AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- That's strange, considering her own unlikely road to success. The daughter of a wealthy army officer, she fled as a teenager from her repressive childhood in Somalia, where she had dreamed of becoming an actress, dating men, drinking wine and living the life she saw in movies.

Now in the Netherlands, having gained an audience for her bleak stories of oppressed women and failed immigrants, she finds she still can't escape fear. Since the slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh last month in Amsterdam, there have been death threats against two prominent Muslim women -- politicians Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Holland and Mimount Bousakla in Belgium -- who have spoken out against repression in Islam.

Allas, 35, is among a growing group of young women from Muslim backgrounds who are making it in politics, the arts, media or the law in Europe and in some cases are putting themselves at the forefront of the fight against extremism from two directions -- Islamic fundamentalists and Europe's far-right fringe. From a television journalist in Italy to a standup comic in Norway, these women are speaking up in voices that may never have been heard had they remained in their native lands.

In Somalia, says Allas, "If you are a girl, you always are in fear of your parents, your older brothers, your male neighbors. It is always the man.... It is always fear and fear and fear." Now her sister says she fears raising her small children here because of the heated anti-immigrant climate. Her two brothers have left the country. "When I came to Holland, for me it was, Whew! What freedom! What a country! It was love, immediately," she recalls.

"But Holland is not the same."

Nusrat Chagtai, a Muslim human rights lawyer of Pakistani origin who works in Birmingham, England, acknowledges that "we are very fortunate we have a lot more freedom." Yet the higher profile comes with risks.

Fatima Elatik, deputy mayor of Amsterdam's heavily immigrant Zeeburg borough, was assigned bodyguards after receiving threats from a right-wing Dutch extremist after the Van Gogh killing. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks "there's been a lot of Muslim- and Islam-bashing in our society that really was very frightening," said Elatik, 31.

She deals often with young immigrant men and women who want to be Dutch yet feel alien. Even though she wears a head scarf, she considers herself a modern, liberal Dutch woman. "What is typically Dutch? I don't look Dutch, I don't have a Dutch name. But I wear Dutch clothes. Even my scarf, my hijab, I buy in Dutch stores. What more do you want from me?"

Elsewhere in Europe, some women confront the culture clash in unusual ways. In Norway, Pakistan-born Shabana Rehman uses humor. A women's rights activist and professional comedian, her stories -- told in saucy, slangy Norwegian -- focus on the taboos of Islam, and culture conflicts. "I go up on stage with texts from my own daily life. Openly, and with some wonder, I share with the public how I experience sexual and cultural expectations," she says on her Web site.

In April, Rehman caused a stir during a televised debate on Islam attended by Mullah Krekar, the founder of suspected terror group Ansar al-Islam, who lives as a refugee in Norway. Rehman talked Krekar into allowing her to perform "a little test" on the stage to see if he was a fundamentalist. She grabbed him by the hips and lifted him.

"A man who can be carried by a woman can't be a fundamentalist," said Rehman to howls of laughter. Krekar exploded with rage and threatened a lawsuit. In Italy, Rula Jebreal, 31, of Palestinian descent, anchors the late-night news on LA7, a national TV network. She sees Western freedoms as "absolutely compatible with the Muslim religion."

In Belgium, Mimount Bousakla, a 32-year-old senator of Moroccan origin who criticized a Muslim group for failing to condemn Van Gogh's murder, received a telephone call threatening her with "ritual slaughter." Two years ago, Bousakla wrote a book, "Couscous with Belgian Fries," critical of forced marriages and the subjugation of Muslim women. It is in the Netherlands that the culture clash has been the most explosive -- perhaps because it was long obscured by the nation's fabled tolerance and progressive views. Since the Van Gogh slaying there have been some 20 arson attacks on mosques or Muslim schools.

Source: AP

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