From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Ladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield. On November 2nd, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam.

The man charged with the crime as a Dutch Moroccan Muslim extremist.

The motive? A film that Van Gogh had made called Submission about the Treatment of Women under Islam.

For the Dutch, it was a moment of reckoning.

Suddenly the country found itself struggling with its long, proud tradition of tolerance,

and its resolutely politically correct press would have to raise those questions and report on the debate.

The media throughout the West are in the

midst of developing a vocabulary to address the issues raised by the culture clash between

rapidly expanding Muslim communities and their host nations. Back in the Netherlands last week,

the popular right-wing politician Gert Wilders called for a five-year halt to non-Western immigration,

saying that the country had been tolerant of intolerant people for too long. Meanwhile, a wave of

violence committed by and against Muslims has consumed the country. Martin Walker is the editor-in-chief

of United Press International. He's been reading the papers in the Netherlands and around Europe,

and he says the Dutch press reflects the anguish of that nation.

On the front page of Alchemein Dachblad, one of the great daily papers of Holland,

they have the front-page editorial to the Queen saying,

Your Majesty, please speak to us, your people.

Haters spreading like wildfire through the country,

mosques, churches, schools, children are targets of attack. The Netherlands is being in danger of becoming

a country of them and us, Your Majesty, please speak. The New York Times described that the Dutch

have been almost tongue-tied in their inability to deal with their conflicting feelings.

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