Nermin Aydemir JTW Columnist printable version send your friend message to author add comment ()

Friday, 9 January 2009

Theo van Gogh was murdered by Morocco originated Mohammed Bouyeri on the 2^nd of November 2004. The murder of the controversial name had great repercussions. The Netherlands faced serious challenges towards its multicultural structure after the long morning of the 2^nd November last year.  Van Gogh was killed by a Muslim immigrant, M. Bouyeri, and this gave the chance for the ones who lacked legitimate ground for their racist tendencies. It is by no means possible to justify the act of murdering, particularly the brutal scenes taken place in Amsterdam last year. But it also not fair to blame the whole Muslim society for this individual criminality.  Not only the case itself but the one sided attitudes of the Dutch media and prominent politicians hampered the already fragile balance in the society to a significant extent. 20% of the people, living in the Netherlands are foreigners; about one million Muslims live in this country. The municipality of Amsterdam declared last summer that 49% of its population was constituted by foreigners. People have to think twice when raising the extreme nationalist tendencies in such a demographic structure. Moreover, the Netherlands is one of the best examples of peaceful coexistence and has a mission to keep its humanitarian values in an era in which the clash of civilizations is persistently promoted. Van Gogh has been reflected as the spoilt child of television, a genius intellectual, and completely innocent. Nobody mentioned how he used to insult Muslims as well as people from different religions and of course nobody quoted his slang language when talking about his “intellectuality”. Media had something very popular in hand and used it roughly. Framing the case as the fight between Islam and the “modern world” really increased the audience. Society was divided into two camps- us and them, just like Mr. Bush said after the 11^th September. Nowadays, the Netherlands seems to overcome the turmoil to an important extent. However things changed considerably after the 2^nd November last year and the multicultural structure of this country has been wounded severely.   nermin@turkishweekly.net