Quotes of the Day

There are believers who try to change Islam from within. And then there are apostate reformers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. After fleeing from Somalia to the Netherlands in 1991 to escape an arranged marriage, she renounced Islam, calling it "an extremely backward religion." In 2003 she became an M.P. for the liberal VVD party and published The Son Factory, a book decrying the oppression of Muslim women. She followed up with a sequel, The Virgin Cage, last week. As her latest provocation, she has written and narrated a film called Submission, which relates stories of domestic violence, and displays passages from the Koran painted onto the naked flesh of actresses. Shown on Dutch TV last week, Submission drew praise and outrage — including a death threat that drove Hirsi Ali into hiding. The film "is worthless and the nudity unnecessary," says Canan Ujar, spokeswoman for the Women's Federation division of Milli Görüs, the largest Muslim organization in the Netherlands. "Emancipation has to come from within the Muslim community, and we are already working on this." Fadoua Bouali, a Moroccan-born nurse in Amsterdam, disagrees. "The conversations the women [in the film] have with God touched me enormously because they represent real prayers," she says.

In the film, Hirsi Ali recites the fictional monologues of four women praying to God: one has been whipped for having an illicit love affair; another faces an arranged marriage; a third was beaten by her husband; and the last is pregnant after being raped by an uncle. As Hirsi Ali relates these stories, the camera pans over the women's bodies, visible through the transparent chadors they wear. Hirsi Ali says the women are nude because she wanted to show the "naked truth" about domestic violence while also revealing "the beauty of Islam. It's not an ugly culture, but it is interlaced with cruelty."

"I accept some people are offended" by Submission, Hirsi Ali says. "That's legitimate. But in a democracy, it's not legitimate to intimidate and threaten someone for expressing their views." Reformers both inside and outside Islam can agree with that.

• ABI DARUVALLA | Amsterdam
• An 11-minute film by a Dutch MP has sparked praise and outrage among Muslims