By Chuck Hustmyre
October 4, 2007
THE HAGUE, the Netherlands (Crime Library) -- Best-selling author Ayaan Hirsi Ali is in hiding. Hiding is something she's gotten used to in the last few years, but now she has to do it alone.
Ali, 37, a former member of the Dutch Parliament, has been in hiding since November 2004, when Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was gunned down and had his throat cut in broad daylight on an Amsterdam street.
Just before his death, Van Gogh, great grandnephew of the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, had produced and directed a film titled Submission. The film, which Ali wrote and narrated, told the story of the systematic abuse experienced by Muslim women at the hands of Muslim men.
 |
| Ayaan Hirsi Ali |
Ali was born in Somalia. She was raised as a Muslim and forced into an arranged marriage. In 1992, she managed to escape her marriage and was granted political asylum in the Netherlands. Later, she became a Dutch citizen and served in the lower house of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006.
A blunt critic of Islam, Ali renounced the faith entirely in 2002, and in her writings, speeches and interviews, she often lashed out against the Muslim practices of wife-beating, female genital mutilation, and so-called honor killings, the brutal murder of women and girls by relatives for what is described as bringing "shame" upon a family. Ali also charged that by modern Western standards, the Muslim prophet Muhammad would have been considered a pedophile.
After Submission aired on Dutch television, van Gogh and Ali began receiving death threats. Van Gogh shrugged off the threats, according to Ali.
 |
| Film Director Theo van Gogh |
Then on the morning of November 2, 2004, Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Muslim fanatic of Moroccan descent, shot van Gogh while the filmmaker was riding his bicycle to work.
According to witnesses, after the shot knocked van Gogh from his bicycle, Bouyeri chased after van Gogh as he staggered toward the cover of an adjacent building. As the wounded man pled for his life, the assassin shot him again. Then the crazed Muslim pulled out a knife and slit van Gogh's throat. "Cut like a tire," is how one witness described it.
Bouyeri then pinned a message to his victim by plunging a knife through the note and into van Gogh's chest. Police captured Bouyeri minutes later after wounding him in a shootout at a nearby park.
 |
| Theo Van Gogh's Killer, Mohammed Bouyeri |
But it was the scrawled note left on the body of Ali's murdered film collaborator that forced her into hiding. The ranting message called her an "infidel" and threatened that she would be the next to die for insulting Islam.
The Dutch government began providing around-the-clock security for Ali, but in 2006 government officials stripped her of her Dutch citizenship, alleging misrepresentations on her application for asylum. Although her Dutch citizenship was later restored, Ali moved to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2006 and accepted a position with the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute.
While in the United States, Ali wrote the bestselling book Infidel, a chronicle of her life-long struggle against what she described as Islam's brutal treatment of women.
Next Page
War Room Forum
War Room Full Coverage Page
Giving Iranian Nuclear Containment Teeth
Planned Austrian Embassy Attack Latest in the Ongoing "European Jihad"
Resolve of Western Powers to Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Weapon Approaches Critical Test
Resolve of Western Powers to Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Weapon Approaches Critical Test
For more daily crime news
default
increase
decrease
email
print