A Manifesto of Conservative Film or the Whining of a Failed Screenwriter?

You be the judge.

To quote liberally:

Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh's short film "Submission," about the treatment of women in Islam, written by female Dutch parliamentarian and former Muslim Aayan Hirsi Ali, had aired in August on Dutch TV. Van Gogh was riding his bike near his home when a Muslim terrorist shot him, slashed his throat, and pinned to his body a note threatening Ms. Ali. This appears to be an organized effort, not the act of a lone nut; Dutch authorities are holding 13 suspects in the case.

After the slaying, I watched "Submission" (available online at ifilm.com) and my mind is still boggled that 11 minutes decrying violence against women incites such violence. There've been many films over the years that have taken potshots at Catholics, but I don't remember any of us slaughtering filmmakers over the offense. You didn't see the National Rifle Association order a hit on Michael Moore over "Bowling for Columbine."

One would think that in the name of artistic freedom, the creative community would take a stand against filmmakers being sent into hiding à la Salman Rushdie, or left bleeding in the street. Yet we've heard nary a peep from Hollywood about the van Gogh slaying. Indeed Hollywood has long walked on eggshells regarding the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The film version of Tom Clancy's "The Sum of All Fears" changed Palestinian terrorists to neo-Nazis out of a desire to avoid offending Arabs or Muslims. The war on terror is a Tinsel Town taboo, even though a Hollywood Reporter poll showed that roughly two-thirds of filmgoers surveyed would pay to see a film on the topic.
...

Earlier this year, I was shopping a script that included Arab terrorist characters in addition to good Arab characters. Companies were interested, but after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, a wave of scripts were returned to me the next week. Confused, I narrowed the potential culprit down to a small Geneva Conventions joke by one brash character, and I changed it before sending it out again. The response was noticeably warmer, but I still encountered some trepidation over the War on Terror theme.
When I began meeting and networking with other conservative filmmakers, I put the lines back in the script. I'm not changing it again. Nor will I compromise my story. It would look pretty silly for European neo-Nazis to be traipsing around the Pakistani border, anyway.