Sunday, October 06, 2002

The Somali woman in Holland that I mentioned last month, who spoke out against the Islamic fundamentalists there, in now in hiding. Does anyone realize what we face here? Please people, wkae up before every moderate voice of reform is chased into hiding or murdered for their views.

In doing so Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become the Netherlands' very own Salman Rushdie and is now in hiding after receiving a barrage of anonymous death threats, allegedly from extremist Muslims.

I like the allegedly. Like there is the possibility itcould be a rouge group of Dutch Moonies or something. Well, it is the Guardian.

This is part of the bitter attack as passed on in the article I posted on 09/23.

In a popular talk show early this week, Ms Hirsi Ali made a plea for full women's rights, including "complete personal freedom and individual choice". Muslims deny "the serious imbalance that exists in relationships between Muslim men and women", she said and added that, in this context, Islam could be called "a backward religion".

The trouble started when she took part in a live debate on Dutch TV. An advisor to the Dutch opposition Socialist party, she used the opportunity to launch a bitter attack on Islam, taking issue with what she called the shoddy way in which it regarded women. Making a plea for full women's rights including 'complete personal freedom and individual choice' she claimed there was a 'serious imbalance' in relations between Muslim men and women and borrowed Fortuyn's famous phrase to label Islam 'a backward religion'

Sounds like a bitter attack to me. I wonder if a woman attacking a Christian or Western tratement of women would be described as 'bitter' in the Guardian.

Yassin Hartog, a spokesman for Islam and Citizenship, the Netherlands' main Muslim lobby group, says he believes the death threats against Hirsi Ali may have been fabricated to blacken the Muslim community. 'We're getting more and more signs that these death threats are bogus,' he told The Observer. In an effort to distance themselves from the affair 17 Muslim organisations have signed a declaration condemning the death threats. However, this is not the first time anti-Islamic rhetoric has attracted death threats in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

And Yasser Arafat condemns terrist attacks against Israeli civilians.

'This is nothing new - just think of Salman Rushdie,' Secil Arda, the head of a Turkish women's group, told Radio Netherlands. 'Some people have the courage to say something, to give their opinion. 'I consider our fight a milestone in the process of emancipation. Without this quest we would never have change.'

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