November 20, 2004: The Netherlands, arguably the most tolerant of EU countries, has seen anything but tolerance since the murder of movie director Leo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street on November 2, 2004. Van Gogh’s police protection, which had ended just days before his murder, was implemented over death threats made following the release of his controversial movie "Submission". The movie reflected van Gogh’s views on the plight of Muslim wives and included frontal scenes of women with semi-transparent clothing that revealed not only their breasts but in some cases also bruises from abuse by their husbands.

Within hours of van Gogh’s murder by a Muslim extremist a Muslim school near Eindhoven was burned to the ground, and the balance of intolerance in the next 2 weeks included 15 more bombings of Muslim schools, mosques and Christian churches, topped off by a 14 hour siege of a house in The Hague by a police anti-terrorism unit, resulting in the surrender of 2 terror suspects.

There are about one million people living in the Netherlands who have immigrated from Muslim countries, accounting for 6% of the country’s population. A spokesman for former EU justice commissioner Antonio Vitorino emphasized: "It’s happening in the Netherlands, but it affects the entire EU." Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, currently President of the European Union Council, sees coordinated integration policies within the EU as part of the solution: "The strong reaction and counter reaction following van Gogh’s death reveal tensions in our society. We have to learn from one another in Europe concerning the integration of minorities." Just last week the European Council approved the implementation of a joint immigration and integration policy by the year 2010.

The situation in the Netherlands prompted German chancellor Gerhard Schröder to demand that "immigrants must be committed to our legal system. A democracy cannot tolerate any space outside the legal system or a parallel society." Edmund Stoiber, chairman of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and Schröder’s opponent in the 2002 election, went one step further at his party’s convention this weekend in Munich. Stoiber challenged party delegates to defend "the Christian imprint of our country." According to Stoiber, foreigners residing in Germany must accept "our legal and values system and our dominant culture." During the CSU convention a resolution against Turkish EU membership passed by a unanimous vote.

In a statement released on November 17, the Turkish ambassador to Germany, Mehmet Ali Irtemçelik, asked whether "it is a civilized position to transfer emotions directed at a murderer to a religion and in general to all people of that faith and to make them responsible." Irtemçelik is concerned most about the Turks living in Germany, who in his opinion are being given the feeling of being "undesirables."