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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
November 14, 2004
Theo van Gogh
That you may live in "interesting" times is of course an old Chinese curse and in this sense of the word it will be interesting to see how the social legal and political situation develops in the Netherlands after the murder of Theo van Gogh. His cremation was this last week; his "execution" by a Muslim fanatic was performed on Nov. 2nd. Let us linger one more time over the scene of death so far as we can reconstruct it from press reports. The Dutch pundit and filmmaker who had been out on his bicycle was shot several times at close range and according to witnesses remained alive long enough to beg his assailant to stop. He then had his throat slit and spinal cord severed to the point where he was nearly beheaded. Five pages in Arabic were then pinned to his body by the knife then embedded in his chest. This dissertation consisted of quotations from the Koran and promises that Holland Europe Israel and America would all be annihilated by victorious Islam. Various prominent Dutch personalities were threatened by name. It is important to take this in. Theo van Gogh's "alleged" murderer (we are dealing with Western legal niceties which are not recognized in Sharia law) was a psychopath but not of the "normal" loner sort with which we are familiar from the annals of Western psychiatry and jurisprudence. The police in Amsterdam were able to round up six of his alleged accomplices after the crime and are seeking more. And the relationship between the ritual murder of Theo van Gogh and the numerous butcherings of hostages by Jihadis in Iraq Pakistan and elsewhere was obvious from any distance. Whether in the Middle East or embedded within Western society the Jihadis claim not only the right to decide which among us should live or die but also the right to perform theatrical executions in some parody of the traditional Islamic manner. Of what was Theo van Gogh guilty? Of making a film in collaboration with the Muslim apostate Somali-born Dutch woman politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an act of protest against the subjugation of women in Islam. I have seen and don't like the film; nor could I enjoy any of Theo van Gogh's previous intemperate assaults on Christianity both as filmmaker and newspaper columnist. But our Western tradition is or was to live with expressions of free speech while instead suppressing acts of intimidation and violence. Several Dutch regional television stations which were about to show the film cancelled it in response to the murder. Ditto a museum; and the national public television network which had already shown it refused to show it again. So much for freedom of expression in the Netherlands today. In the city of Rotterdam opposite a mosque where it is widely believed Jihad is being preached on Fridays a Dutch street-artist created a fresco inscribed with the words Thou shalt not kill. Politically correct to a fault the mayor of Rotterdam had it scraped the moment he received a complaint from the mosque's imam and Rotterdam police confiscated the film of journalists attempting to get a record of it. As one lonely picket at the murder site read: "Theo rests his point." But there have also been attacks by vigilantes on several mosques on a Muslim elementary school and on a centre that aids Muslim immigrants in the time since Theo van Gogh's murder. These acts are reprehensible; truly attacks on the innocent. The majority of the Muslims in Holland as elsewhere are probably more afraid of the Jihadis than non-Muslims are because they live in closer proximity. Indeed the much-criticized silence of Muslim "moderates" in the face of one atrocity after another can be too easily explained by their fear of reprisals. And they know the authorities cannot protect them. Out of political correctness our politicians and courts provide cover for radical Muslims to organize and intimidate. They finally prove helpless against the vigilante response. They think they are protecting the Muslim community by suppressing free inquiry into and criticism of the Jihadi canker lodged within it; when in fact they are setting up innocent Muslims for a terrible blind retribution that will make no distinctions between innocent and guilty. Free speech under automatic protection of law is the alternative to a society governed by intimidation and violence. The "political correction" that in Canada as in Holland leads to the suppression of free speech necessarily restores the law of the jungle. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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