Fatal detraction

Caught a chill from nettime: about


> inability to view the world according to abstract principles, to transcend
> the literally militant passages of sacred texts.






> <http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id0005855>
>
>
>
>
> OpinionJournal - TASTE COMMENTARY
>
> Fatal Detraction
> A provocative, and offensive, filmmaker and columnist attacks Islam and
> pays with his life.
>
> BY LEON DE WINTER
> Friday, November 5, 2004 12:01 a.m.
>
> AMSTERDAM–It was only two years ago that an animal-rights extremist
> assassinated the populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, explaining later in
> court that he did so, in part, to stop Fortuyn from using Muslim immigrants
> as "scapegoats." Now the Netherlands is once again in shock. On Tuesday,
> the filmmaker and newspaper columnist Theo van Gogh–a distant descendant
> of the artist Vincent–was murdered, allegedly by a Muslim immigrant (now
> in police custody). On Wednesday the police arrested eight Islamic radicals
> in connection with the slaying. The Netherlands prides itself on being a
> liberal and tolerant country. What is going on?
>
> Like Mr. Fortuyn, whom he admired, Mr. Van Gogh was a radical libertarian,
> a champion of free speech who refused to be constrained by taboos or social
> codes. I know from personal experience what it felt like to be the target
> of his invective.
>
> Mr. Van Gogh's pen could be vulgar and radical, and he managed to offend me
> more than once. In 1984, after I directed a feature film called
> "Frontiers," about a Dutch journalist who goes abroad to interview a
> terrorist and discovers his own violent side, Mr. Van Gogh accused me of
> "selling out my Jewish identity," although there was not a single Jewish
> character in the picture. Writing elsewhere about Jewish writers or
> filmmakers, he made Holocaust-tinged jokes like: "Hey, it smells like
> caramel today–well then, they must be burning the diabetic Jews." Such
> attacks went on for almost 20 years. (Mr. Van Gogh was 47 when he died.)
>
> To be clear: Mr. Van Gogh did not limit himself to Jewish topics. He
> attacked Christian values and symbols as well. Theodor Holman, another
> Dutch columnist, once wrote that "every Christian is a criminal," and a
> storm of controversy broke out. Mr. Van Gogh came to his defense by writing
> that people offended by those words were only "the fan club of that rotting
> fish in Nazareth." After viewing Mel Gibson's recent film, Mr. Van Gogh
> remarked in the daily Metro: "I just went to see 'The Passion of the
> Christ,' a film as bad as an LSD trip which shows once again that also in
> the sewers of Christianity collective daftness just leads to mud."
>
> After the death of Mr. Fortuyn, who warned that Holland's open culture
> would clash with its growing Muslim community, Mr. Van Gogh turned his
> attention to Islam, spewing invective in his columns and earning many
> enemies. Many people went out of their way to avoid him, including me.
>
> Even so, Mr. Van Gogh remained a member of the artistic establishment. He
> worked for the leading Dutch television companies, for newspapers and
> magazines. In August he caused a sensation by collaborating with Ayaan
> Hirsi Ali, a Somali who fled to Holland 10 years ago and who eventually won
> a seat in Parliament. Two years ago, Ms. Hirsi Ali declared that she no
> longer considered herself a Muslim. Death threats followed, and she was
> given round-the-clock protection by the Dutch secret service. Certain
> segments of the public hailed her as the true heir of Mr. Fortuyn. She
> certainly has a charismatic persona: She is black, beautiful and
> elegant–and knows Islam inside-out.
>
> It was the film that Mr. Van Gogh and Ms. Hirsi Ali made,
> "Submission"–the title is a literal translation of the Arabic word
> "Islam"–that appears to have led to Van Gogh's murder. In his 20-minute
> movie, based on Ms. Hirsi Ali's script and screened on television in
> August, Mr. Van Gogh portrayed written passages from the Koran on partially
> clothed female bodies to accentuate the texts' hostility to women. The
> intention, of course, was to provoke a discussion among female Muslims.
>
> And provocative the film was, but in the context of Holland's often brazen
> filmmaking culture it was reasonably cautious and subtle. In fact, it led
> me for the first time to write something positive about Mr. Van Gogh. I
> thought the negative reaction to "Submission" was unfair. In Elsevier
> magazine I wrote that the "people who are offended by this film have a big
> problem." I noted that it did not openly show naked women–as so many
> critics had claimed–and that it was rather modest in its style, subdued
> and carefully made.
>
> In his own statements, Mr. Van Gogh made no concessions to the
> sensibilities of Holland's Muslim immigrants. He was an artiste
> provocateur–troublesome, offensive and hyperbolic but, it should be said,
> accepted within the wide boundaries of Dutch culture.
>
> But not by everyone. On Tuesday, a 26-year-old observant Muslim named
> Mohammed B. (officials are withholding his family name) decided to act,
> unable to accept that unbelievers like Mr. Van Gogh might be led to
> criticize or ridicule Islam. The son of immigrants who had found work,
> prosperity and freedom in the Netherlands, he had a history of violence
> and, it now appears, was allied with a group of radical Muslims.
>
> Having shot Mr. Van Gogh while the filmmaker was riding his bicycle, and
> clutching a knife in both hands, Mohammed B. tried to cut off Van Gogh's
> head–"as if he were slicing bread," as one eyewitness related. For the
> deed, he had dressed himself in traditional Moroccan garb and, it seems,
> attempted to ritually slaughter the infidel, like an animal. He stuck a
> note on Van Gogh's chest with a knife.
>
> The minister of justice announced yesterday that the note was a letter
> addressed to Ms. Hirsi Ali, threatening her and filled with threats and
> anti-Semitic remarks. The letter, he noted, "shows an extreme religious
> ideology; it says that its enemies should fear for their lives." The
> minister of the interior, for his part, remarked that the letter was "a
> direct attack on the Dutch democratic system."
>
> And so it seems to be. In a strange and appalling way, Mohammed B. did to
> Mr. Van Gogh what Mr. Van Gogh did to the actresses and extras in
> "Submission"–the essential difference being that the actresses could wash
> the words away and leave the studio without a care, while the words on Mr.
> Van Gogh were pinned by his murderer to his dead flesh.
>
> This difference highlights what many in the Netherlands see as an enormous
> problem with the fundamentalist parts of Arab-Islamic cultures: an
> inability to view the world according to abstract principles, to transcend
> the literally militant passages of sacred texts. To some, the Koran to this
> day offers no prospect of a free interpretation, or a tolerant one, that
> can exist alongside the free speech of a liberal society.
>
> In the heyday of their multicultural utopia, the Dutch political and
> intellectual elites believed that radical Muslims and radical libertarians
> could exist peacefully together in the same society. In recent years it has
> become clear that such a belief was an illusion, although the politically
> correct media long tried to avoid the whole subject.
>
> Mr. Fortuyn, in his outspoken political career, broke the taboos
> surrounding the problems of immigration and paid with his life. Mr. Van
> Gogh paid the same price for a provocation that, had it been directed at
> Christianity rather than Islam, would have hardly raised an eyebrow.
>
> Mr. de Winter is a Dutch novelist and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.
–
soundart performance videoinstallation multimedia painting theory


<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
<www.naxsmash.net/inscapes>