What made Europe do it?

betsy · February 17, 2006

This topic is about Europe. Trying to understand why those cartoons had re-surfaced yet again, inspite of the protest voiced out after they got published in Denmark.

I do not believe that there is no reason behind what seems to be an intentional action on European media's controversial reaction. DEFIANCE is the word that springs to my mind right now.

I remembered reading a murder case a couple of years back about a movie person murdered by a Muslim who found offense with his movie. In that news articles, members of the press were quoted about their concern for freedom.

This might have something to do with what had caused the media to "provoke" the Muslims. This is just an excerpt.

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November 07, 2004

Trifkovic: Europa Delenda: Muslim immigrant murders Dutch maker of a movie about Islam

The threats on van Gogh's life started ten weeks ago, after the premiere of his film. It was scripted by a Somali-born woman, Hirsi Ali (34), who grew up as a Muslim but has denounced the cult. She is now a Dutch national assembly deputy, and vociferous in her criticism of Islamic obscurantism and violence. She says the goal of the film was to draw attention to rampant but concealed violence against Muslim women, including those living in Europe, who are routinely subjected to rape, incest, forced marriages, and the suicides. "Muslims deny it," she says, "and many Dutch are afraid of taking it on, of causing religious tension, of being called racists."

Van Gogh insisted that he could not see why so many Muslims expressed outrage with his movie. It opens with a Muslim prayer; the narrator then tells stories of four women who ask for Allah's help to lighten their suffering. One was forced to marry a man she hates, one was raped and made pregnant by her uncle, one was whipped after she had sex with her boyfriend, and one is repeatedly beaten by her husband. The women feel abandoned by Allah despite their devotion to him. As a close-up shot of a battered and bruised face appears, the narrator says:

"Oh, Allah, most high. You say that men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because you have given one more strength than the other. Yet I feel at least once a week the strength of my husband's fist on my face."

In addition to his film, van Gogh also wrote columns about Islam that were published on his website and in the Dutch newspaper Metro.

All that appears to have sufficed for a fatwa, a death sentence, and an execution-style murder, in broad daylight, deep inside the Western world. There but for the grace of God go I. Lord have mercy.

Mijnheer Balkenende seems to be implying that "this brutal murder" will be deemed less "unacceptable" if it turns out to have been caused not by "a difference of opinion" but by some more profound reason—by the sense of pain and grievance in the Muslim community, perhaps, caused by the late filmmaker's insensitive and inappropriate words and actions. His reference to Van Gogh's "outspoken opinions" is already echoed in a hundred obituaries describing the victim as "controversial." This brings to mind a Dutch journalist's New York Times obituary of Pim Fortuyn, which called his views "a curious mixture of right, center and left." In today's Holland, no less than in America, it is obvious that notions described as "outspoken," "controversial," and "curious" denote thoughts, as opposed to programmed responses.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/003828.php