Posted on 11/08/2004 12:41:29 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS – The murder of a controversial Dutch filmmaker has reenergized an uncomfortable debate over Europe's relationship with its growing Muslim minority. Theo van Gogh, whose latest work cast a critical spotlight on Muslim treatment of women, was gunned down and stabbed last week as he road his bicycle in Amsterdam. A letter left on his body threatened lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim who worked on the movie, as well as Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen.
Prosecutors have targeted what they say is a gang of young Muslim extremists. They have also arrested two men who made a video that promised paradise to those who could behead Geert Wilders, a right-wing politician opposed to immigration.
The slaying and disclosures of other threats underscore growing tensions in the Netherlands over the integration of Muslim immigrants and their tolerance of Western values. Moderate Muslims, meanwhile, say they are being victimized because of the actions of a few.
"Tensions are really blazing up," says Ruud Peters, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Amsterdam. "Many Dutch think the activities of radical Muslims spreading hatred should be ended, and they don't separate extremists from the large majority of moderate Muslims. The Islamic community feels forced to apologize for something they cannot be held responsible for.''
It's a divide that has played out across Europe, where the Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 15 years, according to the UN, and perceptions have been shaped by Sept. 11. In the Netherlands, reports surfaced after the attack on the US that Dutch Islamic schools were teaching anti- Western lessons, and that imams were taking intolerant stands against homosexuals. In 2002, Pim Fortuyn, a popular right-wing populist who said borders should be closed to all new immigrants, was assassinated by a left-wing Dutch activist.
A survey last week found that 80 percent of all Dutch people feel their society has changed for the worse as a result of the slaying of Van Gogh.
That discomfort cuts both ways, says Said Bouddouft, chairman of the national Moroccan council, SMT. "Muslims are afraid to speak out and feel separated from the society they live in,'' he says. "People feel uncomfortable at work, because colleagues question them.''
Concern over radical activity has spurred the Netherlands' secret service, the AIVD, to increase investment in staff and expertise, says Professor Peters. Indeed, Muslim extremism is the new focal point in most European countries, says Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, at St. Andrews University in Scotland. "The French have their own magistrate on terrorism, just like Spain, and Britain started with its Joint Terrorism Analysis Center where all intelligence information is gathered.''
This process is beginning to bear fruit, though cooperation is still imperfect. Germany recently banned the extremist Turkish Kaplan movement, while France expelled radical imam Abdelkader Bouziane. "Unfortunately,'' says Mr. Ranstorp, "Holland still seems to be suffering from a lack of staff and resources.''
But Ranstorp emphasizes the need for bridging divides - not just better policing. "What we need are political initiatives: we have to avoid people feeling alienated, and authorities need to have liaisons with the Islamic community," he says.
A counterstrategy like this can prevent young Muslims in Western countries from joining radical factions, many experts say.
Mr. Bouddouft, the Dutch Moroccan leader, says including Muslims in the process is essential. "We can be an important partner in the fight against extremism,' he says. He plans to propose guidelines all Dutch mosques should obey.
"We should make clear on certain topics: this is the limit," he says. "Some imams say in their prayers that we shouldn't pay taxes. That's absurd. We live here and should abide by the rules.''
yes, lets fight terrorists with "rules"
My fantasy is that the Netherlands becomes the first nation to declare political correctness as a threat to national security.
(Conscious eye roll.)
He plans to propose guidelines all Dutch mosques should obey.
You mean there's more than one?
No wonder the whole country is going to hell.
They cut his throat, didn't quite decapitate him. They also pinned a letter on him with a knife. Perhaps the Dutch will wake up and sweep the Islamic terrorists from their homeland. I doubt it though.
"Muslims are afraid to speak out and feel separated from the society they live in,...People feel uncomfortable at work, because colleagues question them.''
If they felt like saying the right things I don't think they'd have need to fear, if they had the right answers I'm sure their co-workers would be happy to hear them.
This is why we fear the moderate Muslims too, they go into the "Don't blame me, I didn't kill the guy" mode, it's almost always that, never a full throated denunciation of the Islamofacist violence.
HEY MODERATE MUSLIMS - WE CAN'T HEAR YOU YET!
Brilliant! I'm sure Mr. Rantsrop wants to get back to the place where they were, where terrorists are not the focus of their lives but they're a nuisance. Good luck with that!
There is no turning back the clock.
As much as they fight the notion, countries need to stop reshaping themselves to accommodate an enemy. Pandering to terrorists is insanity.
There were no reports of injuries. Pictures showed the burned-out entrance of the school which was empty at the time of the attack at about 3:30 a.m. local time. Police suspected it was related to the murder last week of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected Islamic radical, the report said. ***
Those darned resources...they never seem to magically appear when a sensitive socialist country needs them most!
You say you can't hear the moderate Muslims. Partly this is because they are the first to be killed for expressing their views about the extremists.
A Muslim who worked on the film was also threatened. Maybe we should see this movie.
This movie was based on a screenplay by a former Muslim. However, the movie also made claims that Muslims have sex with animals. It also featured a woman in a see-through burka. This was probably viewed as obcene and a calumny by Muslims. Too bad the filmmaker couldn't have stuck to the facts a bit. The mistreatment of women is bad enough without trying to offend people just for the heck of it. He was being provocative. He wasn't trying to get Muslims to rethink their attitudes. He was not criticizing in a constructive way. He was trying to stir things up. He got more than he bargained for.
http://www.nysun.com/article/4403
Murder in Holland Brings Terror War Home to the Dutch
BY DINA TEMPLE-RASTON - Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 8, 2004
AMSTERDAM - For many in this Dutch city, the war on terror came calling just five days ago. That is when a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan national emptied a magazine of bullets into the body of a filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, outside the bucolic Ooster Parc, slit his throat, and spiked to his chest an ominous five-page letter promising a new holy war.
The letter warned of "screams that will cause chills to run down a person's back, and make the hairs on their heads stand straight up."
"People will be drunk with fear, while they are not drunken. Fear will fill the air on the Great Day," the letter read. "I know that you, Oh America, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Netherlands, will go down."
The letter sent a frisson of horror through a nation that, until last week, liked to think of itself as the liberal and tolerant heart of Europe. In the wake of van Gogh's execution, many local politicians, from a Somali-born former Muslim member of Parliament to the Jewish mayor of Amsterdam, have either gone into hiding or taken to traveling with bodyguards.
Lawmakers are considering an emergency law that will allow authorities to revoke the Dutch nationality of dual citizens suspected of terrorist activity, so they can be deported. Suddenly, ethnic Dutch are looking at their Muslim neighbors through narrowed lids and are suspicious of the terror within.
"It was tense before, but the murder brought so many things out into the open," a woman, Caroline Houton, said as she washed beer glasses in a pub off one of this city's grand canals. "We've always considered ourselves so open-minded and inclusive that we didn't think we'd ever be targets in a holy war. That happens to big powers, like America, and now, suddenly, it has happened to us."
A man who had come to lay flowers at a makeshift memorial to van Gogh, Mark Bakker, made a similar point.
"Theo van Gogh was an agitator, he tried to stir things up, but we thought we could all handle it, that it would get a dialogue between Muslims and the Dutch here going," Mr. Bakker said. "Instead it was solved with bullets, and it has shaken everyone up."
The authorities have arrested a man they call Mohammed B. for the crime, and six other Islamic militants were charged Friday with "conspiracy with a terrorist intent." The indictment marks the first time the Dutch have used a new law that expands their power to prosecute people suspected of terrorism.
"The increase in radicalization is worse than we had thought," the deputy prime minister, Gerrit Zalm, told reporters. "We are not going to tolerate this. We are going to ratchet up this fight against this sort of terrorism."
While the execution of van Gogh, 47, was a shock, it couldn't have come as a complete surprise. He had been on the receiving end of a roster of death threats for months after Dutch television aired his film "Submission" in August.
The 10-minute film, based on a screenplay by a parliamentarian and former Muslim, Aayan Hirsi Ali, criticized the treatment of women in Islam and features a Muslim woman in a see-through burka telling the story of her abusive marriage. She has text from the Koran written on her naked body condoning family violence.
While the movie helped coalesce extremist forces against van Gogh and Ms. Hirsi Ali, the pair had long been vocal about their disdain for Holland's radical Islamist immigrants. Not only did van Gogh call them a "fifth column," but disparaged them, in gutter language, as having sexual relations with goats. Ms. Hirsi Ali, for her part, quit the Dutch Labor Party because, she said, the liberals were too soft on Islam.
Both she and van Gogh had received death threats after "Submission" was released. Ms. Hirsi Ali accepted police protection, but her collaborator waved off the suggestion, saying he was just "a merry village idiot," whom no one would bother to kill. Ms. Hirsi Ali has gone into hiding since the van Gogh murder last week.
The Dutch government said the murder was "an act against freedom of expression" and organized a rally in Amsterdam in support of Van Gogh - whose great-great-grandfather was the brother of the artist Vincent van Gogh - and the freedom of expression he has come to represent. Some residents of the city have grumbled about revisionist history.
"Theo van Gogh is one of those guys who liked to stir things up," a bookstore worker, Jan von Kampen, said. "I know that he said some of the things he said just to get a reaction, to try to get people to talk. But there were a lot of people who didn't understand that and were pretty upset." Mr. von Kampen cited van Gogh's obscene references concerning Allah as particularly offensive.
Regardless of whether van Gogh goaded his critics, what is clear is that his death has opened old wounds between ethnic Dutch and the nearly 1 million Muslims in the Netherlands. At the time of his death, van Gogh was working on a film about another politically motivated murder, that of a flamboyant anti-immigrant populist, Pim Fortuyn. He was killed in May 2002 by an animal-rights activist.
Three years after that murder, many Dutch feel that the time has come for the Muslim minority to try harder to adopt Dutch values.
There is a move, for example, to compel Dutch Muslims to learn the Dutch language. Many Dutch Moroccans and Turks bristle at the government's push for assimilation. They wonder why they are tagged as foreign when they have been born and educated in the Netherlands.
In the current climate, though, that argument is arousing little sympathy.
In recent days the city's liberal newspaper, the Telegraaf, published an editorial that called for a "very public crackdown on extremist Muslim fanatics" to ensure they don't "cross over the boundaries." Editors called for tightened controls on international cash transfers and the suppression of magazines and newspapers that incited extremism. Mosques should be shuttered if their imams encouraged illegal acts.
"This should also apply to extremists who have dual nationality," the editorial said. "They have no business here. In addition, the range of extremists to be kept under surveillance needs to be expanded. If more money is required for all this, then that money must be made available. It is more than worth it for the sake of the citizens' safety."
Other newspapers picked up similar themes. The Netherlands is clearly rethinking its position on being the beating liberal heart of Europe.
Mr. Zalm, the deputy prime minister, said the Cabinet is also considering taking action against a mosque that Van Gogh's accused killer regularly attended.
"I know it is just one murder," Ms. Houton said, "but this has changed us."
Europe had better find its balls.....Its going to need them.....
Those Dutch can be pretty fierce once they get their dander up.
Bump!
This movie was based on a screenplay by a former Muslim. However, the movie also made claims that Muslims have sex with animals. It also featured a woman in a see-through burka. This was probably viewed as obcene and a calumny by Muslims. Too bad the filmmaker couldn't have stuck to the facts a bit. The mistreatment of women is bad enough without trying to offend people just for the heck of it. He was being provocative. He wasn't trying to get Muslims to rethink their attitudes. He was not criticizing in a constructive way. He was trying to stir things up. He got more than he bargained for.
So let's shoot him and cut his head off? I can't quite make the leap with you.
I would suggest execution is better than terrorism, as the deported ones will be a fountain of information on infiltration for the next wave of Jihadi.
Not only did van Gogh call them a "fifth column," but disparaged them, in gutter language, as having sexual relations with goats.
Sounds like more than a few Freepers. Also sounds like he was right about the fifth column part, only time will reveal the goat part.
I think you are taking the leap, not me. This man was trying to start trouble. He also attacked jews.
Had he cared about improving the situation of Muslim women he might have interviewed women and let them speak in a more tasteful way so that Muslims would listen.
He might have interviewed Muslim women who have husbands who respect them, too. There are many Muslim men who are kind and loving husbands. Focus on them and let the others see there is a better way.
This film maker was trying to start trouble, not solve a problem. If you want people to change, you don't do what he did.
He should not be murdered, of course, but he was trying to provoke people.
I Saudi Arabia they are having a lot of public discussions on TV about the rolls of women and men. All the different views get to be heard. Everyone has to be civil.
If you want people to have a change of behavior, you have to change their hearts--not make propagandistic films that accuse people of perversions.
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