Srdja Trifkovic on the murder of Theo van Gogh at Chronicles (thanks to Jim):
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.