Solomonia Archive: The Globe and the Van Gogh Murder

Saturday, November 20, 2004

This Boston Globe story is interesting for a few reasons. Yes, it starts and ends by somewhat portraying Muslims as victims, not the perpetrators - true as far as it goes, but an odd frame to provide the incident - and also somewhat frustratingly referring to the "alleged killer," (alleged? Come on.) but along the way we can observe a couple of things...

Boston.com: Killing fuels Dutch clash of cultures

UDEN, Netherlands -- They had gathered for prayers at a mosque on the final night of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when someone shouted, ''Fire at the school!"

The community of devout Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in this town south of Amsterdam rushed to Bedir Islamic Elementary School as flames lit up the sky.

Among them was Emine Altun, 32, who stood shivering as the school that taught 120 children, including her two boys, was gutted in less than an hour on Nov. 9.

Scrawled in white spray paint were the initials of the hate group known as White Power.

''We could only cry," Altun said.

The attack was among the spate of bombings, fires, and vandalism at more than 20 mosques and Islamic schools and organizations in the bitter, violent atmosphere that has erupted after the Nov. 2 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected Islamic extremist. Several Protestant churches also have been attacked in a spiral of revenge.

Uh oh, the "cycle of violence" comes to The Netherlands.

The tumult of the past two weeks has jolted the Netherlands, long synonymous with tolerance and modern, secular values. Famous for its orderly bicycle lanes and its open society in which prostitution and cannabis are legal, and as home to the seat of international law in The Hague, the country has been transformed into a cultural battlefield.

The Hague, heal thyself!

Headlines around the world have trumpeted van Gogh's killing and the wave of violence as a clash of civilizations -- Islam vs. the West. But political scientists and religious scholars say they see it more specifically as the opening of a direct conflict between a fiery Islamic fundamentalist movement rooted in a disenfranchised Muslim immigrant community and a strident secular fundamentalism that is increasingly intolerant of any religious expression.

Interesting. Cracks of an admission that anti-religiosity can be as fundamentalist and intollerant as the religious variety.

Van Gogh was attacked on a crowded street in Amsterdam while riding his bicycle to work. He was shot eight times and stabbed, and his throat was slit.

A note was left on his chest, allegedly by his suspected killer...

"Allegedly by his suspected killer..." Don't commit yourself to anything there, Globe.

I didn't mean to fisk this, actually. Instead, I just wanted to point out a couple of interesting tid-bits that I think relate to some domestic political issues. Skipping ahead:

The Netherlands has 16 million people, including 1 million Muslims mostly from Turkey and Morocco. By many accounts, the country has mishandled immigration policy, failing to integrate newly arrived Muslim citizens and even second-generation citizens, into its society. Critics of government policies say, for example, that it erred with a well-intentioned but flawed approach to education that permitted religiously funded schools, isolating Arab speakers from the mainstream population and feeding on discontent and joblessness in the immigrant Muslim community.

Is it too much to point out that this is an indictment of bi-lingual education here at home? I don't think so. Allowing isolated communities to stay isolated feeds their lack of success and inability to integrate into the greater society. Learning English in school (here at home) and mainstreaming students with full English instruction ASAP is one of the solutions.

...Bouyeri bought into the mindset, according to dozens of messages he posted on several militant Islamic websites and in a community newspaper in the months before the attack. Authorities say he called for jihad against Europeans and Americans...

It's good to see Jihad being mentioned in a paper like the Globe without a disclaimer about true Jihad as a spiritual struggle rather than a physical one.

And here's an interesting argument against hate-speech laws:

...''From the perspective of our community, when a Muslim cleric called homosexuality a sin or spoke out against gay marriage, he was taken to court and sued and condemned by the government," Larouz said. ''But when van Gogh said these hateful things, he was defended for his right to freedom of speech. That . . . double standard fueled even more anger."...

Once you start making some citizens more protected than others, you instantly begin to risk feelings of second-class status in the others.

Posted by Solomon at 5:19 PM on Saturday, Nov 20, 2004
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