the preview of comming attraction. Kosovo today, Ravena and Notre Dame tomorrow
Posted on 11/03/2004 5:42:51 AM PST by SJackson
the tragic murder of Theo van Gogh reveals about the high cost of multiculturalism
Theo van Gogh was shot dead on an Amsterdam street on Tuesday morning. His assailant was a Dutch Moroccan who was wearing traditional Islamic clothing. After shooting van Gogh several times, he stabbed him repeatedly, slit his throat with a butcher knife, and left a note containing verses from the Qur’an on the body. Said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende: “Nothing is known about the motive” of the killer.
Others were not quite so cautious. A Dutch student declared: “This has to end, once and for all. You cannot just kill people on the street in a brutal way when you disagree with them.” Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam, declared: “We will show loud and clear that freedom of speech is important to us.”
Freedom of speech: Eight weeks ago, van Gogh’s film Submission aired on Dutch TV. The brainchild of an ex-Muslim member of the Dutch Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Submission decried the mistreatment of Muslim women — and even featured images of battered women wearing see-through robes that exposed their breasts, with verses from the Qur’an written on their bodies.
In poor taste? Insulting? Probably that was a bit of the intention. Van Gogh, the great grandson of Vincent van Gogh’s brother (“dear Theo”), was a well-known gadfly on the Dutch scene; in the past, he had attacked Jewish and Christians with enough vehemence to elicit formal complaints. But after Submission, the death threats started to come. Van Gogh, in the eyes of many Dutch Muslims, had blasphemed Islam — an offense that brought the death penalty. The filmmaker was unconcerned. The film itself, he said, was “the best protection I could have. It’s not something I worry about.”
His death shows that it’s something that everyone who values freedom should worry about. For the murder of van Gogh, if it indeed turns out to have been committed by a Muslim enraged at his “blasphemy,” has precedents. In 1947, the Iranian lawyer Ahmad Kasravi was murdered in court by Islamic radicals; Kasravi was there to defend himself against charges that he had attacked Islam. Four years later, members of the same radical Muslim group, Fadayan-e Islam, assassinated Iranian Prime Minister Haji-Ali Razmara after a group of Muslim clerics issued a fatwa calling for his death. In 1992, the Egyptian writer Faraj Foda was murdered by Muslims enraged at his “apostasy” from Islam — another offense for which traditional Islamic law prescribes the death penalty. Foda’s countryman, the Nobel Prizewinning novelist Naguib Mahfouz, was stabbed in 1994 after accusations of blasphemy. Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, many non-Muslims have been arrested, tortured, and sentenced to die on the slimmest of evidence. And of course, there is the Ayatollah Khomeini’s notorious death fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
But for such things to happen in Iran and Egypt, two countries where Islamic radicalism is widespread, is one thing; to have a “blasphemer” gunned down on the streets of Amsterdam in broad daylight is another. Europe has for thirty years encouraged massive immigration from Muslim nations; Muslims now comprise five percent of Holland’s population, and that number is growing rapidly. But it is still largely taboo in Europe — as in America — to raise any questions about how ready that population is to accept the parameters of secularism. When Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn tried to raise some of those questions in 2002, he was vilified as a racist — in line with the continuing tendency of the Western media to frame questions regarding Islam in racial terms, despite the fact that the totalitarian intransigence of the ideology of radical Islam is found among all races. And Fortuyn himself, of course, was himself ultimately murdered by a Dutch assailant who, according to The Guardian, “did it for Dutch Muslims.”
The deaths of Fortuyn and now van Gogh indicate that the costs of maintaining this taboo are growing ever higher. One of the prerequisites of the hard-won peaceful coexistence of ideologies in a secular society is freedom of speech — particularly the freedom to question, to dissent, even to ridicule. Multiculturalism and secularism are on a collision course: if one group is able to demand that its tenets remain above criticism, it no longer coexists with the others as an equal, but has embarked on the path to hegemony.
It is long past due for such considerations to become part of the public debate in Western countries. To what extent are Muslim immigrants in Western countries willing to set aside Islamic strictures on questioning, criticizing, and leaving Islam?
After van Gogh was killed, thousands of people took to the streets of Amsterdam to pay him homage. Among them, according to Agence France Presse, was a Muslim woman who stated: “I didn’t really agree with van Gogh but he was a person who used his freedom of expression.” She held up a sign saying, “Muslims Against Violence,” explaining: “I decided that as a Muslim and a Moroccan I should take up my responsibility to show that we do not support this act.”
But the traditional Muslim view is, unfortunately, alive and well; it was firmly restated several years ago by Pakistan’s Federal Sharia Court: “The penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet …is death and nothing else.” No one knows how many Muslims in Europe and America hold the views of the Moroccan woman at the rally, and how many would side with Pakistan’s Sharia Court — and the killer of Theo van Gogh.
If Western countries continue, out of ignorance, fear, or narrow self-interest, to refuse to find out, they will find themselves playing host to many more incidents like the bloody scene in Amsterdam Tuesday morning. The longer this question is ignored, or attributed only to “racist” sensibilities, the more likely it becomes that the killing of Theo van Gogh will not be a tragic anomaly, but a harbinger of things to come.
The question is: Can a nation that tolerates all religions tolerate a religion that does not tolerate other religions?
"you cannot just kill people on the street"
You can if you are muslim and there is always a liberal willing to explain away the reasons for the killing.
Here's hoping that Pres. Bush and the new Congress will quickly take action to change the insane immigration laws of this country.
“Nothing is known about the motive” of the killer." Said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.
Duh, I think the motive is screaming at him from the previous sentence.
"His assailant...a Dutch Moroccan who was wearing traditional Islamic clothing.....shooting van Gogh several times,...stabbed him repeatedly, slit....throat...butcher knife,.......a note containing verses from the Qur’an on the body."
Another radical animal rights activist.
Required reading for European dummies, before they become dhimmis:
"His death shows that it’s something that everyone who values freedom should worry about."
An Excellent this-is-the-future-so-take-heed post.
bookmarked.
the preview of comming attraction. Kosovo today, Ravena and Notre Dame tomorrow
Europe has swallowed a poison pill.
Islam, The Cult of Intolerance & Murder™
And the liberals rail about US evangelicals. You don't find the followers of Pat Robertson out on the streets slitting the throats of liberals.
It's called civilization.
And the new laws should be retroactive. The task isn't just to stop the ongoing invasion. What is equally important, is to clean up the harm already done, to get rid of the Islamic vermin so abundant everywhere in the West.
Look for instance at this part of the article:
She held up a sign saying, “Muslims Against Violence,” explaining: “I decided that as a Muslim and a Moroccan I should take up my responsibility to show that we do not support this act.”
They should do it back in Morocco, or any other Islamic cesspool they had come from. They demand so loudly a right of return for their terrorist Pali buddies... but their own right to go back was never taken from them. Mohammedans did learn their PR lessons. They always have at hand a group of "moderate intellectuals" ready to put up a show of tolerance and compassion. But the sincere majority is "dancing in the streets" and celebrates the deaths of infidels.
Even when that infidels had died quite a long time ago. Here in Wellington, for instance, the Somalian community leadership was quick to express "their outrage" when Jewish graves were desecrated several weeks ago. But I looked the grass-root Kiwi Somalians (what a joke!) in the eye, and I didn't believe a word.
And yes, in this tiny country we have a ever-growing Somalian, and Afghan, and Arab, and other Mohammedan communities, all heavily subsidized by the pinko Labour government with our tax money. There is even widely praised by the Left "the first Muslim MP" in the NZ Parliament...
They still restrain themselves from ritual killings of the infidels, keeping to more "moderate" crimes like rape of "white European whores" and, sometimes, each other... but wait another 10 to 15 years. When this mob is big enough, the gloves will go off.
You are fighting a straw man of your own making. The article itself reveals that in the past van Gough had offended both Christians and Jews, who filed formal complains against him.
That what it's all about - civilised people choose civilised ways to deal with an offender, savages would shoot him several times, stabb him repeatedly, slit his throat with a butcher knife, and leave a note containing verses from the Qur’an on the body.
And this in deed is something that everyone who values freedom should worry about. Isn't it?
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