"For some Dutch officials it was evidence of a social experiment gone
horribly wrong. 'We were naive in thinking people would exist in
society together,' said Rita Verdonk, the immigration and integration
minister whose name also appears on the death list."
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089- 1347473_1,00.html
Jihad wrecks Dutch race harmony

Matthew Campbell, Amsterdam

WHEN Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, collected his post from the
letterbox on Wednesday he got an unpleasant surprise. Among the bills
and junk mail was a letter addressing him as "ugly dog". It told him
he would soon be beheaded.

It was an unnerving way to start the day. Only 24 hours earlier Theo
van Gogh, the film maker who had often attacked radical Muslims, had
been riding along on his bicycle when a Muslim fanatic first shot and
then butchered him on a busy street with the nonchalance of an
abattoir worker.


Now other people were being targeted, too, as evidence emerged of
a "brigade" of Dutch jihadists preparing to murder "the enemies of
Islam" in a terror campaign that would be easier to carry out than
the bombing of trains or heavily guarded government buildings.

The carefully planned killing of van Gogh plunged into ferment the
formerly peaceful "bicycling monarchy" where, in the good old days, a
relaxed Queen Beatrix used to ride about without attracting any
attention. It prompted some to rethink their faith in a multiracial
society. Others predicted a bloodbath.

"Do not think you are safe," said the letter to Wilders, who had been
planning to set up a party to help to tackle the "Islamic problem" in
Holland, "because we will catch you and cut off your ugly head."

He was not the only one to be threatened. "There will be no mercy"
said a document that the killer had held over van Gogh's chest before
skewering it there with a final knife blow to his heart.

By then van Gogh, 47, had been shot several times and was seen by one
witness on his knees, pleading with his assailant, "Don't do it . . .
we can still talk about it."

The response was a knife to the throat. The killer sawed through the
neck and spinal column, almost to the point of decapitating him.

Unlike the murder two years ago of Pim Fortuyn, the right- wing
populist, by an animal rights activist, the motive for such savagery
seemed horrifically clear - to spread terror in Europe's green and
pleasant garden with a theatre of blood more reminiscent of the
deserts of Iraq. It has succeeded.

Wilders has been taken into protective police custody along with
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a liberal MP of Somali origin who also appeared on
the list. Her offence was to call herself an ex-Muslim and jointly to
produce with van Gogh a film about the Islamic oppression of women.

The Dutch were not alone in their worries. All over Europe media
pundits, entertainers and politicians were forced to ponder the
chilling possibility that cross-border co-operation among closely
connected jihad cells might mean that they, too, were threatened by
the new terror.

For some Dutch officials it was evidence of a social experiment gone
horribly wrong. "We were naive in thinking people would exist in
society together," said Rita Verdonk, the immigration and integration
minister whose name also appears on the death list.

She added that Moroccan immigrants "have never learnt about Dutch
values", despite efforts to train them to respect the country's
mores.