Al-Qaeda to Kill Omar Sherif

And Lawrence is no longer around to rescue him. Anyway, Al-Qaedaism is going too nutty. Not that Sherif has been very popular in the Arab world after he snogged a Jewish woman, Barbara Streisand, in 1968 when memories of the six-day war with Israel was fresh in Arab minds – his movies were banned in Egypt as a result – but threatening to kill him is going a couple of steps too far.

I blogged Sherif’s come back yesterday and mentioned that one of his recent roles was that of Moses father in law, Jethro. That alone is not cause for a death-fatwa since Moses is one of the many thousand minor prophet’s that paved the way for the major Prophet (insert blessing). Playing St Peter is, apparently:

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."

Says the Guardian: “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."

Sherif: "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."

I wonder what it is like to be a young Al-Qaedaist and think that the only cool thing you can do is to tell other people to go out and kill those you don't agree with? I imagine it must be an internal hell. God knows what other issues they're dealing with. Let's pray for them too.