Charles Groenhuijsen: Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy is with us from Toronto. What kind of reactions did you get?

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy (filmmaker): It's interesting, me being a Pakistani woman, being in Pakistan and being a journalist. Not too many people know how to respond to me, because they're not familiar with seeing Muslim women active in the field. So I feel I'm in a good position when I make my films because people don't expect to see a woman being invasive, asking them the kind of questions that challenge them. So I get a lot of good access, not only in Pakistan, but in the other Muslim countries where I film.

Charles Groenhuijsen: Would this have been possible 10 or 15 years ago?

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy: I don't think that it would have been possible 10 or 15 years ago. A lot more opportunities have opened up for women all around the Muslim world, and people are more open to seeing Muslim women in non-traditional roles.

Charles Groenhuijsen: What about 10, 15 years from now, into the future?

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy: I see a lot of progress. I'm very optimistic actually - not only in the Arab world but in South Asia and in the African Muslim countries as well. I see women finally taking charge, finally taking control of their lives, and really coming out and saying, Islam gives us this kind of rights, and we should be allowed to work.

Charles Groenhuijsen: You get some kind of access being a Muslim woman from Pakistan. What about access for Western journalists? You hear a lot of complaints from Western journalists working in the field out there, saying it's almost impossible - the limitations, the bureaucracy kills us. What's your view on that?

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy: Western journalists come into countries for a week, a week and a half. They hire local fixers, they don't know anything about the language, about the culture. So they come with their baggage and their stereotypes, and a lot of people are hesitant to speak with them. People who understand languages and cultures have better access in Muslim countries and will continue to get better access in Muslim countries.

Charles Groenhuijsen: Do you think it will improve in the next couple of years, so that it's easier for Western journalists to create this fair portrayal of Islam and Muslim countries?

Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy: As long as Western journalists hold stereotypes about the Muslim world and about Muslim women and the religion, it's going to be very difficult for them to break barriers. I encourage a lot of them to work with people on the ground in Muslim countries - journalists who are already on the ground, who understand the situation; that will give them a better avenue.

Charles Groenhuijsen: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is this an encouraging sign, the fact that she can do all this?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Oh yes, I see this as a very encouraging sign. And I haven't seen the whole documentary, but what I have just seen is very good. And it's very good that the thoughts of the gentleman that she spoke to are exposed, and the fact that he relates that to Islam. When people defend Islam, they select certain verses from the Koran that say we should live in peace and so on, but they refuse to see the other side, which is used by the majority of Muslims all around the world.

Hosam El Sokkari (head of Arabic service, BBC World Service): One of the biggest challenges that any media professional has is contextualisation. The element that seems to have been ignored in this discussion is the audiences we're talking to. If the product of an intellectual activity is going to be useful to an audience, we have to think about what sort of impact it will have, and how that is going to be perceived. I was shocked to see that Submission has been described as a documentary. It is not a documentary, and reading it as a documentary is wrong. It is a [work of] artistic expression that has to be seen within that context. The problem is that some people have perceived it as a documentary, and sometimes also the makers of the film have used it as a documentary.

There has been a debate for about 14 centuries now in the Middle East about the context of the Koran and how to interpret the text. If we are going to identify and agree and enforce the same interpretation that the fundamentalist Muslims are trying to enforce on the Middle East, we are on a lost cause, because it means we are trying to demonise Islam, rather than a certain interpretation of it, and that's dangerous.

Nakhle El Hage (director of news and current affairs, Al Arabiya): Some of the [Arabs] here drew a very flourishing image of the situation of Arab women in the Arab world, and I think they are a minority. We are really unlucky in the Arab world because we have a minority hijacking the image of the Arab woman here in this conference, and a minority of imams hijacking the public opinion in the media sometimes.

The image of Arab women is not flourishing at all. Arab women in Kuwait recently got the right to vote. In some countries, she cannot drive a car. In all countries, she cannot leave her country without the permission of her husband. I really sympathise with the lady from Somalia because she's threatened. I disagree with her. I think she went too far, provoking a large community, the Muslim community, but I really sympathise with her because she's scared and there are lots of security measures around her. And I don't sympathise with people who say, "We are scared," and they can move freely.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I am not scared.

Ibrahim El-Zayat (Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe): I'm half-German and half-Egyptian, and head of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe. I know that Miss Ali has suffered very much - she has been raped, she had a lot of problems in her youth, and I agree that she will come out to have her own issues on it.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Excuse me. What did you say? I really have to interfere with this. You say that I was raped? That is not true.

Ibrahim El-Zayat: That is what I heard. But okay, it's good if it's not true.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I was not raped. I was not more abused than anyone else. There is empirical evidence that in every country where there is sharia [Islamic law], women are oppressed terribly. Face it; it's reality. But I don't want you to say that I was raped.

Ibrahim El-Zayat: Mr. Groenhuijsen, you should decide whether this is The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Show, or whether it's something else. You are the one who has spoken most - I totally respect this, because you are the organiser and the moderator. But if Miss Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to comment on everything, I think this is not very correct. We need to come to the issues.

It's all about a question of respect. I was born and brought up in Europe; I am European. So when I come to see that we have lacks and we have problems in the Muslim world, especially with the role of women, we also have it on all levels of life in Europe. When we come to see the hijab issue, we see that we really have a lot of issues that we need to go into in detail and see how we can understand that the future of this country where we are living is a future of minority and majority. The majority also needs to take a step toward the new community, a new society.

Fran Unsworth (BBC): We are in a room full of journalists, and this is a journalistic conference, and I'm surprised that whatever everybody feels about the arguments that are going on here, we do not accept that actually there is a free-speech issue, and should be defending this person's right to say whatever it is that she feels she has to say. [Applause]