I feel for this brave, heroic woman. I don't approve of some of van Gogh's language as quoted here, but he embodies the soul of the West: if one is not free to express his convictions, one is not free. A darkness continues to descend upon Europe, and is also evident in the silly portions of this article on which I comment below. From The Guardian, with thanks to Filtrat.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has called the prophet Muhammad a "lecherous tyrant", Islam a "backward religion", and the Koran "in part a licence for oppression". Theo van Gogh dubbed Muslims "goat-fuckers", a radical Islamic leader "Allah's pimp", and Islam a "retrograde and aggressive" faith.Van Gogh, the 47-year-old great-grandson of Vincent's brother and a talented if wildly provocative film-maker, columnist and TV interviewer, died on a street in eastern Amsterdam on Tuesday morning, slain by a suspect whom police yesterday described as an Islamic fundamentalist with terrorist ties.
"I feel terribly guilty," a shocked Hirsi Ali told Dutch media yesterday, adding that she was "very much afraid" that Submission, an 11-minute film about Islamic violence against women that she wrote and the film-maker produced, was the direct cause of his death. Unlike van Gogh, Hirsi Ali lives under 24-hour police protection.
The elegant 34-year-old MP for the free-market VVD party, a Somalian refugee who 12 years ago fled an arranged marriage and now calls herself an "ex-Muslim", has every reason to be distressed: the manner of Van Gogh's death was brutal - and, it emerged yesterday, depressingly familiar....
The assassination has sparked a heartfelt national outcry in the traditionally tolerant Netherlands, sparking fears of a dangerous rise in racial tension in a country whose population of 16 million includes some one million Muslims, mainly of Turkish or North African origin. Fanning fears further, a recent government estimated that by 2010, several large Dutch cities like Rotterdam, Amsterdam, the Hague and Utrecht would have Muslim majorities.
Recent opinion polls show the Dutch to be increasingly hostile towards immigrants and fearful of Muslim extremism. Islam, immigration and integration have shot to the top of the political agenda since the rise of Pim Fortuyn, the populist anti-immigrant politician who was himself shot dead by an animal-rights activist in May 2002, and whose party finished second in general elections just days later. The centre-right Dutch government has only succeeded in fanning the flames by calling for greater integration of immigrants through language tests and citizenship classes, and recently fuelled even more controversy with plans to repatriate up to 26,000 failed asylum seekers.
There goes the media again, turning the victim into the perpetrator and the perpetrator into the victim. The wicked Dutch fanned the flames. Is it any wonder that one of the poor immigrants snapped?
In the midst of this tinderbox, insisting on their right to speak freely and with the support of many Dutch people, Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh scattered their sparks - a blistering critique of Islam - with magnificent disregard for the feelings they might be offending.
Ah. Magnificent disregard for offended feelings. Old Theo had it coming, eh?
The slender, couture-clad Hirsi Ali has had several fatwas issued against her and spends her life in the company of a brace of six-foot bodyguards; Van Gogh also received death threats but refused protection, saying the bullets would surely never come for him. "No one can seriously want to shoot the village idiot," he said recently....Damning Islam as a "backward, 12th- century religion", a "medieval, misogynist cult incapable of self-criticism and blind to modern science", Hirsi Ali says orthodox Muslim men routinely indulge in domestic violence against women, as well as incest and child abuse. To make matters worse, she argues, their behaviour is invariably hushed up.
"The Netherlands is a country that worships consensus and peace, but here you have newcomers who are not integrated into this system," she said last year. "They exploit an open, liberal society to reach illiberal ends. Everyone knows the position of women in Islamic countries is horrendous, but the Dutch like to think it doesn't happen here. They don't want to believe Muslim women in the Netherlands are beaten and locked up in their homes, or that girls are murdered for holding hands with a non-Muslim boy."
The solution, Hirsi Ali argues, is for fundamentalist Islamic books to be banned, Mullahs to be banished and for western societies "not to bend over backwards to accommodate a culture that advocates the degradation of women ... but to ensure that the Muslim men who perpetrate such barbarity are brought to justice".
The "lapsed Muslim" last year found an effective and articulate artistic partner in Van Gogh who, as well as having made a dozen feature films in his 25-year career, was also a much-loved, deliberately provocative and often obscene columnist and pamphleteer who published numerous indictments of an over-radical Islam in an over-tolerant Netherlands. Fired over the years by almost every Dutch newspaper and magazine for offending its readers, he wrote most recently for the daily freesheet Metro and ran his own highly popular website, De Gezonde Roker (The Healthy Smoker).
But in the no-longer-tolerant-Netherlands, he paid the price. Fraught Dutch commentators had no hesitation yesterday in saying that Holland had become a "front-line state" in a brutal collision between two cultures. "In France or Belgium, you don't have this same kind of very Dutch cabaret-like figure who rages about goat-fuckers," one commentator, Rene Cuperus, told De Volkskrant.
"They must know that they've landed up in the most liberal country in the world, the land of abortions and gays and all that - but Muslims don't see it. There's just no way to bridge that gulf in a politically correct way." Sociologist, Herman Vuisje, described Van Gogh's murder as "not a turning point, but the after-effect of a historical failure".
That failure is called "multiculturalism."
And an academic, Norbert Both, posed the question that, one imagines, is now troubling Ayaan Hirsi Ali - as well as a great many less outspoken Dutch people."The great dilemma, in confronting intolerance, is that you cannot reply with tolerance," he said. "If you do ... you lose your own identity. Can we, despite the emotion, remain ourselves? That's the question."
The Guardian would be the first to defend "Piss Christ" or any other artwork that ridiculed or offended Christianity and Christians. Oh, how pathetic and transparent are the double standards of the far left. . .
"The great dilemma, in confronting intolerance, is that you cannot reply with tolerance,"
Everyone should take this to heart. Many value the principle of tolerance so much, that they are willing to blindly sacrifice an entire culture of tolerance by their inaction.
Well, this cowboy ain't fixin to go down that road!
No, we can't offend muslims. After all, they might kill us.
I think that I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.
Wake up, Europe. A liberal democracy cannot be defended by herbivores.
Some-one like Theo couldn't have existed in France, because he would have gone to jail for the "hate crime" of offending muslims.
Please Holland DON'T bring in the same religious hate crime laws that France has, and that Britain soon will have.
Yes the anti-'hate speech' laws are obviously an attempt to sweep things under the carpet. If criticism of islam is banned, then nobody will get their throat cut for offending muslims, and we can all pretend that islam is a religion of peace. "You see, no throat-cutting here, our muslims are very well assimilated. The only real source of tension is the Israel-Palestine conflict." I've often wondered how many of the muslims here would actually attack Salman Rushdie, if they happened to see him in the street.
Somebody tell Hirsi Ali to stop feeling guilty, OK? She and Theo van Gogh practiced free speech; and a guilty party(ies) then murdered Theo van Gogh. When the Dutch police find the perps; and if the suspects they've nabbed are found guilty, then those criminals should feel the full force of the law.
An excellent letter to the Independent. No link unfortunatly.
Letter to the Editor
re: "Islam, Murder and Europe's Lost Civilization", Independent, 4.11.04
Sir: It's true, the West is lost, for it opened her gates to islamic invasion. The foul crime in Amsterdam will not, as Alibhai-Brown insinuates, "be seen as evidence that all muslims abhor enlightened values", for not all enlightened Westernes are so silly as to regard all Muslims as equal - there are Muslims who estimate enlightened values and abandon their faith to become Ex-Muslim(a)s like Ayaan Hirsi or Taslima Nasreen or Ibn Warraq (all living under threat of death in exile, apostates of Islam being outlawed, persecuted, or murdered), - but it gives clear evidence once more of the inherently violent message of a totalitarian political religion that spawns terror against the unbelievers and legitimates women's total deprivation of their human rights in accordance with all schools of it's religious law, sharia. This law is undermining the legal systems of Europe, enforced by collaboration, imposed on the non-muslim population by the European political elites, the willing supporters of the djihadists. The apologists of Islam who dominate Western media are routinely slamming the critics of "The Religion of Peace an Tolerance" according to the most widespread rule "blame the victim."
The untenable assertion that the murder of Pim Fortuyn has nothing to do with the slaughter of Van Gogh, on grounds of the first being committed by a non-muslim, is a rather eyewashing argument. Obviously both prominent Dutch men, well known for their similar political conviction, disobeying political correctness, were murdered due to voicing their criticism of Islam publicly, one by a moslem, the other by a native dhimmi, who eliminated with Pim Fortuyn the most feared political rival of the islamophile establishment, executing exactly the intentions of the most fanatic indigenous supporters of the muslim cultural occupants, the left collaborators of islamofascism.
The "animal rights activist" was a left activist, whose German lawyer is said be a sympathizer of the former German RAF, the criminal nest of a left milieu known for advocating terror - like all radical leftists being fascinated by violence, far more attached as usual to the criminals than to the victims. The criminal, male, young, foreigner, traditionally is suspect of beeing a hero or a saint for the Left, part of a "revolutionary" potential.
The activists of the Muslim Brotherhood (already the favorites of the Nazis against the Jews) are their new "oppressed" class - see the allegedly "desperate" suicide-bombers (desperate about the oil-dollars sponsering the terror?). Islam is the opium of the Left. Being unable to mobilize any longer their sacred masses with holy Marx, they have chosen Mohammed as their new Prophet, another messenger of a totalitarian god, promising paradise and not tolerating any deviation from orthodoxy.
It was not about "animal rights" - it is the religion, stupid. A religion defying all human rights. The neofascist Euslam of Eurabia.
While Blair is fighting terrorism abroad, the mother country of democracy he pretends to defend against terrorism has become the European propaganda center and turntable of radical islamic ideology. May at least one of the new islamic colonies in the West - maybe the Netherlands - wake up from the lulling mantras of "tolerance" towards the intolerant, may the little Country of Fortuyn and van Gogh, not for the first time in history invaded by a brutal power of intolerance, finish the self-destructive politics of appeasement in face of an enemy most hostile to democracy, freedom and human rights.
Is it not the country from whose shores the Prince of Orange once set sails for the coast of England? An enterprise promoting the early process of democratization... May the silenced voices of these recent Dutch martyrs for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Individual find the due resonance in the English Parliament, may they incite the sleeping spirit of resistance against this monstrous muslim obfuscation of the spirit of freedom and entlightenment in the country that gave birth to Locke and Hume, may they find an echo in the country that originated the bill of rights, refused any subjection under foreign power, political or religious, inspired and won the fight against fascism, may they remind the brave anti-terror-fighter Blair of the enemy within the walls of Troja, hostile to the west, breeding the breed of religious violence, - an enemy whom the left fundamentalist accomplices of islamic colonization are feeding. It is in the name of this left-islamo-fascist EUreligion, propagated in the Newspeak-terms of PC, political correctness res. corruptness, that Fortuyn and van Gogh were murdered. The inspirators of the religious slaughtering of dissidents, apostates and critics of Islam (not your author Ms. Alibhai-Brown, mistaking herself for being superior to the threatened Ayaan Hirsi, not she but Ayaan Hirsi is forced to hide, that's the difference between apologists and apostates of the "Religion of Peace", Mad'm), are not only sitting in Marocco or the Mosques of the Netherlands, they are operating as well in Londonistan, where Britain's favorite religious Zombies like Abu Hamza and similar gentlemen could act at lib (in contrast to the strictly confined muslim women), had not the United States declared the war against Terror. Be the methods successful or be they contested -they were and are the response to the islamic declaration of war to the West. The clash of civilizations which the EU-connection tries to blanket, to deny and to smoothe with the rhetoric conjuring tricks of their powerful left-media opinion cartel, has reached another stage of escalation.
How many death fatwas must be issued, how many be executed, how many acts of terror and bestial murder, butchering of defenceless hostages, of unarmed civilians, how many acts of elimination of the few critics of Islam, be they performed by moslems or their willing supporters, must occur until the old Europeans are willing to realize the coherence between islamic law and islamic war, between the religion of djihad and islamic terror, and last not least the crucial connection between the muslim inspirators of the islamization of Europe (along with their agenda for the annihilation of Israel) and their European collaborators - the financial and intellectual sponsors of the religious system of global terror, the religion of Subjection, called Islam. Subjection of the unbelievers to the muslim realm and reign of terror.
Regine van Cleev
(my pseudonym, sorry, because I'm not inclined to have my throat cut whilst Mdme Alibhai et al. can freely walk around and dissiminate such clueless comments as her message of political submission to the religion of peace.)
4.11.04 Basel Switzerland
One has to understand that Van Gogh used the term goatfuckers because of Khomeini's belief that sex with goats was permissible. He clearly singled out the fundamentalist idiots, the islamists if you will, not muslims in general. He worked with muslims all the time and made a very moving series about a muslim boy and a regular girl based on Romeo and Juliet. This man was an artist and a freethinker, not a politician. He hated Islam, not muslims.
When he called the radical thug Abu JahJah 'the prophet's pimp' it was after JahJah became known as an islamic maniac who wanted to introduce Sharia law in Holland. The man cheered on 9/11, for godsakes!
Yeah he used strong language but not more strong than the language those radicals use against us. Calling our women whores, marching down the street shouting 'Hamas Hamas, gas the Jews!', making it impossible for our teachers to teach about the holocaust, desecrating war heroes on remembrance day, attacking Jews and non-muslims in the street, destroying property, imposing their backward beliefs on the rest of us, the list is endless.
Why should we watch our language? Playing nice has gotten us nowhere with these religious jarheads in the last decades, it just made them stronger. We gave them everything they wanted and more. Theo's words were very necessary in a country lulled to sleep by radical left politics and the mainstream media. We needed a wake-up call and Van Gogh realised this. Just like Fortuyn tried to warn us, he got killed as well for speaking his mind.
Obviously some people do not believe in freedom of speech, especially not when there are people that express beliefs others than their own. Muslims especially can't seem to handle the slightest criticism and people's patience with them is wearing thin. Killing people doesn't help, either. I'm severely pissed off by our so-called progressive thinkers who seem to think that by playing nice and appeasing fascists they won't hurt us. "What do I need to do to make them not want to kill us anymore" one of those bright lights said on national tv a few days ago.
Well, give them our Jews, our gays, our women, our dignity and our constitution. Even after that they probably will still try and cut your head off. Now I know why my fellow Dutch never put up a fight when the nazi's came marching into the country. Too many damn cowards. The politically correct lunatics work overtime to paint Van Gogh as a radical himself who asked for it by criticizing Islam. A few channels wanted to air Submission as a tribute to Van Gogh but suddenly cancelled it because they fear for their lives.
By doing that they made us all a target. Now the terrorists know that by terrorising Dutch citizens they get pretty much everything they want. So they'll do it again.
If you want to know more about what goes on in Holland, we opened up an International Corner on the anti-idiotarian Gunzilla forum: http://www.gunzilla.net/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=35. You can register there and ask questions. Or just read up from time to time, we'll be keeping you up to date on what goes on.
Wow,some great posts in this thread. I'm glad that the independant published that letter by Regine Van Cleev, thanks Tipper. And Leveller, thanks for the link.
Yes, great posts, everybody! - especially that really impassioned letter from Regine. I'm surprised it actually got published in the Indie.
I have the impression that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in every threatened country in Europe who want to do SOMETHING about what's happening...but we're all individuals or small groups and no one really knows what to do or how to link up to become a movement with a real powerful voice that even those dhimmies in Brussels and Strasbourg will have to HEAR.
This JW site is great but maybe there should be a site too for those all across Europe. Is there any such thing already? Anyone know?
There had been a series of pony rapes in Holland a few months ago. A "Moroccan man" was finally caught inflagrante delicto with a Shetland. The Dutch were at loss what to do, because sex with animals is not illegal in Holland. They actaully debated it in Parliament. I believe they finally determined that it was cruelty to animals to force them to have sex with humans, but I'm not sure if they passed a law against it or not.
These incidents probably prompted Theo's remarks.
Here's an article about the pony raper btw:
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?channel_id=1&story_id=5519
It doesn't say anything about the ethnic background of the "65-year-old man" caught inflagrante delicto with the pony, but Dutch people on another board confirmed to me that he was a Moroccan.
Tipper and others- thank your for such good posts, and bravo for the letter to the "independent", I got that alibiforfascism womans name wrong on another post, but I distictly remember seeing her on a news discussion tv programme arguing that muslims should have their own members of the Euro Parliament.
The sheer cheek of it, they are so special, so different from everyone else, and I mean EVERYONE else they have to have MPs exclusively to represent them. This would be howled down in protest from left and right if it came from any other group, but they are so emboldened by the pc-engendered fear in the host country they can get away with it.
Your letter is superb, forceful and articulate, hope you don't mind my passing it around for a little enlightening of those who are having increasing difficulty ignoring the mounting evidence of jihad and dhimmitude reaching for their throats.
Re Tipper's post/letter by "Regine van Cleev"
Does anyone have a link to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's original piece that prompted the reply? I say this because on 11 Nov 2002, nearly 2 years ago, she wrote this:
http://www.obv.org.uk/reports/2002/rpt20021111e.htm
"Look around the Muslim worlds and violence is everywhere in families, among groups, in countries, used by rulers against their people, or by individuals against the state or anyone they don't care for. These violations are not confined to Muslim societies, it is true, but if Ramadan is to mean anything, it must make us examine the wretched in our own houses. It is becoming harder and harder to say that the majority of Muslims in the world today are people of peace (which they are) because every week produces yet more evidence of outrages that are committed in the name of Islam.
Often against women. I wonder how many British Muslims fasting at present feel enraged by the pending stoning of Amina Lawal, the young mother accused of having sex outside marriage by a sharia court? One of the most nauseating statements on this came from Inayat Bunglawalla of the Muslim Council of Britain – the moderate body close to government: "Perhaps in the West it can appear to be harsh but it is a matter of perspective," he explained, adding that stern Islamic justice was better than expensive prisons that house, feed and rehabilitate criminals. Really?
Another crisis: A Somali refugee in the Netherlands has just gone into hiding because she is being sought by one of our many killing brigades. Ayaan Hirsi Ali publicly condemned the treatment of women in Muslim communities and the conspiracies of silence that allow these to fester. Oh sure, hundreds of Muslim women will now write in response and say I am peddling stereotypes and that they are strong and free. Which many are. But that hardly matters when so many other women within the faith remain enslaved. The issue will be taken up this week by Women Living Under Muslim Laws at a meeting in London. I do hope the Muslim Council of Britain sends Mr Bunglawalla to what will be an educative experience."
If she is now really feeling "superior" to Hirsi Ali or justifying her murder then that's a pretty big about-turn. But not unusual for Ms. Alibhai-Brown to do...
As for the Guardian criticising Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh for their "magnificent disregard for the feelings they might be offending.", I am truly touched by their sensitivity for Islamic beliefs, as I am sure will be their columnist David Aaronovitch, who wrote this piece in the Observer, the Guardian's sister Sunday paper, on 26 September 2004:
"You can't even insult Catholicism any more. Last Thursday, Stuart Murphy, the controller of BBC3, took the decision not to show Popetown, a cartoon series set in the Vatican and featuring an infantile pontiff, celebrity-hungry nuns and venal cardinals (now there's an original thought). Having seen the series, he felt its comic virtues failed to 'outweigh the potential offence it will cause'. So it was either unfunny or offensive - and he only knew when he saw the final product."
The article continues...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1312826,00.html
How sensitive they were towards Catholics!!!
the movie is not freedom of speech but freedom of insulting. you can send any critics to Islam in educated way. you can not hide behind 'art' to become rude.
I tought Hirsi Ali now very satisfied. Finally she can push the tolerance of dutch moslem into the lowest limit.
If Hirsi Ali tought she become better person after she leave Islam why she should make provocative and rude statement. It just hurt other people. Does she think now she's better than Islamic terrorist ? I tought she's kind of terrorist also.
Some moslem people interpret differently Al-Quran. If Hirsi Ali found some wrong interpretation among moslem then she can use her knowledge to lead to right way. If she does not have any knowledge about Islam then she better shut up.