Posted on 11/03/2004 5:33:05 PM PST by A. Pole
Theo van Gogh (47), a Dutch filmmaker who had made a movie critical of some aspects of Islamic society and culture, has been shot dead in an Amsterdam street on November 2. The late great-grand-nephew of famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh had received many death threats after releasing Submission last August, a short film detailing the treatment of Muslim women. He shrug off the threats, saying there was nothing offensive in his movie. The killer, a 26-year-old Moroccan residing in Holland, was wearing a long beard and Islamic garb when he shot and stabbed van Gogh in broad daylight. He was arrested after a shootout with the police.
Van Gogh's murder brings to mind the killing of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn who advocated curbs on Islamic immigration. He was gunned down in 2002, only days before an election in which he was expected to do well. Both men supported Holland's permissive social climate—Fortuyn was a homosexual who supported "women's rights" euthanasia, and legalization of drugs—and both came to see Islam and rampant Muslim immigration as the greatest threat to the kind of liberal, secular society in which they felt comfortable.
The threats on van Gogh's life started ten weeks ago, after the premiere of his film. It was scripted by a Somali-born woman, Hirsi Ali (34), who grew up as a Muslim but has denounced the cult. She is now a Dutch national assembly deputy, and vociferous in her criticism of Islamic obscurantism and violence. She says the goal of the film was to draw attention to rampant but concealed violence against Muslim women, including those living in Europe, who are routinely subjected to rape, incest, forced marriages, and the suicides. "Muslims deny it," she says, "and many Dutch are afraid of taking it on, of causing religious tension, of being called racists."
Van Gogh insisted that he could not see why so many Muslims expressed outrage with his movie. It opens with a Muslim prayer; the narrator then tells stories of four women who ask for Allah's help to lighten their suffering. One was forced to marry a man she hates, one was raped and made pregnant by her uncle, one was whipped after she had sex with her boyfriend, and one is repeatedly beaten by her husband. The women feel abandoned by Allah despite their devotion to him. As a close-up shot of a battered and bruised face appears, the narrator says:
"Oh, Allah, most high. You say that men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because you have given one more strength than the other. Yet I feel at least once a week the strength of my husband's fist on my face."
In addition to his film, van Gogh also wrote columns about Islam that were published on his website and in the Dutch newspaper Metro.
All that appears to have sufficed for a fatwa, a death sentence, and an execution-style murder, in broad daylight, deep inside the Western world. There but for the grace of God go I. Lord have mercy.
In a display of suicidal idiocy be expected from a supine European Social Democrat, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende hastened to declare that "nothing is known about the motive" of the assassin, and called on the nation "not to jump to far-reaching conclusions." (Only hours later the police in The Hague arrested two-dozen Dutch youths, who seem to have jumped to their own conclusions, for "inciting hatred" and shouting "discriminatory and racist" chants.) The Prime Minister also referred to van Gogh's "outspoken opinions"—with at least a hint of the possibility that he had it coming—and boldly declared that it would be "unacceptable if a difference of opinion led to this brutal murder."
Mijnheer Balkenende seems to be implying that "this brutal murder" will be deemed less "unacceptable" if it turns out to have been caused not by "a difference of opinion" but by some more profound reason—by the sense of pain and grievance in the Muslim community, perhaps, caused by the late filmmaker's insensitive and inappropriate words and actions. His reference to Van Gogh's "outspoken opinions" is already echoed in a hundred obituaries describing the victim as "controversial." This brings to mind a Dutch journalist's New York Times obituary of Pim Fortuyn, which called his views "a curious mixture of right, center and left." In today's Holland, no less than in America, it is obvious that notions described as "outspoken," "controversial," and "curious" denote thoughts, as opposed to programmed responses.
As for the Muslims? they are merely doing their thing, in the footsteps of their prophet. There were no turbulent filmmakers in Muhammad's time, but there were poets, and some of them gave him as much grief as van Gogh apparently did to the young Moroccan. After the battle of Badr, as Muhammad scrutinized his prisoners, his eye fell fiercely on one al-Nadr whom he had never forgiven for captivating the audiences in Mecca with more entertaining tales. He was beheaded on the spot. In Medina Muhammad ordered the murder of Asma bint Marwan, a poetess who made fun of him in verse. Anticipating Henry II's outburst, Muhammad exclaimed, "Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?" One of his followers duly did, that same night, stabbing her as she nursed her youngest child. One Abu Afak, supposedly over a hundred years old, criticized Muhammad in verse. The latter simply commented, "Who will deal with this rascal for me?" Abu Afak did not see the morning. The hatred of artistically inspired detractors was obsessive with Muhammad, and reflected in the Kuranic verdict that poets are inspired by Satan and have gone astray, possessed and no better than soothsayers.
That was the man who is explicitly upheld by all Muslims everywhere—from Mecca to Milan, from Amsterdam to Agadir—as the paragon of godly, morally impeccable behavior, to be admired and emulated until the end of time. His followers in the Western world are ready and willing to kill the native-born infidels who dare say things that are not to their liking. They feel justified by the divine sanction offered by their prophet. And kill they most assuredly will.
Short of a belated, massive, and unexpected recovery of its spiritual and moral strength—impossible under Prime Minister Balkenende and his ilk—Europe faces submission to Muhammad and eventual acceptance of sacred Arab places as its own. It can be saved, maybe, if it rises against its rulers, against the Balkenendes, Blairs, and a thousand clones who facilitate the advance of Islam by destroying every trace of the sense of community of European nations based on kinship, faith, and culture. If it does, if the youths arrested in The Hague provide an example and a lead for a million others, Theo van Gogh will not have died in vain.
Waning of Europe bump.
The Third Reich never died. The Muslims are the new Nazis. Adolf Hitler and his henchmen would be very proud today.
All this murderous crap can be found in the Koran and more specifically in the life of Muhammad. And the Koran exhorts all Muslims to emulate the life of Muhammad.
Again, the "religion of peace" at work.
Absolutely true. The left does not understand that Hitler has returned, far worse than ever, wearing a dirty rag around his head and chanting "Allah Akbar" in place of "Heil Hitler."
Why should this be a surprise??
What else does one expect from the Religion of Peace? He should have taken precautions if he was going to criticize Islam. And I think he was very brave for doing so. A little naive in not anticipating any response.
Now if Michael Moore really wants to make a name for himself.......Nah, he's a bully and a coward and Hollywood and Cannes wouldn't give him awards for a 'documentary' about murderous Muslims.
Very interesting, if disturbing. What does the author mean by "there but for the grace of God go I?" That part I didn't understand.
One thing we all need to understand, Van Gogh, Fortym, they may have had more liberal views than most of us here, but the Islamofacists want to kill us too. They are doing a good job of killing people, Muslims too. They pretty much s*ck at everything else.
I hope that Dutch woman will be safe, but if I were her I'd hire some armed and extremely dangerous bodyguards STAT.
Muslims lionize Adolf Hitler to this day. They call him Abu Ali. "Abu Ali Akbar." When Adolf Eichmann was tried in Israel, Muslims rushed to his defense and called him a "martyr", "courageous", and "hero" for his role in the Holocaust. Newspapers throughout the Muslim world canonized Adolf Eichmann. Mein Kempf is very popular in the Muslim world. Last of all, many Nazis and Nazis collaborators fled to Muslim countries in the Middle East, mainly Egypt and Syria and some fleeing to Palestine, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
The alleged "religion of peace" claims yet another victim.
According to Nietsche, if a culture is strong and righteous, it need not resort to murder in the face of criticism or doubt - it can disregard such things as an elephant disregards a gnat.
If Islam is indeed the all-encompassing ideal of human existence that its followers claim, then why the ever-growing mountain of corpses being heaped in sacrifice to their god?
It seems to me that Islam is the moral equivalent of National Socialism and the various flavors of revolutionary Communism, in the sense that those ideologies feed and nurture the absolute worst of human nature: domination, lust for power, and mass murder in the name of the "Cause".
Murderous fanatacism is not born of strength, but of fear, insecurity, and envy.
Europe, meet your future.
If this happened in my city we would be burning mosques to the ground. Why is this not happeneing over there. The only defense to Islam is the wholesale explusion of its culture of murder and terror from a nation.
As much of a monster as Hitler was, at least he wouldn't have betrayed his people in the manner that many of the cultural Marxists running Europe currently are. If the EU bureaucrats don't take seriously the growing fear and anger of its native people, one day there will be some sort of pan-European fascist backlash.
EU bureaucrats believe in the false gospel of John Lennon:
Imagine Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people living for today... Imagine there's no countries, It isnt hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, No religion too, Imagine all the people living life in peace... Imagine no possesions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people Sharing all the world... You may say Im a dreamer, but Im not the only one, I hope some day you'll join us, And the world will live as one.
Yeah, those Marxists are traitors. They need to be eradicated from the face of humanity too besides Islamists.
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