Opgestookt

On 2 november 2004 Theo van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a muslim fundamentalist. Theo van Gogh was a filmmaker and writer who loved the freedom from the sixties and seventies and saw the growing number of active muslims as a threat to that freedom. He had a big and foul mouth, a typical honest Dutch guy who was not afraid to speak his mind or wish a braintumor unto a political opponent. He left loads of enemies behind and yet apart from Mohammed Bouyeri, none of them had ever taken a gun and shot him, let alone cut his throat with a kitchenknife.

In the weeks following this murder some people took revenge for Theo van Gogh on muslims in general. They burned some islamic schools and mosques. Apparently not all muslims took it lying down, because a few churches were burning too. This violence was milked to the bone by our nations experts and caring people. Suddenly they ‘discovered’ the so-called ‘Lonsdale youth’: fans of fast house music, who are proud of the Netherlands and show their hate for foreigners by dressing in the brand of a black boxer. Kids like this have been around for years and the opinions from most of them don’t differ so much from those of the professionally concerned people themselves.
Not a day has passed since 9/11 without some intellectual publishing an open or concealed attack on the 5% muslims in the Netherlands. Experts never hesitate to blame crimes, mistakes or any kind of annoying behaviour on the muslim religion or culture. One of the weirdest examples of this was some intellectual who wrote an half page article in the newspaper about a fight in a bar. With nothing more than a few basic facts from the policereport, the writer gave a step by step account of the fight. Every step was explained by the Moroccan culture of the guy who drew the knife. It would be fun to see this kind of reasoning used on white criminals: ‘the white junkie was almost predestined to snatch the bag, because in the Dutch culture there is not much respect for the law and the Dutch are well known for stealing. They even have a song to honour the pirate who stole a ship full of silver from the Spanish in the 17th century. No wonder the thief was addicted, the Dutch are the biggest drinkers in Europe, it’s in the culture…’ Everyday we are being fed stories like this, but always about immigrants. Even people who don’t meet any muslims in their daily life are now worried about the ‘islamification’ of the Netherlands. And all those worried people feel they have to have an opinion about any incident involving muslim immigrants. So a Turkish kid who shot a schoolteacher, was in the news for weeks. A Dutch man who tried to stab his teacher to death a few months later, wasn’t news anymore as soon as the media found out that he wasn’t foreign.
And with every new scandal the demands on immigrants become stronger. They must integrate, assimilate, adapt, lose half of the Quran and next week the entire book. They are guilty until proven innocent, because if they don’t speak out often enough against radical islamists they are seen as their allies. They must discipline Moroccan streetkids overnight because it is a problem of their community, but if they work at building and strenghtening that community, they are isolating themselves. Somehow they must lose the culture that is supposed to determine every fiber of their being. Only the ‘Lonsdale youth’ is honest enough to draw the final conclusion from this kind of reasoning, they don’t want and don’t like foreigners anyway.