Dutch Critic of Islam Slain

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 3 — Holland was in turmoil after eight Muslims were arrested for the killing of a radical filmmaker on an Amsterdam street Nov. 2. Theo van Gogh, 47, was shot repeatedly by a man in Arab dress who then slit his throat.

The eight Muslims, of Algerian or Moroccan origin, are suspected of terrorist ties. Holland's justice minister, Piet Hein Donner, said the gunman “acted out of radical Islamic fundamentalist convictions,” the AP reported.

Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of the famous painter, had received numerous death threats after the release of his film Submission, a broadside against Islam's treatment of women.

Tens of thousands thronged the streets of Amsterdam to protest the murder, which came two years after the anti-Muslim-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn was killed by an animal-rights extremist.

Buttiglione's Enemies Called ‘Fascist’

LONDON DAILY MAIL, Oct. 29 — Journalist Stephen Glover has condemned the withdrawal of Rocco Buttiglione's appointment to the European Commission as a “terrific scandal whose outcome bodes ill for the 400 million citizens of the European Union.” Buttiglione, the Italian justice minister who formally bowed out Oct. 31, had incited the rage of left-wing members of the European Parliament with statements against homosexual behavior and in favor of the traditional family.

Glover called Buttiglione “the civilized voice of the Catholic intellectual. …s He is prepared even to apologize for causing hurt. Described as an extremist, he does not, in fact, wish to coerce anyone into changing their behavior. He regards the way we live our lives as a matter for personal conscience, and of faith.”

That this was not good enough for the union, Glover concluded, proves that Europeans are certainly not “living in a new enlightened age in which (the continent) has turned its back on the evils of fascism.”

Irish Prime Minister Defends Church Role

DUBLIN SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, Oct. 31— Prime Minister Bertie Ahern has warned against rising anti-clericalism in Ireland. Speaking Oct. 30 to the 1,500 Irish religious in Rome, he lamented that Church scandals have resulted in a situation whereby “it becomes all too easy to tar everyone with the same brush.”

Ahern praised the Irish church's commitment to education, charity and justice as particularly valuable in a country blinded increasingly by material wealth. He concluded, “Any blanket portrayal of the Church as a negative force in our society, therefore, is not only misleading, but also inherently dangerous.”

Hindu Holy Terrors

LONDON TIMES, Nov. 3 — In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, a gullible businessman is teased about sacred monkeys in the Vatican. There are no sacred Vatican monkeys, of course, but their existence in Indian Hindu temples is all too real — and dangerous.

Zoologists were called in after 2,000 rhesus monkeys at the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati went on a rampage. Temple priest Bani Kumar Sharma said, “They hide in trees and swoop on unsuspecting children loitering in the temple premises or walking by, clawing them and even sucking a bit of blood.”

Indian monkeys are strictly protected as embodiments of the Hindu god Hanuman. In 2001, 10,000 invaded Delhi and damaged several army bases.