Nov 2, 2004, 7:30 AM (ET)
By TOBY
STERLING
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A
Dutch filmmaker who had received death threats after
releasing a movie criticizing the treatment of women
under Islam was slain in Amsterdam on Tuesday, police
said.
A suspect, a 26-year-old man
with dual Dutch-Moroccan nationality, was arrested after
a shootout with officers that left him wounded, police
said.
Filmmaker Theo van Gogh had
been threatened after the August airing of the movie
"Submission," which he made with a right-wing
Dutch politician who had renounced the Islamic faith of
her birth. Van Gogh had received police protection after
its release.
Dutch national broadcaster NOS
and other media reported that Van Gogh's killer shot and
stabbed his victim and left a note on his body. NOS said
witnesses described the attacker as having an "Arab
appearance."
A witness who lives in the
neighborhood heard six shots, and saw the man concealing
a gun. She said he walked away slowly, spoke to someone
at the edge of the park, and then ran.
"He was walking slowly,
like he was trying to be cool," she said, describing
him as wearing a long beard and Islamic garb. "He
was either an Arabic man or someone disguised as a
Muslim," she said.
Another witness told Dutch
Radio 1 the killer arrived by bicycle and shot Van Gogh
as he got out of a car. "He fell backward on the
bicycle path and just laid there. The shooter stayed next
to him and waited. Waited to make sure he was dead."
The slain filmmaker was the
great grandson of the brother of famous Dutch painter
Vincent van Gogh, who was also named Theo. In a recent
radio interview, Van Gogh dismissed the threats and
called the movie "the best protection I could have.
It's not something I worry about."
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter
Balkenende called on the Dutch people to remain calm.
"Nothing is known about
the motive," he said in a written statement. "I
want to call on everyone not to jump to far-reaching
conclusions. The facts must first be carefully weighed so
let's allow the investigators to do their jobs."
Balkenende praised Van Gogh as
a proponent of free speech who had "outspoken
opinions."
"It would be unacceptable
if a difference of opinion led to this brutal
murder," he said.
Police spokesman Eric Vermeulen
said the attacker fled to the nearby East Park, and was
arrested after exchanging gunfire with police. Both the
suspect and a policeman suffered minor injuries.
"They were conscious"
when taken to hospital, Vermeulen said.
Van Gogh's killing immediately
rekindled memories of the 2002 assassination of Dutch
politician Pim Fortuyn who polarized the nation with his
anti-immigration views and was shot to death days before
national elections.
In addition to his film, van
Gogh also wrote columns about Islam that were published
on his Web site, www.theovangogh.nl, and Dutch newspaper
Metro.
The short television film
"Submission" aired on Dutch television in
August, enraged the Muslim community in the Netherlands.
It told the fictional story of
a Muslim woman forced into a violent marriage, raped by a
relative and brutally punished for adultery.
The English-language film was
scripted by a right-wing politician who years ago
renounced the Islamic faith of her birth and now refers
to herself as an "ex-Muslim."
Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a
member of the Dutch parliament, has repeatedly outraged
fellow Muslims by criticizing Islamic customs and the
failure of Muslim families to adopt Dutch ways.
The place of Muslim immigrants
in Dutch society has long been a contentious issue in the
Netherlands, where many right-wing politicians have
pushed for tougher immigration laws and say Muslims
already settled in the country must make a greater effort
to assimilate.
Theo van Gogh, 47, has often
come under criticism for his controversial movies. In
December, his next movie "06-05," about the May
6, 2002 assassination of Pim Fortuyn, is scheduled to
debut on the Internet.
Copyright 2004 Associated
Press. All right reserved.
Death of a
“Blasphemer”
By Robert
Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 3, 2004
Theo van Gogh was shot dead on an Amsterdam street on
Tuesday morning. His assailant was a Dutch Moroccan who
was wearing traditional Islamic clothing. After shooting
van Gogh several times, he stabbed him repeatedly, slit
his throat with a butcher knife, and left a note
containing verses from the Qur’an on the body. Said
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende: “Nothing
is known about the motive” of the killer.
Others were not quite so cautious. A Dutch
student declared: “This has to end, once and for
all. You cannot just kill people on the street in a
brutal way when you disagree with them.” Job Cohen,
the mayor of Amsterdam, declared: “We will show loud
and clear that freedom of speech is important to
us.”
Freedom of speech: Eight weeks ago, van
Gogh’s film Submission aired on Dutch TV. The
brainchild of an ex-Muslim member of the Dutch
Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Submission decried
the mistreatment of Muslim women — and even featured
images of battered women wearing see-through robes that
exposed their breasts, with verses from the Qur’an
written on their bodies.
In poor taste? Insulting? Probably that was a
bit of the intention. Van Gogh, the great grandson of
Vincent van Gogh’s brother (“dear Theo”),
was a well-known gadfly on the Dutch scene; in the past,
he had attacked Jewish and Christians with enough
vehemence to elicit formal complaints. But after Submission,
the death threats started to come. Van Gogh, in the eyes
of many Dutch Muslims, had blasphemed Islam — an
offense that brought the death penalty. The filmmaker was
unconcerned. The film itself, he said, was “the best
protection I could have. It’s not something I worry
about.”
His death shows that it’s something that
everyone who values freedom should worry about. For the
murder of van Gogh, if it indeed turns out to have been
committed by a Muslim enraged at his
“blasphemy,” has precedents. In 1947, the
Iranian lawyer Ahmad Kasravi was murdered in court by
Islamic radicals; Kasravi was there to defend himself
against charges that he had attacked Islam. Four years
later, members of the same radical Muslim group,
Fadayan-e Islam, assassinated Iranian Prime Minister
Haji-Ali Razmara after a group of Muslim clerics issued a
fatwa calling for his death. In 1992, the Egyptian writer
Faraj Foda was murdered by Muslims enraged at his
“apostasy” from Islam — another offense
for which traditional Islamic law prescribes the death
penalty. Foda’s countryman, the Nobel Prizewinning
novelist Naguib Mahfouz, was stabbed in 1994 after
accusations of blasphemy. Under Pakistan’s blasphemy
laws, many non-Muslims have been arrested, tortured, and
sentenced to die on the slimmest of evidence. And of
course, there is the Ayatollah Khomeini’s notorious
death fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
But for such things to happen in Iran and Egypt,
two countries where Islamic radicalism is widespread, is
one thing; to have a “blasphemer” gunned down
on the streets of Amsterdam in broad daylight is another.
Europe has for thirty years encouraged massive
immigration from Muslim nations; Muslims now comprise
five percent of Holland’s population, and that
number is growing rapidly. But it is still largely taboo
in Europe — as in America — to raise any
questions about how ready that population is to accept
the parameters of secularism. When Dutch politician Pim
Fortuyn tried to raise some of those questions in 2002,
he was vilified as a racist — in line with the
continuing tendency of the Western media to frame
questions regarding Islam in racial terms, despite the
fact that the totalitarian intransigence of the ideology
of radical Islam is found among all races. And Fortuyn
himself, of course, was himself ultimately murdered by a
Dutch assailant who, according to The Guardian,
“did it for Dutch Muslims.”
The deaths of Fortuyn and now van Gogh indicate
that the costs of maintaining this taboo are growing ever
higher. One of the prerequisites of the hard-won peaceful
coexistence of ideologies in a secular society is freedom
of speech — particularly the freedom to question, to
dissent, even to ridicule. Multiculturalism and
secularism are on a collision course: if one group is
able to demand that its tenets remain above criticism, it
no longer coexists with the others as an equal, but has
embarked on the path to hegemony.
It is long past due for such considerations to
become part of the public debate in Western countries. To
what extent are Muslim immigrants in Western countries
willing to set aside Islamic strictures on questioning,
criticizing, and leaving Islam?
After van Gogh was killed, thousands of people
took to the streets of Amsterdam to pay him homage. Among
them, according to Agence France Presse, was a Muslim
woman who stated: “I didn’t really agree with
van Gogh but he was a person who used his freedom of
expression.” She held up a sign saying,
“Muslims Against Violence,” explaining: “I
decided that as a Muslim and a Moroccan I should take up
my responsibility to show that we do not support this
act.”
But the traditional Muslim view is,
unfortunately, alive and well; it was firmly restated
several years ago by Pakistan’s Federal Sharia Court:
“The penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet
…is death and nothing else.” No one knows how
many Muslims in Europe and America hold the views of the
Moroccan woman at the rally, and how many would side with
Pakistan’s Sharia Court — and the killer of
Theo van Gogh.
If Western countries continue, out of ignorance,
fear, or narrow self-interest, to refuse to find out,
they will find themselves playing host to many more
incidents like the bloody scene in Amsterdam Tuesday
morning. The longer this question is ignored, or
attributed only to “racist” sensibilities, the
more likely it becomes that the killing of Theo van Gogh
will not be a tragic anomaly, but a harbinger of things
to come.
