Theo van Gogh's Murder
Nov. 9th, 2004 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI asked Omaha about this last night, and she didn't know anything about it. So, here are the details.
Filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in Holland in daylight on a public street, with more than a dozen witnesses watching. His assailant pulled up in a car, got out, shot him several times, and when van Gogh refused to die from his wounds, walked up and sliced through his neck while van Gogh begged "Don't do this. Have mercy! We can still talk about this!" van Gogh was nearly decapitated. The murderer then thrust the knife, with a note, to van Gogh's chest and fled the scene.
van Gogh was the subject of death threats because of a short film he had made recently, which is available via BitTorrent, depicting an Islamic woman making prayers, while flashbacks show her non-consensual arranged marriage, rape at the hands of her brother-in-law, and punishment for "adultery". The woman is lightly veiled, and through the veil one can see her naked body, and written on her skin are the verses of the Q'ran which give men "dominion" over women.
van Gogh was only the director. He collaborated with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a prime minister of the Dutch Parliament. She is an ex-Islamic and a fierce critic of the way Islam treats women. At least two documents-- one of which the note pinned to van Gogh's body-- have said that she is next on the hit list. Ali is being sued by a Moroccan national living in Holland for "dragging Mr. van Gogh into the danger zone of her apostacy." This led one blogger to comment, "Come to Amsterdam! Our weed really is this potent!"
The Dutch police have arrested his assailant and eight others who are believed to have conspired with him. All nine were members of the El Tahweed mosque, a European sect of Islam infamous for its stated goals of creating a European caliphate and wiping out secularism. The murderer himself was apparently well-known in his community for helping young people and being a volunteer, was well-educated, spoke and wrote Dutch better than most Dutch. There is good evidence that members of El Tahweed recruit into Takir Wal Hijira, a terrorist group that specializes in sleepers, people who "look and act non-Islamic" until it is time to carry out their mission. Their goal is to create havoc by turning "the ordinary boy or girl next door" into an object of suspicion.
Since the incident, Arabic websites have published death threats against several members of parliament and other critics of the non-integrationist portions of the Islamic community in Holland. Meanwhile, Dutch television shows have argued about whether on not Mr. van Gogh "went to far in using his freedom of speech," somehow implying that he deserved it. And in a man-on-the-street interview, a reporter somehow found a Muslim fellow to admit "in my community, such murder is normal. How could it not be?"
The letter stabbed into van Gogh's chest was long and rambling, accusing the Dutch of being in "sway to the lying Jews" and a bizarre reference to pregnant camels, which I'm sure is a parable understood by Q'ranic scholars, but the letter ends with a death threat against Miss Ali and this:
I know for sure that you, Oh America will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Europe, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Holland, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go under.
I think that one thing we should have learned from terrorism: when they tell you that their objective is the overthrow of the state and the death of everyone not in accordance with their ideology, believe them.
Filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in Holland in daylight on a public street, with more than a dozen witnesses watching. His assailant pulled up in a car, got out, shot him several times, and when van Gogh refused to die from his wounds, walked up and sliced through his neck while van Gogh begged "Don't do this. Have mercy! We can still talk about this!" van Gogh was nearly decapitated. The murderer then thrust the knife, with a note, to van Gogh's chest and fled the scene.
van Gogh was the subject of death threats because of a short film he had made recently, which is available via BitTorrent, depicting an Islamic woman making prayers, while flashbacks show her non-consensual arranged marriage, rape at the hands of her brother-in-law, and punishment for "adultery". The woman is lightly veiled, and through the veil one can see her naked body, and written on her skin are the verses of the Q'ran which give men "dominion" over women.
van Gogh was only the director. He collaborated with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a prime minister of the Dutch Parliament. She is an ex-Islamic and a fierce critic of the way Islam treats women. At least two documents-- one of which the note pinned to van Gogh's body-- have said that she is next on the hit list. Ali is being sued by a Moroccan national living in Holland for "dragging Mr. van Gogh into the danger zone of her apostacy." This led one blogger to comment, "Come to Amsterdam! Our weed really is this potent!"
The Dutch police have arrested his assailant and eight others who are believed to have conspired with him. All nine were members of the El Tahweed mosque, a European sect of Islam infamous for its stated goals of creating a European caliphate and wiping out secularism. The murderer himself was apparently well-known in his community for helping young people and being a volunteer, was well-educated, spoke and wrote Dutch better than most Dutch. There is good evidence that members of El Tahweed recruit into Takir Wal Hijira, a terrorist group that specializes in sleepers, people who "look and act non-Islamic" until it is time to carry out their mission. Their goal is to create havoc by turning "the ordinary boy or girl next door" into an object of suspicion.
Since the incident, Arabic websites have published death threats against several members of parliament and other critics of the non-integrationist portions of the Islamic community in Holland. Meanwhile, Dutch television shows have argued about whether on not Mr. van Gogh "went to far in using his freedom of speech," somehow implying that he deserved it. And in a man-on-the-street interview, a reporter somehow found a Muslim fellow to admit "in my community, such murder is normal. How could it not be?"
The letter stabbed into van Gogh's chest was long and rambling, accusing the Dutch of being in "sway to the lying Jews" and a bizarre reference to pregnant camels, which I'm sure is a parable understood by Q'ranic scholars, but the letter ends with a death threat against Miss Ali and this:
I know for sure that you, Oh America will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Europe, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Holland, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go under;
I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go under.
I think that one thing we should have learned from terrorism: when they tell you that their objective is the overthrow of the state and the death of everyone not in accordance with their ideology, believe them.
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What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 10:08 pm (UTC)So - first things first - I'm not Dutch. But I'm married to a Dutchman, and we watch Dutch tv news occasionally, and watched rather a lot of it around the time TVG was murdered.
And a further disclaimer: my Dutch is rather shaky. I'm pretty good at understanding it, but I had to double-check with my in-house interpreter (he *is* an interpreter, as well as a translator. That's what we each do, professionally) to be sure of what I was hearing.
And - while this doesn't condone murder or any other violence - I have to say that TVG spoke in terms as inflammatory as possible about Islam. He wasn't just hating it, he was actively baiting Muslims. Things equivalent to using the N-word for persons of color, and general hatred and belittlement of all Muslims, for behaviors that are the province of some few of them.
Note: this doesn't condone murder. It speaks, perhaps, of the high passions operating around the world and specifically in Europe, in the countries where a growing Muslim population threatens the indigenous ex- or currently Christian one. Countries where intolerance of others and otherness is just below the surface, and where the boundaries of tolerance are being stretched beyond recognition for the formation of the EU, the common currency, etc.
As far as I can tell, Islam isn't about overthrowing non-Muslim states, not about world domination. The people using terrorist tactics and a strategy of terrorism use Islam much as Bush uses Christianity - as a peg to hang their ideology on. Or as Hitler used his version of Paganism. Paganism didn't lead to what Hitler did - Hitler did. He just draped a state religion over his goals.
So I guess my issue with your post is that you don't identify who "they" are when you talk about what "they tell you" - and that the lack of identification smacks too much of anti-group-of-people - a path that has led humanity down into the depths of hell. (See Japanese internment; see treatment of Chinese in B.C. and everywehre along the West Coast of the U.S. See treatment of Gypsies and Jews in WWII. See... ...see history, in all its gore.)
Maybe our generation will avoid that pitfall. And maybe our daughters' will.
(Oh, and a clarification about the reference to the Jews: Amsterdam prides itself on its Jewish connection. Many, many words in the local dialect/slang derive from Hebrew/Yiddish. This just possibly might be seen as another slight to people who define their politics in terms of the Jewish/Arab conflict. That doesn't make it ok to kill people. But it does explain why someone who dislikes the political stance they see as Jewish could find the Amsterdam Jewish-speech-adoption mannerism as very irritating. I don't know anything about the camels, though.)
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 10:27 pm (UTC)Your telling is, frankly, wrong.
Islam is *all* "about overthrowing non-Muslim states".
It's one of their highest laws, primary commandments, and is the very basis of the name "Islam". The "peace" that the word "Islam" translates into is not "peace" in the western understanding. It's the "peace" of social, doctrinal, and religious unity, were everyone is either Muslim, Dhimmi, or Dead.
I would rather nuke the world than let dar-al-Islam spread into the west.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 10:49 pm (UTC)I wouldn't. I can't even call a truce - your solution leaves me dead. Mine leaves us all, worldwide, fighting terrorism. Neither is a good place to be.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 10:54 pm (UTC)Islam wishes to go the same path. A pox on both their Kingdoms - but mass death by radiation seems rather more extreme than religious intolerance.
With this perspective, are you still eager to nuke the world?
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 10:59 pm (UTC)The Caliphate is one of them.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 11:04 pm (UTC)But you don't have to buy the rhetoric - certainly not at the price of the whole world being nuked. (You have the power - you're the sovereign of the sole superpower, the nuclear overlord; I take the threat very seriously.) Nor do you have to roll over and accept that fate. But, hey, easy on the red buttons, will you?
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 11:49 pm (UTC)The muslim world still resents the smashing (their view, in more honest terms, it collapsed under it's own weight) of the last Caliphate. The reason why so many Muslims supported Saddam, despite his secular stance, was he was the last great hope for a risen Caliphate.
With the right intonation, the word means the ideal Caliphate, the one that completely spans and covers the entire globe, a World Govenment, worshipping Allah and imposing Shar'i everywhere.
That's a fate worse than death.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-10 12:10 am (UTC)Saddam was a secular leader. He added Arabic text to the flag of Iraq rather recently (after Gulf War I? I don't recall when, offhand) by way of trying to align himself with a growing population turning to religion in their desperation.
The meaning you ascribe to Caliphate (context, not intonation, being the key element) is identical to the Christian notion of world domination. Worshiping Jesus all around. Ask any missionary about their goals - you'll get the straight dope.
The Sharia (not Shari, as far as I know, that's a North African river) is actually a flexibly code of law, based on precedent, much like the system we're under. It has been horribly abused, but so has every system of law (the selection of Bush for his first term comes to mind). The Soviet Union had a constitution that sounded far loftier and more benevolent than ours.
How laws and systems are worked out in practice is about people and cultures, not words and how they're arranged on pages.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-10 01:17 am (UTC)Big Difference.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-10 01:20 am (UTC)All I've been trying to say is: there are other options beyond nuking the planet or acting randomly against groups based on their religious beliefs.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-10 01:51 am (UTC)LJ sucks, sometimes
Date: 2004-11-10 01:54 am (UTC)I had a wonderfully written and clarified reply, and lj ate it.
I had a short, terse entry stating that, and lj ate it.
I am now too upset to say much else. I am utterly amazed at how efficiently computers help us lose data, with nary a trace. *sigh*
Re: LJ sucks, sometimes
Date: 2004-11-10 01:56 am (UTC)Re: LJ sucks, sometimes
Date: 2004-11-10 08:50 pm (UTC)I tend to give most computer systems two strikes, assuming what I'm trying to say isn't important, or one strike if what I'm trying to say is rather long. Or longer than I want to re-type, anyway.
FYI.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 11:55 pm (UTC)Dhimmi had to pay a special tax, were forbidden many jobs, were second class citizens before the law (unable to testify against Muslims, etc), and were to be kept "subdued".
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-10 08:52 pm (UTC)Hell, let's just kill everyone with any sort of view about religion. It could save us a lot of grief in the long run. :)
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 10:31 pm (UTC)It goes like this:
"They can talk for hours about how wrong it was to kill babies, busboys, businessmen, receptionists, janitors, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers - and then they lean towards you, eyes wide, and they say the fatal word: But." source
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 10:46 pm (UTC)I don't have a solution.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 11:02 pm (UTC)"Engaging" in a "conversation" between cultures is not a solution. That's been tried.
Given them a pile of money is not a solution. That's been tried, too.
Treating is as a law enforcement problem is not a solution. That's also been tried, as well.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 11:38 pm (UTC)Israel has been under attack that falls under the general heading of "terrorist" since 1967 or so (the attacks before '67 were about halfway split between military attacks and farmers trying to get back to their homesteads). Its response has been to arrest every male aged 14 and up who shows leadership, to demolish the homes of every family connected with a person accused of terrorism (no proof required; errors inevitable). The net result: escalation to the point of civil war.
I'd hate to see the US take that path. But I'd hate even more to have the whole world nuked for lack of creative attempts. I love this country, this funny union. I love our culture, our attempts at ethics, our celebrations and ethics. No, no Samsoning my beloved homeland.
Re: What it looks like from a Dutch(ish) perspective
Date: 2004-11-09 11:58 pm (UTC)I will speak more gently then is deserved, and observe that such reporting and "widely held opinions" are very often, well, not true.
Ad hominem?
Date: 2004-11-10 12:16 am (UTC)In fact, I am still up-to-date on the Israeli culture. I read Israeli newspapers in Hebrew every evening (they're 10 hours ahead of us - I'm in your time zone, a couple of hours north, just south of the border) - as well as reading research about the culture and history on a regular basis.
But by making an ad hominem assumption about the sources of my knowledge - you've sort of asked to end the argument, I think. (Anyhow, it feels kind of unpleasant to be doing this in another person's journal - sorry, Elf!)
Re: Ad hominem?
Date: 2004-11-10 12:42 pm (UTC)“I’m sorry Elfs.” First of all, Fallen wasn’t misreading anything. What Credentials, makes you superbly knowledgably on what you believe in.
I’m American Mix breed – Irish/Sicilian/Cherokee = hot temper basket case. I was born in Colorado, I’m 3o years old. I see more than most American care to admit or claim. I know American People more than your credential on your studies within the culture.
Quite frankly every country is two faces with conspiracy. Hidden truth to what they consider a ‘Need to Know’ only Government Clearance Status will KNOW. For the fact it bases on to protect from mayhem upon the country.
There for what you don’t know, won’t hurt YOU. Every place in the world, no matter what creditable knowledge you may have, you really don’t know the whole truth within the capitalism and hidden lies. For the information is being control and monitor. Saddam was a dictator and he was the equivalent of 'A Hitler', if it suits him and his profitable gain. He’ll find away to obtain it for himself.
Some will agree that Bush isn’t too far behind, if he continues to ignore certain issues.
The Islamic fate is the equivalent to Charlie Mason tripping on Acid, when a religion over sees the government and have more of control and it’s people = brainwash rabid fools, that is Mayhem/Nazism/ are over load on PCP to even think to control a government by religious belief with a occupancy of 'MAN' that has an opinionated mind / a involuntary thinking process and sometime it's a selective process and that is when they ignore being diplomatically with poise. It seldom causes wars. By Forcing your selective thinking process on those who don’t want to be pressure in believing your way is the right way.
Now you may judge this post completely rude an overly opinionated, but that is the whole point,
You can’t control people, the culture, how the majority of the people think in how a country should live or be ruled or by whom. If the people chooses to cry for help and by another country like ours to intervene and offer their assistance. Now that how you over throw a dictator a mix drinks of explosive toward another country to help over power. For their religion, 'Islamic' and the rabid preachers brainwashing them to take control for what? Money - to consider what they believe is supreme over all other option of faith.
I'm sorry what I see is Islamic maybe the a rabid pit compare to Christianity, if America continue going the way it is....well dam Islamic and Christianity is droppings acid together in thinking that the chosen religion is the main foundation of it's own Country when other 'Man Kind' would beg to differ.
I’m sorry the ‘Islamic’ faith is no better than Christianity for the fact the people with in the religion will only hear and read a one sided selective material for they are being led to believe in that way, instead of freely questioning it with out fear from the Preacher or the Dictator.
This is just my opinionated mind, don't take it too harshly. I have nothing against the Islamic faith only those use bring it into war or perceiving it as a vision to kill for Allah!