Jawed Santani, Thin-Skinned In Amsterdam

by Hugh Fitzgerald

The latest act of Islamic terrorism took place in the Central Railroad Station in the heart of Amsterdam. There, one Jawed Santani, a 19-year-old  Afghan, currently a resident of Germany, stabbed, in an attempt to murder, two tourists. They happened to be Americans, but he was not out to kill Americans — any Infidels would do. What he was intent on doing was expressing his fury at the Netherlands, for what he regarded as a series of insults to Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islam, coming from people in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands, after all, is where the movie Submission, about the mistreatment of women in Islam, was produced. One of those involved in making the movie was Theo van Gogh, who was later stabbed to death by a Muslim fanatic for his role in producing that movie. The Netherlands is where the celebrated apostate from, and enemy of, Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, got her start. It is where Pim Fortuyn, one of the earliest and most eloquent of European political figures to speak about the demographic threat from Muslims to the survival of the West, first delivered his warnings — and was murdered by a weak-minded animal-rights activist for “picking on helpless Muslims.”

The Netherlands is also the home of the famously anti-Islam Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, who had recently announced his plan to conduct, this coming November, inside the Dutch Parliament building, a Muhammad cartoon drawing contest. That aroused fury in many Muslim countries, but especially in Pakistan, where the whole country seemed to be up in arms, and threats to attack Dutch people and Dutch interests were made by well-known politicians. The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a conservative Islamic party, even  threatened to blockade Islamabad, the capital of the country, unless the Pakistani government severed diplomatic relations with the Netherlands. It did not come to that, for Wilders announced on August 30 that, not wanting to endanger others, he had decided to cancel the contest.

But the announcement on a Thursday of the cartoon cancellation was not enough to stop the 19-year-old Afghan on the next day, a Friday, from stabbing two foreign tourists — clearly, non-Muslims — in the Amsterdam Central Rail Station. For Jawed Santani was not getting revenge only for Wilders’ latest plan, but rather, for a whole host of insults, as he described them, to Islam and Muhammad, originating in the Netherlands over the last few years. It was not even necessary for him to try to kill Dutch people. Any Infidel tourists on Dutch soil would do, to get back at the Netherlands and, not incidentally, make it a more dangerous and less attractive place for tourists. How convenient if, while you kill incidental Infidels, you are also Inflicting economic damage on the country you hate.

Hostile Takeover, Thilo Sarrazin’s second book on the dangers of Islam and the Muslim invasion of Europe, has just appeared in Germany. Many of those who wrote hostile reviews have pointed out, as one example of Sarrazin’s supposedly preposterous charges, his claim that Muslims are “thin-skinned” and react very badly to criticism. For these hostile reviewers, this was an absurd, islamophobic notion.

There is no need for Sarrazin to respond. He need only introduce into evidence the mental picture we can all visualize, of that 19-year-old Afghan, Jawed Santani, who traveled from Germany to the Netherlands, and in the Amsterdam rail station chose two tourists to attack at random. You can now see him, in your mind’s eye, standing satisfiedly over two bleeding bodies while clutching a knife that is also dripping blood. It’s the attack he felt compelled to carry out on Dutch soil because of what he said were repeated insults, from a handful of Dutch, against “the Prophet Muhammad, the Koran, Islam, and Allah.”

I call the perpetrator of that bloody denouement thin-skinned. What would you call him?

First published in Jihad Watch