Has it been five years already? God, how time flies...
Five years ago I was convinced that this moment would prove to be a watershed. Surely now the Netherlands, and Europe, would wake up. Surely now the aggressive wing of the muslim community would be dealt with, would be cut down to size.
With 20/20 hindsight we must conclude that it was a watershed moment, but not in the way I envisioned.
What made the day so memorable was the obvious panic coming over our political classes and the dignified calm that the general populace displayed despite everything. There were no riots. No bands of enraged citizens were roaming the streets searching out muslim victims to exact revenge upon. No headscarfs were forcefully torn off or spat upon. Mosques did not go up in flames, Korans were not torn up in the streets
"...In the days following the murder we saw Mayor Cohen visiting the family of the murderer and the mosque he used to frequent. Our queen did not go out and meet with the family of the victim to pay her respects. But she did find the time to sit down with muslim youth to assure them that the government would be there to protect them. Protect them against an 'anti-muslim backlash' that never materialized and never was on the cards to begin with."
One man, a Rotterdam artist, Chris Ripke, (who's studio is right next door to the Mosque in the Insulindestraat [the Turkish Iskender Pasa Camii Mosque) decided to do a fairly innocuous protest. He went to Rotterdam, and painted a small mural of an Angel, some Koranic text about peace at the bottom, and the words:" Though Shalt Not Kill" in Dutch across the mural.
A man representing the nearby mosque was of course, offended by the Christian sentiment on the mural and called the city and demanded it be removed. In point form, the city obliged and perhaps most horrifying of all, the police told all media present for the removal of the mural they may not film it and had their film taken away in keeping with the Dutch police of 'non-escalation'. A few days ago, someone sent me a link to a video on youtube of this whole event. Apparently someone decided not to comply with the police request thankfully, and a group of us worked hard to translate and subtitle this as we feel as many people as humanly possible need to see this and understand its importance. Although this event is old, the presence of this tape is new to me and almost certainly new to the English speaking world. Here is the English subtitled video:
Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous
What a different road the Netherlands might have taken if Pim Fortuyn had lived! Back in the early spring of 2002, the sociologist-turned-politician—who didn’t mince words about the threat to democracy represented by his country’s rapidly expanding sharia enclaves—was riding high in the polls and appeared on the verge of becoming the next prime minister. For his supporters, Fortuyn represented a solitary voice of courage and an embodiment of hope for freedom’s preservation in the land of the dikes and windmills. But for the Dutch political class and its allies in the media and academia—variously blinded by multiculturalism, loath to be labeled racists, or terrified of offending Muslims—Fortuyn himself was the threat. They painted him as a dangerous racist, a new Mussolini out to tyrannize a defenseless minority. The result: on May 6, 2002, nine days before the election, Fortuyn was gunned down by a far-left activist taken in by the propaganda. The Dutch establishment remained in power. For many Dutchmen, hope died that day.
