The killing of Theo van Gogh and the aftermath

I have read several comments by FReepers about the slaugthering of Theo van Gogh and see a lot of half truths about it. Therefore I will write this short report from Utrecht (The Netherlands).

Theo van Gogh was a very famous film maker and columnist in The Netherlands. His movies were about several topics including a remake of Romeo and Julia with a Dutch girl and a Morrocan immigrant. He was a very generous guy as all his friends mentioned at the funeral and a good citizen (working for his son's sportclub). His other side was his fun in provoking people. He has provoked almost every well-known person in the Netherlands. For instance, there has been a lawsuit against him for commenting: "It smells like caramel, they must be burning the Jews with diabetes". He just loved to create conflicts.

He has been sacked as a columnist numerous times and the last few years he used the free newspaper in public traffic and his website www.degezonderoker.nl (thehealthysmoker) for his insults. Last years a lot of his insults were pointed against Muslims which he always mentioned as goatf*uckers. And yes, that is possible in the NL. I read an article about a NYT reporter who was thinking how he was going to translate that. I read in the NYT that he finally used "bestiality with a goat". :-)

Another person in the NL who is trying to start a discussion about Muslims and the Koran is Ayaan Hirsi Ali (House of Representatives for the liberal party). She is originally from Somalia and when she was told to marry a guy she fled to the NL. She asked Theo van Gogh to do a short film about Mulims women surpression and he did. Ayaan has been threatened so many times (she is someone who is not Muslim anymore, don't know the word for that) that she got police protection 24/7. Theo did not want protection.

Last week Theo van Gogh was cycling through Amsterdam and Mohammed B. shot him several times, slit his throat and than stabbed two knifes in him. One was sticking a letter to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to his body.

That night 20.000 people were making a lot of noise on the Dam (square) in Amsterdam to make a statement that this will not be tolerated. Also several Muslim demonstrations have been held after Tuesday. And a few rightwing extremist (neo nazis) were having demonstrations but these were aborted by the police.

A few more people were arrested in the aftermath and police are searching Mohammed B.'s religious teacher. They both had contact with Samir A., the guy who was arrested for planning attacks against the House of Rep.

Mohammed B. was raised in the NL and was a normal (read: moderate Muslim) until two years ago. He started visiting more radical mosques, got a beard and started wearing djelaba's. People around him say that he started becoming radical after his mother died of cancer. But when he got radical they lost contact.

Since Theo van Gogh was not a normal guy his friends organised a party the day before his funeral. They even had a corner with goats behind a fence with a sign above it: "For people that have the urge". :-)

Since last Tuesday a few attacks have been commited against Islamic schools and mosques. This ranged from small fires to thrown-in windows. Apart from two other attacks: A bomb attack at a Islamic school in Eindhoven and yesterday a fire that burned down a Islamic school in Uden. Also several churces have been under attack in recent days and yesterday night (I cannot believe it) the church in the village I grew up at (Boxmeer) was set on fire (small one though).

This morning I woke up and learned that the terrorism police squad tried to enter a house in The Hague and got a grenade thrown at them. Three police men were hurt. The police is trying to prevent the thing that happened in Madrid (exploding house when they entered) and are still waiting to enter the house. It is now even prohibited to fly over The Hague.

I can tell you guys this. Living in the Netherlands at this moment in time is very unreal. The song I keep having in my head this morning is "We gotta get out of this place.." I am starting to think more and more that we are on the edge of a major conflict within the NL (as some of you guys have been telling al along), but I am not ready to give up on the Muslim community in the Netherlands.

If it happens I probably have move to another country (perhaps to America like Theo van Gogh was going to do when his son finally got 18, is now 12 I believe). We'll see...

Btw. People were questioning my Dutch decent because of my English but I lived in England for half a year so that's why.

If anyone has any questions about the Netherlands or the situation as of now, please feel free to ask.

"I would have agreed with you in the past, but no longer. It IS a war against Islam, as hard as that is to admit. You can say "war on terror" but the problem is obvious. Might as well get the devil out in the open where we can look at him."

It is a war against a radical version of Islam. A radical version that Moderate Muslims do not believe in. Here is an article that may give more insight into this issue.

http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=220

Press Corner
IT'S NOT A 'CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS'
November 8, 2004
By M. Zuhdi Jasser
American Islamic Forum for Democracy

An open memo to Jerry Falwell

During an interchange on CNN hosted by Wolf Blitzer, you appeared with Rev. Jesse Jackson and you made the following comment: "But you've got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops. And I'm for the president to chase them all over the world. If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord."

I found your comments to be quite reckless. They are indicative of a deep-seated deviation from America's founding secular principles. You seem to have no idea what we are actually fighting in this war on terror.

Your words are destructive to the reformist efforts of moderate secular Muslims around the world and especially in the United States. Your inflammatory Crusade-like language from another time undermines the growing numbers of courageous reformist Muslims who are working with you in the front lines of the war on terror.

These reformist Muslims are working to liberate our faith from its hijacking by fanatical Islamist terrorists who exploit the language of theology for barbaric purposes.

Need I remind you of the fact that this great nation of ours was formed by pioneering Christian intellectuals who were escaping the religious persecution of Britain and the Church of England? Need I remind you that the faith of Islam, which shares the same Judeo-Christian-Islamic ethic, is now beginning to fight similar internal battles against theocracy. As a representative of your interestingly named "Liberty University" I am sure that your university teaches the history of America as we all know it.

American history actually teaches us that Thomas Jefferson worked tirelessly to demarcate the line between religion and state. In your own state of Virginia, back in 1786, Jefferson penned the Act on Religious Freedom that stands today as a cornerstone of American principles of freedom and tolerance of religion.

Reverend, perhaps prior to your next sermon to your congregation at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg Virginia, Jefferson's writings would serve you well to review. The beauty of America is that each of our congregations across denominations and faiths can enjoy Jeffersonian principles regardless of our path. As George Santaya noted, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Any comments you make publicly will not be dismissed as the rants of a fringe minority figure. Christianity is a majority faith in this country. Our enemies are waiting for comments like yours to rally in a false religious war those within their populations who otherwise would be fighting them for reform. As a moderate reformist Muslim, I apparently need to remind you that the population most at risk in this international war are moderate secular Muslims. Moderate reformist Muslims are the only ones who can directly defeat this radical ideology we are all fighting. If you do not understand this alliance we need to form, then you truly "just don't get it."

This is not a war against a tactic "terror" - this is a war against an ideology. You, along with Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham have allowed yourselves to fall into the trap of framing this war into a war of "Christianity vs. Islam."

There is nothing more dangerous and ill-advised strategically than this kind of vitriol. It is firstly misinformed since all three faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam worship the same God of Abraham and share the same ethical and moral values. Secondly, it does not foster a dialogue of reform and "pro-religious secularism" which is direly necessary for reformist Muslims to be able to lead internally. This reform must begin in America, and certainly cannot begin in an atmosphere of Christian leaders calling for "blowing them away in the name of the Lord".

As a prior U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, I know that our officers and enlisted are fighting for our nation but each with their own personal spiritual drive. Rev. Falwell, our military includes millions who serve honorably for their nation within the principles of their own faith from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to Buddhism, Sikhism, and Hinduism to name a few.

Contrary to yourself, President Bush gets it. He understands that the liberation of Iraq and its majority Muslims will be in the end the liberation of Islam from the terrorists and the theocratic Islamists.

I strongly encourage you to reassess your off-tilt approach to this noble war on terror. This is certainly a just and noble war. This is a war for religious liberty and against theocracy, militant Islamists, and those who use terror as an instrument of change.

Your language of religious intolerance runs against the principles for which our nation stands and feeds into the hand of our Islamist enemies. We cannot lead Iraq away from theocracy and into a tolerant religiously free secular nation, only to lead our own nation toward religiously motivated wars and intolerance.

Just before this story broke, and a few days before the US elections, I met with a high-level Dutch delegation. They held the belief that US reaction to 9-11 was overblown, that the US should be more modest in its use of power, and so on. One actually told me that since the Twin Towers were insured we shouldn't be so upset. I was polite and gave them as objective a view of things as I could muster, this despite wanting to kick that guy's ass.

When they asked me my prediction on the election, they were sad to hear that I felt that Bush would win decisively. They were more dissappointed to hear why, that being that, indeed, Americans are not "nuanced," and that the President has been acting on a general mandate to go and kick ass whenever, wherever, and that the only general sentiment against the President is a result of his restraint -- that is, were things settled in Iraq, having gone into Iraq wouldn't be an issue. Americans don't like to lose, and absent decisive conclusion there, there is hesitation to follow the program. However, I explained, the majority of voters will give renew the President's program and wish him God-speed in Iraq and the WOT, which that majority plainly sees as one in the same. They did not like to hear any of this.

I suspect these guys are feeling less "nuanced" now. More black & white to 'em.

Chena, the problem I have with saying we are only fighting a radical version of Islam, or a minority fundamentalist faction of Islam, or a hijacking of the peaceful religion of Islam, is this:

As much as I'd like for all the above to be true, Islam does indeed teach submission, the spread of Islam by force or coercion, the subjugation and conversion of the world eventually, with those who will not convert being slaves or dead. This is what Mohammad taught, this is what's in the Quran and the Hadiths.

To say all these people are "moderate Muslims" who abhor violence is partially true. They are only "moderate" in that they either do not fully know or believe the tenets of their faith. Or perhaps they are just milquetoast mosque-goers, like Baptists or Methodists that may show up at church but don't want to think about all that sin or Jesus stuff.

Being a moderate Muslim is sort of like being a moderate pit bull. Maybe they haven't bitten anyone yet. But I still don't want my kid to pet one. You never know when they'll become radical pit bulls. My apologies to pit bulls everywhere for the comparison.

Some notes:

On 9/11, 3000 Americans died, two of our tallest buildings were leveled and I don't recall any mosques or Islamic schools being burned. The closest is the killing of one Sikh by a person of questionable sanity, although CAIR would say that dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of Muslims were talked to meanly or looked at funnily. One filmmaker is killed and the Netherlands goes crazy.
You can listen to a Pim Fortuyn or you can get much worse. Before he was killed by an insane person, Pim Fortuyn was persona non grata in the Netherlands. "Responsible" people condemned him uniformly. There was no place for him among the elites. There was no dialogue about it because that dialogue would not be tolerant. Now that Theo van Gogh has been murdered, there is no outlet for frustration at Islamic intolerance. No outlet that has any responsibility anyway. It's now in the hands of thugs and criminals and skinheads.
The institutions of Europe are an echo-chamber. I don't know about the Netherlands, but I'm going to guess that it's like the rest of Europe where the television programs are subsidized and the news programs are quite uniform and to the left of the sentiment of most of the people, certainly to the left of the newspapers. The elites, even from different political parties, think the same way, have the same views and abhor the same kinds of ideas. The "right way of thinking" is very well-defined and dissent is simply not permitted.
Some things cannot be tolerated. The prevaling view is now one of fear that the Muslims have been "pushed" into radicalism. This is the wrong view. The most radical Muslims are the ones with the easiest lives. Children of the educated upper-middle-class, second generation, bored. The problem with this view of tolerance is that it assumes that all are sheep. And even if one wolf comes in, perhaps he can be dealt with -- given a small, sickly member of the flock to feast upon -- but when a pack of wolves emerges, there is no way to combat this systematic problem.
The solution is that the Netherlands has to discuss choking Muslim immigration to a drip. There will be fights and there will be accusations of racism and intolerance and the Dutch will have to deal with the fact that the self-righteous view of their own morality has been illusory.

Thank you for your post, jb6. I have found on threads such as this that we could go back and forth, both of us searching for supporting documents, both current and historical, and still end up at square one.

I believe that we all share the same fears about terrorism, radical Islamists, and the future of our world. I would like to think we have learned from history and would not want to repeat our darkest days by making poor judgements.

I believe that the United States will suffer another terrorist attack and I fear it will be even worse than 9/11. What do you want us to do? Do you, yourself, believe that ALL Muslims are evil? Do you want them all wiped off the face of the earth? Would you like to see American Muslims interred in camps as we did with the Japanese, or maybe have them all deported? Should we allow hate crimes against our fellow Americans who are Muslims?

There are many questions like these that one must ask oneself as we all search for answers as to the best way to win this War on Terror. You said, "These so called ellusive "moderates" have failed to do a damn thing to really stop the radicals." Is that a true statement? The United States had also failed to do a damn thing to really stop the radicals, until George W. Bush became our President. And now moderate Muslims have joined the fight as well against these radicals. They began right after 9/11 and continue to this day. Not much is said in the MSM about their efforts, but these people have their lives at stake as well, and perhaps it would be wise to learn more about steps they are taking.

If you have time, please read these two articles:

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=15332

http://www.freemuslims.org/news/article.php?article=207

ps: I don't believe what you said about the Germans was factual. Millions of Germans who rose up against Hitler were rounded up and sent to prisons. The minority of elitists smashed them like bugs. As you can imagine, the internet has pages and pages full of information about Nazi Germany. :)

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