Ayyan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch member of parliament and a former Muslim, fiercely attacks "backward Islam" and her country, which bows its head in the name of tolerance; On the murder of her colleague, the director Theo Van Gogh, she says: "I feel guilty"
John Hanley, New York Times, Haaretz, Walla!
The house of the director Theo van Gogh opened, after the murder. He received several threats on his life, but used to say "no one really wants to shoot the village fool"
Ayyan Hirsi Ali called the Prophet Muhammad "a tyrant full of lewdness", Islam "a backward religion", and the Koran "a partial license for oppression". Theo van Gogh called the Muslims "goat abusers", one of their extremist leaders he called "Allah's pimp", and Islam - a "retarded and aggressive religion". Van Gogh, the 47-year-old great-grandson of my painter brother Vincent Van Gogh, a gifted and controversial film director, newspaper columnist and TV host, was murdered on Tuesday last week in a street in Amsterdam. The killer was, according to the police definition, "an Islamic extremist with ties to terrorism."
The filmmaker was shot several times while riding his bicycle on the way to the office, but managed to continue riding another 40-30 meters, according to eyewitnesses, until he was caught in the second barrage of fire by the attacker, a 26-year-old young man with Dutch and Moroccan citizenship. Eyewitnesses said that Van Gogh begged for his life, but the assailant, who according to them was bearded and wearing a long coat, continued to shoot the director, pulled out two butcher knives, slit his throat, and stuck them in his chest.
"I feel very guilty," Ali told the Dutch television networks. She stated that she was "very concerned" that the film "Submission", an 11-minute film about violence against women in Islam, was the direct cause of the murder. Ali, 34, wrote the script for Van Gogh's film, but unlike the murdered director, she is under 24-hour police protection. Ali is currently a member of parliament from the liberal party VVD. She is a refugee from Somalia who escaped a forced marriage, and now calls herself a "former Muslim".
The murder caused a deep shock throughout the Netherlands, a country generally known for its tolerance, and it now threatens to ignite racial conflicts in a country where one million of the 16 million inhabitants are Muslims, most of them Turks or North Africans. Concerns about the intensification of the religious conflict also increased following the publication of an official government report recently, which estimates that in 2010 many cities in the Netherlands, including Rotterdam, Amsterdam and The Hague, will have a Muslim majority.
In this atmosphere, Hirsi Ali and Van Gogh, and with them a large part of the public, insisted on exercising their right to freedom of expression, and ignored the possible harm to the feelings of others. Several halachic rulings have already been issued against Hirsi Ali, the transfigured and fashionable woman, and she is protected by bodyguards. Van Gogh also received threats on his life, but he refused to receive police protection, saying he did not think the bullets would be aimed at him. "No one really wants to shoot the village fool," he said recently.
Their joint film, "Submission", which was screened in August by the State Broadcasting Authority of the Netherlands, tells the story of a Muslim woman who is forced to attend a forced marriage ceremony, suffers abuse from her husband, is raped by her uncle, and is brutally punished for adultery. In one of the scenes, a beautiful young Muslim woman is seen praying to Allah in a mosque. She wears a veil over her face, but her naked body is well reflected through a transparent tunic. In another scene, a woman's battered shoulders are seen, covered by the words of verse 36 in verse XNUMX of the Koran: "The men are in charge of the women according to the advantages that Allah has given them, and they provide for their needs. The honest ones obey their owners and protect their owners' rights in their absence. But those whom you fear will riot, you may, after warning, remove from your ranks and whip them."
The film is a powerful and provocative interpretation of Hirsi Ali's claims. The member of parliament passed the women's law at the age of five, was sent to Germany to marry a Somali husband in a forced marriage, and in 1992 fled to the Netherlands, penniless. There she worked as a cleaner in a cookie factory and as a translator, and finally enrolled in political science studies at Leiden University. In 2001, upon completion of her degree, she wrote a paper on "murder due to dishonor of the family" of Muslim women. The work was actually a sharp indictment against the 30 years of multiculturalism of the Netherlands, which Ali described as a "shocking mistake" born of "guilt feelings that have no place". The work caused great embarrassment in the Dutch Labor Party, which invited him over Ali, but the VVD party, which is staunchly opposed to immigration, welcomed Hirsi Ali into its ranks with open arms, first as a researcher, and then as a party member. She was elected to the parliament in The Hague in January 2003.
Hirsi Ali, who denounces Islam as a "backward religion from the 12th century", "a medieval faith, hating women, blind to modern science, unable to criticize itself", claims that the orthodox men in Islam often beat their wives, commit adultery and abuse children. To add insult to injury, she claims, society silences their behavior. "The Netherlands is a country that worships consensus and peace, but here there are new immigrants who do not fit into the system," she said. "They abuse an open and liberal society to achieve their illiberal goals. Everyone knows that the situation of women in Islamic countries is appalling, but the Dutch prefer to believe that this does not happen here. They refuse to believe that Muslim women in the Netherlands are beaten and imprisoned in their homes, or that girls are murdered because they hold hands with non-Muslim boys." The solution, Hirsi Ali claims, is to outlaw radical Islamic books, to boycott religious priests and to ensure that Muslim men who commit barbaric acts are prosecuted.
Members of the media in the Netherlands did not hesitate this week to say that their country is becoming the front of the conflict between two cultures: "(Muslims) must know that they are coming to the most liberal country in the world, the country of abortions and gays and all that. But they don't see it. There is no way to bridge this gap in an adequate political way." The sociologist Herman Wiescha said that Van Gogh's murder is not a turning point, "but the result of a historical failure". Academician Norbert Booth said that "the dilemma in dealing with intolerance is that you cannot respond to it with tolerance", and added, "If you do that, you lose your identity. Despite the turmoil of the soul, can we remain who we are? That is the question."
The freedom to be a Muslim
By Irshad Manji
Muslims in the West can revive the Muslim tradition of independent thinking
The murder of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who criticized the customs of Islam, reminds us all of the bitter truth: 15 years after the Iranian government issued a death sentence against the writer Salman Rushdie, expressing an opinion that is contrary to the opinion of Muslims is still a dangerous act.
As a Muslim revolutionary, I speak from experience. My book "The Problem with Islam" made me a target for expressions of anger and hatred. The reason for this is that I am asking questions that Muslims can no longer ignore. Why, for example, do we waste the talents of women, half of God's handiwork? Where does the anti-Semitism that characterizes Islam today come from? And above all, how can even moderate Muslims understand the Qur'an literally, when, like any holy text, it is full of contradictions and ambiguities? The problem with Islam today is that this adherence to the literal meaning is becoming mainstream.
It often happens that Muslims who are offended by these words support them when they respond to the words. I regularly receive death threats on my website. Some would-be murderers emphasize the benefits of martyrdom. They want to throw me into the "fire of hell" in exchange for 72 virgins. Others just want to know what flight I will be boarding soon, so they can hijack the plane. For some reason, I don't feel like sharing them on my schedule.
Some threats were particularly terrifying. At a North American airport, a Muslim man approached my traveling companion and said to her, "You are luckier than your girlfriend." When she asked him to explain his words, he made a motion with his hand as if he was holding a gun and "shot". "In the end she will find out what I mean", he said.
However, despite all the threats, there is also good news: the support, affection and even love I receive from my fellow Muslims exceeds all my expectations. Two groups in particular – young Muslims and Muslim women – have flooded my website with letters of thanks for having someone say out loud what they've only been whispering.
That's why I don't take my bodyguard everywhere. If I want to convey a credible message that it is possible to resist the establishment and lead a normal life, it is not possible to have a burly bodyguard constantly looking over my shoulder.
Of course I have not tried to visit Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan since my book was published. Even so, the relative confidence I felt when talking about Islam in the West convinces me that Muslims in the West are in the best position to revive the Muslim tradition of independent thinking. The reason for this is that in the West we enjoy a valuable freedom to think, express opinions, challenge and be challenged - without fear of the state.
I do not deny that some Muslims suffer persecution and discrimination from Western governments. I myself suffered a similar fate during the first Gulf War when I was kicked out of a federal building in Ottawa, Canada, for no apparent reason. However, this reservation does not change a basic fact: if we, the Muslims living in the West, dare to ask questions about our holy book, and if we want to condemn the violation of human rights committed in the name of the Koran - we do not need to fear that we will be raped or flogged, stoned or executed.
What do the Muslims in the West do with their freedoms? I know what many young Muslims want us to do: to think critically about ourselves and not just about Washington. Indeed, an important motive for writing my book was my conversations with young Muslims on campuses in the US and Canada. Many of them told me, "We need people like you to help us make our religion more open, because if it doesn't open we will leave it."
These young people are on the front line of the war for the soul of Islam. Whatever the risks to my safety, I will not turn my back on them or the gift of freedom bestowed upon me by the society in which I live.
The author is a Canadian of Pakistani origin, the author of the book "The Problem with Islam"
In the Netherlands they fear: Jihad has come to us
By Thomas Fuller
Van Gogh. The murder deepened the gaps
Herald Tribune
Amsterdam. Next to the flowers and candles placed at the foot of the doorstep of the house of Theo Van Gogh, the murdered Dutch film director, someone left a handwritten note: "Government skins! This was once a free country." About a week after Van Gogh was shot and stabbed to death by the son of a Moroccan immigrant, there is still shock, sadness and anger in the Netherlands.
And also fear. Van Gogh's outspoken views against Islam made him the victim of what many Dutch people now call the first terrorist attack in their country. "There is no guarantee that it won't develop into something much more violent," said Paul Schaeffer, one of the top experts on immigrant communities in the Netherlands, who was among Van Gogh's acquaintances.
According to Shafer, considering the number of militant mosques scattered in Europe and the feeling of alienation among Muslim communities across the continent, it seems that similar assassinations can occur in all European countries. "This is not a disease unique to the Netherlands," he said. "Such acts of violence could equally happen in Lyon, Copenhagen, Antwerp or Berlin. This is a European problem."
On Friday, Josias van Artsen of the VVD party, a coalition partner, said that jihad "has arrived in the Netherlands." "These people don't want to change our society, they want to destroy it," he said and called for a desperate fight against them. Fritz Volkstein, European Commissioner and one of the first Dutch politicians to address the problems arising from immigration to the country in the 90s, said on Tuesday that the intelligence services of the Netherlands need "more money and more people" and that they should focus on "infiltrating" the extremist Moroccan organizations.
Van Gogh's murder seems to have deepened the divisions in Dutch society. Moroccan immigrants who were interviewed for this article said that they condemned the murder of Van Gogh, but also accepted the hostile treatment, according to them, towards Muslims and discrimination against them in the workplace. The old Dutch, on the other hand, say they are beginning to fear expressing themselves freely about Islam and its place in society. Publicists who discussed the issue above the pages of the newspaper said that they had received threats on their lives, and recently security was attached to several senior politicians.
The suspect in Van Gogh's murder, 26-year-old Muhammad Bouiri, shot the director with a gun - eyewitnesses said they heard at least 20 shots - then stabbed him with a knife, slit his throat and pinned to his body with a dagger five pages of a pamphlet in which he called on Muslims to rise up against the "infidels". The people of the Netherlands were shocked by the brutal nature of the assassination, reminiscent of the executions of the kidnapped in Iraq, and to no less extent, by the fact that the murder happened in broad daylight on a busy street where Van Gogh rode his bicycle.
Jan de Roos, a 23-year-old student, recalled the assassination of Pim Fortoun, the populist politician who called for curbs on immigration, saying the Netherlands was "already full" of enough. "When Fortown was murdered, everyone thought that something like this could never happen here again," said de Ros. "Well, it happened again."
Fortuna and Van Gogh sharply criticized Islam. Assassinations of their lives caused a wave of hostility in the Netherlands towards foreigners in general, and towards Muslims in particular. In the Netherlands, which has a population of 16 million, about a million Muslims live. Ellen Leizenga, a 42-year-old psychologist who came to lay a rose where Van Gogh was murdered, said that since the act she has felt a change in the mood in her neighborhood. "People are more blunt in their statements," she said. "They want all the extremists to be deported. And to be honest, I quite sympathize with this position."
The personal story of Muhammad Boyeri is not different from that of many frustrated Muslim immigrants who turned to the path of violence. Bowery is the eldest of nine children. According to the Dutch media, he was a pleasant person until the day his mother died, a few years ago. After her death he began to grow a beard, wear traditional Moroccan robes and attend the Al-Tawhid Mosque in Amsterdam, known for its extreme sermons.
Van Gogh, a filmmaker, publicist and TV show host, was a scion of the family of the famous impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh, and he was murdered about a kilometer from his home in a bourgeois neighborhood of Amsterdam. His blunt style and his verbal lashings aroused reservations even in an open society like the Netherlands. His attacks were directed mainly against Muslims, but he did not spare his tribe from Jews and Christians as well.
