Counterterrorism Blog

The Guardian reports today that radical Muslims have threatened to kill actor Omar Sharif for the grave offense of . . . playing St. Peter in an Italian TV film and then speaking highly of the role.  Sharif played the role for a two-part mini-series called San Pietro.  The Guardian reports:

A message on a website linked to al-Qaida has threatened death to the veteran Egyptian actor Omar Sharif after he played St Peter in an Italian TV film.

In remarks widely reported in Italy earlier this month, the 73-year old actor, a convert to Islam, said he had "seemed to hear voices" during the filming of St Peter, a two-part mini-series shown last week.  Sharif was quoted as saying:  "Playing Peter was so important for me that even now I can only speak about it with difficulty.  It will be difficult for me to play other roles from now on."

The Italian news agency Adnkronos International said that a message on a web forum used in the past by al-Qaida had a link to a site carrying the threat.  "Omar Sharif has stated that he has embraced the crusader idolatry," it said.  "He is a crusader who is offending Islam and Muslims and receiving applause from the Italian people.  I give you this advice, brothers, you must kill him."

While this incident is a minor one in the grand scheme of things, it provides another glimpse of the single-minded fanaticism of our radical Islamic enemies:  It is truly remarkable that Omar Sharif's life would be threatened after he does no more than speak glowingly about his recent role as St. Peter.  This is the same kind of fanaticism that resulted in the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the murder of Theo van Gogh.  There are many other examples of people being threatened with death -- and in some cases, actually killed -- because their speech was deemed offensive by radical Muslims.  In many cases, as here, the speech that prompted the threats was exceedingly minor.