After the publication of a novel critical of her own culture, Lale Gül had become the target of intimidation and threats through social media and family. She had received gun photos from anonymous accounts. The 23-year-old writer had also left her parents' home. "But I didn't expect the threats to be so serious."
We are in the country where the Blossom Books publishing house has just removed Mohammed from Dante’s Hell in a new Belgian-Dutch translation of the Divine Comedy.
We are in the country where director Theo van Gogh was killed for making the film “Submission” about women in the Islamic world.
In Linnaeusstraat, a district of Amsterdam, the Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri ambushed the director and slaughtered him after pinning a letter to his chest. We are in the country where the Iranian artist Sooreh Hera was to exhibit a series of photographic works depicting gay couples in a museum in The Hague, including one where the models wore masks of Mohammed and Ali. "We will burn you alive", "we killed once we are ready to do it a second time ..." were the threats. The museum thus had to cancel the exhibition.
We are in the country where the cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot, who published under a pseudonym, announced that he would no longer make his irreverent drawings, including one that reads “Islamsterdam”. Too dangerous to continue ...
We are in the country where a politician critical of multiculturalism, Pim Fortuyn, was killed on the street.
We are in the country from which Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the indomitable co-author of the film that cost Theo Van Gogh's life, had to flee to the United States, while Geert Wilders, the best-known critic of Islam and whose name was engraved on Van Gogh's stomach, wears a bulletproof vest in Parliament and even in televised debates.
It goes without saying that the film that cost Theo Van Gogh his life has never been broadcast again. Because in the most free and most tolerant country in Europe, submission is complete. (INN)
