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A shot from the film Submission by Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh showing Quranic verses painted on a female body -meant to look like whip lacerations.

"Since your arrival in the political arena in the Netherlands you have been constantly busy terrorizing Muslims with your statements," the letter read. "You are not the first and not the last who has joined the crusade against Islam."

Hirsi Ali, who calls herself an ex-Muslim, has gone into hiding.

The letter also asserted: "It is a fact that Dutch politics is dominated by many Jews."

"What do you think of the fact that there is a Jew in power in Amsterdam?" it said, referring to Amsterdam's Mayor Job Cohen.

Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm agreed with comments by other politicians who called van Gogh's murder a declaration of Islamic holy war.

"We are not going to tolerate this. We are going to ratchet up the fight against this sort of terrorism," he said.

Among measures under consideration is an emergency law to enable authorities to revoke the Dutch nationality of dual citizens suspected of terrorist activity so they can be deported.

The suspect in murder, a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan, was arraigned on six terrorism-related charges. Five other detainees are of Moroccan origin, one is Algerian and the other has dual Spanish-Moroccan nationality.

Van Gogh, a distant relative of the famous 19th-century Dutch painter, was shot and stabbed to death Tuesday while cycling down an Amsterdam street. Some reports said the killer slit van Gogh's throat with a knife as the victim lay on the pavement.

"Don't do it. Don't do it. Have mercy. Have mercy!" the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper quoted Van Gogh as begging his killer.

Another Dutch newspaper, the Telegraaf daily, carried a large color photograph of Van Gogh's body with a knife protruding from his chest under the headline Butchered.

The newspaper said the killer shot Van Gogh eight or nine times, then calmly slipped his weapon in the pocket of a beige raincoat before bending over his victim and slitting his throat.

Van Gogh made "Submission" in collaboration with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch politician and former Somali refugee who said she had fled an arranged marriage and physical abuse in her native country. Ali, who has renounced Islam, has been under police protection since the film was aired because of threats against her life.

The film featured four women who claimed to have been abused by their Muslim husbands and who wore see-through robes showing their breasts, with texts from the Quran scrawled on their bodies.

Some Muslims and women's groups said the movie's depiction of the abuse of women was insensitive.

Van Gogh also wrote a book titled "Allah Knows Better" that criticized Islamic extremism and claimed Muslim clerics hated women.

Van Gogh — an award-winning filmmaker, television producer and newspaper columnist — once mocked a prominent Dutch Jew, referred to Jesus as "the rotten fish" of Nazareth and called a radical Muslim politician "Allah's pimp."

Nearly 1 million Muslims live in the Netherlands, about 5.5 percent of the population, and recent opinion polls suggest that many Dutch citizens feel threatened by their presence.

The murder is testing already strained relations between the ethnic Dutch population and the Muslim community.

Arsonists are believed to have set fire to a mosque in the central Dutch city of Utrecht.

The government has pressed for Dutch language tests and citizenship classes and has announced plans to repatriate up to 26,000 immigrants — some of them longtime residents — whose applications for political asylum have been rejected.

NOV 5:

Still, there were reports of heavy-handed tactics in some places. The Council on American-Islamic Relations provided several examples, including a young Pakistani man who was held for five hours in Las Vegas after books on the Muslim holiday of Ramadan and Arabic grammar were found in his possession.

"This was viewed as an extension of the ongoing policies that have been targeting Muslim and Arab-American communities," said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. "These communities view themselves as law-abiding and contributing to society in a very positive way."

ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents also arrested a 23-year-old Pakistani man in late October who had illegally entered the United States through Mexico in 2000 and was working as a fuel tanker truck driver with access to a major U.S. seaport. The man, who was not further identified, is charged with making false statements about how he entered the country and remains under investigation for any links to terrorism.

Meanwhile, the FBI still has not identified a man calling himself "Azzam the American," whose lengthy videotape aired last month promised attacks that will make U.S. streets "run red with blood."

But while French medical sources said Arafat was technically still alive, they added that he was "brain dead" and only breathing with the help of life support machines while in an irreversible coma. They said the  life support systems were on the insistence of his wife, Suha.

"He is dead, but neither Arafat's wife nor the Palestinian leadership is ready to announce this," a PA official said. "The announcement could take place on Friday."

Technically, Arafat is "not dead," one source told AFP on condition of confidentiality. But there was no hope of him leaving his vegetative state and recovering basic bodily functions such as breathing without assistance.

Such artificial care can be "extended for several days or several weeks thanks to the machines," the source said.

Israel's private Channel 2 network and army radio had reported that Arafat had been declared dead at a military hospital in Clamart, southwest of Paris.

But Azzam al-Ahmed, communications minister in the Palestinian cabinet and one of Arafat's closest allies, insisted news of his death was premature.

"It is wrong. If the president was dead, the whole world would know," he told AFP. "But it is true that he is a very critical condition."

US President George W. Bush said "God bless his soul" when told by a reporter of unconfirmed reports that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had died.

The reporter told Bush during a press conference of the reports that Arafat had died. The US leader did not know that the reports had later been contradicted by French and Palestinian officials.

"My first reaction is: God bless his soul," said Bush.

"And my second reaction is that we will continue to work for a free Palestinian state that is at peace with Israel."

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat died in the Percy military hospital near Paris, Proche Orient Info, a French newspaper that covers the Middle East reported Thursday evening.

Radio Monte-Carlo also reported on Thursday evening that Yasser Arafat is clinically dead.

Proche Orient reported that doctors decided to take Arafat off the artificial respirator on Thursday evening at about 5:30 p.m.

Israel's Channel Two television cited unnamed sources in Paris saying that Arafat underwent a brain scan and was found to be "no longer alive."

But Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie denied the report, saying: "I have just spoken to the officials in Paris and they say the situation is still as it was. He is still in the intensive care unit."

French television station LCI quoted an anonymous French medical source saying Arafat was in an "irreversible coma" and "intubated" - a process that involves threading a tube down the windpipe to the lungs, often to connect a respirator.

The source said Arafat was taken into intensive care Thursday morning because he was unconscious. The source said Arafat was put on a respirator, and that he is not responding to the medication he is receiving.

"I don't think he stands a chance of getting up out of the coma," the source told French TV.

The source continued, "In the past three years, Arafat's health was neglected, and this is what brought on this deterioration."

AP adds: French doctors announced Thursday that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who is in intensive care at a French military hospital, is still alive.

"The clinical situation of the first fews days following admission has become more complex," Christian Estripeau, head of communications for French military health services.

"The state of health of the patient requires appropriate treatment that required his transfer on Wednesday afternoon of Nov. 3 to a unit adapted to his pathology," Estripeau said.

"Mr. Arafat is not dead," he said, concluding the brief statement.

"This statement has been drafted out of respect for the discretion demanded by his wife," he said.