Dare to Speak: Islam vs Free Democracy and Free Enterprise (I)
Section 8.
The House of Islam’s Relationships with non-Islamic Nations
The Netherlands
If any nation could be called the birthplace of extreme tolerance, it is the Netherlands. Its tradition of toleration began as a reaction to Catholic repression under Spanish rule during the 1500s, and flowered when the Netherlands gained independence in 1609. Dutch tolerance was so famous that the Pilgrims, who ultimately landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, initially moved to the Netherlands seeking refuge from British persecution. They decided to leave after concluding that the Dutch were too permissive.
Since then, Dutch tolerance expanded from the realm of religion, free speech, and equal rights for women to issues that would scandalize many in the United States, including legalized marijuana and hashish, prostitution, nudity, gay marriage, and euthanasia.
While some people may call this kind of tolerance “utopia,” a more accurate term would be “laboratory.” The Dutch conduct social experiments that are simply impossible in other parts of the world. An important experiment that the Dutch have been conducting recently is: “What happens when you tolerate groups and ideologies that do not tolerate each other?”
One of the experimental cases producing results is the Dutch mixture of Islam, homosexuality and free speech. One result was the 2002 assassination of Prof. Pim Fortuyn, who led a fast-rising political party known as the LPF. [1][2] The professor’s death taught this experiment’s lesson: in a nation committed to tolerance, the only thing that cannot be tolerated is intolerance.
This paradox stands out especially with Fortuyn, because his activism against the massive influx of Muslim immigrants was motivated by Islam’s strong prohibitions against homosexuality. As an openly gay man, he had already witnessed brutalities carried out by immigrant Muslims against Dutch homosexuals who were accustomed to living their lives openly. He also noticed that many Muslim immigrants, even those who had lived in the Netherlands for generations, did not assimilate into Dutch society, and did not even bother to learn the language. He saw the population of his native Rotterdam rapidly become 15% Muslim. He feared that Islam’s intolerance of homosexuality could alter Dutch society and spread anti-homosexual persecution.
At the time, Fortuyn was portrayed in Europe’s press as a xenophobic neo-Nazi. This raises an interesting question: Why did the press deem Fortuyn’s “intolerance” of Muslim immigrants worse than Muslim intolerance of homosexuals? At any rate, Fortuyn’s rising star, as the leader of a major political party, was called a threat to the treasured European doctrines of tolerance.
The tide of intolerance toward Fortuyn rose to such a point that the forces of political correctness snuffed him out. On May 6, 2002, he was shot dead by Volkert van der Graaf, a Dutch animal rights activist, just days before national elections that predicted an impressive showing for his party.
Despite his murder, Pim Fortuyn was able to make his point, which was summarized concisely in the National Review article, Murder in Holland:[3]
In a recent televised debate with an imam, Fortuyn baited the Muslim cleric by flaunting his homosexuality. Finally the imam exploded, denouncing Fortuyn in strongly anti-homosexual terms. Fortuyn calmly turned to the camera and, addressing viewers directly, told them that this is the kind of Trojan horse of intolerance the Dutch are inviting into their society in the name of multiculturalism.
Fortuyn’s words proved to be prophetic as the Dutch experiment yielded another result. On November 2, 2004, movie producer Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered by Muhammad Bouyeri for making a film critical of Islam.
Finally, the Dutch got Pim Fortuyn’s message. In a November 2004 poll of Dutch television viewers, he was voted “The Greatest Dutchman of All Time.” [4]
As for Theo van Gogh, the New York Times article, Man on Trial in Dutch Killing Says He’d Do ‘Same Again’, summarizes the story:
AMSTERDAM, July 12 – …Bicycling to work last Nov. 2, Mr. van Gogh was shot at least six times before having his throat cut.
The defendant, Muhammad Bouyeri, the 27-year-old son of Moroccan immigrants, showed no remorse, saying he had killed Mr. van Gogh based on his religious beliefs. “I acted out of conviction and not out of hate,” Mr. Bouyeri told the court. “If I’m ever released, I’d do the same again. Exactly the same.” He added his actions were based on “the law that instructs me to chop off the head of everyone who insults Allah or the prophet.”
Mr. van Gogh – along with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch politician (who co-produced the film “Submission” with him) – received death threats after their short but provocative film about abuse of Muslim women was broadcast last year on Dutch television.
…
Prosecutors…characterized Mr. van Gogh’s killing as a terrorist act designed to rein in a tolerant and democratic Dutch society. “The accused preaches a message of hate and violence,” one of the prosecutors… told the court. “He preaches that anyone who thinks differently can be killed.”
Mr. Bouyeri was apprehended…in a shootout with…Dutch police. He told the officers…that he had wanted to die that day, presumably as a martyr.
…
Originally, Mr. Bouyeri had tried to boycott his own trial…Dutch journalists had speculated that he refused to recognize the court’s jurisdiction, believing instead that he was only beholden to the Islamic law of Shariah.
…
After killing Mr. van Gogh, Mr. Bouyeri used a knife to affix a five-page note to Mr. van Gogh’s corpse. It quoted the Koran and threatened Ms. Hirsi Ali, among other prominent Dutch politicians. Ms. Hirsi Ali, who went into hiding for weeks after the killing, still lives under constant police protection.
Ms. Hirsi Ali, by the way, is an Islamic refugee from Somalia who renounced her faith and fled to the Netherlands after being forced into an arranged marriage. [5] Sadly, in the months that followed van Gogh’s death, the firestorm caused by Hirsi Ali’s denouncement of Islam has led the Dutch to turn dumbfoundingly on their brave refugee, with a blind eye toward the threat that menaces them all. As the Wall Street Journal reported:
Islamist Threats To Dutch Politician Bring Chill at Home
By Andrew Higgins May 17, 2006; The Wall Street Journal, Page A1
THE HAGUE – Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been threatened repeatedly with “execution” by Islamist extremists. She lives in an apartment with bulletproof windows, and is driven to work at the Dutch Parliament by armed guards, who vary the route to outfox would-be hit men.
But an unexpected menace emerged closer to home: her own neighbors. They have fought to evict her, complaining that the presence of a well-known terrorist target in their luxury apartment tower in this Dutch city has upset their family lives and reduced the value of their property.
“Once this lady leaves, the problem is no longer there,” says…a retired executive who owns a place two floors above the hunted politician. He says he has nothing…against Ms. Hirsi Ali. But along with other residents, he wants to banish the fears stirred by the proximity of Holland’s most acid – and most frequently threatened – critic of Islam.
Yesterday, Ms. Hirsi Ali’s neighbor got his wish. Three weeks after a Dutch court ordered her out of the building in response to complaints from Mr. Verhagen and other residents, she resigned from Parliament and said she would leave Holland altogether. Her decision follows a cascade of problems: angry neighbors, a government threat to revoke her citizenship and, more generally, growing public disenchantment with her denunciations of both radical Islam and more conventional Muslim doctrines…
Possibly the most disturbing aspects of Theo van Gogh’s murder are Mr. Bouyeri’s personal history and the content of the letter he stabbed onto van Gogh’s dead body, as reported in the Wall Street Journal article, Rude Awakening: A Brutal Killing Opens Dutch Eyes to Threat of Terror:[6]
Mohammed Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan man arrested for the murder of Mr. van Gogh, and many of his suspected confederates, shared a trait with Mohammed Atta and his fellow 9/11 hijackers in the U.S.: They weren’t slum-dwelling delinquents but reasonably educated beneficiaries of the Western societies they want to destroy…
A note tacked onto Mr. van Gogh’s chest with a knife…fulminated against “infidels,” [and] vow[ed] death to Ayaan Hirsi Ali…“Hair-raising screams will be squeezed from the lungs of the nonbelievers,” warned the letter. It ended…in the style of an Islamic verse: “I know for sure that you, O America, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Europe, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Netherlands, are going to meet with disaster.”
Mr. Bouyeri…was born in Holland and graduated from a Dutch high school. He spoke Dutch far better than Arabic, worked as a volunteer in an Amsterdam youth center, and before he embraced radical Islam, seemed well integrated in society.
While life has remained relatively calm in the Netherlands, tensions between Muslim and Dutch communities have heightened. Although no additional injuries or deaths have been reported, there have been numerous retaliatory attacks on Islamic sites within the country. [7]
Despite their bad treatment of Hirsi Ali, the normally tolerant Dutch have begun to take pro-active measures to stave off a culture clash with Muslim immigrants. One of their first actions has been to send a clear message: We are a tolerant people, and if you cannot tolerate tolerance, we will not tolerate you! The medium for this message is an entrance exam that the Netherlands now requires of all would-be immigrants, as explained in the article, Film exposes immigrants to Dutch liberalism: [8]
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – The camera focuses on two gay men kissing in a park. Later, a topless woman emerges from the sea and walks onto a crowded beach. For would-be immigrants to the Netherlands, this film is a test of their readiness to participate in the liberal Dutch culture.
If they can’t stomach it, no need to apply. Despite whether they find the film offensive, applicants must buy a copy and watch it if they hope to pass the Netherlands’ new entrance examination.
The test – the first of its kind in the world – became compulsory Wednesday, and was made available at 138 Dutch embassies. Taking the exam costs $420. The price for a preparation package that includes the film, a CD ROM and a picture album of famous Dutch people is $75…
Spain
Spain’s experience with Islam goes back to the glory days of Islam’s rapid expansion, as it galloped across the tumbling Roman territories of North Africa and continued into the Iberian Peninsula. In 711 AD, Muza ben-Nosair conquered the Visigoth King Rodrigo. In 712, he proclaimed the caliphate of Cordoba. This caliphate continued its rapid expansion until it was finally halted in southern France at the Battle of Poiters in 732. After this over-extension, the caliphate retrenched and established a more permanent presence over most of what is now Spain.
Initially, Spain prospered under its Muslim rulers, but by the early 1100s, the caliphate had disintegrated into 39 petty kingdoms, which became exhausted from internal battles and were reduced to chaos. In this weakened state, the Christian subjects were able to reassert themselves and, kingdom by kingdom, reclaim the land for Christendom. By 1492, the same year as Columbus’s “discovery” of America, Spain’s Catholic King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella eradicated the last vestiges of Islamic power from Spain by conquering Granada. [9]
After five centuries of sleep, Islam roused itself again in Spain on March 11, 2004, through the bombing of four rush-hour trains. The reason for this shocking violence went beyond Spain’s support for the war to depose Saddam Hussein; it was also meant to settle old accounts dating back to the 1400s:
Madrid train bomb kills 192
By Bill Hutchinson, with James Gordon Meek and News Wire Services
New York Daily News, March 11, 2004
Stunned Spanish authorities scrambled last night to track down the cold-blooded terrorists who killed 192 people and wounded more than 1,400 by bombing four rush-hour trains converging on the capital of Madrid.
…
A shadowy group linked to Al Qaeda claimed responsibility…
Francisco Javier Ruperez, Spain’s ambassador to the United States, said, “This is our own 9/11, and I am sure we are going to react very much the way the Americans did when they had that terrible suffering of theirs.”
…
The blasts came just three days before national elections…In its letter, the Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri said the bombings were payback for Spain’s support of the Iraq war.
“This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America’s ally in its war against Islam,” the letter said…
The horror of this attack shocked the world. Afterwards, the sinister justification sank in: “settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America’s ally in its war against Islam.”
The words of this letter reveal that the attack was really not a settling of accounts at all, but pure aggression veiled with a pretext.
How so? Basically, there was little for the attackers to settle accounts over. Spain had rescinded its colonial aspirations in Muslim Africa decades earlier, and the Crusades were ancient history. In fact, Christian Spain did not even exist at the time of the Crusades – it was a part of the Caliphate of Cordoba. The claim that America was waging a war against Islam also makes no sense. The U.S. and its allies went to war against Saddam Hussein, a secularist who was a menace to both his Muslim neighbors and his Muslim citizens. At the time of the blast, Coalition forces were helping Iraq establish an Islamic Democracy.
Perhaps the terrorists intended to say that they were punishing Spain for its Apostasy from Islam hundreds of years ago, but their only clear message was pure hatred. Nothing but hatred could have motivated this attack on civilians that left 1400 casualties and 192 deaths.
Unfortunately, Mr. Ruperez’s predictions for Spain were disappointed, and the people of Spain responded with fear rather than resolve. A few days after the bombing, they elected a presidential candidate who promised to extract Spain from Iraq.
Go to Part II
REFERENCES FOR SECTION 8:
[1] LPF stands for List Pim Fortuyn. No one said he was modest!
[2] Fortuyn buried after Dutch bid farewell, BBC News, May 10, 2002.
[3] Murder in Holland, by Rod Dreher, National Review, May 7, 2002.
[4] Fortuyn voted greatest Dutchman, BBC News, November 16, 2004.
[5] Gunman kills Dutch film director, BBC News, November 2, 2004.
[6] Rude Awakening: A Brutal Killing Opens Dutch Eyes to Threat of Terror, by Andrew Higgins, The Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2004, page 1A.
[7] Islamic School Set Ablaze in Netherlands Associated press, November 9, 2004.
[8] Film exposes immigrants to Dutch liberalism, Associated Press, MSNBC News, March 15, 2006.
[9] A Concise History of Spain, by Henry Kamen, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1973, summarized from pages 15-57.
Go to Part II
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