Girls on film

A portion (I think) of Theo van Gogh's film Submission can be viewed online here. Oddly enough, the narration is in English. And don't be put off by the Looney Tunes ad at the beginning.

I watched it; while I can understand why some of the imagery would be offensive to Muslims, it doesn't strike me as being red-flag-waved-in-front-of-a-bull offensive. Then again, I'm not a Muslim, but I can say that it's nothing worth killing someone over. For what it's worth, I wonder if it's not so much the content of the film as an attempt to silence Theo van Gogh's collaborator, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The note the killer left behind, after all, was addressed to her, and I suspect a flesh and blood woman who's thrown off the veil and thinks for herself and holds political power is a lot more threatening to the Islamists than a short film. (Added later: Think about it -- it's impossible to charge her with either xenophobia or Islamaphobia; Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a far freer hand to defend the Dutch tradition of religious tolerance and intellectual freedom than her Dutch colleagues.)

The link to the film, by the way, comes via Buff and Blue, who suggests that some of the imagery makes Islam seem more appealing than Presbyterianism. Well, if one's going to set the bar so low...