Lastly, here is a link to the movie that Theo Van Gogh was killed for making:
I think you should watch it, and encourage others to watch it. Send it far and wide.
How the Dutch, spurred by the Van Gogh murder, are now girding up to deal with Islamic fascism:
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/10/news/dutch.html
For Dutch, anger battles with tolerance
By Craig S. Smith The New York Times
Thursday, November 11, 2004
AMSTERDAM Anger toward the Netherlands’ Muslim community percolated among the crowd that gathered outside the funeral for the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was killed by an Islamic extremist a week ago.
The public debate over how conservative Islam fits into Europe’s most tolerant, liberal society had already become a no-holds-barred affair before the killing of van Gogh, who had publicly and repeatedly used epithets against Muslims. But his killing has now polarized the country, giving the rest of Europe a disturbing glimpse of what may be in store if relations with the continent’s growing immigrant communities are not managed more adeptly.
The anger is such that for the second time in two days an Islamic elementary school was attacked Tuesday, this time in Uden, part of what Dutch authorities fear are reprisals after van Gogh’s killing, The Associated Press reported. The authorities said that Muslim sites had been the target of a half-dozen attacks in the past week, The AP reported.
In apparent retaliation, arsonists attempted to burn down Protestant churches in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amersfoort, the news service quoted the police as saying.
The attacks have scratched the patina of tolerance on which the Dutch have long prided themselves, particularly here in their principal city, where the scent of hashish trails in the air, prostitutes beckon from storefront brothels and Hell’s Angels live side by side with Hare Krishnas. But many Dutch now say that for years that tradition of tolerance suppressed an open debate about the challenges of integrating conservative Muslims.
Jan Colijn, 46, a bookkeeper from the central Dutch town of Gorinchem who was at the funeral Tuesday night, complained that the Netherlands’ generous social welfare system had allowed Muslim immigrants to isolate themselves. Because of that, “there is a kind of Muslim fascism emerging here,” he said. “The government must find a way to break these communities open.”
Another man, who declined to give his name, was more succinct: “Now, it’s war.”
For many years, such criticism of Islam and Islamic customs, even among Dutch extremists, was considered taboo, despite deep frustrations that had built up against conservative Islam in the country.
Many here say that began to change after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, when the Netherlands, like many countries, began to consider the dangers of political Islam seriously. The debate fueled an anti-immigration movement and helped propel the career of the populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered by an environmental activist shortly before national elections in 2002.
By all accounts here, Fortuyn’s murder removed any remaining brakes on the debate surrounding immigrants.
“After Pim Fortuyn’s murder, there were no limitations on what you could say,” said Edwin Bakker, a terrorism expert at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. “It has become a climate in which insulting people is the norm.”
He and others said the public discourse, even among members of government, reached an unprecedented pitch and included language that went far beyond the limits set for public forums in the United States.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a member of Parliament and one of a handful of politicians threatened with death by Islamic extremists, publicly called the prophet Muhammad a “pervert” and a “tyrant.” She made a film with van Gogh condemning sexual abuse among Muslim women, who were portrayed with Koranic verses written on their bare skin.
Van Gogh himself was one of the most outspoken critics of fundamentalist Muslims and favored an epithet for conservative Muslims that referred to bestiality with a goat. He used the term often in his public statements, including a column he wrote for a widely read free newspaper and during radio broadcasts and television appearances.
The cumulative effect made van Gogh, a distant relation of the painter Vincent van Gogh, a kind of cult clown on one side of the debate, and a reviled hatemonger on the other.
The debate became so caustic that the Dutch intelligence service, AIVD, issued a report in March warning that the unrestrained language could encourage radicalization of the country’s Muslim youth and drive individuals into the arms of terrorist recruiters. The agency has warned repeatedly in recent years that such recruiters are active in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe.
While only about 20 percent of the Netherlands’ estimated 900,000 Muslims practice their religion, according to one government study, officials say as many as 5 percent of Muslims in the country follow a conservative form of Islam. Most are from the Netherlands’ Moroccan community, which has its roots in the Rif, an impoverished, mountainous Berber region in the north.
There are about 300,000 people of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands today, and the ratcheting up of the anti-immigration debate has alienated many of them from Dutch society and, many people argue, has also helped fragment the Muslim community.
Jean Tillie, a professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam, says that the debate has broken down a network that connected even the most extremist Muslim groups to the more moderate voices within the Muslim community. He cited an Amsterdam government advisory board that brought together all kinds of Moroccans and fostered communication and cohesion within the Muslim community.
“Those groups participating didn’t agree with each other, but they met together with the collective mission of advising the city government,” he said.
The board was abolished a year ago, he says, in the wake of the anti-immigration debate. He claims that funds for other ethnic organizations have shrunk and outreach policies have also been abandoned.
At El Tawheed mosque, considered by many people here to be the epicenter of extremism in Amsterdam, Farid Zaari, the mosque’s spokesman, argues that pressure from the debate has hindered the Muslim community’s ability to control its radical youth.
“If we bring these people into the mosque, it is possible to change their thoughts, but few mosques dare to because if you do, you’re branded,” he said.
Dutch media reports insist that van Gogh’s killer attended the mosque, and though Zaari says the mosque has no record of his ever being there, he said that political leaders and the media should encourage the mosque to reach out to the community’s radical youth, rather than stigmatizing it for doing so.
The mosque was previously associated with a Saudi-based charity, Al Haramain, which American and Saudi Arabian officials accused earlier this year of aiding Islamic terrorists. The mosque has since severed its ties with the charity, but more recently it has been criticized for selling books espousing extremist views, including female circumcision and the punishment of homosexuals by throwing them off tall buildings.
Several legislators have called for the mosque to be shut down, but under the Dutch constitution it is difficult to do.
Zaari admits that the Muslim community was slow to respond to the fears within Dutch society. “We didn’t feel it was our responsibility to bridge the gap, but now, with the murder, the gap has gotten wider,” he said. “All of us want to begin a dialogue now, but the language of the political right is too extreme, and that’s preventing discussion,” he said. “We all have to cool down and be careful what we say.”
The problem is how to bridge a gap that has yawned dangerously since van Gogh’s murder.
The Amsterdam Council of Churches published paid notices in some Dutch newspapers pledging solidarity with the Muslim community. But the government’s response has been to promise more money for fighting terrorism and stronger immigration laws.
“Islam is the most hated word in the country at this point,” said the terrorism expert, Bakker.
Explosion in raid on house
The explosion of a hand grenade during a terrorism-related raid on a house in The Hague on Wednesday wounded three police officers, The Associated Press reported from The Hague.
The Hague’s chief prosecutor, Han Moraal, said the raid was part of a “continuing investigation into terrorism” but would not say whether it was related to the killing of van Gogh.
Several city blocks were cordoned off in a mostly immigrant neighborhood near the Holland Spoor train station.
Interesting article by a British physician and social critic who publishes under the psuedonym Theodore Dalyrimple:
Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered
The filmmaker focused on the shameful abuse of Muslim women by Muslim men in Europe. | 15 November 2004
The slaughter of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam, in broad daylight, by a young man of Moroccan origin bent on jihad, has at last dented Dutch confidence that unconditional tolerance can be on its own the unifying principle of a viable society. For tolerance to work, it must be reciprocal; tolerance appears to the intolerant jihadist mere weakness and lack of belief in anything. Unilateral tolerance in a world of intolerance is like unilateral disarmament in a world of armed camps: it regards hope as a better basis for policy than reality.
Like most people in Western democracies, Van Gogh, by all accounts a brash and combative man, took his freedom of expression for granted. Most of us most of the time do not reflect much on the fact that such freedom is an historical exception rather than an historical rule, a reversible achievement rather than a free gift of God. There are still many who would rather kill than brook any contradiction of their opinions or beliefs, even while they live in the most tolerant of societies.
But why kill Theo Van Gogh, of all the people who have expressed hostility to radical Islam? Perhaps it was mere chance, but more likely it resulted from his work?s exposure of a very raw nerve of Muslim identity in Western Europe: the abuse of women. This abuse is now essential for people of Muslim descent for maintaining any sense of separate cultural identity in the homogenizing solution of modern mass society.
In fact, Islam is as vulnerable in Europe to the forces of secularization as Christianity has proved to be. The majority of Muslims in Europe, particularly the young, have a weak and tenuous connection to their ancestral religion. Their level and intensity of belief is low; pop music interests them more. Far from being fanatics, they are lukewarm believers at best. Were it not for the abuse of women, Islam would go the way of the Church of England.
The abuse of women has often, if not always, appealed to men, because it gives them a sense of power, however humiliated they may feel in other spheres of their life. And the oppression of women by Muslim men in Western Europe gives those men at the same time a sexual partner, a domestic servant, and a gratifying sense of power, while allowing them also to live an otherwise westernized life. For the men, it is convenient; interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, almost the only openly hostile expressions toward Islam from British-born Muslims that I hear come from young women, some of whom loathe it passionately because they blame it for their servitude.
Religious sanction for the oppression of women (whether theologically justified or not) is hence the main attraction of Islam to young men in an increasingly secular world. This explains why a divide often opens between brothers and sisters in the same European Muslim family; the sisters want liberty, but the brothers enforce the old rules. They have to, or the whole gratifying system breaks down.
This, I suspect, is the source of the rage against Theo Van Gogh
This is a very good article from the UK Spectator which examines the killing in light of the left’s oppression of those who attempt to critisize, or even analyse, its idealogy. The best quote is:
“Just as communism could only be upheld by totalitarianism, so multiculturalism is being upheld by curbs on free speech and democracy.”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=5273&issue=2004-11-20
Here are a couple more quotes:
“What angered them all ? van Gogh, Hirsi Ali and Fortuyn ? is the way the intolerant left-wing hegemony of political correctness was strangling free speech and democracy ? not just causing the problems in the first place, but trying to destroy those who discuss them. At his funeral, van Gogh?s mother, Anneke, lambasted the ?politically correct thought-police? while his sister spoke about his ?aversion to violence and crimes against democracy?.”
As evidence, the article continues:
“In a sickening essay, Rohan Jayasekera, the associate director of Index on Censorship, a group which supposedly defends freedom of speech, blamed van Gogh for his own murder. He wrote that the film-maker was guilty of ?an abuse of his right to free speech?, his ritual slaughter was ?his very own martyrdom operation? and we should ?applaud Theo van Gogh?s death as the marvellous piece of theatre it was?.”
The article concludes:
“By curbing free speech and political parties, and demonising those who fight for gay rights and against domestic violence, the Left is telling the world that multiculturalism is incompatible with liberal democracy. The Left?s loss of faith in liberal democracy is a result of its naive belief in human nature. The creators of multicultural societies believe they can abolish tribal feelings of belonging based on shared values, history and culture. Just as communism could only be upheld by totalitarianism, so multiculturalism is being upheld by curbs on free speech and democracy. The lesson of the Netherlands is that there is only so much you can do to change human nature, and the more you shut off the valves of debate and democracy, the more human nature ? in all its ugliness ? will assert itself, often violently.”
Nice – I really do think the biggest threat to free speech and civil liberties comes from bureaucrats who want to enforce politically correct “multiculturalism”, which usually means anti-West and anti-traditional.
[quote]hedo wrote:
“…The Qu’ran is not a beautiful book in my opinion. It is filled with promises and threats of punishment for those who do not submit to the will of Allah as interpeted by Mohammad. I read it with an open mind and it is quite scary.”[/quote]
I couldn’t agree more but I have to say that Islam does contain some doctrines that are quite similar to my own religion even though I am a Christian.
What I find disturbing is that Islam is a relatively unstructured religion. There is no priesthood and no ordinances. I have often wondered why certain Islamic clerics have not been denounced or excommunicated for their hate filled messages they regularly spout off at Friday prayers. The answer is pretty simple… no one seems to be in control. Islam is like a giant container ship with no one at the wheel.
With this lack of guidance and lack of basis in truth it is no wonder that the Islamic terrorist says of himself, I’m not a terrorist, I’m just being a good Muslim.
It is time for Muslims to face the fact that their religion contains doctrines that terrorists can easily point to as justification for all that they do. I believe that this will be a very difficult thing for Muslims to do. Basically they will be criticizing the Koran by saying that certain doctrines it contains are false.
after reading all this shit I have the overwhelming desire to wake up tomorrow and find out how I can buy a gun. I have nevered owned a gun before, and have never fired one either. I don’t know what the laws in new jersey are, but I am going to find out tomorrow.
after that i have another overwhelming desire to sign up for one of tim larkins defense courses.
I really wonder where all this shit is realling going, especially in our country. the quote about 1% of the population adding up to about 50,000 people really scares me. this country has a much larger muslim population, as well as a much larger radical environmental population, in addition to all the potential timothy mcveigh’s, it is really some scary shit out there.
sorry for the rant, but this thread is really disturbing me. I got this really disturbing feeling that our government is going to have to make some really hard and unpopular decisions over the next few years in which some people are gonna have to get out of here, and some people are gonna have to die.
Mike –
It is hugely disturbing. The Dutch thought tolerance was the answer to all problems, but they are waking up to the fact that you can’t tolerate wolves in the flock.
What we need to do as a first step, in my opinion, is simple: have the FBI infiltrate mosques that have reputations for preaching radical doctrine, and control access to prisoners by only allowing public meetings. WHile the ACLU may disagree, I don’t see the problem with having FBI agents monitor what are supposedly public meetings in mosques – if it’s public, they don’t need warrants of the sort they would need for wiretaps. Just get some agents to attend services.
As to the next step, I guess that would depend on what they found out.
“naive(sp), hoping for peace, is the surest way to encourage an aggresor”.
I heard this quote for the first time in a really goofy movie called spies like us. but I could never find out who really said it. does anybody know who it was, it sounds like something sun tzu would have said.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
It is hugely disturbing. The Dutch thought tolerance was the answer to all problems, but they are waking up to the fact that you can’t tolerate wolves in the flock.
[/quote]
BB,
Do you think that message will really sink home with the vast majority of people in the US?
Elk, Vroom, Professor and RSU any comments?