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Clash of Civilizations (Holland)
Newsweek ^ | Nov. 22 issue | Stryker McGuire

Posted on 11/14/2004 1:49:34 AM PST by Eurotwit

What's wrong with this picture? The airspace over the city is declared off-limits to all unauthorized aircraft. Some 200 police, including rooftop snipers and antiterror forces in balaclavas and bulletproof armor, descend on a neighborhood near the main train station..."We cannot let ourselves be blinded by people who seek to drag us into a spiral of violence," the prime minister tells a shaken nation.

So what's wrong? The city is The Hague, and the country is the Netherlands—famed for tidy bicycle lanes, a well-mannered citizenry and the court where Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for war crimes. It underscores the fact that the clashes of civilization taking place at the global level—between Muslims and Christians, between religious fundamentalism and secularism—are also unfolding inside individual communities and countries on a smaller but still dangerous scale. And it shows that the war on terror is sometimes just down the street... Watching events unfold in the Netherlands, the rest of the region knows it's looking into a mirror. The once admired Dutch "polder model" has grown increasingly ill suited to today's Europe, much less tomorrow's. Already the Netherlands has the second largest Muslim population in Europe in percentage terms (6 percent, compared with 7 percent in France). Britain, Denmark and Sweden all have just over 3 percent. Norway, Finland and Ireland have among the smallest Muslim populations in Western Europe, under 1 percent. But even in such countries, tensions often run high because of the speed at which the Muslim community has grown.

The fanatical blow of an assassin against a filmmaker on a busy Amsterdam street thus, rightly or wrongly, becomes part of a chain stretching from the World Trade Center and Bali through the Madrid train bombings to Abu Ghraib and Fallujah.

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: clashofcivilizations; jihadineurope; jihadinholland; koranimals; netherlands; religionofpeace; religionofpieces
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1 posted on 11/14/2004 1:49:34 AM PST by Eurotwit
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To: Eurotwit

Oh yeah. The equine fecal excretia is about to violently collide with a rotory oscillator.


2 posted on 11/14/2004 1:56:18 AM PST by clee1 (Islam is a deadly plague; liberalism is the AIDS virus that prevents us from defending ourselves.)
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To: Eurotwit; abu afak; B4Ranch; dennisw; Travis McGee

Van Gogh's murder should wake up the whole world. It was just as much of a threat to freedom of expression as the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I put it on a level with our 9/11 because they singled out one artist. How can the world sit idly by with fascists running around killing people who merely comment on the dangers of religious intolerance?


3 posted on 11/14/2004 1:57:45 AM PST by risk
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To: Eurotwit
A problem is children and youth being taught Hate, by perverted mullahs in a supposed holy place, and then the Muslim society either to weak or passive or believers in the hate to police their own.So now Holland and the rest of the civilized world must for it's own survival.
4 posted on 11/14/2004 2:12:48 AM PST by Cutterjohnmhb
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To: Eurotwit

A nation that capitulates to petty street criminals isn't going to have much success against organized terrorism. Not to worry, however. If the quality of life deterioriates too badly they can all be euthanized.


5 posted on 11/14/2004 2:18:07 AM PST by Mr Ramsbotham (Laws against sodomy are honored in the breech.)
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To: Eurotwit

One way to root out the problem would be going door to door with a can of Spam a fork and a pistol.


6 posted on 11/14/2004 2:21:20 AM PST by BigCinBigD
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To: risk
How can the world sit idly by with fascists running around killing people who merely comment on the dangers of religious intolerance?

Because the world is full of stupid, cowardly Leftists who never met a decisive action they could support.

7 posted on 11/14/2004 2:23:55 AM PST by Malleus Dei ("Communists are just Democrats in a hurry.")
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To: Eurotwit

Suddenly we seem to have communicated with Mars. The media "gets it" now that one of their kind was unjustly taken. "WOW", they replied. "There is really something going on here!" ..........HELLLLOOOO!! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?


8 posted on 11/14/2004 2:32:59 AM PST by Earthdweller (US descendant of French Protestants)
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To: Eurotwit

"(6 percent, compared with 7 percent in France). Britain, Denmark and Sweden all have just over 3 percent. "

I have hear percentages much higher.


9 posted on 11/14/2004 2:44:06 AM PST by tkathy (There will be no world peace until all thuggocracies are gone from the earth.)
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To: clee1

Americans better wake the f*ck up! (Awake, armed and ready Freepers excluded, of course).


10 posted on 11/14/2004 2:45:39 AM PST by WarPaint (Nuke mecca. Be done with it.)
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To: Eurotwit; All
 
Islam versus Holland- Red Cresent Rising?

11 posted on 11/14/2004 2:55:22 AM PST by backhoe ( Islam has become the 21st century version of Nazism.)
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To: Eurotwit

Yes...Western Europe led by France now faces the mother of all problems...to many Muslims. The fuse has been lit. The Euroweenies are going Oh!Oh!..now what???


12 posted on 11/14/2004 3:13:03 AM PST by Route101
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To: Eurotwit
"We must ask ourselves if we have not been naive over the past few years—ask ourselves if we have not for so long agreed to take in anybody [as immigrants]," said Dutch Justice Minister Rita Verdonk last week. "We Dutch are easy prey," says Jon Wolter Wabeke, a senior judge in Amsterdam. "We're vulnerable because we're a soft, tolerant society."

Sounds frighteningly familiar to me.

13 posted on 11/14/2004 3:29:58 AM PST by raybbr
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To: Eurotwit


 

A Palestinian child shows the victory sign as he takes part in a demonstration  in Rome against the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier, November 13, 2004. REUTERS/Max Rossi

                             The future of Europe?

14 posted on 11/14/2004 3:30:33 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer (The democRATS are near the tipping point.)
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To: Eurotwit
Already the Dutch Parliament has voted to shut down Muslim radio stations and Web sites.

If we had done that in the US after 9/11, the UN and the rest of the world would have called us intolerant. In Holland, it's barely worth a mention by Newsweek. The hypocrisy is astoundingly obvious.

15 posted on 11/14/2004 3:41:25 AM PST by Peach (The Clintons pardoned more terrorists than they ever captured or killed)
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To: BigCinBigD

Spam is too good for them. How about over boiled, unseasoned chitlins?


16 posted on 11/14/2004 3:58:01 AM PST by TheSpottedOwl ("In the Kingdom of the Deluded, the Most Outrageous Liar is King".)
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To: Peach
The hypocrisy is astoundingly obvious.

Oh, you've got that right. It's getting tiresome.

17 posted on 11/14/2004 3:59:31 AM PST by TheSpottedOwl ("In the Kingdom of the Deluded, the Most Outrageous Liar is King".)
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To: risk
Van Gogh's murder should wake up the whole world. It was just as much of a threat to freedom of expression as the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

This is a very good point and one worth repeating. At the time, the Iranian fatwa against Rushdie was seen as a one-off, but now even Sunni Moslems have taken up the Iranian Shiite radicals' tools, and they make bold to assassinate Westerners in their own cities, for expressions of view uncongenial to the muftis.

Supporting your point, Daniel Pipes concluded his 1990 book The Rushdie Affair with the following thoughts:

At the same time, the ayatollah's [Khomeini's] accomplishments must not be exaggerated. The global fear of early 1989 is not likely to be soon repeated. Khomeini was a unique ruler and the furor surrounding The Satanic Verses is likely to remain without match. In theory, while many of Khomeini's tactics can be imitated by anyone, Iranian prototypes tend rarely to be imitated, so this incident may well turn out to be a one-time affair. The Iranians institutionalized and systematized the recruitment of suicide bombers, but few states availed themselves of this powerful tool. Seizing the U.S. embassy in Tehran proved to be a brilliant tactical innovation by the Iranian radicals in 1979, but it has not been emulated even once [as of 1990 -- this was before the Guevarist MRTA seized the Japanese embassy in Lima in 1996]. Taking such a step requires a radicalism, an ideological devotion, and a personal commitment as deep as that of Khomeini and his followers. In the Rushdie case, Khomeini managed to impose an unprecedented form of trans-border censorship precisely because no one is like him. No other leader challenged the existing order in so profound a way or had a vision of the just society that differed so fundamentally from the prevailing models. Accordingly, conventional dictators typically find that following in the ayatollah's footsteps is beyond their capabilities.

Moreover, even his achievement was less than complete. It should be remembered that it was the Saudis who got the book banned in most Muslim countries; Iranian efforts to extend censorship to the West failed. For all the fear Iranians created in the West, their attempts at intimidation turned The Satanic Verses into a spectacular commercial success. Despite and because of the Muslim efforts, The Satanic Verses became the book of the year. Boastful claims that protests would continue until the book was recalled and the author and publisher apologized came to naught. The controversy caused many Westerners to feel a highly unusual sense of solidarity, seeing themselves again as the only civilized people and recalling old animosities toward Islam. In many ways, the ayatollah not only did not get his way but he stirred up antagonisms taht will harm his cause for years to come.

Is the power that Khomeini achieved an aberration or the beginning of a subtle shift in norms? While it is too early to say, it is clear that the answer depends far more on the West than on Khomeini and his ilk. The West has to make it clear that the fundamentalist Muslims will gain nothing through threats and intimidation. [Quoting The Times of London] "The only acceptable way to end The Satanic Verses affair is to go on repeating that until the message is heard and believed."

-- Daniel Pipes, The Rushdie Affair, pp. 250-251. (Emphasis added.)

18 posted on 11/14/2004 4:04:38 AM PST by lentulusgracchus ("Whatever." -- sinkspur)
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To: Eurotwit
antiterror forces in balaclavas

I don't know about you, but everytime I see this word my mind automatically reads its as baklavas, and I see people with pastry on their head.

19 posted on 11/14/2004 4:08:32 AM PST by cschroe
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To: Eurotwit
How incongruous and ironic that The Hague is where Slobodan Milosevic is on trial for waging war on muslims who encroached on Christian Yugoslav territory. Now the Dutch are coming to full realization that they are having serious problems with muslims encroaching on their turf.

How long will it take European nations to understand that the only way out of this mess is to begin deporting muslims? Further, how long will it take U.S. citinzenry and their PC government to realize that option is the best for America?

20 posted on 11/14/2004 4:19:18 AM PST by JesseHousman (Execute Mumia Abu-Jamal)
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