Dutch MP plans new Islam film

The Hague, Holland - Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali has told the BBC she intends to make a follow-up to the Theo van Gogh film Submissions Part One, which resulted in the director being killed, allegedly by a radical Muslim.

Van Gogh was murdered in November 2004, allegedly by Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri. Van Gogh had his throat cut and was shot several times.

A letter was then pinned to his chest with a knife. The letter threatened Ms Ali, who had scripted the film.

"Deciding not to make Part Two after Theo van Gogh's murder would be, I think, really wrong," Ms Ali told BBC World Service's The Interview programme.

"It would reward the killers of Theo van Gogh, it would reward violence, suggesting it can get people to do what you want them to do."

Intention

Submissions Part One showed habitual violence towards women and had verses of the Koran on women's semi-naked bodies.

The extracts written on their bodies included passages which say women should be beaten if they do not behave properly.

Ms Ali said that the killers had believed that the Koran had been "defiled" by this.

"But my intention with the film was to show a woman praying and talking to her God that is very different to the way Muslims worship, which is to submit to the will of God.

"These women are saying 'Look God, we've done everything you've asked of us, but see what's happened to us'. This is what the film was about - putting the lens on the painful bits of Islam."

Ms Ali said that she and Van Gogh had planned a sequence of Submission films well before his death.

Part Two, for example, would regard men.

"I was going to make it anyway," she added.

"Now, regardless of the risks, I am going to make it, in order to show that we should not bow to violence."

Ms Ali lives under police protection. Earlier this year, she spent two months in hiding.

She said she accepted that making Submissions Part Two would mean her life would never return to "normal" - but said this would have been the case anyway.

"Remember Salman Rushdie - he wrote the book [The Satanic Verses] in 1989, and he'll never have a normal life again," she added.

"That's the case - once, as a Muslim, you say you are not a Muslim, or you make statements the radicals regard as apostasy, then they believe that by killing you they will go to Heaven.

"So I am going to live, to prove to them that there is no Heaven - or Hell, for that matter."