogh had just finished a film on the life of Fortuyn that was due to be broadcast shortly. But it was his latest film Submission, which featured a Muslim woman forced into an abusive arranged marriage and who was raped by her uncle, that caused the most outrage in the Dutch Muslim community.

The 11-minute film, broadcast on national television in August, was narrated and written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a refugee who fled Somalia 12 years ago to escape a forced marriage. Describing herself as a former Muslim, Ms Ali has since become a liberal member of the Dutch parliament and high-profile critic of Islam. After the broadcast, van Gogh and Ms Hirsi Ali, 34, were repeatedly issued with death threats and reluctantly accepted police protection.

Ms Hirsi Ali, who famously criticised Muhammad as “a pervert” for marrying a six-year-old girl, Aisha, when he was 53, and consummating the marriage when she was nine, was taken to a safe house by police. The outrage sparked by the murder in 2002 of Fortuyn, a flamboyant homosexual who campaigned against Islamic intolerance, was a watershed in Dutch politics. All political parties were forced to take a tough stance on immigration, with the Government adopting some of the strictest immigration laws in Europe and forcing immigrants to learn more about Dutch culture, language and values.

There are currently one million Muslims in a Dutch population of 18 million.

The Dutch wing of the European Arab League, one of several organisations to criticise Submission, said it was shocked by the murder.

Van Gogh sparked controversy when he addressed Islamic issues after the September 11 attacks. In a book called Allah Knows Better, he attacked Islamic militancy and accused imams of hating women.

Submission criticised the Koran for sanctioning domestic violence and depicted four abused women in see-through robes showing their breasts with Koran text painted on their bodies.

One verse of the Koran states: “And those (wives) you fear may be rebellious admonish, banish them to their couches, and beat them."