Filmmaker's killing sets scene for latest Islamic debate

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A five-page letter pinned to the body of a Dutch filmmaker brutally slain after making a movie critical of Islam called for Muslims to rise up against the "infidel enemies" in the West.

Other messages - later left at the sidewalk shrine where Theo van Gogh's throat was slashed - dripped with equal venom against radical Islam. "Enemies live among us," read one missive in a bed of flowers, votive candles and crosses.

Europe's complex interplay with Islam appears to stand at a tipping point, and Tuesday's slaying of the 47-year-old filmmaker as he was riding his bike down a busy boulevard in Amsterdam could indicate one direction in which it is headed.

"The Muslims say they're scared," mourner Nicolette Toering said. "No, we're scared."

Dutch authorities were investigating whether the chief suspect, a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan man detained shortly after the attack, acted alone out of rage or had links to wider extremist networks.

The attack underscores the hard political and social choices that Europe faces about Muslims and the Islamic world.

In December, European Union leaders will decide whether to overlook public objections and move ahead with membership talks with Turkey, a Muslim nation of about 70-million people and a galloping birthrate that could push it past Germany's population in a generation.

European police agencies have sharply boosted cooperation against suspected Islamic terrorist groups following the March train bombings in Spain that killed 191 people. Washington's European allies in Iraq are reassessing their levels of military and commercial support following waves of attacks, kidnappings and beheadings blamed on Islamic militants.

EU officials last month signed the text of a proposed constitution that could face opposition from voters demanding a clear reference to Europe's Christian history.

But those big issues fade on the streets of many European centers. Here - even in places like tolerant Amsterdam - it's often expressed as a gnawing feeling that militant factions in Islamic immigrant communities are gaining ground and chipping away at values such as free speech and secular politics.

"There is a feeling that a social collision is becoming inevitable," said Jan Rath of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies at the University of Amsterdam. "People think it's been building for years and now finally coming to the surface."

The landmarks along the way included the 1989 death threat "fatwa," or religious edict, against British writer Salman Rushdie for alleged insults to Islam in The Satanic Verses, the rise of neofascist movements, the assassination of Dutch anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and France's ongoing showdown with Muslims over a ban on head scarves and other religious apparel in schools.

"My impression is the European voices that say, "Everyone is equal, but we are more equal than Muslims,' are growing," Rath said.

The Netherlands offers a good vantage point to gauge changing attitudes toward Muslim communities across Europe, which have grown more than 100 percent in the past 15 years, according to U.N. reports. Some sources place the Muslim population as high as 13.5-million in Western Europe, or more than 2 percent of the population, in addition to more than 6-million native-born Muslims in the Balkans.

Unlike the French or Spanish, the Dutch long had little direct contact with Islam apart from a colonial presence in distant Indonesia that ended in 1949. Muslim immigrants began arriving after World War II as reconstruction labor, as they did in Germany and other countries.

The workers, mostly Turks, assimilated well into Dutch society. Moroccans and other North Africans began arriving in the 1970s and 1980s, when more lenient laws allowed men to bring in their families.

But the situation in Holland was getting tougher. Jobs were more scarce and some politicians began trying to connect the rising crime rate with the swelling Muslim community, now about 1-million in a country of 16-million people.

Last year, parliament member Geert Wilders pressed for a five-year ban on immigration from Turkey and Morocco. Dutch antiterrorist agents, meanwhile, have intensified probes into alleged radical recruitment among young Muslims.

Van Gogh - a distant relative of the famous 19th century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh - often tested the boundaries of free expression by denouncing Muslims in the most graphic terms. His last work, Submission, attacked the treatment of women under Islam.

The filmmaker's fans were as passionate as his detractors.

"He was trying to warn us about the dangers of radical Islam," said Geert Plas as he visited the site where Van Gogh was ambushed. "Now maybe we'll listen. This is not a small event. It's part of the World Trade Center and Madrid. We must see this."

Christian prayer cards, crosses and biblical passages sat amid the flowers - a rare religious outpouring in one of Europe's most secular states.

"This doesn't just say something about the Netherlands," said Baukje Prins, assistant professor of social philosophy at Holland's Groninjen University. "It is an example of how international relations have become polarized."

NOT JUST IMMIGRATION: The birthrates in many Muslim communities in Europe are among the highest, particularly in Nordic nations.

HEADING EAST: The most pressing political issue is whether to open full European Union membership talks with Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation of 70-million people. Turkish membership would stretch EU borders to Iraq and Iran.

TOUGHER LAWS: European antiterrorism agencies have strengthened cooperation. Many countries also have tightened controls on illegal immigration and asylum claims.

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