Dutch in Crackdown on Muslim Immigration

The country said to be the most tolerant in the world is reassessing its open-borders policy after the broad-daylight murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamic terrorist two weeks ago.

“Now the country is changing its open-door immigration policy,” reports Fox News Channel’s Heather Nauert, “kicking out tens of thousands of people awaiting political asylum.”

“Some members of Parliament want to take it one step further and close the borders altogether — and even kick out radical imams at some of the mosques,” Nauert said Sunday.

Van Gogh — grandson of the famous painter — had angered Muslims with a recent film critical of the way the culture treated women. He was shot on Nov. 2, allegedly by Muhammad Bouyeri, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan with suspected links to an al-Qaida group. Bouyeri was charged with murder.

After firing six shots, Van Gogh’s assailant followed the bleeding artist across the street, where he slit his throat and plunged the knife through a terrorist manifesto into his chest.

The document threatened members of the Dutch Parliament with further attacks. Two of those named have gone into hiding.

The Netherlands’ Muslim population has grown to 1 million in recent years, a little more than 6 percent of the total population.

Under fire from a Dutch citizens who say the government’s lax law enforcement and open-door immigration policies have left them vulnerable to attacks from enemies in their midst, the government of Jan Peter Balkenende has grown more aggressive in recent days, launching a new wave of surveillance on suspected Muslim radicals and pledging to deport troublemakers.

“The jihad has come to the Netherlands,” said Jozias van Aartsen, a leading Dutch Christian Democrat and speaker of the Parliament, in the wake of Van Gogh’s murder.

On the need to keep an eye on suspected radicals, Christian Democrat Maxime Verhagen contended, “It’s better to have 10 possibly innocent people temporarily in jail than one with a bomb in the street.”