GERMANY: For 20 years, Seyran Ates has campaigned for the rights of Muslim women in Germany by speaking out against domestic violence, arranged marriages and so-called "honour" killings.
But now Ms Ates has announced she has closed her Berlin law office after years of being threatened, beaten up and shot at by enemies who call the Turkish-born lawyer a traitor to the Turkish community.
She made her decision last June after she and a Muslim woman she was representing in a divorce case were attacked by the woman's ex-husband outside the court. "It's once again become clear to me how dangerous my work as a lawyer was, and how little I was and still am protected as an individual," she said yesterday, adding "my life and that of my young daughter have priority".
Ms Ates was born in Istanbul, grew up in Berlin and fled a fundamentalist Muslim family herself. She stirred up Germany's integration debate by attacking "blue-eyed" left-wingers and their belief that multicultural tolerance is the correct approach to integration issues. This, she said, ignores the huge problems of domestic violence and the booming trade in brides between Germany and Turkey.
"We must finally stop allowing human rights violations in Muslim parallel societies to be shrugged off with appeals to German history," she said recently.
Ms Ates's announcement has prompted accusations that Berlin politicians and police failed to provide her with enough support and protection.
Last March, she said she applied for - but was refused - police protection after the popular Turkish paper Hürriyet launched a campaign against her following a typically provocative interview. In it, she said Turkish men viewed their women as "slaves on the marriage market".
Women's rights groups, politicians and leaders of Germany's Muslim community expressed shock at her decision. Sidar Demirdögen, head of an association representing women migrants, said Ms Ates had collided head-on with "patriarchal mentalities which have to be broken".