Threatened writer Lale Gül is no longer writing about Islam. “You are really on your own if you do,” she says Buitenhof. “I don’t want to defy fate and tempt the gods.”
Since the publication of her book I’m gonna live about the strict Islamic environment in which she grew up, Gül is threatened by Muslims. “Of course it is super scary if you have received photos of firearms from different accounts,” says the 23-year-old Dutch student, who is of Turkish descent.
From dozens of other social media accounts, Gül says he has received texts such as “I will personally send you to hell”, “enjoy it while you still can” and “I can’t wait to see you”.
Watch part of the interview with Gül here:
She has reported several times and has good contact with the police, she says. But finding out who the threats are coming from is unlikely to work.
Because at her last report she was told that it is a lot of work to find out one account, because they have of course disappeared from the face of the earth. “So I shouldn’t expect them all to experience consequences. That’s a shame about that system, but yes, I understand it too.”
She did not expect these kinds of serious threats, she says in the television program. “In retrospect I think that is actually naive.”
About eighty percent of the responses she receives to her book are positive, says Gül. They come from Muslims, but also from people from the Jehovah’s Witnesses community, experimental Reformed circles and homosexuals.
Secret location
Earlier, Gül said that her debut novel would also be her last book, but she has come back from that. “Because I’ve also gotten a lot of messages from people saying, please keep going.”
The writer has left her parental home and is staying in a secret location. Her parents are angry with what she wrote about her family. “They are looked upon at this book and at me and that they raised me this way. Their whole reputation is totally lost.”