AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Following the death of a controversial filmmaker by Islamic fundamentalists, violence is gripping the Netherlands – a small country of 16 million people.
Theo Van Gogh (search), whose latest movie denounced the treatment of women in Muslim countries, was slain Nov. 2 in Amsterdam. His throat was slit and a note attached to a knife shoved in his chest threatened “jihad” against the Dutch government.
Officials arrested an alleged Islamic extremist in connection with the slaying. The suspect is part of what officials describe as a 1,000-member international terror cell with ties to Usama bin Laden (search).
The religious tensions in this normally tolerant country have resulted in the bombing and vandalism of more than 20 mosques and churches around the Netherlands (search).
The Dutch prime minister paid a visit to a mosque to try to calm ethnic tensions. Six percent of the country’s population is from Muslim countries but the problem isn’t necessarily coming from the newcomers.
“We now have an integration problem with a large population of foreign people. But the problem [is] we are now apprehending for extremism Dutch people born in the Netherlands … It’s a different aspect in that respect,” said Dutch Justice Minister Piet Donner.
Donner said some young men and women raised in the Netherlands refused to accept the tolerant Dutch way of life. It’s something locals are angry about.
“If they don’t accept how the policy is here in Holland, then they have to leave,” one woman said in Amsterdam.
Some here think twice about the country’s open-door immigration policies and acceptance of foreigners.
“From the 60s in the Netherlands, we have seen we were almost too tolerant. We accepted almost everything here in Holland,” said Gerard Van As, a member of Parliament. “They call the Netherlands almost a breeding place for criminal organizations.”
Officials confirm that the Dutch Secret Service, the agency in charge of investigating terrorism, has been infiltrated by at least one Islamic extremist. The agent was said to be recruited after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States in a rush to bring in Arabic speakers.
That agent was an associate of the radical accused of killing Theo Van Gogh.
Click on the video box near the top of this story to watch a report by FOX News' Heather Nauert.
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