Why Theo Van Gogh Died

A Dutch journalist explains why the controversial filmmaker was gunned down on an Amsterdam street. TAP talks to Marc Chavannes.
This article is reprinted from The American Prospect.

In the weeks after the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist on November 2, 2004 Holland, a country known for its culture of tolerance, experienced unprecedented levels of racial and ethnic violence. Last Wednesday, Marc Chavannes, Washington correspondent for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, talked with TAP’s Mark Goldberg about the rise of the contentious Dutch Muslim subculture and the repercussions of van Gogh’s murder.

A Dutch friend of mine told me, “I went to bed in Holland but woke up in a completely different country.” Does this capture the prevalent mood in the Netherlands right now?

The van Gogh murder is a little bit like our 9-11. The degree to which the United States had changed after 9-11 was hard to fathom in Europe. Now, this one murder seems to be having a similar effect on my fellow Dutch nationals.

In Europe we have experienced our own homegrown terrorism for years, so although Dutch people felt enormous solidarity with Americans after 9-11, many asked, “Aren’t Americans a bit too focused on themselves when they keep saying that 9-11 was some huge paradigm shift?”

The Netherlands, right now, is undergoing a similar sort of attitudinal change. It will be interesting to watch whether this change sparks a shift in Europeans’ generally hostile attitude towards George W. Bush’s aggressive foreign policy and his “axis of evil” style approach to the world.

Could you explain how the Dutch understand a “pillarized” society? Very few Americans are familiar with this concept.

When one talks about the “pillarization” of Dutch society, what they mean is a political system predicated upon compromise. It is a pluralistic tradition that was born out of an enlightenment era recognition that no one religious group — that is the Catholics, Protestants, or others — will ever emerge as a clear majority of the population.

In practice, throughout much of the last century, what pillarization meant was that Catholics, Protestants, and secular social democrats built up completely separate institutions for themselves. From political parties, to separate trade unions, schools, radio and television stations, and even weekend sporting clubs, the groups didn’t intermingle much. The dominant attitude was live and let live. So long as it didn’t affect you, one didn’t concern oneself with the goings-on of the other group. In a way, this was the social and political shape of what many people refer to as the Dutch culture of tolerance.

And the 20th century saw the decline of the pillars?

In the last decades you saw the emergence of a secular reality that deprived the pillars of their significance. Whatever the resulting “Dutch” identity, religious affiliation became less prevalent. By the later decades of the 20th century, the old system was crumbling. For example, trade unions merged and newspapers stopped telling their readers for whom they should vote.

At that time, the Dutch experienced their first big wave of Muslim immigrants.

In the 1950s and 1960s a large number of Dutch industrial corporations needed more labor. They couldn’t find that in Holland or Europe so they looked to countries with too many hands and too few jobs — mainly Turkey and Morocco. The government labeled the people who were offered contracts “temporary guest laborers.” There was no return policy, and in time many were entitled to remain permanently and let their families come over.

Now in Rotterdam and Amsterdam you have second- and third-generation children of immigrants who are Dutch, speak Dutch as their first language, but who, to a certain degree, have not been well integrated into mainstream Dutch society. They remain between two cultures and a few are prone to listen to radical Islamist sirens.

Many schools in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht have grown to teach an immigrant majority. These so called ‘black schools’ bear out the problems of incomplete integration.

It seems that the wave of Muslim immigrants has ushered in a revival of the pillarization formula.

Whereas the Dutch pillarization model was crumbling, all of a sudden, Dutch politicians, most notably the Christian Democrats, proposed this Dutch pillarization approach for Muslims. So, for example, Muslims were given, according to the old formula, the right to organize Muslim schools with state support.

While some of the schools worked, others didn’t too well and apparently became breeding grounds for an ideology that wasn’t respectful of western liberal democracy. Under the old model, the inspector of schools would make sure that a Protestant, Catholic, or secular school adequately taught things like math, languages, and [physical education]. But school inspectors wouldn’t check what they were teaching about religion — that was considered their own personal business. The traditional hands-off policy has painfully shown its limits with these schools.

Were politicians slow to respond because of a general taboo against placing judgment on those who belong to a separate religious group?

Multiculturalism was tried and tested in many European countries, but it came very natural to the Dutch with their pillarized system. We have had a lot of policies well-tailored to multiculturalism, I mean, what’s more logical than saying, “I’m Catholic, you’re Protestant, go ahead! You’re Muslim? Fine!”

But we have not done a lot to really help people integrate. For example, we hesitated for very long on whether we should demand that new immigrants learn the Dutch language or teach them in their own language.

That said, we certainly have had a couple of moments when people were speaking out against multiculturalism. However, no one did this with great punch and charisma until Pim Fortuyn emerged as a political force. He came from nowhere politically to create a party that may have been the second largest in Parliament if not for his assassination in May 2003. This proved that there was a huge reservoir of popular unease with the taboo against criticizing how Muslims conduct their business.

To his supporters, Pim Fortuyn seemed to lift this intolerable burden of political correctness from the public debate. What happened after his death?

In the climate following Fortuyn’s assassination, without a clear critic of multiculturalism, people like Van Gogh emerged to fill that void.

In the American press he is dubbed a “filmmaker,” but he was more than that — he was a provocateur. He sometimes used terrible language and he was absolutely convinced that not just Islamic fundamentalism, but Islam itself is a “primitive religion” (as he called it).

He was an essayist, on radio and TV, and had a website which was his refuge whenever he was kicked out of a newspaper column — which actually happened a lot because no editor in chief can maintain a columnist who crosses the line week after week. But it was revelatory and fascinating for the mixed responses his work emoted from the public.

In many ways, tensions between the Muslim immigrant population and the white Dutch native population have been brewing for years. Is van Gogh’s murder simply a violent manifestation of this tension?

More than anything else, it was the ritual fashion in which Van Gogh was executed that made it abundantly clear to most Dutch people that now we are talking about the real thing: Islamist fundamentalism.

How, then, is this shaping public opinion?

A new Fortuyn is emerging, or so he likes to think: Geert Wilders, who split with the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. In the meanwhile there is a fierce debate about the limits of multiculturalism, free speech, and the long-cherished culture of tolerance.

For example, in the last year or two, the well known Dutch novelist Leon de Winter has become an outspoken ambassador for what can be considered neoconservative points of view. He writes a blog in which he links frequently to the National Review and Wall Street Journal op-ed page and other like-minded American sources.

As long as the subject matter of his blog and columns was terrorism and the war in Iraq, he seemed to be somewhat out of sync with popular opinion in the Netherlands. A majority of Dutch people probably didn’t see his point, and neither did they recognize that his intellectual counterparts were a very clearly defined section of the American Commentariat.

After the Van Gogh murder, he suddenly seems more in step with popular sentiments in the Netherlands. With the same links, same convictions, and same deep distrust of what he calls the Islamization of Europe, his views are now more palpable to the public.

Mark Leon Goldberg is a Prospect writing fellow.
• This article is available on The American Prospect website.
Copyright ? 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Mark Leon Goldberg, “The Death of van Gogh”, The American Prospect Online, Dec 3, 2004. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, interview

http://www.ayaanhirsiali.org/ AYAAN HIRSI ALI was born in Somalia and raised a devout Muslim. In 1992, Ayaan was married off by her father in a ceremony which she refused to attend. In order to escape this marriage, she fled to the Netherlands where she won asylum, and eventually citizenship. After earning a degree in political science she served as an elected member of the Dutch parliament for three years. She has since become an active critic of Islam, an advocate for women’s rights and a leader in the campaign to reform Islam. Her willingness to speak out and her abandonment of the Muslim faith have made her a target for violence and threat of death by Islamic extremists.

Ms. Hirsi Ali was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2005, one of Glamour Magazine’s Heroes of 2005, and she received the Prix Simone de Beauvoir in 2008. She has published a collection of essays entitled The Caged Virgin and a best-selling memoir Infidel.

Nov. 2, International Freedom Of Speech Day

The murder four years year ago of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, described as a “message in blood” by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, has widened the gap between religious communities and inflamed tensions, a survey shows.

“We shouldn’t let ourselves be divided by a small group of people that writes its message in blood,” Balkenende said at a commemoration service in the Amsterdam street where Van Gogh was shot. Murderer Mohammed Bouyeri said he killed to protect Islam. “Spurring hate is no solution,” Balkenende said.

Van Gogh, a descendent of the brother of the 19th Century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, was known for his outspoken criticism of Islam.

He angered many Muslims by making a film that accused Islam of condoning violence against women.

Van Gogh in 1999 started a production company with collaborator Gijs van de Westelaken. Van Gogh’s last movie, “06/05,” reconstructs the murder of Pim Fortuyn, the anti- immigration candidate for the Dutch parliament assassinated on May 6, 2002. He was killed by a Dutchman, Volkert van der Graaf.

The murder of Van Gogh, 47, who made a movie critical of Islam, has caused a “big majority” of people in the four largest Dutch cities to view relations between Muslim and non- Muslim communities as “negative” or “very negative,” according to an MCA survey published today in Trouw. The country counts 950,000 Muslims among its population of 16 million people.

“Van Gogh was always very provocative,” Alexandra Keddeman, an employee at his production company, Column Productions, in Amsterdam, said in an interview. “He wanted to get people to debate with him.”

The movie that led to his death, called “Submission,” shows images of a Muslim woman wearing a transparent veil revealing her breasts. Koranic texts describing punishments for disobedience among women are written on parts of her body.

“Van Gogh was razor-sharp and sometimes repulsive to his opponents, but always involved and engaged,” Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen said at the commemoration service.

Entitled to Speak

People gathered traditionaly at the site of the killing, in Linnaeusstraat, in eastern Amsterdam. “The commemoration is useless if we don’t draw any lessons from it,” Cohen said. He said people are entitled to the freedom to speak.

The MCA survey interviewed 800 people in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, almost a year after the crime.

Bouyeri, 27, was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Amsterdam court in July, after saying he had no regrets and would “cut everyone’s head off” who demeaned Islam. Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan national, won’t ever receive parole.

In the weeks after the crime, at least 10 Muslim schools and mosques were subjected to arson attacks and vandalism. Authorities also said the threat of terrorism increased.

Dutch police on Oct. 14 staged nationwide raids, arresting seven people suspected of planning terrorist attacks on politicians and buildings. The suspects are members of the so- called Hofstad Group, which prosecutors have linked to Bouyeri.

Prospect of Terrorism

A terrorist attack in the Netherlands is a “realistic” prospect, according to the Dutch National Anti-Terrorism Coordinator. The anti-terrorism group, which falls under the ministries of justice and internal affairs, rates the current threat “substantial,” the second-highest of four grades.

“All of us will remember indefinitely how our country was shocked Nov. 2 2004 after the horrible assassination,” the chairman of the anti-terrorism group, Tjibbe Joustra, said in a speech at a conference in Amsterdam on Oct. 26 2005.

Minister of Finance Gerrit Zalm committed 130 million euros to programs to combat terrorism this year. Most of the money is going to expanding the intelligence services.

I murdered Van Gogh in religion’s name

A Dutch-Moroccan man has confessed in court to murdering a film-maker critical of Islam, breaking his silence in a case that has stoked religious and racial tension in the Netherlands.

Mohammed Bouyeri is accused of killing Theo van Gogh as he cycled to work in Amsterdam on November 2, 2004.

He is charged with shooting and stabbing Van Gogh before cutting his throat and leaving a note pinned to his body with a knife.

“I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted,” the 27-year-old told Amsterdam District Court.

“I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion.

“I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same.”

Bouyeri, who has shown no emotion throughout the trial and refused to speak, told the court he felt he owed Van Gogh’s mother, Anneke, some explanation.

“I have to admit I do not feel for you, I do not feel your pain, I cannot - I don’t know what it is like to lose a child,” he said.

“I cannot feel for you… because I believe you are a nonbeliever.

“I acted out of conviction, not because I hated your son.”

Prosecutors say Bouyeri, who waived the right to mount a defence, is a radical Muslim dedicated to a holy war against the enemies of Islam. They allege he murdered Van Gogh to spread terror in the Netherlands.

Punishment
Prosecutors have asked that Bouyeri be sent to prison for life - a sentence that affords no chance of parole.

Beyond that, they are demanding that Bouyeri be stripped of his right to vote or stand for election for the rest of his life, “to literally place him outside of our democracy”.


I demand that United Nations adopt November 2, as International Freedom Of Speech Day.

Teach your children about Theo Van Gough.

Submission, film by Theo Van Gogh

Working from a script written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, van Gogh created the 10-minute movie Submission. The movie deals with the topic of violence against women in Islamic societies; telling the stories of four abused Muslim women. The title itself, "Submission", is a translation of the word "Islam" into English. In the film, telling their stories as if they are speaking to Allah. Qur'anic verses unfavourable to women are projected onto their bodies in Arabic. After the broadcast of Submission, Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali also received death threats. Van Gogh did not take these very seriously and refused any protection, reportedly telling Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "Who would want to kill the village idiot?

Van Gogn was shot 8 times by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch- Moroccan Muslim.

Ayaan fled Netherland and is now in USA under severe protection. Recently a member of Netherland parliament named Geert wilders has decided to release a 10 min movie regarding the truth about violence in Quran. Guess what! The movie hasn't been released yet and he has received so many death threats that he is under police protection and is constantly changing safe houses. However he's stayed firm in his decision regarding the release of the movie. So let's support freedom of speech and not be intimidated by bunch of savages who are stuck in the 7th century and want to impose their throwback religion on the rest of the civilized world.

The silencing of Theo van Gogh

11/24/2004

The Dutch filmmaker believed that insulting people was his right as a free citizen. The Muslim fanatic who slaughtered him didn't agree.

By Ronald Rovers
On the morning of Nov. 2 2004 in a busy street in east Amsterdam, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri pulled out a gun and shot controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was riding a bike to his office. Van Gogh hit the ground and stumbled across the street to a nearby building. He didn't make it. As the Moroccan strode toward him, van Gogh shouted, "We can still talk about it! Don't do it! Don't do it." But the Moroccan didn't stop. He shot him again, slit van Gogh's throat and stuck a letter to his chest with a knife. He was slaughtered like an animal, witnesses said. "Cut like a tire," said one. Van Gogh, the Dutch master's great-grand-nephew, was 47 years old.

After shooting van Gogh, Bouyeri fled to a nearby park, where he was arrested after a gunfight with the police. One police officer was wounded and Bouyeri himself was shot in the leg and taken to a police hospital.

The letter pinned to van Gogh's chest contained accusations aimed not at him but at Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee and liberal parliamentarian, who for years has been fighting for women's rights in the Netherlands' widespread Islamic community. Earlier this year, Hirsi Ali and van Gogh had made "Submission," a short fiction film that was shown on Dutch public television. In the film, a Muslim woman is forced into an arranged marriage, abused by her husband, raped by her uncle and then brutally punished for adultery. Her body, visible through transparent garments, shows painted verses from the Koran. The film, van Gogh said in a TV interview, was "intended to provoke discussion on the position of enslaved Muslim women. It's directed at the fanatics, the fundamentalists.

Written in Dutch, the bloody letter called Hirsi Ali an "infidel fundamentalist" who "terrorizes Islam" and "marches with the soldiers of evil." With her "hostilities," she "unleashed a boomerang and it's just a matter of time before this boomerang will seal your destiny." In capital letters it said: "AYAAN HIRSI ALI, YOU WILL SMASH YOURSELF ON ISLAM!" The letter ended with a kind of chant: "I know for sure that you, O America, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Europe, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Holland, are going to meet with disaster."

Hirsi Ali fled into hiding the day of van Gogh's murder and the next day published a reaction in the Rotterdam daily, NRC Handelsblad. "I am sad because Holland has lost its innocence," she wrote. "Theo's naiveté wasn't that it [murder] couldn't happen here, but that it couldn't happen to him. He said: 'I am the village idiot, they won't hurt me.'"

But they did. As part of his fearless bravado, van Gogh underestimated the wrath of his enemies -- and perhaps the cultural storm at the core of Dutch society. The rage directed at van Gogh stems from the uneasy coexistence between the liberal Netherlands and Islamic fundamentalism. For decades, the country has had an open-door policy; it is now home to more than 1 million immigrants, mainly from Islamic countries. In the process of ensuring that Muslim immigrants are treated as equal citizens, the Dutch government has allowed mosques to flourish, some of which preach a radical brand of Islam that runs counter to the Netherlands' liberal values. It's this climate of "politically correct" tolerance that incited van Gogh and spurred him to strike back in his writings and films.

In fact, the big-bellied, chain-smoking director had just completed another bomb-throwing film, "06-05." It concerns the murder of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn, a writer, professor and outspoken opinion leader who opposed the Dutch government's investment in a new fighter jet, the Joint Strike Fighter. Like van Gogh, who called Fortuyn "the divine bald one," Fortuyn detested the politically correct atmosphere that he said pervaded the country. In the spring of 2002, the flamboyant gay libertarian won Rotterdam local elections by an overwhelming majority, and it looked like he'd do the same in national parliament a few months later. But just before election day, Fortuyn was murdered.

On his Web site, the Healthy Smoker, van Gogh had predicted the assassination: "I suspect Fortuyn will be the first in a line of politically incorrect heretics to be eliminated," he wrote. "This is what our multicultural society has brought us: a climate of intimidation in which all sorts of goatfuckers can issue their threats freely." Fortuyn, however, was not shot by a Muslim extremist but by an animal-rights activist for "using Muslims as scapegoats," as the murderer, a quiet, earnest-looking man, later explained in court.

Notably, van Gogh was murdered exactly 911 days after Fortuyn. Anger toward him had certainly been rising to a boiling point all year. In May, he was slated to act as chairman of a public debate called "Happy Chaos" at the Amsterdam City Theatre. Dyab Abou Jahjah, the leader of a relatively small but provocative Belgian Islamic organization, refused to sit at the table with van Gogh. One of the organizers claimed Jahjah said, "We're not taking any more of that pig." When Jahjah left the stage, van Gogh took the microphone and said: "So this is what some Muslims think of democracy!" After Jahjah left, he said to the crowd: "Why would he be afraid to talk to me? After all, he's the prophet's pimp and he has bodyguards." The debate was canceled.

Needless to say, this didn't enhance van Gogh's standing with Dutch Muslims. Nor is the filmmaker's posthumous reputation likely to improve with the Dutch government and military when "06-05" is released next month. As van Gogh said when he was making the film, "I'll do my best to seriously insult quite a few people."

Nov 24, 2004 | As a writer, van Gogh lived to insult people. There was "something pathological" about it, said Dutch author Leon de Winter. But it wasn't all pathology. Van Gogh also had a warm and compassionate side. I recently talked to him on the phone when he was on the set of one of his new projects. In his high-pitched and hurried speech, he was friendly enough to answer my questions despite being busy, yet he also managed to throw in a couple of obligatory insults about one of his colleagues. "His sole function as a member of these financing committees is to block my movies," he said. "All that mediocrity that sits on these boards."

Van Gogh made his first movie, "Lüger," in 1980, at the age of 23. In the previous year, the law school dropout tried to get in to the Amsterdam Film Academy but was turned down. He claims the approval committee told him to see a psychiatrist. No problem, he thought, I'll teach myself how to direct and raise money for films.

He collected $30,000 from friends and family and started filming. "Lüger," a thriller about a mentally disabled millionaire's daughter who's kidnapped by a greasy psychopath, was screened at the Dutch Film Festival in 1981 and caused an instant riot. The cause of all this commotion was two scenes, one in which the protagonist shoves a pistol into a woman's vagina and a second that shows two kittens spinning in a washing machine. The latter scene was faked, but editing techniques didn't stop van Gogh's opponents from criticizing him. Some of his colleagues called the film "adolescent shit" and one person spit in van Gogh's face at the festival. "Every penny spent on this film is a penny for the devil," wrote the country's largest newspaper. All the same, the festival jury gave the film a special mention.

Van Gogh had only just started. His next few films were book adaptations that were well received by critics but were hardly noticed by moviegoers. The exception was "06," about a sensual anonymous phone sex relationship spinning totally out of control after one lover discovers the identity of his partner, that was also shown in New York as "1-900." It attracted the largest audience for a Dutch film in 1994.

Van Gogh increasingly took control over his own films and refused to work with traditional Dutch film funds. He loathed the bureaucratic obstacles that slowed him down. The downside was that he had to somehow collect his own money, just as he did with "Lüger." To make "06," he took a second mortgage on his house.

But raising money wasn't always easy, a fact van Gogh owed to his habit of insulting people. In 1989, Dutch broadcasting network Veronica canceled the contract for the production of the satirical "Loos," about a washed-up lawyer who is forced to defend a shady nightclub owner after the latter has kidnapped the lawyer's sadomasochistic lover. Van Gogh offended one of the network's chiefs by calling him "a coke head who specialized in throwing secretaries over the balcony."

On the other hand, most actors loved van Gogh. His friend, author Thomas Ross, said that as a director, van Gogh couldn't care less about plot, he was only interested in acting and dialogue. Actors who were mediocre at best in other films peaked when directed by him. Although if actors didn't manage total devotion to a project, they earned van Gogh's wrath. "He was usually too drunk to learn his lines," van Gogh wrote when one of his former actors died. He also couldn't stand people exploiting their sorrow. About an actress van Gogh felt was exploiting the death of her son, he sarcastically remarked, "Now mummy can go on tour for years with his remembrance."

Some of van Gogh's colleagues insisted that the filmmaker's insults were a pose and that it was a "test of intelligence to be able to see through them," as the critic Hans Beerekamp put it. But it wasn't always that straightforward. Many people were offended when van Gogh made Holocaust-tinged jokes about Jewish writers and filmmakers: "Hey, it smells like caramel today -- well then, they must be burning the diabetic Jews," Leon de Winter, in the Wall Street Journal, recently quoted van Gogh as saying. Van Gogh's friend, writer Theodor Holman, had once called "every Christian a criminal" and van Gogh couldn't resist rushing to his friend's defense after Christians raised a public outcry. Van Gogh declared that Holman's enemies were only "the fan club of that rotting fish in Nazareth."

"Theo didn't understand much about people; he couldn't see things from their perspective," Holman said recently. "That made him blunt but curious at the same time."

But that doesn't explain it all. He also passionately believed in free speech and he took on everything and everyone that posed a threat to it. Two years ago, he told the Dutch newspaper Trouw: "I believe Islam threatens our freedoms. Let me state this clearly: I don't mean every Muslim is dangerous and it would be stupid to think so. But it would be even more stupid to deny that our freedoms must be protected."

Van Gogh didn't feel threatened personally, he said repeatedly. But he did feel the freedom to speak out was being curtailed. Earlier this year, a play in Amsterdam about the prophet Mohammed was considered "blasphemous" by a local Muslim politician. Van Gogh sardonically placed an ad in a local Amsterdam newspaper, saying, "Why shouldn't a play get prohibited? Vote for her!" This declining tolerance for criticism was what van Gogh perceived as a growing climate of intimidation. He toyed with people but was serious at the same time.

Van Gogh's former friend, actor Thom Hoffman, thinks differently: "His quarrels were meaningless. He just took the most radical stance. In the 1980s, he promoted cruise missiles when the whole country literally opposed them. In the 1990s, he took on men with beards," when the politically correct majority still denied any signs of religious or ethnic conflict in the peaceful kingdom of the Netherlands. Van Gogh ended his friendship with Hoffman in the 1980s after the latter appeared in movies that van Gogh hated. "He called me an S.S. officer with Vaseline up my ass," Hoffman said. "He sort of got stuck on Second World War idioms."

Offensive as he could be in person and as a writer -- numerous magazines and newspapers fired him after insults or fights over the contents of his writing -- as a filmmaker, van Gogh was a close reader of human behavior. His films show protagonists who passionately try to connect to each other but end up meeting somewhere in the middle. Van Gogh presented a sinister, failing romanticism, his characters always blinded by their own agendas.

Van Gogh made a total of 25 films and TV programs, and film critic Dana Linssen believed they were only getting better. In van Gogh's 1998 film, "De Pijnbank," Linssen wrote, van Gogh "showed me he was focusing more and more on the power struggle between people. Between men and women and on a more fundamental level between predator and prey, especially when these roles shift between people. He showed us victims can be as opportunist as the ones in power. Heroes become villains and the other way around." In van Gogh's last production, "06-05," Linssen saw his "different personae: the political commentator, the artiste provocateur on a mission and the humanist with a frank and unsettling view on human nature, all come together."

Ten hours after the news of van Gogh's murder, 20,000 people came together on Amsterdam's main square. They stood in shock, hoping this was not the beginning of chaos and the end of free speech. But incidents in the following weeks seemed to prove the opposite.

The Dutch finance minister, Gerrit Zalm, spoke of a "war on extremist Islam," although he renounced that a few days later after the prime minister responded that stirring up public opinion might not be the wisest thing to do right now. Zalm subsequently said he meant "the fight against extremism" and not "war." An Islamic school in the south of the country was damaged by a bomb attack, but no one was hurt. After that, two churches in another town were hit by fire bombs.

A message from the Islamic group Tawhid Brigades was then posted on a fundamentalist Web site, stating that the Dutch government and the general public would become targets of terrorist attacks if the assaults on Islamic institutions didn't stop. The group is little known and security services are having a hard time judging the actual threat. At the same time, though, the Moroccan consulate in Rotterdam was covered in feces. A few hours earlier, a party for the premiere of "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" was evacuated because the manager noticed some suspicious uninvited guests at the party.

Today, a somewhat uneasy calm has settled over the country. The day after van Gogh's brutal murder, the secret service arrested eight people, all suspected of being part of a radical Islamic network. Police and intelligence services have increased their efforts to find terrorist cells and uncover international networks financing terrorist activities. Moroccan groups organize gatherings and even bike rides to show that they are of good will and that the murder suspect was a loner or at best belonged to a small group of religious zealots.

Police have revealed that Bouyeri, van Gogh's killer, the son of Moroccan immigrants, was raised and educated in Amsterdam. A quiet man living in a poor residential area on the outskirts of town -- even his Moroccan neighbors didn't know him -- he did volunteer work for a local community service. He turned to the radical right in front of his friends and teachers, and in 2001 started going to a mosque run by a controversial Egyptian, who had praised suicide attackers as martyrs. The Wall Street Journal reported that Dick Glastra van Loon, the community center coordinator, recalled that Bouyeri, "who had never seemed particularly religious, banned alcohol and then tried to bar mixed-sex meetings" at the center. There has been speculation about the seed of Bouyeri's radical fundamentalism, including suggestions that the death of his mother triggered him to develop a fixation on a society based solely on Islamic Law.

In her letter to a Rotterdam newspaper after van Gogh's murder, politician and "Submission" screenwriter Hirsi Ali, who is rumored to be soon returning to public life, wrote: "Theo and I amply discussed the possible consequences of Submission. He said: 'The moment these considerations stop you from speaking out, that's the moment freedom of speech stops and that is exactly what the fundamentalists want us to do.'"

In a society that tries to offer equality and fundamental rights to all its citizens, van Gogh always called himself "a fundamentalist when it comes to free speech." On a public radio show in May, he said: "People always tells me I cross the line. But free debate is a war of ideas. It's a place where we should be able to hurt each other."

-- By Ronald Rovers

I copied this article from the web site Salon.com