AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- A year to the day after the brutal slaying of controversial Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh by a fanatical jihadist, the Netherlands is still tense, tetchy and trying to come to grips with the breakdown of its once-lauded multicultural model.
"People have become more careful, the feeling of insecurity is higher and relations between Muslims and non-Muslims have become more difficult," says Jeffrey Schwerzel, a cultural anthropologist at the Free University of Amsterdam.
Van Gogh, an outspoken critic of Islam who had just made a provocative film about the mistreatment of Muslim women, was slain in broad daylight on Nov. 2, 2004, by a radical Islamist with terrorist links. The self-confessed killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, shot the film director seven times, slit his throat from ear to ear and pinned a note to his chest with two knives containing verses from the Koran.
But it was not just the brutal nature of the murder that horrified the Netherlands -- a prosperous and traditionally peaceful country of 16 million people -- it was the spate of anti-Muslim attacks that followed. In the days and weeks after Van Gogh's killing, an Islamic school was burned to the ground and mosques across the country were set alight and daubed with racist graffiti.
Muslim extremists responded by threatening to kill a handful of prominent Dutch politicians known for their anti-Islam beliefs. Somali-born lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the film Van Gogh directed, and populist politician Geert Wilders have both been under police protection since the attack.
Speaking at a ceremony in central Amsterdam to mark the first anniversary of the film director's murder, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said: "We should not let ourselves be divided by a small group of people which writes its message in blood, a small group of people with a cynical message of terror that want to drive us to hatred."
But despite the pleas for calm, unity and tolerance, the Netherlands is a more divided and less easy-going place than it was a year ago. The killing of Van Gogh has caused a large majority of people in the four largest Dutch cities to view relations between Muslims and non-Muslims as "negative" or "very negative," according to a poll published Wednesday in the weekly Trouw magazine.
Since the cold-blooded slaying of Van Gogh, a distant relative of the painter, the center-right government has toughened its once-liberal stance on integrating the country's one million Muslims and rushed through some of the most draconian anti-terrorist laws in Europe.
It has given police, public prosecutors and judicial authorities greater powers to investigate potential threats, made it easier to use wire-tapping and electronic surveillance at an earlier stage, expanded the capacity of the country's intelligence services and cracked down on jihadist cells operating in the Netherlands.
The authorities have had some high-profile successes -- last month Dutch police arrested seven people suspected of planning terrorist attacks on politicians and buildings -- but Schwerzel fears the government's hardline stance may be counter-productive. "The government has abandoned its softly-softly approach on integration issues and is increasingly looking at the world through a security lens. By focusing all their efforts on preventing another attack, authorities might create new tensions."
The Netherlands is already on a knife-edge. Earlier this week, the country's train system was paralyzed after two men in traditional Islamic robes were reported to be behaving suspiciously. And according to the Dutch National Anti-Terrorism Coordinator, a terrorist attack in the country is regarded as a "realistic" prospect.
Since soft drugs, prostitution, gay marriage and euthanasia were legalized, Holland has earned the dubious reputation as being the world's most tolerant country. The killing of Pim Fortuyn, the openly gay former columnist who rocked Holland's cozy political establishment with his anti-immigration rhetoric before he was gunned down in May 2002, robbed the Netherlands of its innocence. Van Gogh's slaying has had an even more devastating effect on the Dutch way of life: It has silenced some of its most caustic critics and eroded the fundamental right to free expression. "Many people in the Netherlands have become more cautious about making statements about subjects such as Islam," writes Sebastiaan Gottlieb in an op-ed for Radio Netherlands. "Fear of threats, or actual threats, have seen columnists, politicians and entertainers and satirists become more likely to exercise self-censorship."
One politician who refuses to bow to this pressure is Hirsi Ali, who plans to write a follow-up to "Submission," the provocative film directed by Van Gogh. "Problems are being pushed under the carpet because society is tired of the debate about Islam. We'd rather not see the danger in all its nakedness. Not every day, not every week. We'd rather put things into a different perspective and, above all, remove them from our perspective. So, we go and talk about the fundamentalism of other religions, about other countries, about other dangers."
For centuries Holland, an open, liberal, trading nation, has looked outwards for inspiration, wealth and labor. Now it is looking inwards, and the Dutch do not like what they see in the mirror.
