Well in that case I apologise.
Though I have to say, I didn’t notice any outraged Pit threads about it condemning Buddhists.
Hell with the apology—I want my dollar-twen’y!
He’s retired now, but there was George Habash, who was General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In the occupied territories, yes it is a constantly shrinking number and may be even lower than 3% at this point. However that percentage was ~10 - 20% in 1948 ( depending on which figures you accept ) and many of the Palestinians in diaspora are Christian - i.e. the difference isn’t birthrates so much as a higher percentage of immigration out of the area. There are significant number Christian Palestinian in the Americas for instance.
Former known Palestinian terrorists from Christian families include folks like George Habash, leader of the PFLP 1967-2000 and Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the DFLP since 1969.
As the Palestinian terrorist profile has moved from secular nationalism towards Islamism a la Hamas and PIJ and the Palestinian Christian population has declined these numbers have declined along with them, without a doubt. However the fact remains that Christian Palestinians have traditionally been just as unrelentingly hostile to Israel as their Muslim counterparts.
- Tamerlane
Moroccan teens ‘spit’ on Van Gogh portrait
Originally posted by jjimm
Since we’re talking about a murder in the Netherlands I can inform you this is simply not true.
The media here are falling all over each-other to be as Politically Correct as they can be. Any signs of goodwill from the muslim community will be shown on the news again and again and again.
Sadly, there isn’t much goodwill:
4 November 2004
AMSTERDAM — Moroccan teenagers have allegedly spat on a large portrait of murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, it was reported Thursday.
Shortly after Van Gogh’s murder on Tuesday, spray can and graffiti artist Donovan Spaanstra, 33, painted a portrait of the Dutch television celebrity and columnist on the façade of a building in the Warmoesstraat.
“For an artist, from an artist. Van Gogh has walked past here thousands of times,” Spaanstra told newspaper De Telegraaf.
Initially greeted by applause for painting the portrait, Spaanstra claimed some Moroccan teens then hassled him, screaming “Hamas, Hamas”. He claimed they even spat on the portrait and did not want to discuss the killing.
I’m sorry. Could you forget about my last post?
I found out too late that the source came from ‘De Telegraaf’. Which is a widely read newspaper, but a very right-wing one.
They might tell the truth, but I’m not in the habit of reading it, nor do I like quoting them. [and I didn’t think Expatica would print them]
Thanks.
FUCK IT.
It’s true. [using Rune’s link]: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraaf.nl%2Fbinnenland%2F15329121%2FMarokkanen_spugen_op_portret_Van_Gogh.html&lp=nl_en
Fuck you, you filthy, ignorant cowards. Remind me why I should offer my spare time, counseling your battered women. I spit on you. Wanna kill me? Mail me, I’ll send you my address.
Fuck.
I really do despair, when elements of the Muslim community are so narrow minded that they cannot see the harm they cause. Fuck.
I think a key element of that story is the word “teens”. The great majority of teenaged boys of any ilk can be relied upon to be immature idiots.
I dispair too, Angua. Gyrate, yeah. Teenagers are our future, right?
Latest news:
The letters [5 pages] that the motherfucking murderer stuck with a knife in van Gogh’s stomach was a threat to all non-believers of the Islam and one open letter to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to tell her she would be next. [I’ll link a.s.a.p.]
He also carried a suicide note with him in which he said he was willing to die as a martyr.
The police shot him in his leg.
Spitting on a portrait of a murdered man is certainly disgusting and hateful. But come on, it’s hardly in the same category as murder.
Many Muslims, even among the majority who deplore violence and would never condone Van Gogh’s killing, did consider him an anti-Muslim bigot and feel deeply offended by his work. I don’t agree with them, but it does seem that some of his imagery was pretty inflammatory. What reaction do you think a filmmaker would get from a fundamentalist Christian community for a film attacking oppression of women among fundamentalists, showing a woman’s body with whipping wounds and Bible verses on it? I think many such Christians would feel that it was a rancorous attack on their faith and their scripture, not just on their sins. That AFAICT is how a lot of Muslims felt about Van Gogh’s use of Qur’an verses in a similar scene in his movie Submission.
Of course that’s no justification for murder, nor even for the cowardly insult of spitting on his posthumous portrait. But let’s not blow it out of proportion, either. Muslims who felt (rightly or wrongly) that Van Gogh was an intolerant Muslim-basher should not be required to pretend that they didn’t dislike him. Murder doesn’t invalidate freedom of opinion, and ISTM that Van Gogh would be the last person to want it to.
So, you’re saying there are really no sociopolitical conflicts between Islam and the West that can’t be worked out in an afternoon over a pot of hot tea? It’s all just a lack of understanding and a failure to communicate? Tell me more, I’m all ears.
Dang, I thought the link was that they were all historical figures. After all, poor misunderstood Brutus, as you point out, was no Christian, and neither was LHO. (I would think that it is safe to assume that he might have been raised Christian, but as a good communist he was probably an atheist.)
But that doesn’t matter. Booth and LHO were both killed by other Christians due to the outrage of their crimes. We aren’t seeing too much of that going on at the popular level in the MENA region; instead, we see tacit support.
Brutus: Booth and LHO were both killed by other Christians due to the outrage of their crimes. We aren’t seeing too much of that going on at the popular level in the MENA region; instead, we see tacit support.
The killer of Lee Harvey Oswald was Jack Ruby, a Jew.
To gum:
Thank you for the updates from the Netherlands.
To Angua:
You have convinced me that there is more anti-terrorist feeling among the Muslim community than I initially believed - this in spite of the discouraging news from the Netherlands. Please accept my sympathy. This must be very hard for you.
I am disturbed by those who believe that the War on Terror is a myth ginned up by the Media to sell headlines. There is no single monolithic terrorist organization, but there is definitely a confederation of terrorist groups around the world. And they cooperate with each other. Even the IRA, in its heyday, had ties with Libya (I think) which supplied them with money, weapons and expertise.
No, the “War on Terror” is a vaguely defined catchphrase ginned up by the Bush administration to encompass a nonspecific number of activities and legislation. Our war on Terror will ultimately be as successful as our wars on Drugs and Poverty: without a *specific *target or targets and *specific *goals, the whole thing will become a quagmire of political and military opportunism. In the meantime people will continue to blame *nonspecific *targets which will often be the Muslim (or generic foreign person) next door.
Which is why the Muslim community gets a bit antsy: speak out and have the Muslim lunatic fringe after you, or don’t speak out and get lumped in with them. It’s a bad scence all around.
None of which is necessarily your fault; I’m just ranting now.
Jacob Rubenstein. Shoulda guessed. Just goes to show that those Jews are tough on terrorism!
But the point remains valid. It’s not like we were going to let LHO go or turn him into a folk hero. Just not acceptable in polite circles.
Just subscribing to this thread. You guys debating make more sense to me then “Sonja Barend” (Dutch talkshow).
Carry on.
Ok. Arafat’s wife is (or was, has she converted?) a Christian too as everybody know. Don’t know if she’s native Palestinian. Come to think of it, Arafat is Egyptian.
But it was my impression that there were some really bad blood between the Moslem Palestinians and Christian Palestinians, about as bad as between the Jews and Palestinians, and that was the reason so many (more) Christian Palestinians had fled, that some Christian Palestinians had even fled to Israel. I know a guy, a Christian Palestinian. Says he descends from Frankish crusaders, well he looks it, blond and light skinned, but I don’t know, he’s probably a bit crazy. He hates the Jews of course, but nowhere near as much as he hates the Muslim Palestinians.
Thank you, I’m glad I’ve managed to enlighten at least one person. What’s harder, however, is coping with the willfull ignorance towards Islam shown by some in this thread, even when presented with facts and evidence.