Rogier van Bakel of Nobody’s Business has kindly alerted me to this item from his site:
Dutch Muslim Site Spoofs Hirsi Ali’s Death
Www.elqalem.nl is a website by and for young Dutch muslims. It bills itself as a “completely neutral information platform.” The editors say the site should be considered a “part of the neutral, informative news media.”
There is no shortage of articles on El-Qalem that put that assertion to the test, however….
There is a sarcastic screed called “The Ayaan Manifesto,” announcing the death of Ayaan Hirsi Ali…. It was written by Moroccan-born editor Mohammed Jabri. Jabri says Hirsi Ali died in a car bomb attack, and he asks her, in an article that goes from macabre obituary to open letter, “Don’t you think it’s weird that you kicked the bucket exactly one month after Theo van Gogh’s murder?” He mentions the film “Submission” that Hirsi Ali made with van Gogh (it condemns traditional Islam’s treatment of women as property); in a humorously-intended aside, Jabri says that he has begun beating his sisters “because otherwise the movie would have missed its mark.”
The part about Hirsi Ali’s violent death, at least, is a spoof: the politician has so far managed to stay alive despite multiple death threats (though she has apparently had to flee the country, and has not been seen in public for almost two months). Lest anyone thinks that the “Ayaan Manifesto” is itself a death threat “” albeit one that’s worded cunningly enough to escape legal culpability “” the editorial team of El-Qalem claims otherwise.
We do not wish her dead. We do wish she’ll become a good muslim and will start to cover her head with a hijab. We also wish that Geert Wilders [right-wing politician and Islam critic] will become a good muslim, and will grow a beard. And we wish that Rita Verdonk would begin wearing a burqa, so we’ll no longer have to see her ugly mug.
Jabri (who is also on the record as saying that gay people may be thrown off the roofs of high buildings) is thinking about starting an Islamic political party. By all accounts, he’s already a busy man, what with his day job at the Dutch Department of Social Affairs, a government body.