Posted on 11/11/2004 8:43:17 AM PST by quidnunc
It was only two years ago that an animal-rights extremist assassinated the populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, explaining later in court that he did so, in part, to stop Fortuyn from using Muslim immigrants as "scapegoats." Now the Netherlands is once again in shock. Last Tuesday, the filmmaker and newspaper columnist Theo van Gogh — a distant descendant of the artist Vincent — was murdered, allegedly by a Muslim immigrant (now in police custody). The next day the police arrested eight Islamic radicals in connection with the slaying. The Netherlands prides itself on being a liberal and tolerant country. What is going on?
Like Mr. Fortuyn, whom he admired, Mr. Van Gogh was a radical libertarian, a champion of free speech who refused to be constrained by taboos or social codes. I know from personal experience what it felt like to be the target of his invective.
-snip-
This difference highlights what many in the Netherlands see as an enormous problem with the fundamentalist parts of Arab-Islamic cultures: an inability to view the world according to abstract principles, to transcend the literally militant passages of sacred texts. To some, the Koran to this day offers no prospect of a free interpretation, or a tolerant one, that can exist alongside the free speech of a liberal society.
In the heyday of their multicultural utopia, the Dutch political and intellectual elites believed that radical Muslims and radical libertarians could exist peacefully together in the same society. In recent years it has become clear that such a belief was an illusion, although the politically correct media long tried to avoid the whole subject.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at americanoutlook.org ...
I'd say it was the bullets, the slit throat and two knives stuck in him ... all courtesy the religion of "peace".
They did not learn anything from the murder of Fortuyn, and they won't learn anything from the murder of van Gogh.
Utter baloney. A complete pipe dream. Impossible in any civilized society, and especially on in which the government's jack booted thugs descend on grieving people who write "thou shalt not kill" in response to a murder by Islamists...because the government is so afraid of upsetting those Islamists. That's not a "tolerant" society : it's a cowardly, cringing, craven one.
"I'd say it was the bullets, the slit throat and two knives stuck in him..."
Liberally.......
No, Muslims killed Van Gogh.
Good article.
Sadly, you're right.
All this will do is cause Europe to "look inward" them blame their own intolerance for the actions of the terrorists.
The final analysis will be: If we weren't so intolerant towards Muslims, this would have never happened.
This sounds just about right to me. So I have an honest question. How exactly is Liberal Democracy going to take in Iraq, given these facts?
In other words, these radical Islamic nutters admit no truth other than the one found in the Koran. Thus if follows that the core tenants of liberal democracy (i.e. the civil equality of women, the separation of church and state, tolerance of other faiths) is anathema to them.
Is it not possible that our attempts to construct liberal democracy in Iraq will falter, because the Sunnis & Shias have the worng "mindset"?
I am not questioning the President, mind you. I am only suggesting that the Iraqi peoples have not historically evolved to the point where they can live in a Democracy.
Dutch liberals are just discovering the Barbarians are at the gates.
Will they close them or open them winder?
I hope Bush is right in how this is being done. It will take a long time and I seriously doubt we have the staying power as a nation to see it through. Only history will be able to tell us. I expect Iraq to look more like Egypt than like Turkey 20 years from now.
You beat me to it. It was no abstraction that killed Van Gogh, it was a criminal using an abstraction for an excuse.
"Is it not possible that our attempts to construct liberal democracy in Iraq will falter, because the Sunnis & Shias have the worng "mindset"?"
I suppose it depends on what proportion of the population have a fundamentalist mindset, and how many are willing to exercise their rights, like free speech, despite the threats of death from those who do have the fundamentalist mindset.
Look at the Netherlands - given what happened to Mr. Van Gogh, how many more will be willing to step up and take on radical Islam, even in a less offensive manner? While many profess a belief in the right to free speech, how many are willing to die for exercising it?
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Suspected arsonists set an Islamic elementary school on fire Tuesday amid a string of attacks following the killing of a Dutch filmmaker by an alleged Islamic extremist.
Firefighters work to extinguish the fire set at an Islamic school in apparent revenge for the killing of a filmmaker.
AP
Firefighters struggled to extinguish the flames at the burning Bedir school in the southern town of Uden, where someone had scrawled "Theo Rest in Peace" in the building in homage to slain filmmaker Theo van Gogh, but the building was destroyed in the blaze.
Uden Mayor Joke Kersten told Dutch television she didn't know the exact cause of the fire but suspected arson. She said the school had not been the target of prior attacks.
Arsonists attempted to burn down Protestant churches in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amersfoort in apparent retaliation for the bombing of a Muslim elementary school in Eindhoven on Monday, police said.
Muslim sites have been the target of a half-dozen attacks in the past week. No injuries have been reported and no arrests have been made.
Tensions have been high in the Netherlands in the week since the murder of Van Gogh, who was shot and stabbed in Amsterdam by an alleged Islamic radical after making a movie critical of Islam. A funeral was held for Van Gogh on Tuesday.
In Utrecht, police arrived Tuesday to find that a church window had been smashed and a container of flammable liquid thrown inside. In Amersfoort, several Molotov cocktails were thrown at the outside wall of a church.
Liberalism will kill us all...unless enough people get tired of putting up with the nihilist multicultural anti-Christian crap and get serious about defending Western Christian civilization. Someone killed by Muslim barbarian kooks in a major city in Europe - that's absurd. Deport them all!
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