The ugly side of Islam

On Nov. 2 of last year, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot, stabbed and nearly beheaded. Aside from the embarrassingly long time it took to go to trial, what is really disturbing and enlightening is the nature of the killer's confession.\nMohammed Bouyeri, the murderer, is an Islamic extremist, and he told the court that what motivated him to kill was his religion -- van Gogh had made a film called "Submission" that criticized Islam's treatment of women.\n"What moved me to do what I did was purely my faith. ... I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his prophet," Bouyeri told the court.\nNot stopping there, Bouyeri even told the victim's mother, "I have to admit I don't have any sympathy for you. I can't feel for you because I think you're a nonbeliever."\nThe Associated Press story which quoted Bouyeri also noted that spectators were "stunned" by his comments.\nStunned? After Sept. 11, after Madrid and only a week after London? How can one be stunned when it is common knowledge that large networks with this mindset are actively seeking the downfall of western civilization and when Bouyeri himself has 12 accomplices awaiting trial? One would have to live in a cave (and not in Afghanistan, either) to not see this.\n"Peace in our time," said Neville Chamberlain after Munich in 1938, perhaps the most naïve statement of the century. But Chamberlain is not far from a typical political idealist of today, and I dare say his kind is more common than ever, especially in Europe. Their heads are so high among the clouds that they don't notice the bombs exploding at their feet.\n"Tolerance," "understanding" and "dialogue" are rattled off dogmatically as the solution to terror. But no amount of tolerance or understanding can deal with people of Bouyeri's mindset and there certainly will be no dialogue, only hot air being frozen on stone-cold hearts.\nThe trial also shows how diametrically opposed the Islamic extremists are to western values. If I beheaded everyone who made a movie portraying Catholicism negatively, all of Hollywood, except maybe Mel Gibson, would be dead (and the movie industry's IQ would consequently skyrocket). One filmmaker criticizes Islam and dies for it -- notice the disparity? Van Gogh died because he picked the wrong religion to insult. It was the one with a sect of extremists willing to \nmurder because a man expressed his contrary opinion. These people hate everything the west represents, down to basic free speech.\nThat hatred is so thorough that it precludes any compromise. It took oceans of spilled blood to make Chamberlain see that, and I certainly hope no more must be shed to show our own Chamberlains. Their devotion to their twisted ideology resembles that of the Nazis: kill and die for your ideals. They must therefore be treated as were the Nazis. No tolerance, no dialogue, no mercy. That is how evil is vanquished.