Filmmaker killed, violence erupts, Dutch reconsider tolerance shtick

This is starting to sound like a movie itself

On November 2, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (yes, a relative of Vincent) was shot, then repeatedly stabbed, then had his throat cut with a butcher knife on an Amsterdam street by a “Dutch Moroccan who wore traditional Islamic clothing.” A five-page letter declaring holy war and threatening death to the critics of Islam was stabbed to his chest with a knife.

Eight weeks prior, Van Gogh’s documentary film, “Submission,” about the abuse of women in Islam which “featur[ed] images of battered women wearing see-through robes that exposed their breasts, with verses from the Qur’an written on their bodies,” aired on Dutch TV, to much uproar from the local Islamic community.

Since the killing, several Dutch mosques have been attacked, an Islamic school bombed and other burned downwith the words “Theo rest in peace” written on it in retaliation. Then, in retaliation for the retaliation, two Protestant churches had petrol bombs thrown at them.

Yesterday, at his funeral, which was broadcast live on TV, Van Gogh’s mother told the hundreds in attendance “Let no social worker, psychologist or another member of the thought police tell us we cannot hate, that we have to turn the other cheek.”

That statement had barely hit the presses when a 14 hour standoff with terrorists in the Hague (the irony!) started in which three officers were injured by a booby trap and a hand grenade thrown at them. Airspace over the Hague was closed as a result of the confrontation.

This on the heels of an opinion poll stating that “40 per cent of Dutch people no longer considered Muslims welcome” 81 percent backed extra measures to combat Islamic extremism and some 79 percent felt the killing of Van Gogh showed that Dutch society had changed for ever.

So much for the famous tolerance of the Dutch, huh?