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BERLIN (Reuters) - Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller star in a new film exploring the relationship between the media and celebrities in a re-make of a Dutch version by slain director Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh, an outspoken critic of Islam who was murdered in 2004 by a Dutch-Moroccan militant, planned to adapt a trilogy of films for Hollywood before he was killed, of which "Interview" was the first. U.S. actor Buscemi, who also directs the new version, plays a world-weary reporter called Pierre who reluctantly accepts an assignment from his editor to interview Katya, a trashy horror film star....

Taking the fight to Islam In 1989, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali Muslim, supported the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. But on moving to Europe her views changed and she turned against Islam. Two years ago she fled Holland after the brutal murder of her artistic collaborator Theo van Gogh. Who is this fierce critic who lives under the constant threat of death? Andrew Anthony Sunday February 4, 2007 The Observer (UK) Ayaan Hirsi Ali is not the only critic of Islam who lives with round-the-clock protection. But surely none wears their endangered status with greater style. The Dutch Somali human-rights...

ITALY: MP RECEIVES DEATH THREATS OVER HER ANTI-VEIL BATTLE Rome, 10 Jan. (AKI) - Italian conservative MP Daniela Santanche has received death threats over her opposition to the Muslim veil, Italy's leading paper Corriere della Sera reported in a front-page article on Wednesday. Santanche reportedly received a letter in Arabic and English at her lower house office Tuesday night with pictures of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, murdered in 2004 by an Islamist fundamentalist for his movie Submission, which denounced violence on women in Muslim countries, and Dutch MP Hirsi Ali, the film's author, who has also received death threats....

Two years ago, movie director Theo van Gogh’s throat was cut on a street in Amsterdam in the name of radical Islam. I had partaken in his last work, Submission, where we represented, in the most accurate way possible, the condition of Muslim women: tyranny, humiliations, violence. In this film, we showed Muslim women who had finally rebelled, talking to God in a tone of defiance. It made Imam Fawaz of the Hague scream with hate during the delivery of a vengeful sermon. My friend Theo, the “criminal bastard”, was subsequently riddled with bullets and stabbed to death with a...

THE HAGUE -- When Geert Wilders rose from his desk, his head almost touched the narrow ceiling. The tiny corner office underneath the parliament's roof wasn't selected for space but security. Possible assassins can only come from one direction, making life easier for the two bodyguards outside. Mr. Wilders has been living under 24-hour police protection ever since the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh two years ago. The Dutch-Moroccan who stabbed and shot van Gogh in Amsterdam left death threats behind against him and the Netherlands' other, more famous critic of Islam: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Like the Somali-born...

Ideas can be dangerous. I have learnt that the hard way. But I know that when it comes to freedom and human rights these precious ideas, so valued in the West, are worth fighting for. As a young Muslim woman, born in Somalia, I abandoned my family to avoid an arranged marriage to a distant cousin and fled to Holland. I was just 23 and I had no idea back then that my refusal to submit to a traditional Muslim woman’s life would come to dominate my whole career. So for me, the debate that is raging about the veil,...

I should seriously write a book called, The Idiots Guide To Not Thinking Seriously About Islam. It’s hard to find a subject where mushy thinking is more in vogue – where political correctness conquers reality more thoroughly. People actually are afraid to think seriously on the subject, because the logical conclusions are too frightening for many to contemplate. And so, there’s no place where comfortable clichés are more readily deployed. Probably the most glaring illustration of inanity here were recent comments by his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. On leaving a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, the leader of Tibetan Buddhists...

Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance By Ian Buruma Penguin Press. 288 pp. $24.95 Reviewed by Kay S. Hymowitz By now, almost every country in Western Europe has had its own shocking encounter with the radical Islamists in its midst, its “own 9/11.” For Holland, the event came on November 2, 2004, the day a Dutch-Moroccan by the name of Mohammed Bouyeri shot the iconoclastic documentary filmmaker Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street, nearly cut off his head with a machete, and then calmly plunged a knife into the still-warm body,...

Earlier this week, on Tuesday July 26, 2005, a Dutch court sentenced Mohammed Bouyeri, the killer of Dutch film producer Theo Van Gogh, to life in prison. Following Bouyeri's confession of his gruesome killing of van Gogh, shocking details about the lives of Bouyeri and his friends began to emerge. They afford a telling glimpse into the secret world of Dutch Islamists who used fundamentalism as a veil to mask their sexual perversions. Bouyeri’s parents were first-generation immigrants. He completed secondary school in Amsterdam, then attended college for five years, but quit before receiving a degree. Shortly after the death of his mother, he turned to Islamic...

An ultra-radical Islamic ideology mixing zealot-like devotion and holy war creed is drawing more scrutiny in anti-terrorist probes from the Middle East to Europe — with increasing indications that its base on the fringes of Islamic extremism could be widening. In existence since the 1960s, al-Takfir wa al-Hijra has offered intellectual inspiration to al-Qaida and other militant groups. But authorities now worry about followers becoming more aggressive with recruitment and retaliation against perceived foes of Islam, such as Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Officials in the Netherlands say the Dutch-Moroccan suspect — accused of killing Van Gogh on a busy...

AMSTERDAM — A court in Rotterdam imposed a three-year sentence on Tuesday on a Moroccan-Dutch man for trying to recruit fellow prisoners for a Muslim holy war. Bilal L., 21, was serving a 10-month jail sentence for threatening MP Geert Wilders when he asked fellow prisoners to supply weapons and explosives. The panel of three judges also accepted L. tried to recruit inmates to carry out attacks on the "enemies of Islam". L. is a friend of Mohammed Bouyeri who was jailed for life last year for killing film director Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004. Earlier this year...

AMSTERDAM — Shots were fired as police raided a building on the Moerweg in The Hague on Friday. Dutch parliament buildings hermetically sealed by police Witnesses reported seeing masked men with automatic weapons entering a flat complex on Moerweg which has been sealed off by the police. Radio 1 News was told of people hearing gunfire. The police in The Hague have declined to comment at this stage about the reports. A spokesperson would only say police operations are taking place at several locations in the city. She would also not confirm that a raid was carried out at a...

Somali-born former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to be allowed to keep her Dutch citizenship despite lying in her asylum application in 1992. Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk was forced to make a U-turn after her calls for Ms Hirsi Ali to lose her citizenship met with criticism. Ms Hirsi Ali resigned from parliament in May after Ms Verdonk's comments. She came to prominence in 2004 after a Muslim extremist killed her film-maker colleague Theo van Gogh.

U.S.-born actress warned 'she will be sorry' unless she pulls out of film Sienna Miller Sienna Miller reportedly feared for her life after getting a flood of death threats from Islamic extremists. The American-born, British-bred actress best-known for starring in the remake of "Alfie" as well as her engagement to actor Jude Law, is said to have received a torrent of vicious threats from Muslims furious she's starring in "Interview," a remake of director Theo van Gogh's 2003 thriller. Van Gogh is the Dutch director who was shot and killed in 2004 by an Islamic extremist in connection with his...

The subscription site, STRATFOR or Strategic Forecasting, Inc. - issues almost daily a TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE REPORT with a self described "track record on accurate, insightful global intelligence and analysis earning itself a reputation as the world’s most respected private intelligence company". Strafor's Fred Burton updates the ongoing cartoon controversy (02.21.2006)as follows : "Fatwas and Rewards: An Inflection Point in the Cartoon Controversy" (I have highlighted key points received today via e-mail). "Two minor Shariah courts in India's Uttar Pradesh state have issued fatwas calling for the death of a Danish cartoonist who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. The fatwas,...

BERLIN, 11/02/06 - Conservative (VVD) MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali has completely taken her party leader Jozias van Aartsen by surprise with her visit to Berlin. In the presence of many international media, she expressed unvarnished views of the Danish cartoons featuring the Islamic Prophet Mohammed. Van Aartsen was surprised Thursday evening when a journalist in The Hague asked him what he thought of the speech. "Come back again later," he replied. Sources in The Hague believe Van Aartsen was completely unaware that his MP was to speak in Berlin. But Van Aarsten said Friday that "Ayaan has expressed the party...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch politician forced to go into hiding after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, responds to the Danish cartoon scandal, arguing that if Europe doesn't stand up to extremists, a culture of self-censorship of criticism of Islam that pervades in Holland will spread in Europe. Auf Wiedersehen, free speech. SPIEGEL: Hirsi Ali, you have called the Prophet Muhammad a Tyrant and a Pervert. Theo van Gogh, thedirector of your film "Submission," which is critical of Islam, was Murdered by Islamists. You yourself are under Police Protection. Can you understand how the Danish cartoonists feel at...

AMSTERDAM — "Comparing me to Osama bin Laden does the man a great wrong and extends me too much honour I don't deserve, Mohammed Bouyeri said at the start of his speech from the dock on Thursday. "But it fills me with me with honour, pride and joy that you see me as the black standard-bearer of Islam in Europe," he told the prosecution. Dutch-Moroccan Bouyeri, 27, is serving a life sentence for the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam on 2 November 2004. Although he cannot receive a further sentence he is among a group of Muslim...

Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of film maker Theo van Gogh, is to be given the chance to address the court later today in the case against the Amsterdam terror network, 'the hofstadgroup'. Bouyeri has two solicitors, but is adamant that he will do the talking.

Mohammed Bouyeri, the killer of Theo van Gogh, has had a chance to air his extremist views to the court, and says that to be compared with Osama Bin Laden is too much honour. "That you compare me to Bin Laden is for him an insult and for me too much honour, but if you say I am the black-flag bearer of the islam in Europe fulfills my honour, pride and happiness" said Bouyeri to the OM (Public prosecutor) in the packed court in Amsterdam-Osdorp...