In making the film, Hirsi Ali clearly wanted her audience to be afraid of Islam’s power to perpetuate the abuse of women. She wanted her audience to recognize and accept that Islam was a threat to Western values. In her quest to manufacture a large-scale fear of Islam, she received help from an unlikely source—Muhammed Bouyeri. His decision to hunt down and kill Van Gogh seemed to confirm Hirsi Ali’s warning that Islam was a danger to the West.

XREF: Connects to wider discussions of how acts of terror retroactively validate political narratives and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 379