Speak your mind, lose your life

Anthony Browne

20 November 2004

Anthony Browne says that the terrible murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam is further proof that radical Islam is not compatible with liberal democracy

Political correctness led in the Netherlands to decades of the ‘politics of denial’, with politicians and media refusing to address a looming crisis. One of the first to analyse the problems was Paul Scheffer, professor of urban sociology at Amsterdam university, who wrote a ground-breaking essay in January 2000 which noted that despite the much-trumpeted multiculturalism, there was an increasingly radicalised resentful ethnic underclass, particularly of Muslims.

The famed Dutch ‘tolerance’ was, he said, based on looking the other way, but he warned that that was no longer possible with ethnic minorities heading for a majority in the four largest cities. Furthermore, he said, ‘there are cultural differences that do not lend themselves to concession, compromise or buying off’. In the same essay, he wrote: ‘None of the unspoken expectations, such as the idea that integration was simply a matter of time, has turned out to be right. So the house of cards known as the multicultural society collapses.’ He concluded, presciently, that ‘the multicultural fiasco that is taking place poses the greatest threat of social unrest’.

The murder of Pim Fortuyn broke the taboo on talking about immigration, and the murder of Theo van Gogh has broken the taboo about tackling Islamic radicalism. The politically correct Left is now ridiculed in the Netherlands. A sign at the site of his murder says it all: ‘Theo rests his case’. But outside the Netherlands, the Left is drawing a different conclusion. In a sickening essay, Rohan Jayasekera, the associate director of Index on Censorship, a group which supposedly defends freedom of speech, blamed van Gogh for his own murder. He wrote that the film-maker was guilty of ‘an abuse of his right to free speech’, his ritual slaughter was ‘his very own martyrdom operation’ and we should ‘applaud Theo van Gogh’s death as the marvellous piece of theatre it was’.