Anyone (outside of the Netherlands) heard this news? A rather famous Dutch columnist and filmmaker, known for his outspoken views on religion in general, and Islam in particular, was murdered last week (november 2nd) by an Islamic fundamentalist guy. The murderer was a second generation Dutch-Moroccan, born and bred in the Netherlands.
<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/11/02/netherlands.filmmaker/index.html">Link to story</a>
I posted this story in order to highlight the growing unrest in my country. People are pissed off about this, and many Muslim immigrants don't seem to understand why.
Just to provide some background material:
- Muslims, specifically of Moroccan descent, are angry at being linked to the murderer. They see the murderer as an insane deviant, who isn't even a real Muslim (because of his crime).
- Some Muslims say that van Gogh deserved to be murdered because of what he said. Some say he didn't deserve it, but they can understand the murderer. Some say he didn't deserve it, but that he should have expected it.
- A lot of native Dutch people have been angry at Moroccans in general for a while now, for their unwillingness to "blend in". There have been many incidents of Moroccan kids being a pain in the arse to other people. Only two weeks ago there was a story on the news about a Dutch family practically forced to move from a predominantly Moroccan street; the kids there bullied them on a daily basis, until they finally left. There's Moroccan kids calling Dutch girls whores, there's Muslim clerics denouncing gay people as diseased, there's Moroccan kids playing soccer with packs of flowers on our national day of mourning for the deaths of WW2... tons and tons of stories, all supposed to be "incidents".
- A lot of the Muslim immigrants, specifically Moroccans, have a hard time getting a job. Partly because of their lower social class and education, partly because of the bad examples set by some of their kin.
Now, what do outsiders think of this? Does anyone know how we can get out of this mess?