Scotland on Sunday – Top Stories – Van Gogh murder backlash begins
It prides itself on being the beating liberal heart of Europe, but the murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh has convinced many in the Netherlands that the nation’s legendary tolerance has now reached its limit.
Van Gogh’s execution last Tuesday, which has been linked to Islamic extremists, has brought calls for a crackdown on fundamentalists and renegade preachers that would previously have been unthinkable.
Once liberal commentators now want Muslim hardliners to be thrown out of the country, even if they have Dutch passports, and greater surveillance of the wider Islamic community.
Islamic fundamentalists are the greatest threat to the world since communism. It often hides under the guess of religious freedom. If countries continue to allow this, it will only get worse.
Reading more about The Netherlands and the context of this murder bears a lot of interesting fruit and comparisons with the United States.
In many ways the Netherlands is more socially liberal and tolerant than the United States (pot, prostitution, gays, etc.), but they are also more culturally homogenous, so the large influx of immigrants who do not assimilate has a larger impact on their society. Especially if they are Muslim and attack the tolerant Western values that allowed them to enter the country in the first place.
That’s why this murder is sparking a backlash in the Netherlands.
Meanwhile in the States, we are used to large immigrant groups that maintain their culture and do not assimilate (at least in California). But their parents came here for opportunity and for their children. And they pass that on to their children ad nauseum.
What this means to me, ironically, is that we need the Patriot Act, so we can be confident the authorities are legimately following suspicious people, based on evidence. There’s room to reign in the Act, and some “evidence” of terrorist leanings is questionable, but if I’m expected to be tolerant of everyone I see, without racial or cultural profiling, then somebody has to be watching my back. Just enforcing laws at the border, etc, is not enough. These terrorists are devious and deadly.
The alternative is a backlash against all Muslims and Arabs. You might say we have that already, but not in tolerant areas of the country with a history of immigration. I imagine that could change if a murder like the one in Holland occurred here (specifically LA or SF).