Van Gogh’s murder and moral neutralism, updated

Filmmaker Theo van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh’s great-grand nephew, was brutally murdered: shot eight times while riding his bicycle, his throat was slit, and a 5-page letter was pinned to his body with a knife by a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan. The [Dutch] justice minister said the murder stemmed from “radical Islamic beliefs”..

The letter was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch parliamentarian who abandoned Islam largely as a result of the abuse that she as a woman encountered, and has been translated by Pieter Dorsman, but the murderer is attacking all of us,

I know for sure that you, Oh America will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh Europe will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh Holland, will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go under;

I know for sure that you, Oh unbelieving fundamentalist, will go under.

The NYTies piped in, in Jimmy Carter-like mode

Urgent efforts are needed to better manage the cultural tensions perilously close to the surface of Dutch public life. The problem is not Muslim immigration, but a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society.

Hugh Fitzgerald replies,

What does this mean? Does it mean that the Dutch should reconcile themselves to surrendering, in the first place, the right of free speech, including the right to make a movie called “Submission”? Is that part of the “smoother transition” to a more “diverse” society that of course we all want so much to achieve?

If that “diverse society” means accommodating murder on the streets of Amsterdam, oh New York Times editorialist, sorry — no can do.

If it means refusing to study either the tenets of Islam, or the history of Muslim subjugation of non-Muslims, about which there are many studies, from what happened to the Hindus in India to the Zoroastrians in Persia, to the Greco-Buddhist civilization of Central Asia, to the Christians and Jews of Mesopotamia, Syria, Judea, North Africa, and Spain (the real Spain, not the Spain of Washington Irving or Maria Rosa Menocal’s dreamy fantasies), that to is something some Dutch people, and many Americans, are simply unwilling to do.

The Times vision of a “more diverse society” ignores the fact that Muslims do not believe in, or want, or have anything but contempt and hatred for, a “diverse society.” They want a society that is Muslim, from top to bottom. If they do not call for the immediate imposition of the Shari’a (and by the way, some do), if they do not all echo certain Muslim leaders, such as Jahjah in Belgium, for a total parallel society, governed by Muslim (i.e. shari’a) law within the lands of the Infidels, the Bilad al-kufr, that is only because — for the moment — they are not sufficiently numerous to impose their will. But if nothing is done, they will be.

Is it too much to ask the Editorial Board of the New York Times to study — I will be happy to supply a reading list — the history of Islam, and to familiarize itself thoroughly with what is contained in Qur’an, hadith, sira, and the major commentators? Is that really too much for them to bother with?

Once the NYT and the MSM start informing themselves, there might be an end to this moral relativism where the perpetrators are “militants” victims of “a failure to plan for a smoother transition to a more diverse society”. Until then, call terrorism what it is. And we are at war, one war.

Update Read Jeff Jarvis‘s post, It can happen to anyone, even you. And apparently Van Gogh was killed 911 days after the murder of Pim Fortuyn.

Update 2 Dutch Charge 7 Muslim Men in Killing of a Critic of Islam