This is not the Middle Ages

Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh has been shot dead for making a documentary about muslim women who've been forced into marriages and abused in other ways. He received death threats after his provocative film 'Submission' was shown on Dutch TV. The BBC says:

'The AFP news agency says his film Submission triggered an outcry from Dutch Muslims because it featured four abused women in see-through robes showing their breasts with Koranic text painted on their bodies.

'Van Gogh - who was related to the famous Dutch painter - had also been making a film about Pim Fortuyn, the populist right-wing, anti-immigration politician assassinated in May 2002'

My reactions to this came in the following order:

1. I hope this doesn't help the Bush campaign in any way.

2. I married a muslim woman, helping her escape from arranged marriage in Bangladesh, in 1994. But, despite all the drama, I managed to maintain fairly cordial and respectful relations with her family. They were angry, of course, but now they're back in touch with their daughter. Shazna and I were amicably divorced in 1999, and in 2002 released an album together on Siesta under the name Milky, 'Travels With A Donkey'.



Pim Fortuyn, the right wing Dutch politician assassinated by an animal rights campaigner, was a curious beast. An academic, a homosexual and a dandy, he campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform that he justified with liberal-democratic arguments. The tolerant, he said, should not be tolerant of intolerance. Muslims couldn't understand the liberal and permissive ways of the Dutch, and therefore should leave Holland. The Dutch had no reason to adapt to a state of mind they had themselves left behind in the medieval period.

The trouble with Fortuyn's argument is that it's ahistorical. Fundamentalist Islam is a postmodern phenomenon. It's not from the middle ages, but a product of the times we live in, a hardline reaction to the postmodern west. Its ideology is just as much a part of the modern world as the west's is, for Islam changed itself, toughened itself, in a direct dialectical reaction to western values. Postmodern Islam is our creation as much as the creation of the mullahs and the wahabis. We can soften it by softening ourselves, by remaining polite and by continuing dialogue. Without guns, please.

Addendum: it seems Theo Van Gogh was not only deliberately provocative with his imagery, but also with his words. Here's one of his supporters, from an anti-Islamic messageboard:

'Theo van Gogh is the bad boy of the intellectual debate: attacking the muslims - actually calling them goat f***ckers - , telling the lefties they are hypocrites, for example, for demonstrating against the US in the 1980s.... We're not all refined and sophisticated eurowimps. Dutchies and Americans, we're fighting the same fight. And remember: you freed us from the nazis, but we gave you Colonel Parker. Theo's next film will be on Pim Fortuijn, forever in our hearts.'

Not in mine. A third reaction to this event occurs to me:

3. I hope this doesn't set back Turkey's chances of joining the EU.