05 November 2004 Blog Home : November 2004 : Permalink
The Powerline blog finds an outrageous editorial in the New York Times about the Van Gogh murder (see my earlier comments). The prescription I suggested yesterday for Maureen apparently needs to be taken by some other members of the NY Times staff. The editorial is almost right but just when you think they get it, it all goes horribly wrong
Something sad and terrible is happening to the Netherlands, long one of Europe's most tolerant, decent and multicultural societies. The latest warning sign is this week's brazen murder of Theo van Gogh, a daring filmmaker and columnist descended from the same family as Vincent van Gogh. This summer, Dutch television showed a 10-minute film by Theo van Gogh calling attention to the horrific violence that Muslim women can be subjected to by family members in the name of religion. The chief suspect is believed to be an Islamist extremist, as are eight other men also arrested in connection with the case.
So let's see now a rational person would then expect the editorial to talk about how an intolerant immigrant community has wrecked the country's tolerance and decency.
The Netherlands used to be a country where artists and politicians dared to raise even the most controversial issues without fear of physical retaliation. But the screenwriter who worked with Mr. van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who was elected as a member of the Dutch Parliament, is now under police protection. It's just been a little more than two years since a Dutch extremist shot Pim Fortuyn, a rising populist politician who portrayed Muslim immigration as a grave threat to the nation's traditions of tolerance.
OK so a brief excursion into history and examples of how intolerant the intolerant immigrants seems fair given how likely it is that most readers will associate the Netherlands with Amsterdam "coffeeshops", canals, clogs and carnal delights. Mind you the bit about "without fear of physical retaliation" is remarkably snarky, freedom of speech is not in fact a purely American concept (although sometimes it looks like it these days) it has been present in much of Western Europe too for a long time.
Urgent efforts are needed to better manage the cultural tensions perilously close to the surface of Dutch public life. The problem is not Muslim immigration, but a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society. One very real danger is that the public trauma over the van Gogh murder may lead to a clamor for anti-Muslim policies that could victimize thousands of innocent refugees and immigrants.
True again the problem is not Muslim immigration per se, it is lack of assimilation by Muslim immigrants. But this is where we start to lose the plot. Does transistion to a "diverse society" mean that we permit some people to beat their wives while others are forbidden to? do we have diverse standards for criticism, where criticising a white criminal is OK but not a dusky one? And then there is the potential "clamour for anti.Muslim policies" as if this is ab definitio a bad thing. Perhaps it has not occured to the NY Times that the many people in the Muslim community (you know the female half for example) might actually also like it if their abusers were punished.
Go back to the documentary which covered wife beating by Muslims, if this documentary were utterly false do you not think there would have been a demonstration by thousands of Muslim women protesting it? of course actually no one heard a peep from anyone in the Muslim community except for a few community leaders crying "racist" as they did about this artwork required to be removed (via by Roger L Simon) and you do in fact get the picture of a tincy wincy double standard in the "diverse society". Get real please and consider that neither skin colour nor religion excuses you from obeying the law of the land, There is no need for additional laws or policies other than basic one of ensuring that Muslims also obey the law. Surely that's not a controversial idea?
The challenge for Dutch political leaders is to find ways to reverse this disturbing trend of politically motivated violence without making it harder to achieve cultural harmony.
What part of arresting the perps and not letting political correctness get in the way of the truth is so hard to understand? "Cultural harmony" - talk about mealy mouthed BS. One suspects that worries about "cultural harmony" are why the situation has got so out of hand in the first place. And "politically motivated" seems a little odd. If you read the news about what the message left on the body said, it's clearly NOT political but religiously inspired. Calling it political is just another way to try and hide the ugly fact that some Muslims are intolerant bigots who can't stand having home truths pointed out.