Clash of Civilizations

The last moments of Theo Van Gogh at the hands of an Islamofascist killer creates an interesting portrait of our times. The name 'Van Gogh' is synonymous with Western culture, tied to an era that some argue was the greatest period of art in the West. And in 2004, Vincent Van Gogh's great grandnephew, having made a film about how women are mistreated under Islam, is shot repeatedly, then stabbed.

Theo Van Gogh's last piteous pleadings before his Islamic killer might very well be the words of modern Europe grappling with its rising tide of Muslims on the Old Continent: "Don't do it. Don't do it. Have mercy. Have mercy!"

It's hard to read about Van Gogh's fate and not draw a symbolic parallel between his death and the decline of Europe as a whole. The death of Van Gogh at the hands of a jihadist---in Amsterdam, no less---underscores the cultural divide that socialist European nations are nurturing while in their quest to keep Europe safe for Muslims. Van Gogh was a filmmaker and columnist who appears to have epitomized a secular, post-modern liberal view of the world. He spared no religion his derision; he once mocked a prominent Dutch Jew, referred to Jesus as the rotten fish of Nazareth, and called a radical Muslim politician Allah's pimp. All three Abrahamic religions received his wrath, rightly or wrongly. But only one broke out the koummya and sliced his throat.

Perhaps a state funeral is in order, to lament Europe's passing. Theo Van Gogh the Younger might have been an opinionated, unbridled and uncouth liberal art lunatic who needed to know his limits with Islamofascism's medieval sensibilities; or he might be a hero and martyr to what's left of an enlightened Europe, in a steep decline. Or perhaps he was simply both.

Rest in Peace, Theo.