posted November 04, 2004 02:13 PM            

These people despise every ideal you hold dear and wouldn't think twice about killing you just because of your ideals.

So, I wonder what it's going to take, your husband, wife, children, father, mother, friends being butchered by these people before you realize there is a real war in progress and it's much broader than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When are you going to give your consent to your government going after these people wherever they are, dealing with them and the terrorist nations who send them out as proxies and dealing with them first...before they deal with you?

Oh, I know this sounds like the random act of an individual but it's the mindset behind the act that typifies terrorist thinking.

Death of a “Blasphemer”
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 3, 2004

Theo van Gogh was shot dead on an Amsterdam street on Tuesday morning. His assailant was a Dutch Moroccan who was wearing traditional Islamic clothing. After shooting van Gogh several times, he stabbed him repeatedly, slit his throat with a butcher knife, and left a note containing verses from the Qur’an on the body. Said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende: “Nothing is known about the motive” of the killer.

Others were not quite so cautious. A Dutch student declared: “This has to end, once and for all. You cannot just kill people on the street in a brutal way when you disagree with them.” Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam, declared: “We will show loud and clear that freedom of speech is important to us.”

Freedom of speech: Eight weeks ago, van Gogh’s film Submission aired on Dutch TV. The brainchild of an ex-Muslim member of the Dutch Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Submission decried the mistreatment of Muslim women — and even featured images of battered women wearing see-through robes that exposed their breasts, with verses from the Qur’an written on their bodies.

In poor taste? Insulting? Probably that was a bit of the intention. Van Gogh, the great grandson of Vincent van Gogh’s brother (“dear Theo”), was a well-known gadfly on the Dutch scene; in the past, he had attacked Jewish and Christians with enough vehemence to elicit formal complaints. But after Submission, the death threats started to come. Van Gogh, in the eyes of many Dutch Muslims, had blasphemed Islam — an offense that brought the death penalty. The filmmaker was unconcerned. The film itself, he said, was “the best protection I could have. It’s not something I worry about.”

His death shows that it’s something that everyone who values freedom should worry about. For the murder of van Gogh, if it indeed turns out to have been committed by a Muslim enraged at his “blasphemy,” has precedents. In 1947, the Iranian lawyer Ahmad Kasravi was murdered in court by Islamic radicals; Kasravi was there to defend himself against charges that he had attacked Islam. Four years later, members of the same radical Muslim group, Fadayan-e Islam, assassinated Iranian Prime Minister Haji-Ali Razmara after a group of Muslim clerics issued a fatwa calling for his death. In 1992, the Egyptian writer Faraj Foda was murdered by Muslims enraged at his “apostasy” from Islam — another offense for which traditional Islamic law prescribes the death penalty. Foda’s countryman, the Nobel Prizewinning novelist Naguib Mahfouz, was stabbed in 1994 after accusations of blasphemy. Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, many non-Muslims have been arrested, tortured, and sentenced to die on the slimmest of evidence. And of course, there is the Ayatollah Khomeini’s notorious death fatwa against Salman Rushdie.

But for such things to happen in Iran and Egypt, two countries where Islamic radicalism is widespread, is one thing; to have a “blasphemer” gunned down on the streets of Amsterdam in broad daylight is another. Europe has for thirty years encouraged massive immigration from Muslim nations; Muslims now comprise five percent of Holland’s population, and that number is growing rapidly. But it is still largely taboo in Europe — as in America — to raise any questions about how ready that population is to accept the parameters of secularism. When Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn tried to raise some of those questions in 2002, he was vilified as a racist — in line with the continuing tendency of the Western media to frame questions regarding Islam in racial terms, despite the fact that the totalitarian intransigence of the ideology of radical Islam is found among all races. And Fortuyn himself, of course, was himself ultimately murdered by a Dutch assailant who, according to The Guardian, “did it for Dutch Muslims.”

The deaths of Fortuyn and now van Gogh indicate that the costs of maintaining this taboo are growing ever higher. One of the prerequisites of the hard-won peaceful coexistence of ideologies in a secular society is freedom of speech — particularly the freedom to question, to dissent, even to ridicule. Multiculturalism and secularism are on a collision course: if one group is able to demand that its tenets remain above criticism, it no longer coexists with the others as an equal, but has embarked on the path to hegemony.

It is long past due for such considerations to become part of the public debate in Western countries. To what extent are Muslim immigrants in Western countries willing to set aside Islamic strictures on questioning, criticizing, and leaving Islam?

After van Gogh was killed, thousands of people took to the streets of Amsterdam to pay him homage. Among them, according to Agence France Presse, was a Muslim woman who stated: “I didn’t really agree with van Gogh but he was a person who used his freedom of expression.” She held up a sign saying, “Muslims Against Violence,” explaining: “I decided that as a Muslim and a Moroccan I should take up my responsibility to show that we do not support this act.”

But the traditional Muslim view is, unfortunately, alive and well; it was firmly restated several years ago by Pakistan’s Federal Sharia Court: “The penalty for contempt of the Holy Prophet …is death and nothing else.” No one knows how many Muslims in Europe and America hold the views of the Moroccan woman at the rally, and how many would side with Pakistan’s Sharia Court — and the killer of Theo van Gogh.

posted November 04, 2004 03:35 PM            

In order to appease those that would be beneficial towards the United States' cause over the "War on Terror", we need to start applying better relations with those that are governing those countries, like that of France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Holland, etc.

In spite of the differences between these(and other) countries, you can't deny the fact that they are also the supreme giants of the free world and the rest of the countries that don't hold the same truism of power like that of "First World" countries! But our allies do hold a great amount of influence over these smaller countries then we ourselves would be able to obtain!

We can be able to get that much more of help from them, that can easily locate and strike at the hidden cells, that these "criminals of humanity" have burrowed themselves deep into!

posted November 04, 2004 08:43 PM            

Doctors Without Borders pull out of Iraq
Aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says it is pulling out of Iraq because of escalating violence in the country and danger to its staff.

MSF (Doctors Without Borders) says it has taken the decision "in the light of the extreme risks taken in the country by humanitarian workers".

It blames the pullout primarily on the risk of kidnappings and violence by insurgents, as well as on coalition forces limiting its "humanitarian space".

"It has become impossible for us, as an international humanitarian organisation, to guarantee an acceptable level of security for our staff, whether they are expatriates or Iraqis," Gorik Ooms, director general of MSF-Belgium, said.

"We deeply regret that we are no longer able to bring medical aid to the Iraqi people when they need it the most."

Six more foreigners were kidnapped in Iraq on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the kidnappers of Irish-born aid official Margaret Hassan, the head of Iraq operations for leading charity CARE International, have threatened to hand her to Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Only two months ago MSF vowed it would press on providing aid inside the country despite deteriorating security conditions.

"The security factor has really gradually deteriorated in the past few months and very recently we have a feeling it is becoming increasingly dangerous to be associated with a humanitarian organisation," MSF spokeswoman Eva van Beek said.

MSF says the warring sides in Iraq have repeatedly shown "their lack of respect for independent humanitarian aid".

The agency won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for its aid work around the world.

- AFP

posted November 04, 2004 10:14 PM            

quote:

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One of the prerequisites of the hard-won peaceful coexistence of ideologies in a secular society is freedom of speech — particularly the freedom to question, to dissent, even to ridicule. Multiculturalism and secularism are on a collision course: if one group is able to demand that its tenets remain above criticism, it no longer coexists with the others as an equal, but has embarked on the path to hegemony.

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Now isn't that something that needs repeating?

posted November 05, 2004 02:14 AM              

Or I could say: Islam is prudish and needs to lighten up. Thanks for that article, jwhop.