From the International Herald Tribune, with thanks to Scandie:
...Could Theo van Gogh's death have been avoided? Were there sufficient indications that he should be protected? On Aug. 30, a day after the transmission of "Summer Guests," including "Submission, Part 1," Theo van Gogh's photo was put up on an Islamist Web site under a photograph of me. My photo was captioned "The Wicked Infidel Mortadda," his "The Wicked Infidel Ribald."
"Mortadda" = apostate.
Twenty-two researchers were put to work to find out who was responsible. I made a statement to the police, and the culprit was sentenced to nine months in prison. Was Theo consulted about this? Did no one consider that revenge was imminent, not only because of the film, but also because one of them had been imprisoned?I am angry because I know that the perpetrator is not alone: He is a member of a network of Muslims who are deeply wrapped up in their belief, who walk around with intentions to kill innocent people. Furthermore the perpetrator could prepare his killing in the knowledge of friends and acquaintances, people who would never murder anyone themselves, but who do not care about Theo's death. This fact makes Van Gogh's murder so different from the threats of animal rights activists against politicians or the letters containing bullets sent to the police. These two menaces can be controlled. Islamic terrorism, both in the Netherlands and abroad, is able to thrive because it is embedded in a wider circle of fellow Muslims. I'm angry that this fact is never fully understood by the people responsible for our security.
I feel guilty that I approached Theo with the script for "Submission." And that he's dead because of it. In the cold light of day I know that only the perpetrator is guilty of his death. Instinctively, that is confusing. Theo and I discussed at length the possible consequences for both of us. He said, "As soon as such considerations dissuade you from expressing your opinion, isn't that the end of free speech? That is grist to the mill of the Islamists."
I was prepared to go a very long way to make people sit up and take notice: the Dutch authorities, who have to realize that radical Islam and its supporters have established themselves in the Netherlands; the Muslim population, which must learn to see the unsightly birthmarks of its own religion.
The Muslim population must realize that its disadvantages are not so much a function of a weakened belief in God, or of discrimination, as the radicals would have it, but partly their own doing. The treatment of the individual, the position of women, the creation of ghettos like Islamic schools, these are all factors that explain why Muslim communities lag behind others.
Theo agreed with me on all these points. In his own way and as a filmmaker he tried, as much as possible, not to shut out Islamic youth but to connect with it.
I feel guilty that I abused his lack of fear, because I know that anyone who tackles the holy scripture is in great danger. A man has been killed in a most abominable manner, simply because of what he believes. This is relatively new for the Netherlands, but in Islamic countries, it's a normal part of life.
Although today the extremists are still a very small minority among our Muslim fellow citizens, the potential influence of the extremists within that group is huge.
And still Europe doesn’t understand what danger we are in. Yesterday the European ministers of integration had a meeting in Groninjen. They concluded that to defeat Islamic extremism Europe must have stricter antidiscrimination laws, and we have to invest more money in jobs and affirmative action, so the radicalising younger Muslims don’t feel excluded in our society. That is how dhimmi Europe thinks it can defeat terrorism. I’m very ashamed to be an European citizen at the moment. I really *really* hope Hirshi Ali will be back in the Dutch parliament very soon.
It is often hard to find a true hero in our times. Hirsi Ali is a genuinely brave woman who seems to have enormous compassion. She is my hero.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali for EU president!!!!!!
The camapign starts now!!!!
Ditto libbysmom & obl r us...
Does anyone know how well she rates among the Dutch public in terms of popularity? Whether she could be the PM of that country? If she were to be in that position, it would be much harder for the lefties to shout any anti-Islamism policies as "Islamophobic" (although the Guardian are already their best)
This is what Hirsi Ali said in a program 3/6/2003:
(see it all at http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/stories/s898958.htm)
"AYAN HIRSI ALI: What has dramatically changed is before the 15th of May, anyone who would dare criticise Islam would be called an Islamophobic, anyone who would criticise the cultures of non-western people would be called a racist, people would say you are discriminating and I think my role is that I confuse those people because I am black and I was a Muslim and I'm a woman and I say exactly those things so it's really difficult to accuse me."
Given all the discussion on "racism" now, can we say even now that things have changed dramatically enough? They can't call her racist, but some have called her extreme, traumatized and confused. Some multiculti activists and "feminists" have dismissed this exceptonally independent and courageous thinker as a "puppet" used by her party, just because she doesn't fit into their rigid categories of classification - accusations that were, in a morbid way, similar to those made by van Gogh's killer in the murder letter, hinting to her "Jewish masters".
I really hope that even those people will listen to her now. I wish her luck, and strength to go on.
This woman is very brave but have to be careful, these fanatic people are going to try it, be careful
Ayan Hirsi Ali:
Theo and I discussed at length the possible consequences for both of us. He said, "As soon as such considerations dissuade you from expressing your opinion, isn't that the end of free speech?"
It certainly is.
From the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX):
The Netherlands Association of Journalists (Nederlandse Vereniging van Journalisten (NVJ), Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN (WiPC) have condemned the murder.
Full story, with links (including one that followed the murder of Pim Fortuyn):
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/62496/
It's good to see the press condemning this murder - I imagine it's getting a little hot under the collar...
Nordthiad Didn't they use these ultra strict antidiscrimination laws to shut down The Vlaams Blok party in Belgium ?
A varient spelling of the German word for Green is Heidegger, as in why are Green party leftists so radically anti-American and anti-Semitic? Where did all the Nazis and Communists go? Green. Those are the intellectuals of the Academy. Why isn't Hugh lecturing at a university? Look at Heidegger's mentor. We are trapped in a system ruled by totalitarians stretching from as far back as Sparta, they are continuous, and they will only go down with a fight. These are not people one seriously debates with. The West is captured by this dystopian police state clique; and it's shock-troops are the leftist Greens and the rightwing neo-Nazi thugs of Islam. The intellectual elite of homosexual pedophiles like Foucault, et al, are laughing.
There is only resistence to the fascist elite if you care to restore to your lives anything like what you had in the Jeffersonian world of America. Like the minutemen, you have to rouse your communities. You have to take charge at some point of your own destinies. You have to accept the facts of self-sacrifice for the gain of the whole.
We've seen over and again that our opposition resorts to murder when they run out of arguments. For some it's their first resort. Either way, you will never be safe simply because you're too afraid to be be hurt. They will come for you when they've finished with Spencer. They're not people you debate with. We're dealing with full-blown Nazis. We will always deal with them. Or, in our time, we won't.
There are years of excuses left. You need not do anything at all. The world will slide by as it does now, and you won't even really notice the change from month to month, and what you do notice you'll grow used to over the years. Eventually they will come for you. Probably not soon.
Or you can start taking some responsibility for your actions and the state of our communities. If you can read of elementary schools indoctrinating children in Idaho in the prettiness of Islam without moving toward some social organizing of your own to combat this, then one must ask why you take any interest at all in these issues.
The liberalism of the left is not appealing to any other than those pot-smoking hippie idiots like that creature, K--t. the phony Nature whorsip, the Blood Mysticism, the cult of power, it is rooted in the Nazi ideologies of Heidegger.It's not just tie-died shirts and save the whales. It's insidious Naziism. It's allies in the Religion of Peace are insidious. Look at what they do. Stop the agonizing. Start some organizing.
Evil deludes the most brilliant and simple of minds.
I don't think Heidegger had a mentor, but the teacher who probably influenced him most was Husserl, sometimes called the 'father of phenomenology', also a Jew, whom he betrayed, but not quite to the gas chambers; it was a betrayal befitting a loquacious philosopher who takes himself, and his apparent problems, too seriously.
I don't think I would look for too much 'evil" (there's that word again...go away!) among the 'leftist intellectual elites', whomever they are: confusion, misdeeds, harms, horrible dangers, and foolishness, all related to seeing Islam for what it is...but not the stuff of Islam.
But, things are not what they seem, I think. I actually have some hope for the so-called 'intellectuals' when the truth about Islam comes more and more into focus. We should not allow something evil (...excuse me, I said it again, must be something I ate today) to influence our judgments, leading us to dehumanize and simplify apparent adversaries, whom we may count among our most valuable friends tomorrow, or one day.
@ TrueBrit: in my opinion the Belgium government had no legal base to forbid the Vlaams Blok. They banned the Vlaams Blok on things the party said before 1999, while the antidiscrimination laws are made in 1999. Though the Vlaams Blok said some real racist things many years ago, the party became a more moderate party nowadays. In my opinion a democratic country should not forbid a democratic party that has support of 27% of the Flemish population.
Yes, that would be the dead Jewish Husserl. And from where does the Green shoot?
Intellectuals are as evil as any others, the great difference being that an intellectual has no excuse for any of his evils: he is a rational man making rational choices to do evil. And to dress up evil as Oness with Nature and solidarity with the Third World Peoples is sophistry and evil sophistry. Those who deny on paper the existence of evil are so vile I can't speak when I encounter them. Nor need I. They have spoken for me. The inellectual tenor of our time is pretty-fascism, philobarbarism, and sentimentality. There's no need to argue with it or delve into its mysteries. There is a need to confront the shock-troops, the throngs of enraged and psychotic Moslem men who long for death. The passive understanding of the nature of islam is not a winning proposition. The cynical Heidegger-like intellectuals who would destroy their betters for the sake of their own promotion, the intellectual left, in this case, are not people worth debating. Fristly, organize a response in the communities of the Western world to stop the encroachment of their plants. Later cut the philobarbarism at its roots.
Thses Nazis are not our potential friends. There are only those fools in the vast middle who will follow whatever trend is the mosre social. That is rightly so. Do you really think you'd want a world full of inb Warraqs? I would, but what a world.
We must not pay out our time in understanding the nature of murderers. No point trying to persuade them of the errors of their ways. Evil will not go away of its own accord. It will wither when it's rooted out and cast aside. To do anything so metaphorical we should start by attacking the idea that liberalism is a good thing, that sensitivities are precious, et c. Green cliches are Naziism in disguise. Step over them. Talk to your neighbor. Don't email your wife. Meet people. You might even like them. And you might find they don't feel so good about all this encraochment and creeping fascism they can't quite grasp. No need. Stop concrete encroachments at the sidewalk. It only becomes an intellectual issue at the higher levels of propaganda, at which we are not yet there. We do know, like Philospher Kings, the Good. Let's start acting on that by hitting at the kxxts of the neighborhood, and by raising people's nervousness to a fever pitch. Blood-Mystic tie-dye is fascism. Call multi-culturalism a varient of Naziism. Frighten your neighbors. they do not need more education. How much more intellectualizing needs be done when a fat Dutchman can't safely ride his bicycle down a street in Amsterdam?
Our intellectual elite is collaborationists. Oraganize the proletariate of America for a relovution against the fascist elite and their Blood Cult of Power. Those people are evil. They are intellectuals who kill. They are the filth that was Heidegger, that was Foucault.
Today they buried Arafat. Tomorrow the intellectuals will raise up some new thing to idolize. We're not talking about people we can deal with raqtionally, intellectuals or no. We are faced with evil people who will have to go the hard way. And to gain the Good, we will have to struggle with force by using force. For now, stop "understanding" the nature of the threat. Organize.
Of course I don't direct that at any particular writer, but I put it out as a general statement, however poorly typed and conceived at the keyboard. My point is that we must forego the endless chit-chat of the nervous, and we must pick up our lives as men of will and action and make history. Organize for the day that might conceivably come when Spencer is on the pages of this site. We are dealing with evil people. Organize against them. Forget the middle. Go for your friends and brothers-in-arms first. I exhort us generally. Enough talk.
I'm curious what Heidegger (and Foucault) have to do with the threat of islam and how society at large will benefit by having its proletariat rise against the intellectual elite "collaborationists". Ayaan Hirsi Ali is by the way a member of the intellectual elite as were, to a certain extent, Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn . Islam is the single most anti-intellectual movement/religion in the world and has been for hundreds of years. The almost complete lack of a liberal intellectual stream within islam and their inability to accept any criticism is what makes islam so problematic. Numerous "intellectuals" have pointed this out including liberal intellectuals such as Gore Vidal. Insulting or denigrating liberals, greens, environmentalists, intellectuals or whatever seems to be counterproductive and peripheral to the problem of islam. The fact that certain liberals or socialists go out of their way to pander to islamists testifies to their ignorance as individuals, but has little to do with liberalism or socialism in general. The present enormous problem with islamic migrants in Europe is also largely due to employers lobbying political parties, socialist, liberal and conservative, to allow massive migration from predominantly muslim countries and this problem was exacerbated by allowing family reunification etc. A better intellectual understanding of phenomena such as islam, demography etc. back in the 70's would have allowed us to avoid many of the problems now threatening the western world.
I'm curious what Heidegger (and Foucault) have to do with the threat of islam and how society at large will benefit by having its proletariat rise against the intellectual elite "collaborationists". Ayaan Hirsi Ali is by the way a member of the intellectual elite as were, to a certain extent, Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn . Islam is the single most anti-intellectual movement/religion in the world and has been for hundreds of years. The almost complete lack of a liberal intellectual stream within islam and their inability to accept any criticism is what makes islam so problematic. Numerous "intellectuals" have pointed this out including liberal intellectuals such as Gore Vidal. Insulting or denigrating liberals, greens, environmentalists, intellectuals or whatever seems to be counterproductive and peripheral to the problem of islam. The fact that certain liberals or socialists go out of their way to pander to islamists testifies to their ignorance as individuals, but has little to do with liberalism or socialism in general. The present enormous problem with islamic migrants in Europe is also largely due to employers lobbying political parties, socialist, liberal and conservative, to allow massive migration from predominantly muslim countries and this problem was exacerbated by allowing family reunification etc. A better intellectual understanding of phenomena such as islam, demography etc. back in the 70's would have allowed us to avoid many of the problems now threatening the western world.
My hat is off to Ayaan Hirsi. But, since you raise the intellectual life of post-Christian Europe, I think I know why, with few exceptions, Europe isn't fighting back.
The heirs of the endarkenment, whether in Europe or America, have long been crying about Christ, "We will not have this man to rule over us." They thus embrace and refuse to see evil in any other hater of Christ. At the same time, they strip away every value they ever had. In the 1960's, they used "fag" as the worst thing you could call someone; today, they eagerly get in line to be intellectually sodomized by the gay rights movement. Early socialists once decried capitalism for making early marriage and family life a non-option for many; now their heirs see sterility as "progress". People who decried European nationalism embrace the nationalisms of the rest of the world.
By the way, Hannah Arendt was Heidegger's grad student and, briefly, his mistress. However, I confess to a great admiration for Arendt's work on totalitarian. Perhaps she was so insightful because she saw it up close and personal, as it were.
For the record, and not related nor directed to any of the posts here, I intended to insult Heidegger, not Husserl. Didn't notice the ambiguity until just now and it made me feel like a toad.
What does the gay rights movement have to do with islam, except for the fact that islam is virulently homophobic. Pim Fortuyn was by the way openly gay and one of the first in Holland to call for a halt to muslim immigration. The relatively low fertility in Europe also isn't a problem; the state subsidised high fecundity of the islamic immigrants is, as is the enormous birth rate in the islamic world in general. Instead of critising liberals, gays etc. we should question the wisdom of our continued dependence on islamic sources of crude oil and thus indirect sponsorship of islamic fundamentalism. Conservatives have also virutally crippled family planning work in the third world with their stance against abortion etc. and the popes stance on anti-contraception. How many more impoverished jihadists has this led to? In fact the pope and Bush have joined forces on various occasions with such islamic regimes as Saudi Arabia and Sudan to put a halt to European family planning initiatives. Finally, could some one give me a concise summary of why Heidegger has caused so much trouble, thanks.
It is both informative and fun to digress. However, we must focus on the threat that will engulf us all. How are we going to repel the creeping Islamization that has encroached upon us? R.S. has shown that there are extremists i.e. Jihadists, on every continent and in most countries. Careful examination will probably show that they are in all of them.
Consider this:We can not be disorganized and appear to squabble among ourselves as this further emboldens the enemy. Should they win, all of our petty disagreements will solved, as Islam allows none. All will be crushed under the weight of Sha'ria and subject to interminable fatwahs to correct any deviance in thought or action.
Politics may make strange bedfellows, and I'm sure that our bid survival will result in the strangest alliances ever known. We must stop squabbling and digressing. Our survival depends on cooperation.
"Islamic terrorism, both in the Netherlands and abroad, is able to thrive because it is embedded in a wider circle of fellow Muslims. I'm angry that this fact is never fully understood by the people responsible for our security."
Hirsi Ali is one great woman. I hope she continues the fight and does not ever meet the sad destiny of Theo.
She and Hitchens are two of the few leftists (or ex-leftists, since she left Labour and he quit The Nation) who understand more about what is actually happening.
I suppose the Left has been blind for too long, but now some eyes are starting to open. They sympathize with Islam, I suppose, simply because of misplaced guilt and benevolence: identifying in them some of the opressed of the Third World, it's hard for them to assimilate that that selfsame community now harbours some of the most reactionary people in the planet. The "poor = victim" - "rich & white = opressor" simply does not apply in this case, if such manicheist view ever did. While it is true that the majority of Muslims in Europe are surely law-abiding non-violent people, the problem is that:
"Islamic terrorism, both in the Netherlands and abroad, is able to thrive because it is embedded in a wider circle of fellow Muslims. I'm angry that this fact is never fully understood by the people responsible for our security." (Hirsi Ali)
But I do agree with Arhopala that trying to put everybody in the same bag and relating gay-lib with radical muslims or insulting islamists or leftist intellectuals for being "homosexuals" is stupid and counterproductive. (There is no gay lib or free speech or even intellectual discussion under the radical islamist utopia, and the sooner people understand this, the better.) In fact, radical islamism is completely at odds with almost all of the traditional flags of the Left (secularism, anti-censorship, minority rights, women's rights, environment), and this is why it surprises me and saddens me that so many people in still do not seem to understand it, preferring to find excuses.
Also, the tragic thing is that the first generation of Muslims in Europe is far less radical than the new generation. I suppose that it could be because the elders have experienced in the flesh the harshness and stupidity of Middle East regimes and, while keeping some aspects of their culture, tried to adapt in one way or the other - the same Hirsi Ali could be a case in point of successful transition, but obviously she's a bright young woman, one in a million. The younger generation of Muslims, born in Europe, is paradoxically more gullible to the murderous allure of radical preachers. "My son the fanatic", by Hanif Kureishi (he, born in London from a Pakistani mother, is another case of successful transcultural adaptation), captures well the situation. Both Kureishi and Hirsi Ali are agnostic now, of course. But they show that there is another way.
The film "Submission" was supposed to have three parts, only the first one was made. I suggest that, instead of recoiling in fear and silence, the answer should be to make those two other parts as a homage to Theo. It will be hard to find an available director, of course. But bowing to radicalism will only prove that the intimidation campaing is working.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali IS incredibly brave. I'm definitely going to vote for her if she runs again.
"Although today the extremists are still a very small minority among our Muslim fellow citizens, the potential influence of the extremists within that group is huge."
The Muslim community is the pond that extremists swim in. Drain the pond, and it becomes much easier to shoot the extremists.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is another opportunist that is cashing in on the hysteria against Islam and Muslims.
The facists on this website keep talking about killing. Great!
For Arhopala,
Heidegger was a member of the Nazi party, appointed rector at Freiburg University in 1933, and wrote some very weird stuff in those days. See, 'The Self Assertion of the German University'.
The rest of the 'controversy' is generated by his status as one of the most 'brilliant' philosophers of the 20th century, in the eyes of some, his silence after the war, especially on the Holocaust, and some odd stories that call into question what was going on in his head; and then there is the philosophical issue of the relationship between his 'philosophy' and his political views, which folks debate.
Best of luck.
Thanks JTF
M12390, why is Hirsi Ali an opportunist? She could have made life so much easier for herself if she had kept her views to herself. She aleady had a successful career. In the beginning I actually didn't think that much of her because she was basically saying a lot about the islam that I already knew, and I thought the only reason she gained notariety was because of her status as an immigrant from a third world nation. Had I said the same things I would have been branded a racist. Now, however, I realise how brave she really is to confront islam as an apostate. Her stance on islam has led to her being vilified by everything from feminists to fundamentalists and forced her into hiding with round the clock protection. What an opportunity!
M12390
You disgust me. Aayan Hirsi Ali lives surrounded by bodyguards every single second of her life. And YOU call her an opportunist!
I suppose next you'll be saying that Theo Van Gogh's murder was a suicide.
Why don't you GOGH to hell!!!