Two Views
Two of the daily newspapers I scan every day had staff-generated front-page stories on the Theo van Gogh murder. As you can tell by the headlines, each put a different spin on the slaughter:
At The Wall Street Journal, the headline was "Killing Opens Dutch Eyes to Terror Threat." The Philadelphia Inquirer article, meanwhile, was titled, "Death highlights segregation of Dutch Muslims."
Actually, the bulk of the articles cover the same ground: the Netherlands as a case study of Europe's policy over the past 30 years of welcoming or recruiting a workforce from nearby Third World countries and its failure to help those immigrant assimilate, once it became obvious they were not going to go home again. The dilemma now facing a liberal, secularized Europe with a large and partially radicalized Islamic population in its midst, and the grappling of political leaders in various stages of realization and denial.
But the other third of each story, the stage-setting and local color, couldn't be more different. The Journal focused on the native Dutch; the Inquirer on the Dutch Muslims. Was Theo van Gogh a crude insult-merchant or a filmmaker? Was he asking for it? Are most of the Muslims in the Netherlands little different from the Europeans they live among in their beliefs and aspirations? Are the Dutch trying to balance their traditional openness against the cold reality of Islamist terrorism, or are they rapidly becoming a bunch of closed-minded Muslim-bashers? The answer depends which newspaper you read.
Consider the lede of the Inquirer article:
Quite a different entrée into the story from the one the WSJ writer chose:
The Inquirer is at pains to state that, "Although some Muslims have said publicly that van Gogh got what he deserved, the majority appear to deplore the killing." No statistics, or a methodology for determining "the majority" are offered, however.
The anonymous but well-informed newspaper columnist Spengler (who will irritate everyone who reads him often enough) seems to have compiled some good evidence that condemnation of the van Gogh murder was the exception, not the rule, at least among Muslim organizations in Western Europe.
The Inquirer article quotes a Dutch Muslim man-in-the street, a 35-year-old Moroccan-born taxi driver who approved punishment for van Gogh's killers and said the deed was "not Islam."
Ah, and won't that go down well on the Continent where every country's second national passtime is ridiculing American Christianity?
In fact, Spengler notes, the Duth justice minister has dusted off a 1932 law against blasphemy and proposes enforcing it to prevent future insults to Islam.
At The Wall Street Journal, the headline was "Killing Opens Dutch Eyes to Terror Threat." The Philadelphia Inquirer article, meanwhile, was titled, "Death highlights segregation of Dutch Muslims."
Actually, the bulk of the articles cover the same ground: the Netherlands as a case study of Europe's policy over the past 30 years of welcoming or recruiting a workforce from nearby Third World countries and its failure to help those immigrant assimilate, once it became obvious they were not going to go home again. The dilemma now facing a liberal, secularized Europe with a large and partially radicalized Islamic population in its midst, and the grappling of political leaders in various stages of realization and denial.
But the other third of each story, the stage-setting and local color, couldn't be more different. The Journal focused on the native Dutch; the Inquirer on the Dutch Muslims. Was Theo van Gogh a crude insult-merchant or a filmmaker? Was he asking for it? Are most of the Muslims in the Netherlands little different from the Europeans they live among in their beliefs and aspirations? Are the Dutch trying to balance their traditional openness against the cold reality of Islamist terrorism, or are they rapidly becoming a bunch of closed-minded Muslim-bashers? The answer depends which newspaper you read.
Consider the lede of the Inquirer article:
Theo van Gogh was a kind of high-brow Howard Stern, a clown-provocateur who called one Muslim activist "Mohammed's pimp," and routinely dismissed others as devotees of sex with goats.
Quite a different entrée into the story from the one the WSJ writer chose:
AMSTERDAM -- On Friday a group of left-wing aldermen from this city's heavily Muslim western district met to discuss an issue previously left to the police: how to root out Islamic terrorists in their neighborhood.
"We have to fight terrorism," says Hans Luiten, a 39-year-old socialist alderman who sends his young son to school with mostly Muslim pupils and decorates his office with pictures of mosques. "The war on this small group of terrorists has to be very severe."
The Inquirer is at pains to state that, "Although some Muslims have said publicly that van Gogh got what he deserved, the majority appear to deplore the killing." No statistics, or a methodology for determining "the majority" are offered, however.
The anonymous but well-informed newspaper columnist Spengler (who will irritate everyone who reads him often enough) seems to have compiled some good evidence that condemnation of the van Gogh murder was the exception, not the rule, at least among Muslim organizations in Western Europe.
As a matter of record, most European Muslim organizations declined to disavow the murder of van Gogh. During a November 19 radio interview, for example, Zahid Mukhtar, head of the Islamic Council of Norway, refused to condemn van Gogh's murder, creating a scandal out of proportion to Norway's small Muslim population. A Moroccan-born member of the Belgian Senate, Mimount Bousakla, received death threats after remonstrating with the umbrella organization of Belgian Muslims for its refusal to denounce the van Gogh murder. She since has gone into hiding.
In Germany, most of the country's Muslim groups refused to take part in this past Sunday's Muslim demonstration in Cologne against terrorism and violence. In fact, the Turkish government organized the 20,000-person demonstration without support from local Muslim organizations. Its sole sponsor was DITIB, the Turkish government's Muslim association headed by an appointee from Ankara. DITIB "already had tried in vain to organize a common declaration by all German Muslims against Islamist terrorism", noted Der Spiegel Online on November 19.
The Inquirer article quotes a Dutch Muslim man-in-the street, a 35-year-old Moroccan-born taxi driver who approved punishment for van Gogh's killers and said the deed was "not Islam."
But, he said, van Gogh's antics had long made Muslims wonder: "How far can you go in insulting someone?"
"You can't murder someone for what he says," Kacem said, "but I think there should be a law against insulting religion."
Ah, and won't that go down well on the Continent where every country's second national passtime is ridiculing American Christianity?
In fact, Spengler notes, the Duth justice minister has dusted off a 1932 law against blasphemy and proposes enforcing it to prevent future insults to Islam.
The proposal is astounding, for no Christian country has penalized blasphemy of the most extreme variety in two generations. Would the anti-blasphemy rule apply to scholarly demonstrations that alternative variants exist of the Koran, or to linguistic arguments that the Koran has been mistranslated (eg, Professor Christoph Luxenberg's claim that the "seventy-two virgins" awaiting martyrs in Paradise really are white raisins)?
Labels: Theo van Gogh
