November 09, 2004

Van Gogh's murder, our freedom

We hardly needed the reminder, but the brutal murder earlier this week of Dutch filmmaker and controversialist Theo van Gogh shows again that the enemies of the open society aren't disposed to spare tolerant societies by virtue of their tolerance.
[And yet, the Leftists in the media are busy telling the Dutch to have more tolerance in the wake of this horrific murder!--Jen]
His death has rightly saddened and enraged the Netherlands, known for its famed tolerance but increasingly becoming just another battleground between reactionary Islamism and modern society.
    
Mr. van Gogh, a great grand-nephew of the famous painter, was killed Tuesday by an Islamist.
[God rest his soul!
Van Gogh even looked like his great uncle.
(Compare this photo with one of Great Uncle Vincent's self-portraits and the resemblance is almost uncanny.)

His grandfather, Theo, was the artist's chief supporter and poor Van Gogh would have done far less well without the help of his devoted brother.]
Dutch authorities say an assailant whom they are identifying only as Mohammed B. shot Mr. van Gogh, slit his throat and left a five-page letter in Arabic on his chest stabbed under a knife.

    Mr. van Gogh's views were controversial, to say the least, and incensed Dutch opinion across the political spectrum. A self-described "reactionary," he reportedly delighted in inflammatory language in his newspaper columns, had been fired from several jobs on that account and was a frequent provocator of Islam. Recently, he had received death threats for "Submission,"
[Of course, this is the what the word "jihad" means.--J.T.]
a film he directed depicting a Muslim woman's arranged marriage, rape by an uncle and brutal punishment for committing adultery.
[Needless to say, all common practices of those who embrace the "Religion of Peace."]
The film had come under fire from Muslims, not least because one scene depicted the Muslim woman in question nude with passages from the Koran scrawled across her body.
[Van Gogh's murder is nothing less than a repeat of the Salmon Rushdie "Satanic Verses" fatwa, but in poor Theo's case, the Islamist killers made the death threat a reality.]
    Mr. van Gogh had shrugged off the death threats, saying his film was "the best protection I could have." He was wrong.
    In the Netherlands as elsewhere, people are beginning to wonder — what with anti-immigration populist Pim Fortuyn's murder two years ago by another (non-Islamist) fanatic — whether free speech in their famously tolerant country is under attack.

    Clearly it is. But then, no easy solution emerges for the Dutch, or for the rest of us. One place for the Dutch to begin looking is the country's security apparatus. Ironically, at the time of his death, Mr. van Gogh had been working on a film on the Dutch security services' failure to prevent Mr. Fortuyn's murder just a week before national elections in which Mr. Fortuyn had been a leading candidate. Mr. van Gogh was on to something. Any solution to the problem of radical Islamism will need to include heightened surveillance of suspected militants. But ultimately the Dutch will only be safe when the United States, Britain, the Philippines and all the other targets of Islamist fascism are secure. And we will only become secure when all civilized nations unite to defeat the fascists. Even France will eventually be driven into solidarity with civilization.

This was a cruel, horrible murder in cold blood and in public of an artist merely using his freedom of expression, a civil right honored in the Netherlands for centuries.
It's not that the Dutch need more tolerance;
they apparently have been the paragon of tolerance for decades, being one of the most liberal countries in the world when it came to allowing any and every personal liberty imaginable from using hard drugs to euthanasia to gay rights.
The Dutch just got a hard lesson in jihad, having it shown to them all too clearly with Theo Van Gogh's slit throat that it is most likely that very tolerance, openness and liberty that is angering Islamist fundamentalists to lash out.
Calling this their 9/11, many of the people of the Netherlands have finally reached the limit of their tolerance.
Nor does it help that their many Muslim immigrants have not adopted Dutch culture or otherwise assimilated themselves in with the native-born, "white" citizenry.
In the aftermath of the murder, there have been attacks on mosques and Islamic schools, which were followed by retaliatory fire-bombing of Christian churches.
It seems the Dutch--almost alone in Western Europe--have finally awakened to the IslamoFacist evil living among them and this has only begun.
I'd like to suggest to them that they take a look at our Patriot Act as a start to dealing with the scourge of violent jihad in their midst.
The fact that they picked up 6 "known" radicals immediately after this murder shows that Dutch authorities probably knew all along that these particular Muslims were trouble, but had no way to move preemptively before someone got hurt.
The first home-turf casualty of the WOT has occurred for Holland.
Now we find out if the Dutch are more committed to Western democracy and freedom or to PC-politeness and tolerance for "righteous" outrage expressed violently.
I like the Dutch and I'm hoping for the former:
they, almost alone in Europe, fought the Nazi takeover of their country during WWII--even when the Germans bombed Rotterdam-- and sheltered their Jews (like the immortal Anne Frank) for as long as they could.