Two pieces on the Theo van Gogh murder and while there is no direct queer link here, as there was with Pim Fortuyn's murder, the issue is an important one for anyone concerned with the problems of dealing with religious intolerance. Vikram Outside View: Challenging Islam is risky By Irshad Manji Outside View commentator Toronto, ON, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- Tuesday's slaying of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who criticized Islamic practices, reminds all of a nagging truth: More than 15 years after the government of Iran issued a death warrant against novelist Salman Rushdie, challenging Muslims remains a risky business. As a Muslim dissident, I speak from experience. My book, "The Trouble with Islam," has put me on the receiving end of anger, hatred and vitriol. That's because I'm asking questions that we Muslims can no longer hide from. Why, for example, are we squandering the talents of half of God's creation, women? What's with the stubborn streak of anti-Semitism in Islam today? Above all, how can even moderate Muslims view the Koran literally when it, like every holy text, abounds in contradictions and ambiguity? The trouble with Islam today is that literalism is going mainstream. Muslims who take offense at these points often wind up reinforcing them in their responses to me. I regularly get death threats through my Web site. Some of my would-be assassins emphasize the virtues of martyrdom, wanting to hurl me into the "flames of hell" in exchange for 72 virgins. Others simply want to know what plane I'm next boarding, so they can hijack it. Somehow, I don't feel the urge to share my schedule. A few threats have been up-close and personal. At an airport in North America, a Muslim man approached my traveling companion to say, "You're luckier than your friend." When she asked him to explain, he turned his hand into the shape of a gun and pulled the trigger. "She will find out later what that means," he intoned. But, for all of the threats, there's good news: I'm hearing more support, affection and even love from fellow Muslims than I thought possible. Two groups in particular -- young Muslims and Muslim women - - have flooded my Web site with letters of relief and thanks. They are relieved that somebody is saying out loud words they have only whispered, and grateful that they're being given the permission to think for themselves. That's why I don't take my bodyguard everywhere I go. It may be necessary to have one when I visit France next week. But in my day-to- day life, I refuse to be closely protected. If I'm going to have credibility conveying to Muslims that we can, indeed, live while dissenting with the establishment, I can't have a big, burly fellow looking over my shoulder. I must lead by example. So far, so good. To be sure, I haven't tried visiting Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan since the release of my book. (One challenge at time, please!) Still, the relative safety with which I've debated Islam in the West -- from Britain to Belgium, from Australia to Canada, from the Netherlands to the United States -- convinces me that Muslims in the West have a sterling opportunity. They are best poised to revive Islam's tradition of independent reasoning. Why in the West? Because it's here that we already enjoy the precious freedoms to think, express, challenge and be challenged -- all without fear of state reprisal. I'm not denying that some Muslims have been targeted for harassment, profiling and discrimination by Western governments. I faced the same during the 1991 Gulf War when I was marched out of a federal building in Ottawa, Canada for no apparent reason. However, none of this negates a basic fact: If Muslims in the West dare to ask questions about our holy book, and if we care to denounce human rights violations being committed under the banner of that book, we need not worry about being raped, flogged, stoned or executed by the state for doing so. What in God's name are Muslims in the West doing with our freedoms? I know what many young Muslim would like us to be doing -- thinking critically about ourselves and not solely about Washington. Indeed, a huge motivation for having written my book came from young Muslims on American and Canadian campuses. Even before 9/11, I spoke at universities about the virtues of diversity, including diversity of opinion. After many of these speeches, young Muslims emerged from the audiences, gathered at the side of stage, chatted excitedly among themselves, and then walked over to me. "Irshad," I would hear, "we need voices such as yours to help us open up this religion of our because if it doesn't open up, we're leaving it." They're on the front lines in the battle for the soul of Islam. Whatever the risks to my own safety, I won't turn my back on them -- or on the gift of freedom bestowed by my society. -- (Irshad Manji is author of "The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith." She can be contacted through her Web site, www.muslim-refusenik.com.) from The Economist: Islam in the Netherlands: Another political murder For the second time in two years a horrific murder has traumatised Dutch society THE first time the Dutch hoped it was a freak incident. But a second political murder in the Netherlands in the space of two years has left this country, which has long prided itself on its tolerant, liberal values, in deep shock. Dutch people fear that they may now live in a place where violence has become a way of settling differences of opinion—especially over rocky relations with a growing Muslim minority. An outspoken and provocative film director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered in Amsterdam on the morning of November 2nd. A 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan apparently emptied a magazine of bullets into his victim, knifed him as he lay dying and left a note stabbed into his body. He was arrested after a shoot-out with police. Ironically, Mr Van Gogh was killed as he was cycling to the studio to finish editing a film about the previous political murder, of the flamboyant anti- immigrant populist Pim Fortuyn in May 2002. Fortuyn, whom Mr Van Gogh admired, was killed by an animal-rights activist of ethnic-Dutch origin. At the time the fact that the killer was neither Muslim nor an immigrant was greeted with relief by politicians and public alike. No such relief this time. The victim was an outspoken and often offensive critic of Islam, who once called radical Islamist immigrants "a fifth column of goatfuckers". His killer was a jallaba- clad Muslim immigrant and associate of a radical group that Dutch intelligence has been watching. Police arrested eight more Islamist suspects the next day. The justice minister said the murder stemmed from "radical Islamic beliefs". Mr Van Gogh was killed a few months after the screening on television of his film "Submission". The film, based on a screenplay by a Dutch parliamentarian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, features a Muslim woman in a see-through burqa telling a story of abuse within her marriage; she has text from the Koran condoning family violence written on to her naked body. Ms Hirsi Ali is a Somali refugee who has made a career in Dutch politics by standing against radical Islam and defending her adopted homeland's liberal values. She even quit the Dutch Labour Party for the liberals because she thought it too soft on illiberal Islam. Both she and Mr Van Gogh received death threats after "Submission" was shown. She accepted protection, but he waved the threats away, saying he was just "a merry village fool". Who would want to kill somebody like that? The government labelled the murder an "act against freedom of expression", and organised an Amsterdam rally against it. The protesters worried that the killing might be a sign that they are no longer free to express controversial views, or pursue the most outlandish lifestyles, without fearing for their personal safety. Despite the speedy condemnation of the murder by most Muslim organisations, it could still provoke a sharper clash. This is more worrying since the Netherlands is a country where, at least economically, immigrants do better than in many others. Although they are worse off than the ethnic Dutch, there is no immigrant underclass, and no real ghettos exist. Some immigrants are, like Ms Hirsi Ali, already joining the Dutch middle class, both in incomes and in lifestyle. Despite the harsh debate begun by Fortuyn three years ago, the country suffers from little overt racism. Fortuyn himself insisted that he was no racist, and bitterly dissented from comparisons between his party and France's National Front. Many immigrant groups, such as Surinamese, Chinese or eastern Europeans, fit quite happily into the Netherlands. But the gulf between the ethnic Dutch and Muslims has widened (there are almost 1m Muslims in a total population of 16m). Misunderstandings tend to centre around slippery cultural values and social norms. To many Dutch people, the idea of building a multicultural society has failed. Fortuyn's rise to fame three years ago was a sign of how widespread this view had become. Integration is the buzzword now. Many Dutch feel that the time has come for the Muslim minority to adjust to where they live and adopt Dutch values— precisely the view espoused by Ms Hirsi Ali. The debate is coming at a moment when the Dutch are fretting over a general weakening of their social cohesion. Many see immigrants as at best a symbol of this change, and at worst as one of its causes. After this week, more will feel threatened because their Muslim neighbours do not share their liberal values. Dutch hostility to the prospect of Turkish membership of the European Union may also intensify. The hard-hitting policies of the current immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, have been adjusted to respond to such fears. They include such measures as limiting the influx of immigrants by arranged marriages and making more effort to integrate newcomers into Dutch society, for example by compelling them to learn the Dutch language. Many immigrants say the government's aim is full assimilation. They attack what they see as a lack of knowledge and respect for their own cultural and social norms. And many Dutch of Moroccan and Turkish origin feel offended that they are still officially tagged as "foreign" despite being born and educated in the Netherlands. But that is not likely to change now. Instead, more public figures have been calling on Muslim groups to accept the liberal society they find themselves in—and on the government to force them to if they will not do so voluntarily. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/WfTolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Group Site: http://www.gaybombay.info ========================== NEW CLASSIFIEDS SECTION SEEKING FRIENDS? VISIT www.gaybombay.info click on classified section and type your message in the post section once the link opens What's hot? What's not? 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