Infidel

  When I sat down to write the script for our film, I decided to use the format of prayer to bring about dialogue with Allah. I pictured a woman standing in the center of a room. In the four corners of the room, four women depict restrictive verses from the Quran. The woman in the middle of the room is veiled, but her veil is transparent at the front, opaque at the back. The transparency is necessary because it challenges Allah to look at what he created: the body of woman. On her torso is written the opening verse of the Quran, the “Sura Fatiha,” which every Muslim is required to recite first, at every prayer:

  In the name of God, the merciful, the beneficent.

  Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds, the merciful, the beneficent, ruler of the day of judgment!

  Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid.

  Guide us in the right path, the path of those to whom Thou art gracious; not of those with whom Thou art wroth; nor of those who err.

  The woman observes the rules of prayer: her head is lowered and her gaze is fixed on the front of the mat, where she will place her forehead when she bows to express total obedience. But after she recites the Sura Fatiha, she does something unusual: she raises her head. The camera pans to the first woman, who tells Allah that she has obeyed all his injunctions, but she now lies in a corner, bleeding. She has fallen in love, and for that she has been flogged. She ends, very simply, with the sentence, “I may no longer submit.”

  Another of the women is repelled by the odor of her husband. She has been forced to marry him and now is forced to submit to him sexually, for the Quran says, When your wives have purified themselves, ye may approach them in any manner, time or place. A third woman is beaten by her husband at least once a week: As to those women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them, scourge them and banish them to beds apart. A fourth is a young girl who lives cloistered in her own home. She has been raped by her uncle, and now she is pregnant; she will be punished for having sex outside marriage.

  I called the film Submission, Part One, because submission to Islam causes many other kinds of suffering. I saw this as the first in a series of films that would tackle the master-slave relationship of God and the individual. My message was that the Quran is an act of man, not of God. We should be free to interpret it; we should be permitted to apply it to the modern era in a different way, instead of performing painful contortions to try to recreate the circumstances of a horrible distant past. My intention was to liberate Muslim minds so that Muslim women—and Muslim men, too—might be freer. Men, too, are forced to obey inhumane laws.

  It was a simple film to make. Theo wasn’t interested in writing up proposals for grants and subsidies: he said we should just make a ten-minute film and see what happened. I finished the script at the end of July. Theo rented a studio and hired an actress and a makeup woman, and a few props.

  We did discuss the danger of making a film with this message. Having already spoken out about Islam, I knew how dangerous it was. I warned Theo; I wanted him to keep his name off the project. But Theo called himself the village idiot. He said, “Nobody shoots the village idiot.” He believed that I was the one who would be attacked, and nobody would bother with him.

  The movie almost didn’t happen. We shot it on Monday, July 26. Theo wanted me to cut the script and make it five minutes long; I insisted on ten. He lost his temper, and yelled, “I’m not here just to help you resolve your childhood traumas!” I stared at him and then walked away. He apologized.

  Actually, Theo was probably right: five minutes would have been more effective. I called him a few weeks later, to tell him so, and he said, “No, the film’s perfect. I’m proud of what I’ve done.”

  * * *

  Before Submission aired on TV, I thought it would be courteous to show it to the leaders of the Liberal Party. I also wanted to persuade them that Theo should be given more security, because he insisted on keeping his name on the film.

  They all reacted differently. Frits Bolkestein, the wise old leader of the Liberals, who was now almost seventy, paced up and down his office with worry. He said, “My God, Ayaan, you’re in danger.” I felt awful. I thought, “I shouldn’t have shown it to him, I’ve worried this poor elderly man.” In hindsight, Bolkestein really understood what was happening, as did Neelie. I tried to reassure both of them: nothing would happen to me, because the DKDB was protecting me; we only needed to worry about getting protection for Theo.

  Gerrit Zalm was unmoved. He simply asked if all this stuff was really in the Quran; because it was, he concluded that there was no reason I shouldn’t use it, although he thought it was unfortunate that our actress was half-naked. Johan Remkes, the minister of the interior, just said, “Couldn’t you have found a better-looking chick?” Remkes thought it was a rather amateurish movie; he had no idea why I was making such a fuss about security. I said, “Will you make sure Theo van Gogh is safe?” and he said, “If that becomes necessary, Ayaan, we will, of course.”

  Then I showed Submission to the defense minister, Henk Kamp. He was emotionally caught up by the film itself. He said, “What a cruel world we live in.” It was moving to see him so stirred by it. I asked him “What about security?” and Kamp said, “Muslims have had a lot to take this past year. They’ve been hardened—they won’t react to this.”

  And it seemed to be true. Submission aired on August 29, and there was no huge reaction. Everything seemed to be calm.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Murder of Theo

  In early September 2004, a Moroccan man was arrested by the police after he posted my address on the Internet. He called on all the Followers of the Oneness of Allah to rejoice, because having shadowed my movements they had finally, with the help of God, acquired my address, which was in a courtyard behind the Israeli Embassy. His message was accompanied by two photographs of me and Theo and basically said we both had to die.

  I learned about this from reporters, who began calling me. A few days later, two policemen came to see me and asked me to file a formal complaint against the man they had arrested. I did, and I told the police-men—and everyone else I could think of—that Theo must be protected.

  After making Submission, Theo and I never actually met again, but we used to call each other from time to time. He ignored my pleas that he get protection, and even joked about it. He told me, “Ayaan, you have no idea. I’ve been threatened for fifteen years. Everyone has threatened me: the Jews, the Christians, the Social Democrats, the Muslims—they’ve done it the most—and nothing has ever happened to me. Nothing is going to happen.”

  By this time I had been protected by bodyguards for more than two years. Theo didn’t want a security detail like mine. I worried that he would be trapped in an alley one night on the way home and beaten up, or maybe get rocks thrown through his windows, something like that. I didn’t expect a man to slaughter him in broad daylight—to shoot him, and cut his throat, and stick a knife into his chest.

  The weeks went by, and nothing noteworthy happened, to Theo or me. We didn’t forget about Submission. We spoke whenever I was contacted by the foreign media who wanted to see the movie, but life seemed peaceful that autumn, as I settled down to my second session of Parliament. I had a house, a job that made a great deal of sense to me, a number of friends. I was slowly becoming more accepted in politics. I had a feeling—rather new to me since my entry into Dutch politics—of satisfaction.

  As part of this newfound serenity, I had decided to come to better grips with my management of time. I was constantly late for every deadline: this had to stop. I had to learn to fix goals and do only projects that met them. I hired a trainer named Rik, and on Monday, November 1, Iris, my parliamentary assistant, and I developed a new working plan that started with coming in on time, listing priorities, and ignoring the cell phone during the formal weekly meetings that we solemnly vowed to schedule.

  The next morning, Tuesday, November 2, I was in my office bright and early, in accordance with my resolution, with cof
fee and a stack of things to discuss. Iris and I waited for the Liberal Party press secretary, Ingrid, to arrive. My phone started flashing, and a number appeared on the screen: it was Hugo, my former parliamentary assistant, a young man who now worked for the Liberal municipal councilors in Amsterdam. I decided to be disciplined: I had resolved that I don’t always have to answer calls. This new, focused me clicked the “still” button on the phone.

  And again it flashed: Hugo. What was going on? And again. I kept clicking him off. I really wanted to demonstrate how committed I was to this new schedule of ours. Then Ingrid called, I figured to apologize for being late. “Hugo has been trying to reach you,” she said. “He says something bad has happened to Theo van Gogh. There’s been an attack.”

  I jumped to my feet and ran down the hall to the office of the Liberal caucus’s secretary. Artha had a much bigger office, with a TV that she kept on teletext all day. I ran in and said, “Something has happened to Theo van Gogh, he’s not well”—I didn’t know what I was saying—and she turned to the news. The text said only that there had been a shooting incident in Amsterdam. I said, “There’s probably nothing wrong,” but I was shaking. Artha said, “Call your security people, they should know if something has happened.” My security detail in those days left me at the door of Parliament—there was no need for them to stand outside my office—but as I started to phone Bram, the senior guard on duty, he appeared beside me, as if from nowhere.

  I said, “I heard that something happened to Theo van Gogh.”

  “I can confirm it,” Bram said.

  I asked, “Is he all right?” and Bram answered, “No. Theo van Gogh is dead.”

  I started to cry. I ran back to Iris’s room, closed the door, and tried to breathe. I felt so helpless and shocked, so horrified. Ingrid came rushing in with the security people, and they said, “We have to leave, now.”

  I said, “Sorry, please leave me alone. I’m staying here.” But Ingrid said, “Ayaan, you have to get out.” Bram was very curt—“We have to move”—and Iris was crying. She put her arms around me and whispered as though she were comforting a baby, “Ayaan, let’s go.” Iris had known Theo; since he and I started to work on Submission, they had to joked on the phone a lot—he made her laugh. Bram got me my coat, put it on me, and said, “We’re leaving.”

  Bram and the other guards closed in on me. As we walked out of Parliament into the brick courtyard, more security people surrounded Ingrid and Iris and me. They were not relaxed, as they usually were. They had become grim, and bulletproof, and I saw they were deliberately showing just a small bit of their weapons. This was security to be seen. It was frightening.

  We walked the fifty yards to my house, across the huge public square outside Parliament. Everywhere I looked there were security people: police in uniform, plainclothes officers, cars, guns.

  What had happened to Theo? I turned on the news; the phone calls started. I was confused, shocked—shocked, above all—that Theo had been killed: this was unbelievable. Even the idea that something like that could happen—my mind refused to accept it. I just hoped it wasn’t true. On TV there was just a repetition of the news: a shooting, images of a shape under a white sheet, Theo van Gogh killed. I couldn’t tell myself, “Theo is lying under that sheet”: it simply didn’t seem possible.

  As the morning went on, details began coming in. A man had been arrested. There were fifty witnesses to the murder. A woman said in English—it must have been on the BBC—“a man with a beard, in a Muslim robe.” I rocked back in my chair. So it was a Muslim, and this had happened because of Submission. If we hadn’t made Submission, Theo would still be alive. I felt responsible for his death.

  I would not undo Submission, but I should have done it under my own name, alone.

  I thought about the threat against the two of us on the Internet, back in September. Theo could have been protected from this. It was so stupid; it could so easily have been prevented. I was stricken with anger, and horror, and grief.

  Then Ingrid heard from a reporter that it wasn’t just a shooting. There were knives, Theo’s throat was cut, she said; and the killer left a note. I said, “Ingrid, things are bad enough already. This is hysteria—people are fabricating stories.”

  I was numb. The shock seemed to have obliterated the thinking part of my brain. I could only compulsively watch the news. Ingrid, Iris, and the security people stayed in the house with me all day. Job Cohen called to ask how I was doing. Then, as mayor of Amsterdam, he issued a public call for a demonstration that evening in the Dam, the huge square in front of the royal palace. He called it a noise demonstration, because Theo was noisy; it would be stupid to have a silent march for Theo, Job Cohen said.

  I wanted to attend the march, but Bram got instructions from the hierarchy that I had to stay indoors because, in such a volatile situation, the threat against my life was too high. Attending the demonstration would only increase risks for me and others. I felt I was already responsible for one death: I had done enough damage. I stayed in.

  * * *

  We were watching on television as thousands of people massed in Amsterdam for the demonstration that evening, when Bram said we had to leave the house. He had orders to find me somewhere else to spend the night. Ingrid suggested I go to her place. We sat together in her living room and watched the late-night talk shows about the murder. I was bundled up in a coat and lots of scarves, paralyzed with cold. Everyone on TV was outraged. The entire country felt a sense of shock that someone could be murdered this way—in Holland, of all places—just for making a film.

  Then Bram got another call from his superiors at the DKDB, saying it would be too dangerous to stay at Ingrid’s house. The best idea seemed to be to take me back to my current house behind the Israeli embassy, in the middle of the night.

  The security people stayed inside my house all night, watching. That’s when the bodyguards began standing guard outside my bedroom every night. At around four in the morning, the doorbell rang insistently. I was still awake. I got up and asked the woman guard who was on duty downstairs, “What’s this?”

  The security camera showed an Arab-looking man. He’d rung the bells of all the other buildings around the courtyard. A few days later, when the police picked him up, he claimed to have been looking for a prostitute he’d once visited; eventually, they let him go. But it reminded me of the Internet post about my address. Somebody had localized me to this courtyard.

  After that, it was clear that I couldn’t spend the next night in my house. But I couldn’t stay in a hotel either, the DKDB had decided. My face and name were everywhere on TV; somebody would be bound to recognize me. I couldn’t be safe in any hotel in Holland.

  Could I stay at a friend’s house? I asked. A place in the country, surrounded by woods? The higher-ups at the DKDB thought that would be too dangerous. “Nothing stays secret in Holland,” I was told. “People will talk. Houses that seem hidden will only give you a false sense of security.” In the end, no decision was taken, and I spent that Wednesday night in my own bed.

  At night, alone, I couldn’t stop thoughts from coming. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the murder, could hear Theo pleading for his life. “Can’t we talk about this?” he asked his killer. It was so Dutch, so sweet and innocent. Theo must have thought there was some kind of misunderstanding that could be worked out. He couldn’t see that his killer was caught in a wholly different worldview. Nothing Theo could have said to him would have made any difference.

  I thought about Theo’s twelve-year-old son, whom I had met once and who was now fatherless because of me. When I was awake it was all I could think about, and when I fell asleep I had nightmares. A man in a traditional Muslim tunic, with a beard and a curved sword, was coming into my house through the front door to attack me; when I tried to jump out of the window there was a crowd of men there, too, yelling. I woke up panicked, unable to get back to sleep. I still have these horrible dreams.

  The next morning the sec
urity people told me they had orders to evacuate me from the house right away. They hustled me into a convoy of cars and took me to a place I didn’t recognize, some kind of air base. From now on, my location had to be completely secret, they warned me. They gave me a phone number to give to Iris, in case she had to call me, but they advised me not to use my phone. For security reasons, I couldn’t even be permitted to know where I was staying.

  On the way to the air base, we stopped at the office of the minister of the interior, Johan Remkes. Rita Verdonk, the minister for integration, was there, and her eyes were wet. Rita is tough, but she had always been kind to me, and when she hugged me, I couldn’t help it, I cried again. After a while, Johan said, “There’s something I have to show you, but are you ready for it?”

  I said, “I’m shocked, I’m sad, I’m angry—with you, for not protecting Theo better—but my mind is clear.” Johan handed me a photocopy of the letter. He didn’t tell me it had been stabbed into Theo’s chest by his killer, just gave me some pages written in Arabic and Dutch.

  I read them. The letter was structured very precisely, like a fatwa, a religious verdict. It opened with In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful, followed by a quote from the Prophet Muhammad, the swordsman. Then there was a summary of all the “acts of crime” I had committed against Islam. Then came a verse from the Quran, and a challenge from the writer on the basis of that verse, asking me if I was prepared to die for my convictions, as he, the letter writer, was. He went on to curse the United States, Europe, Holland, and me, and signed with the name “Sword of the Faith.”

  I asked, “Who signed this?” I was gasping. This was evil. It didn’t have a face. If the letter was written by somebody powerful, from outside Holland, somebody whose words command legions, then I had a lot to fear. Remkes told me the letter was found on Theo’s body, along with a poem of martyrdom.

  I spent that night and the next in the air force base, sleeping in a room on a disused floor of the barracks. It was dusty; there were two thin, metal beds with woolen blankets, to which I’m allergic. Tiny windows opened onto a corridor where security guards stood all night. The place was crawling with soldiers. I was told to keep the curtains drawn: nobody was supposed to know of my presence, not even the air base personnel.